Bricks and Windows
I like Daniel Finkelstein's regular columns in The Times and this offering is a perfect example because he has a great ability to laugh at himself and others without being malign, bitter or downright nasty.
The same arguments have applied to trade unions for years, of course, because in far too many cases trade unions are just 'chum clubs' run by tiny groups of activists who share the same narrow political agenda (Labour supporting in the main) and certainly don't represent the wider views of ordinary union members.
But I wonder what Daniel thinks of the recent upsurge in the SNP's membership in Scotland which is fast approaching 100,000 apparently, from around 20,000 in September 2014 before the independence referendum?
Because if these figures were scaled-up to a UK level they suggest a party membership of around 1 million members completely dwarfing the Conservative and Labour parties, never mind the Lib Dems.
I loved the story of the frustrated woman who threw a brick through her own window, by the way, and no matter what the provocation of North Lanarkshire Council over equal pay, I would urge regular readers and A4ES claimants in North Lanarkshire to refrain from doing the same.
We shall overcome, as they say.
Ukip hasn’t got the monopoly on fruitcakes
By Daniel Finkelstein - The Times
As membership of political parties dwindles, the danger grows that the weird and the wacky will gain more influence
By the time it had reached its final conference in Coventry, in 1990, the Social Democratic party was in a sorry state. Its support had entirely disappeared and it had almost no members.
The lack of interest in proceedings was such that speakers from the floor had to be told to keep talking in order to avoid embarrassing gaps in the programme. And when, at the end of the affair, the platform party stood to applaud the leader, we moved our chairs back and knocked over the stage set, a collapsing backdrop providing the perfect metaphor for our political position.
Even more vivid than this catastrophe is my memory of the preceding meeting of the national executive, a committee on which I then sat. A leading activist, taken seriously as a tribune of the few remaining members, announced that her frustration was intense. She simply could not believe that voters were unable to tell the difference between that Social Democratic party (us) and the Social and Liberal Democrats (not us).
She then explained that on local election day her anger at this confusion had reached such a pitch that “I went outside my front door and threw a brick through my own window”. There was a barely perceptible pause, and then the meeting continued as if nobody had said anything untoward.
I thought of this moment when I read the story of Natasha Bolter, the former Ukip candidate who can’t recall how many children she has or what her age is, variously claims that she is divorced or that her husband is dead, wrongly claims to have been a student at a university that has no record of her, and has embroiled the party in a sex scandal about which the truth has proven elusive.
Despite being — let’s put this delicately — a somewhat unreliable personality, Ms Bolter came close to selection for a seat in which Ukip believes it has a chance of winning.
I think this incident is unlikely to change the political situation much. Voters do not follow such stories closely. I do, however, think it was significant. And not really because of what it had to say about Ukip. I think the Bolter question is one for all of us.
Doctrinaire political parties or those promoting novel doctrines are particularly susceptible to cranks. An unconventional outlook and a feeling that you know something that has passed everyone else by is universal. This doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone is a fantasist, but it can be hard to tell when someone is.
Since the entire point of a new party is to represent people ignored by the traditional parties, those who see things a bit, well, differently are at a premium. People with hobby horses feel right at home.
One of my parliamentary campaign team in the SDP/Liberal Alliance used to contact me every day with further evidence that Aids was caused by yeast extract and being spread by the government. He was sure that if I got on to the issue we could “break the mould” of politics. He held a senior role in the constituency organisation.
And if the founding principle of the party is that the others compromise too much and are too flexible with their principles, it isn’t surprising that you end up gathering together quite a lot of argumentative people who think that nobody can see reason except for them.
The other thing that makes parties vulnerable to eccentrics is if they are small. In the dying days of the SDP, as in the early days of Ukip, someone could move from being a novice to being in the leadership team within weeks. It is hard to subject them to the scrutiny that is required. In the 1960s the entire Liberal youth wing was taken over by far-left activists who sent a message from their national conference to Chairman Mao, congratulating him on his murderous cultural revolution.
Yet if this was merely a matter of fringe parties, or maturing ones, the issue wouldn’t matter as much as it does. In fact, the singularity of party political activists is much more important than this makes it sound.
Joining a political party may once have been a mainstream decision, something millions did. No longer. The number of members of the major political parties is dwindling fast.
As a result, the very act of joining marks you out as unusual, however level-headed you may otherwise be, because you show an interest in party politics that is abnormal. My wife, for instance, points out that on our first date I spent quite a bit of the evening talking about David Steel.
And no matter what you are like, a political party, a bit like a church, has to take you in. I once asked a member to help stuff envelopes, only to find 30 minutes later that he’d been scrunching up my election address into a ball before sticking on the address label. I also had to apologise to some voters because one of my canvassers had started screaming at them about their stupidity when they said that they weren’t sure whether to support me.
In my campaigns I’ve been very lucky. I’ve made good friends. I have met many superb, intelligent people in local politics. Yet also a reasonable number who are neither. Which is where the danger lies.
At the moment, the Labour and Conservative parties are still reasonably big organisations. This doesn’t make it impossible for an entirely unsuitable person to become a candidate in a winnable seat. Indeed in the next door seat to the one where I live, a marginal, the Conservatives chose an apparently boring, normal candidate who then went round at night, spray painting swear words on to the cars and front doors of anyone who crossed him. The local newspaper editor, for instance, and the Liberal Democrat candidate.
The size does, however, lessen the chances of this happening. Yet for how long? If party membership continues its decline, soon all the parties will end up like Ukip — accelerating unknown people into office because they are desperate to have, basically, anybody. Becoming hostage to any old person who is ambitious and has an axe to grind.
Our political system is highly dependent — too dependent — on the integrity and stability of its parties. We need to open up the system and ensure a small cadre of activists do not have a disproportionate influence.
Before he joined Ukip, the MP Douglas Carswell advocated open primaries for parliamentary candidates. He doesn’t seem to be following this up. It’s a shame. He was right.
As membership of political parties dwindles, the danger grows that the weird and the wacky will gain more influence
By the time it had reached its final conference in Coventry, in 1990, the Social Democratic party was in a sorry state. Its support had entirely disappeared and it had almost no members.
The lack of interest in proceedings was such that speakers from the floor had to be told to keep talking in order to avoid embarrassing gaps in the programme. And when, at the end of the affair, the platform party stood to applaud the leader, we moved our chairs back and knocked over the stage set, a collapsing backdrop providing the perfect metaphor for our political position.
Even more vivid than this catastrophe is my memory of the preceding meeting of the national executive, a committee on which I then sat. A leading activist, taken seriously as a tribune of the few remaining members, announced that her frustration was intense. She simply could not believe that voters were unable to tell the difference between that Social Democratic party (us) and the Social and Liberal Democrats (not us).
She then explained that on local election day her anger at this confusion had reached such a pitch that “I went outside my front door and threw a brick through my own window”. There was a barely perceptible pause, and then the meeting continued as if nobody had said anything untoward.
I thought of this moment when I read the story of Natasha Bolter, the former Ukip candidate who can’t recall how many children she has or what her age is, variously claims that she is divorced or that her husband is dead, wrongly claims to have been a student at a university that has no record of her, and has embroiled the party in a sex scandal about which the truth has proven elusive.
Despite being — let’s put this delicately — a somewhat unreliable personality, Ms Bolter came close to selection for a seat in which Ukip believes it has a chance of winning.
I think this incident is unlikely to change the political situation much. Voters do not follow such stories closely. I do, however, think it was significant. And not really because of what it had to say about Ukip. I think the Bolter question is one for all of us.
Doctrinaire political parties or those promoting novel doctrines are particularly susceptible to cranks. An unconventional outlook and a feeling that you know something that has passed everyone else by is universal. This doesn’t mean, of course, that everyone is a fantasist, but it can be hard to tell when someone is.
Since the entire point of a new party is to represent people ignored by the traditional parties, those who see things a bit, well, differently are at a premium. People with hobby horses feel right at home.
One of my parliamentary campaign team in the SDP/Liberal Alliance used to contact me every day with further evidence that Aids was caused by yeast extract and being spread by the government. He was sure that if I got on to the issue we could “break the mould” of politics. He held a senior role in the constituency organisation.
And if the founding principle of the party is that the others compromise too much and are too flexible with their principles, it isn’t surprising that you end up gathering together quite a lot of argumentative people who think that nobody can see reason except for them.
The other thing that makes parties vulnerable to eccentrics is if they are small. In the dying days of the SDP, as in the early days of Ukip, someone could move from being a novice to being in the leadership team within weeks. It is hard to subject them to the scrutiny that is required. In the 1960s the entire Liberal youth wing was taken over by far-left activists who sent a message from their national conference to Chairman Mao, congratulating him on his murderous cultural revolution.
Yet if this was merely a matter of fringe parties, or maturing ones, the issue wouldn’t matter as much as it does. In fact, the singularity of party political activists is much more important than this makes it sound.
Joining a political party may once have been a mainstream decision, something millions did. No longer. The number of members of the major political parties is dwindling fast.
As a result, the very act of joining marks you out as unusual, however level-headed you may otherwise be, because you show an interest in party politics that is abnormal. My wife, for instance, points out that on our first date I spent quite a bit of the evening talking about David Steel.
And no matter what you are like, a political party, a bit like a church, has to take you in. I once asked a member to help stuff envelopes, only to find 30 minutes later that he’d been scrunching up my election address into a ball before sticking on the address label. I also had to apologise to some voters because one of my canvassers had started screaming at them about their stupidity when they said that they weren’t sure whether to support me.
In my campaigns I’ve been very lucky. I’ve made good friends. I have met many superb, intelligent people in local politics. Yet also a reasonable number who are neither. Which is where the danger lies.
At the moment, the Labour and Conservative parties are still reasonably big organisations. This doesn’t make it impossible for an entirely unsuitable person to become a candidate in a winnable seat. Indeed in the next door seat to the one where I live, a marginal, the Conservatives chose an apparently boring, normal candidate who then went round at night, spray painting swear words on to the cars and front doors of anyone who crossed him. The local newspaper editor, for instance, and the Liberal Democrat candidate.
The size does, however, lessen the chances of this happening. Yet for how long? If party membership continues its decline, soon all the parties will end up like Ukip — accelerating unknown people into office because they are desperate to have, basically, anybody. Becoming hostage to any old person who is ambitious and has an axe to grind.
Our political system is highly dependent — too dependent — on the integrity and stability of its parties. We need to open up the system and ensure a small cadre of activists do not have a disproportionate influence.
Before he joined Ukip, the MP Douglas Carswell advocated open primaries for parliamentary candidates. He doesn’t seem to be following this up. It’s a shame. He was right.
