Gear 6 ; Political Programmes or Manifesto’s
What is a political manifesto? On the one hand a manifesto is very clear, or ought to be clear. I is an agenda, a series of statements, encapsulating a sequence of actions that are felt to be useful or necessary to a country. Except of course, even as one says that, , it is clear that a good manifesto is nothing quit so simple. It is clearly also, and must as much a series of ‘definitive moves’, that is of signature moves, that sign this party is in government and this party is different, as it is anything useful. Nor is this second approach really that different from the first. The manifesto is also in making these signature moves, and attempting to blend the fate of the party with the fate of the country. It is a gambit, saying our branding, our signature is just what the country needs at the moment.
They represent therefore the blending of the fate of a country with the blend of a political party. Or perhaps more accurately, it is less the political party that is in the frame and more its leader or inner cabal. The manifestos is therefore the place which not only aims to pitch a party as the answer, it also confused in the brand that party with the most famous or prominent members of it. This move is actually increasingly important. It I of course rather unlikely that the majority of individuals read manifestos (indeed the media is so snide about them that they make thi as unlikely as possible). Their role is therefore not really to communicate as such. They have become in anything picture books: full of images of politicians doing things. They therefore ground the famous individuals within a sequence of action shots. It knows that one is electing a some one, capable of doing something. Or better a someone who one has seen doing things, linking to things, caring about thins. They therefore personalize an entire series of moves.
Beyond much simple acts of personalizing politics in a slightly hilarious manner, it is clear that the manifesto, inaugurates Framing: Naming; Riveting; Seeding; Defying: Responsibility. Each such manifestations of the manifesto allow at the time of an election campaign but also in the succeeding parliament a certain series f political moves, moves that require defining.
The simplest of these requirement is that a good manifesto is clear an act of framing an argument. Political campaigns are not really one by policies much as dog tags. Tat I the party that invents a slogan which can wrap up a whole galaxy of ills, and which media and eventually their political are force to use usually in the election This slogan is not really a framing or an expression of the problem There is absolutely no comprehension here of what is going on. On the contrary it is a slogan that is pitched almost as the absence of comprehension Tae that modern abomination ‘Broken Britain’. On the face of it this is n absolutely meaningless phrase. Country do not break and that is an end of it. But repeated use of the phrase by the Tories and their media pals, has made the ,meaningless et of words appear to have a meaning. Almost anything be it enduring social ill or constitutional problem can be caught up in the phrase broken Britain’. It means everything and nothing. To claim then to be the answer or if nothing else the personal you define such a great scourge is on the face of it to claim much. A far less successful phrase has been Browns attempt to enrage the recent global collapse within the tag globalization. We are meant when money disappears or jobs go, to blame the entire world. he trouble with such a move, is that it may or may not be right. But that is nothing to the very obvious fact that the move is designs to exonerate Brown. The tag is then no good, of even back fires, as it reminds the user that this is Browns cringing excuse, he is to present therefore within the tag. It serves him too well. And here then is the rub of such tagging. The good tag is the excuse for a thought. That is it is a lazy good for nothing, stock answer that appears to allow the user to answer a problem without thinking (but seeming to).Anything tenth excessively owns such a move or ties it to a personal or a name or a date is going to fail It is the first task of the manifesto to create the algebra of this personal language, a language that is said to work when people who would never dream of reading the manifesto never the less quote elements from it.
The second aspect of the manifesto is naming. Buried within the manifesto are a number of absolute policies: For example Asbos or a generation ago the nation curriculum, These policies were originally designed as answers o a problem or a debate, a policy that was meant to address a very complex social ill, within a simple single move. As such the policy it liable to failure, But the manifesto marks the point that his inevitable failure breaks into something else. N a sense a policy such as an abso is not really judged on whatever abstract series of arguments or hysterias that policy was meant to address, but on how it is used.: That is they give a name to an action and a series of consequence, almost all unforeseen in the original policy, to that action. A successful policy is then that for whatever reason grows to be loves, or at least appears for whatever reason to be success. The success need have nothing really to do with the initial policy or might but only indirectly. The use of laws, and the intention of the lawmaker are clearly very different, if related, things. The role of the manifesto is then to allows for this difference. A la becomes a name, in enacted and then is judges as the by name to those consequences. Political parties are then judged according to which of their little named policies, the little souls, they create, thrive and which are seen as failure or worse.
Thirdly an manifesto needs to be open events. Beyond the creation of little political souls with a life of their own, a manifesto needs o stake a claim to rather slippery ‘political aspiration’ territory. They therefore allows a government to claim that it wants o end child poverty or help Africa. The point of these slippery series of statements is that they allows whatever part is in power a certain freedom to invent. T if you like they invent or allows a degree of capital in dealing with events, if things happen, and the opposite of the aspirations occurs it is no ones fault. I however highs improve then the government can claim rightly and wrongly that they were caught up wit that change. This last fact is all the more easy for a government to claim as any wise government will, seeing a change I in the offing, suddenly become more involved; wit it, so that it can claim or at least be associated with the result The manifesto is meant then to claim this desire to be associated with success appear more natural. The manifesto is their the grounding of a political party within long term social trends, and the statement that sometimes in a rather ‘indefinable’ way, a political party is caught up in these events.
This move need not be always associated with external success. Many governments second terms are defined by what policies where popular in their first terms, Policies that were in the manifesto, but as little moves or non important policies, suddenly if they are popular grow and blossom ( a generation ago privatization was the paradigm example of this, hardly mentioned in 1979, it cam to dominate the Thatcher years). And so a manifesto therefore operates to create political breaks and changes for a party. It allows then to claim success or long terms strategy within the series of events that otherwise invariably overwhelm government.
The manifesto fourth role is t defining the sense in which a government can protect itself fro the fire of the media. H media who have no real responsibility beyond the stream of event in their most torrent and vacuous of senses, invalidly attack government based on short term reaction. The manifesto and that fiction we have that a government is elected don a program of a number of years, then severe as the only real buttress a government has against such attacks That is if something is in the manifesto, then however unpopular it might be, or whatever criticism it faces it democracy against a legitimacy for the party. They can say ht thy have been honest about it. In making this appeal they of course are borrowing that legitimacy hat a democracy is meant to lend to a government. That is if a party is elected, if it put its jobs on the line, the name of a series of ‘policies’ and is elected, the that party and those policies gain kudos. This kudos is not pure myth he politely party is able to justly claim in the face of media harassment, that a least there jobs were dependent on there policies and their beliefs, which is more than the medias are.
Politicians can then constitutionally make this claim and do). The problem is of course that his claim is very simplistic or better disingenuous. I is made in spite of the fact that every one knows that parties are elected more on personality, or reaction to the ‘other lot’ than policy. The manifesto is then in itself not an important political program, so much a necessarily legal refuge The claim that the government is elected for a time to enact the manifesto serves o give a government breather or create for it a space a time frame within which it can sit out events, only to latter, at a certain date be pitched into them again. He manifesto as such is then a art of a refuge in time (the infamous mid term) here a government as a government can be unpopular or even loathed and from which it can, come next election emerge The narrative or myth being that after a term in government and a series of policy moves (the manifesto enacted) the government is judged. This is of course rather a myth, as what actually ifs judged a this point is less the record in government of the government and more the relatively likening and loathing of this party against all the others. That is what is judged at election s less political success and more political gut feels, feeling this aspect of the manifesto has little to say about. But in a sense this does not matter. What matters is that the myth of enacting a manifesto allows a government a space to exist in, n the face of event.
Finally manifesto dippy with three main types of responsibility. He first and simplest is that they offer a pinch in time by which a government can be held to be accountable to a people. That is theoretically one can go back to a past manifesto and see how much became law and how much was practicable or useful. The trouble with this as a move is that it misses the pint that the manifesto is less a program and more an initial series of reaction to a world. No government then really ends up being judged by what they said they would so, and nor should they he world changes far too quickly for that. Secondly a manifesto is unlikely to win an election, but it might well loose it. If buried in the manifesto are policy that are, or could be made to appear loony or daffy, then a party might be in real problem. The manifesto then offers in a sense a series of policies to attack and ideas to savage. It forces parties to expose themselves to one another and the media and allow themselves o be hit, and does so in the name of politics. That I, t does so in the same of debase of opening up the possible that election (and democracies) might actually matter (that is they might actually change things).
Finally a manifesto definite or at least ought o define a series of responsibilities. This series of responsibilities represent he set or criterion a government wants to be thought judged in relation to, Here what matters is not the policy, so much as the intention. Government therefore define axis of development, direction they want o go, and statistics they want to be judged by, within manifestos. This move is complex Every government will of course make much out of the action of saying that they are opening themselves up to criticism and allowing others to access them (member the chancellor Golden rule) And moreover the same politicians will trumpet their success. That is they will aim that they were involved in the series of events that made their polices appear to work. They will however invariably blame something beyond themselves if the statistics they have said they honour and the polices that are meant to move those statistics in someway go out of line. Gordon Browns golden rules were then all important when they worked, and apparently dropped when they became too difficult. Manifesto are critical then in that first move, they lay out the agenda of success in black and white – and do so irrespective of whether that agenda makes sense or no.
In a sense a manifesto is a perfect gear. It is an invisible factory from which result, that is political destines flow. No one reads them, and yet they are paid lip service to. More than that they are part of what defines how a government will be judged in relation to a series of vents most of which they are only very partially responsible for. They then allow the population a democracy the otherwise impossible task, they create a means to judge a government b. This means might well be flawed and often meaningless, and certainly valueless, but this does not matter, Without the excite that there was such a criteria without the manifesto, the series of turgid moves in relation to events, one could judge at all, and democracy, that modern panacea would be actually meaningless….
