Politics and Theatre

In a recent post Paul Krugman assured his readers that "Government is more than theatre".  Actually, I think for many people, politics is just theatre.  This has struck me many times as I look at the various controversies that crop up in national and local politics.

Nationally, it seems often to be the minor but easily understandable failings of politicians that lead to resignations.  More important, but hard to understand issues such as the failure of universal credit, basic incompetence in doing your job or complex problems just don't get the same coverage.  I guess this is related to a general lack of interest in politics.  Many people regard it as being like plumbing; they just want it to work, and don't care how it does so.  I fear it is also related to the increasing instant gratificiation that one sees with modern media such as twitter.  Often I see twitter exchanges where people seem to react the headline, or a phrase, rather than actually read the link.  As headlines are frequently cruder than the articles they point to this can lead to some very ill informed exchanges.

Locally, I notice that people often engage in debates without seeing them as relating to practical consequences.  This runs quite contrary to my own mentality.  What I like most about local government is linking policy to actual events and decisions.  Others seems to see it as just giving rise to essentially symbolic debates.  I think of the attempt to turn the debate over the extremely practical public realm contract into a debate about Middle Eastern politics, the attempt to turn the Tricycle Theatre's muddled effort to avoid politics into a controversy about politics, or the simple failure to acknowledge the need for any choices at all.

Sometimes a whole series of proposals can be put forward.  Each would require significant work if taken forward, but the proposer just drops them as they are rejected.  An example, would be Paul Lorber's multiple library proposals.  In that case the result tended to follow a pattern of lots of noise, followed by complete silence on the issue once it is decided.

Alternatively, as in the FKRL case, a proposal can be rejected for a set of reasons.  A set of myths can then be invented that bear no relation to the facts.  Recently I have seen twitter exchanges in which people wrongly claim that the building is Council property, or that it could have remained so (which refuted here), or that the Council ignored key things such as the areas of deprivation (which anyone who reads the Bailey judgement knows to be untrue).   Such statements are then endlessly repeated, and most people simply don't check their veracity even though the relevant information is freely available.

This makes good decision making very hard, as populist campaigns can swamp the debate through sheer noise, as happened to some extent with the Willesden Library debate where a number of campaigners simply ignored the facts (more examples here).  I don't know what the solution to this sort of thing is, but the effect is to make it very hard for public authorities to function.