Normal people don’t care about politics

By Conor Pope / @ConorPope

On the first evening of living in halls of residence at university, me and the group of strangers I was now living with sat around our kitchen table exchanging stories about our lives that were craftily engineered to make us appear cool and interesting. My big piece was a (true) story about getting into a barfight with Bob Geldof, with some facts altered to make me appear witty and erudite opposite the yobbish prat Geldof. Obviously, factual alteration was minimal.

At one point, the girl flatmate told us she’d been working in Sweden over the previous few months.

“Ah,” I said, seeing a way for me to form a bond with a person I had to live with, “What did you think of recent general election results in Sweden? Interesting, no?”

The response was like something from a Western. The Ke$ha song that had been buzzing out of the crap speakers in the corner stopped. Eyebrows were raised quizzically. A half-smoked cigarette fell out of a slack jaw. Hands clasped together in awkward turtles. Crockery spun towards the floor and shattered into a thousand dispassionate pieces. The door behind me opened in a breeze, letting in a tumbleweed which rolled into the centre of the room, paused, apparently sentient and seemingly embarrassed, then disappeared out the window.

“Erm, yeah… Fionn, will you put the iPod back on? And put something better on.”

Watching Celebrity Big Brother this week (not out of choice, you understand), Sally Bercow appears to have fallen for the same misconception as I that normal people care about politics. From what I gather (having only caught moments when I occasionally look up from reading Camus) she kept trying to talk to Paddy Docherty (of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding fame) about feminism. Paddy Docherty of Big Fat Gypsy Wedding fame does not appear to understand why or care that Sally thinks it’s wrong of him to refer to his wife of 34 years as “my woman”.

Sally was evicted from the house first. Shocker, eh?

Ed Miliband has recently tried to start “a national conversation”. As part of this the general public have been invited to a day of Party Conference. Definitely not because they want to bulk up numbers at a conference no one wants to go to, but because huge conference halls are ideal locations for conversations on a grand scale.

To make this work, we all need to remember that people don’t care. We have to bear in mind that people just don’t give a toss; it’s the key to success.

Of course we have to listen to people, there’d be no point being a political party if we didn’t. In trying to prove that we will, the national conversation is a good idea. However, the problem with listening to the masses is that you can only hear the ones who can shout louder than the rest. It is a little known fact that up until the final draft, the Sermon on the Mount included the line: “…but if you’re not careful, the gobshites will inherit the Earth.” This is the dreaded road the pre-Coalition Lib Dems went down. Up until they had to face up to the real world, they were a spinning weathervane of supposed public opinion, their vapid policies only having to pass the single litmus test of how well received they would be on Question Time.

The national conversation is a noble idea, but must be handled with caution. Despite how many on the left may hope that a Tory Government and the recent unrest may mean the average person will be more politicised, it is not to be. Don’t push the conversation, let it flow naturally. And don’t pay any attention to loud people.