Westminster has become fearful of a fickle and vindictive electorate. There’s value in that, but it’s also holding back our politics
The voter is never wrong. In this era of vox pops, phone-ins, focus groups and constant polls, this view of democracy is more prevalent than ever. Labour strategists reverently refer to switchers from the Tories as “hero voters”, while Keir Starmer often says his government is “in the service of” the electorate. With British politics fragmenting, voters are now being wooed by five national parties – an unprecedented situation, made even more unpredictable by an electoral system designed for serious competition between just two. It would be only a slight exaggeration to say that we are all swing voters now.
In some ways, this is a welcome and potentially exciting change. Since the late 1980s Westminster has mostly offered voters a limited menu – usually bland Labour centrism or ever staler Tory variations of Thatcherism – accompanied by patronising messages that no other recipes are practical. Yet now ministers, shadow ministers and MPs of all parties are hurriedly trying to come up with fresh or fresh-seeming dishes: rightwing populism, radical environmentalism, mild anti-capitalism mixed with social conservatism, and remedies of all sorts for the political and social indigestion caused by globalisation.
Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist