Portrait of a Champion

  We all know the one – that picture our mother has of us winning something sometime in primary school. There is the nervous child we once were, clutching the trophy we won for God knows what sport, a strained smile on our lips, and more than a suspicion of tears. There we are then, and yet there is something in that photo that makes any victory look so very hollow. One gets the suspicion looking at it that we are wondering what the hell is going on? Why did the adults in my life just do this? What was the point? Why did they invent a set of rules, make us obey them, then give us some kind of trophy for the obeying? A sentiment which is crossed with two others. On the one hand, there is genuine pride in winning, in being the best, that cuts across the wonder at the oddity of it all. The very fact then that someone somewhere thinks one is the best, clearly has a momentum in one’s mind. Winning might not be everything, but having others think one is the winner is nice; hence mingled with the prevailing confusion is then a very real and genuine pride. Whatever one did, one did it well. On the other hand, perhaps the dominant feeling is neither confusion nor pride so much as relief, relief that one was not last. For to be last is to be humiliated, no matter what the game (or how ludicrous the result). One must avoid at all costs losing. And the relief on the face of the child in the sports photo is palpable. - They might not quite understand how they have won, but they sure as hell understand what it means not to lose.

  This is the portrait of an individual entered into a contest not of their choosing (or often enough understanding), who has been declared the winner by the powers that be, and so can at last relax into not being that failure they feared they were. This is also very much the portrait of the Leader’s Debate. Here are individuals whom the weight of political events (and perhaps a muffed game of double bluff) have forced into a debate where in spite of a baffling (and often ignored) series of rules, there are no clear results, no clear victory, only an endless fear of losing. It is as if that poor child’s nightmares have come home to haunt it. An endless game, in which losing is rather easy to define, and yet the nature of victory rather elusive. One knows one’s own parents will be proud, and yet one wonders always whether this is enough, whether they are just saying it - or whether the victory is real. More than that of course, one’s parents are also wondering as much. That is they know they are proud parents, and they must think the child is wonderful, and so accept that they might not be being objective. And yet of course that is only a ‘might not’ be being objective: they might after all be right – their child might be the new messiah after all! Any proud parent worth their salt has also the desire that in fact they are being objective. And from this secret hope, they become their own child’s advocates, trying to invent wonder in the jaded minds of other parents (hence perhaps the photo). Not losing is therefore a position which we all understand, but being the real lasting winner is by contrast something to be conjured.

  However one needs caution here. It might be very easy to understand what losing is, and yet exactly where that losing happens might be complex. - So that the losing that really matters is never the losing in the debate, so much as its effect afterwards, in the minds of the loser, and their fellows. To lose, to be the real loser, is so powerful because of course it is a state of mind (this is the point of the photographic proof one parent’s keep that one is no loser). The in the case of the debate, there were then fears about being a loser entering into the debate and during it, fears that were unfounded, as they were based on the cut and thrust of the occasion. The losing that mattered (or not) is not there in the event itself, so much as engrained within the reaction of those that watched it, and concluded things from it (and in the participants therefore once they had emerged from the bubble of that debate): It is then rather easy to win a battle and yet still lose the war.

  In terms of the recent Leader’s Debate in the current British election, it was clear that the parties were concerned with two distinct types of losing in the first debate, - concerns that had gone by the second. The first type of losing was in a sense a probable fiction; it was the fear of the howler or policy error. That is it was the fear that someone would either spot a hole somewhere in the manifesto and really go for it, destroying the leader’s credibility once and for all. Or else it was the fear for the leader who muffs a line or looks shifty (or ill) or forgets sense in the interests of rhetoric. Such moments do occur. They are very much the stuff of legend in debates. And yet they are by nature rather rare. All the more so in a British system of government that is actually very used to fairly violent altercations. Indeed the British election campaigns are traditionally so senseless because all sides are not given hostages to fortune to the terriers of the other side. They know then, that unless their manifesto is full of the vaguest of promises (of the ‘we will not allow anyone to drown puppies’ kind) it is likely to be slated by the other side. The fear then of the bloomer was then essentially a child’s fear. It was based on a worry about oneself (or one’s leaders) in public. One knows one’s own problems with one’s own policies, and one’s ability to present one’s ideas, and wonders whether others will spot the problems. Personal fear becomes then projected onto the audience, and the stuff of paranoia. A paranoia made all the more real by the press that talks endlessly of mistakes and bloomers - a media then that mythologizes past failures, and hopes that there are more to come. The media then run stories implying that these fears might be seen by others, might in THE DEBATE be there for all to see (as befits the resident class bully). And it did not happen that way, for the audience cannot see into one’s soul, and to the real source of the fear: all they will spot (as will the experts) is that the participants are nervous.

  On contrary in the first debate that other error happened. The one that impels the weaker sides to pal up with the stronger in the face of opposition, and only during the occasion. One declares then one’s agreement (and starts to fantasize about an alliance). Maybe one thinks that some of the glamour of that other individual will rub off (it is after all what ‘special relationships’ are all about). More than that, one thinks that if one agrees with the one who is clearly winning, then one might be able not only to get a bit of passive victory; but also that once that victory has been confirmed one might then be in a position to negotiate, and to claim that they owe their success to one’s support. The trouble of course with this hope, is that one’s very initial agreement with the victor makes their victory so much more profound and lasting. It makes it genuine, and as and when they are the masters, the rules start to slide and change. This is of course the situation of the Labour Party. By the oddity of the voting system, they felt secure enough to laud Clegg, at least initially (for the Liberal Democrats almost certainly cannot win the General Election). And yet then the nightmare of what it really means to come third in the popular vote and yet still have the most seats, started to seep in. Most critical of which is of course that such a ’victory’ would destroy all credibility with the voting system, and force a reform that Labour might not be able to control. The result was then the shift away from the Liberals from the early part of the week when they appeared to support them, to the far harder line at the end.

  The game of making the other side look like the longterm loser has become the one that matters. The performance in the debate is merely a part of this. The rules of such a contest are clearly threefold. Firstly one must run a campaign of slur and innuendo. The rule is not to say anything false about the other side, so much as to make a worst case allegation. One claims that the other side will then cut so many places or jobs or will have to put up this or that tax. The point is, that in the face of the lack of substance in the other manifestos, one is making up new substance, new material. The opposing side(s) is therefore necessarily put on the defensive. They need to counter the accusation (which is easy), but then cannot easily present an alternative. They are then caught looking shifty just at the moment that they need to be reassuring. The result is that some of the fear from the first claim sticks (or at least the theory is that it is will). More than that, this plays into the second great game, which has become the game of honesty (or not). There have been in the last five years or so many potentially career-ruining events (corruption, war, the recession etc), that if one can imply that the other side are somehow caught up with these events (or at least are closer to them than oneself) in theory that other side will look every inch the loser. The trouble of course is that the nature of these problems was that they were hard to solve in the first place (and had far deeper causes than perhaps either side can admit). The result is that it is actually hard to absolutely insinuate that the other lot were caught up with the events - and that one was not. I mean there really is no way that Gordon Brown should be able to claim to be anything other than an utter failure as a Chancellor, and yet, and yet because to make this claim questions actually the entire economic system (where he played the rules according to how they were given), it is almost impossible to effectively make. The result is that he escapes and masquerades as being the right man for the recovery. Or to put it another way: The problems are so deep that one cannot easily personalize them. The game then of creating the other side as loser, just got a lot harder!

  Finally during the debate and around it there is another game of ‘create the loser’. This is a game of personalized politics. The game itself has two halves. On the one side, one (or one’s media friends) need to rubbish the other leaders. That is they need to destroy their credibility any which way. And then during the debate the same move is also made, but more subtly, for here it is associated with linking another individual to traditional unpopular policies. This association ought, the larger parties think, to be enough to stymie the Liberal Democrats. The bigger parties strive to face the Liberal Democrats down with their own liberalism. And yet there is a difficulty here. The public might have a double standard at just this point. In a world where there are only two parties, then both parties have to accept Trident missiles (in spite of their drawbacks) as the only possible way to be an effective nuclear power (in the traditional ‘blow up the world sense’). But allow another voice in, and that policy might be questionable. – I.e., the very existence of that third voice allows arguments to be articulated in a more complicated manner, and allows voices that one might not have listened to in the old model, to become heard.  All the more so as the traditional system has created an unpopular politics (even if it has championed populist policies). The game of frame the loser is then very complicated. It might just be that the very act of framing the other, will actually catch the framer in the ruin.

  The game then, of create the loser in the course of the campaign is therefore a game that is theoretically playable. Like the child in the photo, we all know what a loser looks like (as do our parents) and are all determined not to be last. The trouble is though, that the position of being a winner is gloriously uncertain. Here the issue is that we define the winner not in terms of mastery of rules (for there are none, or those that there are, are purely arbitrary) but rather only in that portrait, the one one’s parents have in the dining room. Winning is then being able to allow one’s parent to be proud (and so win in the high level game of competitive parenting). Or again in the current political version, it is to allow others, one’s friends in the media or in one’s own political party, to proclaim victory and take that message out to the wider world, in the full knowledge that the very proclamation of victory conjures up its effect. The problem then becomes - how does one proclaim such a victory in the absence of rules? Can one simply invent a sport that favours the kids that never win? Or can one invent endless consolation races such that one wins something somewhere? - so that one does take part at last. The entire election campaign becomes the oddest of school sports days. Each participant claims to be racing in their own race, a race that they will almost necessarily win; and yet ironically they all claim to be competing for the same cup (and the same slot on the proud parent podium). Their rights to be on such a podium will ultimately come down to not their ability to race (or to invent new races) so much as how many individuals are witness to their victory (rather than their competitors). That is how much their definition of the race wins out, and become a genuine authentic school (if not Olympic) sport. What makes then the debates interesting, is that they are the precedents and rules for subsequent games in the very act of creation. We are then at the moment at which the rules of the game are being fixed. A point that then influences not only the current campaign (and the next parliament) but many others to come.

  It is then as if the startled child in the living room was right to be startled. They have not lost (and so look relieved), and yet they are not quite sure when or even whether they have won. - For the adults seemed to invent the rules as they went along - and invented them to manufacture this victory (egg and spoon, sack race, wheelbarrow race etc). A truth that is only maybe true in the matter of school sports day and its endless novelty races, but certainly is true in this current election campaign.