A matter of expediency
Some might think in prospect that it is a jump too far somehow manage to compose a blog post linking the EU Referendum result to the recent involuntary (I’m not discussing here Will Young’s decision to walk away from the show) three celebrity ‘votings-off’ the BBC’s weekend ratings blockbuster Strictly Come Dancing but today I’m going to do my best to convince my readers otherwise.
I read somewhere that about 40% of all memorable quotations attributed to Sir Winston Churchill never actually came from his mouth or pen (or should that be ‘never first came from his mouth or pen’?) but can in fact be filed under the heading ‘Apocryphal but nevertheless acceptable because (a) they’re good, and (b) they sound as though they could have come from him, so why spoil a good story/anecdote?’ …
Having given that caveat, I’d like to move on to the statement that in the past few weeks I’ve seen published in the media two comments upon democracy attributed to Churchill that seem to strike to the heart of the universal suffrage conundrum.
The first is:
“Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.”
The second is:
“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”
For present purposes it doesn’t actually matter whether or not Churchill uttered either of the above – I simply want to pick up on the thrust and sentiments behind those observations.
For me they neatly sum up the eternal dilemma for what is termed ‘Western democracy’ and ‘the Establishment’ (also referred to as ‘the ruling elite’) in every country which seeks to pay lip service to the equality and worth of every human being in society.
From quite early on in the development of human civilisation, its ruling elites understood the value of popularity and the importance of controlling and/or manipulating the mood and attitudes of the masses. Whether the political system involved was some form of democracy, or indeed just viciously totalitarian, the importance of public propaganda and – when it was invented – the media (radio, television, the internet) in controlling, or even soothing or promoting agitation within, public opinion.
We see this in action at the extreme in the US Presidential elections, where the outcome (as often than not) to some degree depends upon the amount of money that is spent upon the candidates’ respective campaigns.
But let us drag ourselves away from a discourse upon the history and nature of human civilisation and get back to the basics of ‘consulting the people’ as it occurs in the UK.
The key lesson that every UK politician or ‘Establishment’ member needs to learn before he or she leaves the nursery cradle is that – inevitably, due to the instinctive nature of human beings – whenever you ‘consult the people’ there is an attendant danger that you might not like the answer you receive.
Another way of putting this is to cite the advice that – in my day – was routinely dished out to aspiring barristers and solicitor-advocates, viz.
“Never ask in court any question to which you do not already know the answer …”
Translated to politics, that might best be stated as “Never ask the people to vote upon anything unless and until there really is no alternative option.”
A failure to remember or heed this adage – perhaps coupled with his own arrogance tinged with hubris – caused David Cameron’s downfall. He and those around him stupidly formed the view that the arguments for remaining in the EU were so many, overwhelmingly powerful, logical and obvious that nobody in their right mind could possibly vote to Leave. He (sorry, they) also presumed that the full weight of the Government propaganda machine – along with the donations of those Establishment figures with significant money to invest in ‘staying in’ – would produce a straightforward ‘slam-dunk’ result.
Wrong!
[And surely I am not alone in finding a degree of satisfaction that this was so? Anything that will tweak the noses of the Establishment tends to gain my vote every time …]
Now we come to the BBC’s current ‘little local difficulty’ with the outcome of the first three celebrity ‘votings-off’ on Strictly Come Dancing.
As the UK’s ‘Auntie’, the BBC is a convenient whipping boy for not only every loudmouth along the political spectrum from Attila the Hun to Chairman Mao, but also every politically-correct protest group and campaigner ever invented, including all religious bigots and loonies. By seeking to be fair to all, the BBC therefore has an in-built capacity to offend everybody.
This phenomenon is highlighted by the BBC political and current affairs department’s occasional defence of near-last resort: “If we’re being attacked for our bias by both those on the left and right wings of politics, then our general rule of thumb is to assume that our editorial approach is just about where it should be …”
It was perhaps inevitable that when someone out in social media-land first noticed that the inital two contestants kicked off Strictly as a result of the weekly public vote – radio disc jockey Melvin Odoom and Eastenders actress Tameka Empson’s – were black, a ‘controversy’ would begin over the supposed racist views of the BBC voting public.
Momentum for this outrage grew exponentially when last weekend BBC morning television presenter Naga Munchetty also got the chop via the public vote.
My point is this. Strictly Come Dancing is just a frothy light entertainment show, in case anyone hadn’t noticed. Its decisions upon who stays in and who leaves are officially taken by a combination of the judges scores ‘on the night’ combined with a later public vote. That is what gives the show its popular/addictive degree of uncertainty – and causes hundreds of thousands of debates inside viewer homes (and no doubt also in the supermarket queue the next day) at to which celebrity did (or did not) deserve to stay in the show as it progresses towards its final in December.
For the politically-correct brigade, of course, the fact that the first three celebrities voted off this year were non-white is a fresh cause for which to man the barricades. Presumably we’re entering the realms of ‘school sports in which every kid must win a prize for fear of gaining feelings of inadequacy’ and/or some sort of quota-system in which, alternatively, a white celebrity must be voted off the show following any week in which a non-white one was similarly treated?
Or maybe if a female celebrity is voted off … then the following Sunday a male one should automatically be shown the door?
Or perhaps, if a disabled contestant goes one week … and then the following week an able-bodied one must bite the dust?
[At this point I’m opting not to go down the road of mentioning the theoretical possibility that the results on Strictly Come Dancing are rigged – despite the persistent rumours in the media down the years that this is the case. Only yesterday I read in one newspaper that one of the most skillful celebrity contestants in this year’s Strictly is routinely ‘marked down’ by the judges because his past stints at a performing arts school and on the West End stage has given him an unfair advantage over his opponents].
