Doing badly in the Age of Alienation

“Why are you doing so badly?” Krishnan Guru-Murthy asked Ed Miliband onFriday. It was one of those sharp jab questions that can take you by surprise. It certainly – temporarily – stopped the Labour leader in his tracks. But that was just for openers. In the same short interview Guru-Murthy also found time to quote the words of a Tory attack poster – “You’re the millionaire son of a Marxist” – as a further challenge. (Frankly, until a permanent replacement is found for Jeremy Paxman on Newsnight we can expect a few more high-octane interviews from a range of TV presenters.)

Is Labour doing badly? Last Monday two polls, for the first time in over two years, put the Tories slightly ahead. By the end of the week most polls were showing a three-four point Labour lead again. We may have a better sense of how well the parties are really doing by the end of the week.

On Saturday morning you may have heard Sir Robert (Bob) Worcester, the eminence grise of UK opinion polling, on LBC. In his view it is not so much the Labour party as the journalists commenting on polls who are doing badly. Politely, but firmly, he dismissed most of the commentary he reads and hears as misguided. “Look at the share not the lead,” he advised. And added that the Conservative rating was becalmed at around 32%. The Tories cannot win from there, he suggested. Which might mean that Guru-Murthy’s question was not entirely well-founded.

There was another flurry of media excitement last week when Nigel Farage received an extensive grilling, again on LBC, from James O’Brien . It was a careful, well-judged interview that caused Farage some difficulty. But two further points arise. For one, there was an outbreak of excited groupthink among Twitterers claiming that Farage was now finished. We shall see how finished he is come Sunday. But second – why had it taken so long for the nation’s journalists to expose some of Farage’s most unpleasant views? Why are you doing so badly?

The final significant moment last week was the visit of campaign guru David Axelrod to Labour party headquarters. Apart from spelling Ed Miliband’s name wrong in a tweet – at least he didn’t call him David – his most striking contribution was to say that we are living in an “age of alienation”, in which all established parties are struggling to get a hearing.

That sounds about right. So in this sense Guru-Murthy’s question was justified, if it was aimed at all the main parties and party leaders. Why are you doing so badly? Because voters are cynical, disillusioned, and anxious that big problems cannot be solved by mere politicians.

No democrat, seeking votes in a week of local and European elections, can afford to give in to that sort of despair. It would be self-indulgent to do so. And today’s announcement from Labour that they will seek to reform the Low Pay Commission, giving it a five year target to raise wages, is the sort of brave and practical intervention that could give politics a good name.

The way to face up to an Age of Alienation is to aim high but also to offer realistic and achievable policy ideas. A new pledge card with five clear commitments on it would be an appropriate homage to the last really successful Labour election campaign. And it would also give journalists something more positive to talk about.