Portrait by Mandate?

  What is a political mandate these days? The trouble here is that it ought to be so very easy. One stands on an agenda – a campaign presents people with a series of dreams to choose from, and people choose between mandates as they choose between baked beans or types of insurance. It is all and it is not, as simple as that. The political party that gets elected is the one that everyone likes most – for whatever reason; be that advertising or genuine popular appeal. - Either way they have their mandate. More than that, the Mandate is the series of acts, the collection of things gathered together, that a party says it will do in government. In this it is surely less a list of dreams (which party political manifesto ever offered us what we really want?) and more a sequence of benchmarks, and a promise that whatever party is in power will not be dangerous or utterly useless. The mandate forms the benchmark of a government - the series of things that they feel contractually bound to do.

  And yet, there is something false in all of this. For no mandate is quite that simple, as voting is so much more of a nuanced choice than choosing goods or services. So much so that the mandate itself is almost secondary. Or perhaps rather, its real power lies in the myth that it allows politicians and beyond them the entire system, to claim as their own; the myth that says they are doing the people’s will, and are elected to perform certain relatively clear cut tasks. It is the myth of collectivity through democracy and unified propose. The function then of the mandate is to capture in a single shopping list, a supposedly collective will. The mandate is what endorses the manifesto. And yet political manifestos are a subgenera in realpolitik and a political castration of their own. They represent then, never the will of the people so much as a hodgepodge of worries; they contain then measures to hold political parties together in a campaign. - A sequence of policies that look good on the doorstep; a set of partial measures usually created by the lobby industry or representing certain interests groups; and finally a set of aspirations. It is only this last element that is at all indicative of a political mood. The problem of course is that it merely states or reflects that mood. It invites people then to identify with this part, while carefully promising nothing, or worse it serves as a tool for advertising. People see a widescale feeling or prejudice (which is so much easier than a reasoned argument to advance) expressed on the one page of the manifesto – they react to it and assume that the other policies reflect this aspiration – when of course they do not.

  The net result is then that manifestos are very heavy on ‘aspiration nets’ - catching hopes and dreams, and yet are very light on how these same hopes or dreams might be effected. They rather serve to capture them, in the form of a vote, and so a mandate to actually do something rather different – namely the practical polices of the lobby group. The art then of the manifesto, is to make very workaday and commonplace schemes (eg; the creation of community volunteers) sound portentous and significant and part of a ‘bigger picture’. That is, to gloss with a rosy tint otherwise dull-sounding legislation (which may or may not be useful).

  Although perhaps this is not quite fair. For the task of the manifesto is most simply to juxtapose a popular appeal with actual polices. That is also to take one or two of these procedural measures and treat them as if they were popular and designed for the common good. Every manifesto commitment is then dressed up, often as a money saving measure, or as an excuse for an idea, as if it will make a difference. The Tories currently are then pushing schools that opt out of local government control (and so make public schools the norm), as well as advocating health care reform, and immigration, and crime and justice measures - all of which is always the mainstay of this selling shit as chocolate bit of merchandising. The situation here however, is a little more complex. As so effective is this dressing up of lobbying as popular policy, in winning votes (or persuading politicians at least that they are doing something to win votes), that certain departments are very much run on the basis of perpetual revolution and change. Education, health (and now criminal justice as well) live then in a whirl of political change and constant upheaval. For they are the departments that government always knows that it can make a case for needing ‘improving’ and are also the departments where lobby groups always have a variety of different interests (i.e., someone somewhere is always moaning about some aspect of each of these areas of civic life); two facts that combine to make them ‘soft’ areas of the manifesto. No political manifesto worth its salt could afford then to ignore them or treat them as anything other than broken. As nature abhors a vacuum, so politicians need ‘the broken society’ - for what else are they for, but to mend it? Or on a slightly less cynical note, one might say it is actually far harder to govern a country well, than it is to mend one. If one is mending what is already broken then everything is clear, and any cock up which one makes in likely to be forgiven. But if one is merely administering a country that is very well run already (or at least perfectly adequately), one always might cock up (and there will anyhow always be the impression that anyone could do it). To win then the kind of mandate that they want to have - the mandate to confirm their legitimacy and look as if they are in power, politicians and their creature journalists need to make others believe that the society is ‘broken’ in the first place.

  To this end every political mandate will hark upon the three main spaces of a 'broken' society, that form such a rich vein for our political discussion. On the one hand there are adminstratative reforms and the promise of the cost savings which they offer - no party would be elected on an appeal to increase administrative spending or even on the appeal to keep as it is. They all must always claim that there is inefficiency in the system. This is a problematic claim, as in a sense inefficiency IS the system. Inefficiency is essentially created in every very large organization when the top set an agenda that the bottom finds hard to simply effect, (and then tends to cut corners and do anything and so waste anything or say anything to realize it). The very act of setting a sequence of goals in effect creates eddies of inefficiencies. The trouble is that the opposite move – namely that of allowing ideas and organization to bubble from below - also creates inefficiency, as structures are doubled up and done too many times. Inefficiency is then merely the product of the dynamic - so that only a corpse is truly efficient (for it does nothing). Inefficiency cannot therefore be simply rooted out (or if it is, the widescale act of doing so will create new problems). At best what will happen is that various species of inefficiencies die off as our modes of organization shift and evolve. - The overall amount of inefficiency in the system is then a product of the technology as much as it is of anything else (computers might then improve the overall planning and coordination of the system, but then open it up to all the time wasting that the internet brings…). The only other way to drive down inefficiency is to starve the overall system to such a degree that everything that is not absolutely necessary withers and dies. One might then get a more efficient system, but one also gets a much reduced system as it is a necessary corollary. (Moreover, one only might get the latter – as it is perfectly possible that most if not all of the inefficiencies could survive such cuts).

  On the other hand there are the other two mainstays of ‘mandate hunting’ political reform and ‘emotive’ campaigning. Hence politicians need a corrupt and inefficient system of government and voting in order to appear to be doing something. Labour will then promise once again to reform the voting system – all the while ensuring that the bit of legislation that might have reformed it (or at least held a referendum on that possibility) is blocked by the Tories and the demise of this parliament. The reason is of course clear in the long years of opposition that seem to beckon to the Labour Party; they can mutter that the Tories killed voting reform in the end. It will form then a little bit of unfinished business – that then forms in a decade (or however long it takes for us to forget Brown and Blair in government), and will form the main plank of a Labour manifesto (much as devolution formed one of the main planks of government in 1997).  Electoral reform will then become one of those beacons in the (probable)Tory days ahead, that beckon one to a different government. And no party can function without such unfinished business - for in it lies their mass appeal. No party ever then wants to put into practice all its mandates.

  Popular appeals are of course vital. The gun legislation or the anti-hunt campaign were very kind to the Labour Party. They gave it free legislation on a plate; legislation that might not have been effective but answered a popular sentiment with something. The Tories are likewise wanting to ride received (or real) problems about immigration and crime (although here Cameron is fighting shy of actually really promising anything…). It is then in these popular campaigns and in the ludicrous and frequently ineffective legislation which they create, that politicians listen to their people, and gain really popular mandates: which is all very well for being elected, if not for the actual task of governing.

  The result is then that the mandate to do stuff that a politician is elected upon is often rather valueless or at best mythic. It serves more as a focus for the system, and the power of the democratic system. This power lies in the fact that it is not possible to actually have a true ‘mandate’ these days. Individuals not make choices in this manner when it comes to political voting. That is, one votes in a certain way for a variety of very complex reasons: one is voting then out of tribal loyalty (one always does it), or in the name of a particular policy or lack of a policy, or simply as often as not, against the other lot. Voting is then not a reasoned action, and is more like the gut instinct of a football crowd caught up in the dramas of a match.

  Across all these reasons, the idea that one is voting for a party to do things is almost by the by. Or perhaps even counter productive. For if one actually thought about it, and thought about what one is promised by parties, one might not vote at all. One simply does not want (or does not trust) what they are promising, and yet one votes all the same. Or at best, some people want some of it. Or at least a group people in society vote. The trouble with the logic of this mandate system, therefore, is that it cannot easily reach beyond this often self-appointed group. That is, given that we have a system where the reasons why people vote is often nothing to do with what politicians or journalists say, then the set of voters is likely to be limited in the extreme; It is confined to those who can provide their own reason for voting – a dwindling crew. Of course there are those elections where more people suddenly vote. But then the reasons for this sudden flux is often not to do with the mandate at all. 1992 had then a very high turn out, as the contest was tight and exciting, and fears were being whipped up about one side. In this case then, reasons to vote other than the mandate were supplied and so there was an increase in the numbers voting – where before and afterwards, it fell.

  Or at least this is the case in Britain. But in America there appears to be a fascinating and genuinely revolutionary battle going on, which has as its heart, the nature of democracy itself. On the one side there is a President elected by mass vote, and through mobilising sets of people who do not usually vote (the young and different ethnic groups). Obama is then representing the non-mainstream in American political life, and doing so effectively. In spite of a system that appears to have been  defined to defend the status quo (and the vested interests of the habitual voters – the wealthier mainstream American), he is getting through legislation to help the poor – one of his constituencies. And against him is arranged all the fury of the habitual voters – the ones that feel themselves to be the true politician’s class (they are the ones who do the voting, thank you very much - and who run the system). These ‘normal’ voters, these God-fearing folk, have come together to form a political mass movement and lobby group. The roles are then reversed. The mainstream folk have become the lobbying ‘disenfranchised mass’ and the normally disenfranchised mass are being represented and their interests fought for; and the result is genuinely unstable. For who knows how those who are used to not being part of the system are actually relating to this inclusion? And who knows what a group of individuals who feel themselves to be the natural governors of the country, will do when they are suddenly in their view been disenfranchised? There are so many places, both bright and dark, that it could so easily lead to…

  Mandate are a political figleaf. They weld together in the name of freedom two or three different concerns. There are those things the government can do, and those things that they can promise the ‘doggy treat’ politics of popular appeal, both of which are then pitched at the electorate by those who need a mandate. - The mandate being that mystic power which ‘leaders’ get just after the election to do stuff (whether it was part of their manifesto or no). The mandate as people’s will, and the manifesto as the expression of that will. The problem of course here is, that we as a culture are so beautifully complex and so intricate a society that there is no longer anything or anyone that can simply express our will (if there ever really was). The mandate is then in effect an illusion, of some general expression of will, a piece of cod Rousseau, which binds our democracy together, and grounds powers in the appeal to freedom. The very fact that one could have chosen another group of people, is then held to be enough to give government a true mandate. And our problem of course is at this point, is this ever really enough?