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The Practice of Triangulation

I much prefer my politicians to be open and honest, if that is not an oxymoron, I do not like the new career politicians who have never worked in industry or held any job that did not automatically put them in a safe environment divorced from the real life problems of ordinary people.

This tendency of political parties to take on new young blood and teach them the way of the world through one set of principals, is leading to a political elite who have no hands on experience of real life, they are loosing the contact with the people who vote for them, and instead of a variety of different life experiences forming their view they rely on what they are told to think, and do not question anything their own leadership tells them, how could they, poor darlings have been spoon feed since they left school.

I have lived long enough to see foreign militant activists, who would tear up rugby pitches, in an attempt to make our elected government bend to their wishes, put on suits and raise to the highest level in the British politics. Once in power however they then suddenly become very clear that no one is going to get away with the things they did, because that would trespass on their right to govern, if they really felt this way they should have never torn up rugby pitches in the first place.

This brings me round to Robin Cook who said in The Guardian on Friday “It is time someone put in a good word for Peter Hain. He has taken a lot of stick for asserting that the priority given to security in the Queen’s speech proved life was safer under Labour”. Peter Hain is due a lot of stick for lying to the British people about the EU Constitution, but protected as he is by the party system we cannot try to explain to him the deference between tiding up and helping to build a super state.

However I digress Robin Cook then goes on to explain the problems with some of the thought processes going into the government’s electoral calculation to stand on fear of terrorism and law and order.

“If we are going to claim that Labour makes Britain safer, we need to offer policies to convincingly prove it. Promising an effective system of ID cards by 2012 does not suggest the threat is that urgent. Nor has the government ever explained why ID cards would be any more successful in preventing terrorism in London than in Madrid, where ID cards had long been compulsory. Now we understand the public will not be required to produce an ID card on demand, but will be given the option of bringing it down to the police station for inspection just like a driving licence. It is difficult to see the determined terrorists, about whom we are warned, turning up at the police station, where they can be conveniently arrested.

But the most perplexing aspect of a campaign anchored on a threat to security is that it puts law and order at the centre of the election, although that is the one remaining issue on which the Conservative party is ahead in the polls. To New Labour strategists, that is not a puzzle but the reason for choosing security as a central front. They are devotees of the practice of triangulation, and believe that elections are only won by stealing your opponents’ clothing, rhetoric, issues - and, hopefully, their votes. If the Conservatives pose as tough on law and order, then Labour must pose as even tougher.

Whatever the tactical gains in the short run from triangulation, in the long term it threatens to poison our political system. The greatest challenge to our democratic process is the growing number in the electorate who find it hard to identify with any party, or to accept the conviction with which political figures hold their views. The most frequently articulated complaint is that “you are all the same”. Yet, perversely, the objective of triangulation is to minimise the difference between a party and its rival, and to deny the electorate a real choice between competing value systems. The real enemy for Labour at the next election will be neither Tory nor Lib Dem but apathy. But we will not motivate our supporters to turn out and vote for us by pretending that we share our opponents’ priorities”.

Of course the practice of triangulation can be clearly seen in the parties position on the EU, where I am sure Mr Cook is quite happy, that this practice has denied the electorate a real choice between competing value systems for the past thirty years, so much so, that there is never any real discussions about alternatives to EU Membership, and anyone who tries to offer a different value system is treated as if from a different planet.

If the Political parties do continue the strangulation of democratic choice by the practice triangulation then perhaps we will have to start looking to the rugby pitch answer, to a political system that will not listen to the people. But of course nowadays thanks to the BBC militant activist, has a totally different meaning, and the government’s new “militant activist” laws will enable them to imprison us without trial and throw away the keys, because we will of course be trespassing on their right to govern.