Most political
memoirs are written by “successful” politicians, maybe after a
fall from power, nevertheless there has been some period at the top.
Therefore the memoir of a loser is in itself an interesting take.
As a follower, from
afar, of Welsh life and politics I am clearly particularly drawn to
this account of a Welsh aspect of the 2015 General Election, but I
don't think that you need to have any particular interest in Wales to
find the dynamics of a constituency campaign being played out – how
the big picture of the election does, and in many ways does not,
influence the local. It is also an intensely human story, and so I
don't think you need to be a political nerd to engage with it either.
Mike Parker is
honest, at times brutally honest, about Plaid, the party he was
standing for. It gives clues about why Plaid is not riding on the
crest of a wave in the same way as the SNP, but also perhaps why all
parties are undergoing some level of existential crisis. How the SNP
has seen a surge in support in the wave of a defeat in a referendum
on its primary raison d'etre, UKIP possibly the reverse, and Labour's
membership is seen by many to be growing in direct inverse to its
electability are political puzzles equal to Plaid catch-22 to being
too “small c” conservative to capture the anti-establishment
vote, and yet too radical for many others.
Given the turning
point of the tale is the dredging up of Mike Parker's past published
writing makes me even more cautious that usual about putting writing
what I am really thinking... His conclusion is a sad one, that
writers are unwise, unable, to become politicians because there will
always be something in their past that can be quoted out of context
and torpedo them. But in the age of Twitter, we are not all writers
now? What we once said in the pub we now publish online...
I would be deeply
worried by the prospective politician who has never made an ill judge
quip on Twitter, whose every move from the first utterance online,
has been considered and calculated with a view to future
electability. As Billy Joel once sang “And the only people I fear
are those who never have doubts”. We complain that our politicians
are out of touch with reality, and yet pounce on them when they
betray that they are human... In so doing we get what we deserve?
Mike Parker's
relationship to his party feels very real, he is loyal to his party
but not blinkered to its failing. Enough of an outsider not to be
consumed by its internal and self-validating bubble, a bubble that is
likely to be true of all parties not just Plaid. His accounts of the
hustings, where many are attended almost exclusively by the committed
supporters of the various candidates, no one comes to listen, learn,
and decide, but merely to cheer their guy (in most instances in this
campaign all the candidates at the hustings were male). Rather than a
debate they are in effect 4/5 simultaneous rallies occurring in the
same physical space but without meaningful overlap.
It would seem that
one of the challenges Mike articulates is the erosion of nuance, it
is not just that he gets “better” at keeping to the script in his
doorstep encounters, it asks if there a question about chicken and
egg between message and medium?, the sound-bite existed before the
140 character limit of Twitter, but for whatever reason it seems
clear that if you need a paragraph to explain your position you are
unlikely to get traction with the current electorate. But while the
message needs to be simple the world isn't.
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