Many Blood Sucking Creatures

“Politics: ‘Poli’ a Latin word meaning ‘many’ and ‘tics’ meaning ‘bloodsucking creatures’.”

That’s a quote attributed to the American writer Myron Fagan and it neatly sums up the low opinion most of us have of politicians.

It’s perhaps not so unfair when we consider something the American politician Linda Lingle said, “Politicians all too often think about the next election. Statesmen think about the next generation.”

Far too often, politicians focus on the importance of being a politician rather than the importance of doing a politician’s job.

The romantic notion is of a person turning to politics after gaining experience of the world and believing that they can share the value of what they’ve learned through living life with the people they would serve if elected by those people.

Far too often though, the reality seems to be people seeing politics as a career in itself and making life choices with an aim of achieving that end goal.

I’m not saying that was the case with the ex-British Tory MP Nadine Dorries, but her long-delayed resignation letter clearly illustrates, in a couple of ways, the sense of entitlement many modern politicians feel about the role.

On 9 June 2023, Dorries announced she would be resigning as an MP with immediate effect and then promptly didn’t. In fact, her resignation didn’t come till some 11 weeks later, apparently while she spent the time trying to find out why she had been denied a peerage.¹

You’d hope that Dorries became a politician because of a desire to improve the circumstances of the people, yet she appeared to quit the role for self-centred reasons. In addition, having decided she didn’t want to be the MP for Mid Bedfordshire, she then blocked the opportunity for her constituents to move on and choose a new MP for 11 weeks while she retained the role seemingly because it would help her to find out why she hadn’t been given the title she craved.

Doesn’t that feel rather selfish?

When her resignation letter to the PM did finally manifest, it included this peach of a sentence:

“Your actions have left some 200 or more of my MP colleagues to face an electoral tsunami and the loss of their livelihoods, because in your impatience to become Prime Minister you put your personal ambition above the stability of the country and our economy.“²

She also included a sentence about how important “Levelling Up” of the UK was to her and we’ll take a look at how comedic the Tory’s plans on that are shortly, but for now let’s just consider the sense of entitlement she expresses on behalf of herself and her fellow MPs.

A politician’s role is to serve the people and not just the people who voted for them, but those who voted for other candidates or didn’t vote at all. An elected politician is an employee of the people who should see their position and the trust placed in them as a privilege.

But Dorries believes that being an MP is a “livelihood”.

The Cambridge Dictionary definition of livelihood is “(the way someone earns) the money people need to pay for food, a place to live, clothing, etc” and you’ll find similar definitions from other dictionaries.

The role of a politician is not a livelihood.

Politicians are not meant to be doing such work for their own benefit. Their role is to work for the benefit of the people they’re meant to be serving, but so many politicians today seem to believe they serve themselves first, then their party and finally, if it doesn’t conflict with their own or their party’s interests, they serve the people. We’ll consider how we might try to address this issue later in Why Don’t Politicians Have A Fiduciary Duty?

Most modern democracies pay their politicians for the work that they do. It’s intended to ensure that anyone can become a politician, not just rich people who don’t need to earn money to support themselves. So that anyone from society can aspire to serve their neighbours.

Those payments should be seen as compensation that allows politicians to do their work without having to also work a job so they can afford to live. That said, plenty of politicians do seem to also carry out other paid work, which is why we’ll consider whether politicians should be paid more later in The Serious Business of Government.

Talk Dirty To Me Big Boy

I just shared that Dorries declared that levelling up of the UK was important to her. It’s not just her though, the Tories have been making a big song and dance about this for a few years. When Boris Johnson completed Brexit, he announced that the UK could now get on with levelling up, as if being in the EU had prevented the government from doing so before.

Since leaving the EU, the British government established the Levelling Up Fund with £4.8 billion set aside for it.³ When politicians talk about money, the numbers they throw around can be huge in literal terms, but in the context of national government, is that really the case?

Obviously, £4.8 billion is a lot of money, but is it a lot in terms of what it’s intended to achieve? One way to assess it could be to consider how much it is in terms of the overall economy, so in 2019, the UK economy was just under £2.2 trillion, meaning £4.8 billion equates to almost 0.22%. Alternatively, we could see it in terms of government spending for the year, estimated at about £840 billion⁴, which makes the Levelling Up Fund equivalent to a heady 0.57% of all government spending.

Does that seem a lot or not much? Remember that there are all the other aspects of government to pay for, such as the NHS, schools, defence, policing, etc. In many cases, you’ll have trust your gut, but sometimes there may be other clues to help us understand if a claim is generous or realistic.

In this particular case, we’ve got a great example of another country attempting to level up its society.

After the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, West Germany and East Germany reunited into a single nation. West Germany had grown into Europe’s economic powerhouse since the end of World War 2, while East Germany was much poorer.

Following reunification, Germany embarked on a project to bring the east up to the standards of the West. That’s a project that has been embraced by each government since with it estimated that some €2 trillion had been spent on levelling up the former East German states by 2014.⁵ Of course that was over 24 years, but it still equates to around £70 billion per year using the exchange rate at the time of writing.

So quite a bit more than the £4.8 billion levelling up fund. As a percentage of GDP, Germany was spending more than 10 times the UK’s Levelling Up Fund. And this wasn’t a one-off amount of money, it was being paid year after year. It’s also worth noting that even with that investment, levelling up in Germany hasn’t yet been achieved, with capita per head in the eastern states still lower than the states of the former West Germany.

It’s all very well Conservative politicians saying they want to level up the UK and make life fairer for all, but it’s going to take a lot more than £4.8 billion to make it happen.

How about another example of plans that don’t really mean that much? Immigration is a bit of a hot-button topic and the Tory government has been talking tough for years, but generally falling short of their aims. In particular, in 2022, they signed an agreement with the government of Rwanda which would allow Britain to send asylum seekers to Rwanda to be processed there.

The aim is to make it unattractive for migrants to cross the channel by boat, as they would be flown to Rwanda for their asylum claim. Assuming the British courts ever allow these flights to happen, which seems unlikely right now. If there wasn’t an election due, having the flights blocked by the courts might suit the Tory government.

That sounds odd, but the Rwandan government apparently only anticipate receiving about 1,000 asylum seekers over the course of the five year trial period.⁶ In 2023, the UK received asylum applications for 84,425 people.⁷ Let’s assume that figure remains steady for the five-year trial period, that would be 422,125 asylum seekers, with 1,000 of those going to Rwanda or 0.24% of all those seeking asylum.

That means there’s a pretty small chance of being one of the unlucky ones who will get sent to Rwanda. Considering the risks and dangers most of these people will have faced to get to the Channel, do you think it’s likely to have any marked deterrent effect?

So why do politicians say such things? Because they generally work.

Hang out in any Facebook group for aspiring entrepreneurs and you won’t have to wait long for someone to ask for feedback on a sales page. There’ll be a stream of advice. One common piece of advice that often surfaces is that “emotion sells” and you need to make the reader feel emotional about what’s for sale.

It’s a common misunderstanding of reality. Emotion primes the reader for the sale, but logic makes the sale. There may be some exceptions, such as selling an engagement ring to a head-over-heels in love teenager or a sportscar to a recently divorced middle-aged man, but generally, to make the sale, the buyer has to be convinced by logic to spend money. As we’ve seen previously, we’re all slaves to the effect of loss aversion, which means losses tend to hurt us more than gains. Every purchase involves a loss of money, so we need to be convinced of the greater value of the item that we gain in return.

One way around this, though not with everyone, is to defer the transaction cost, so they buy without paying. Buy now, pay later. There’s no immediate pain of paying cash at the point of purchase and some people are happy to press ahead and just not worry about the fact that they will still have to pay, only later.

Politicians can tap into this same emotional mechanism. Make big promises that they know voters will love, because voters will be driven by the emotion. The promise is delayed for some time in the future.

So many politicians’ promises are made with no concern for how they will be achieved or any potential downsides.

Late in 2023, the government of Venezuela held a referendum of the people relating to a region they call Guayana Esequiba which is currently governed by Guyana, but which Venezuela has historically claimed.

The referendum asked five questions, the last of which was “Do you agree with the creation of the Guayana Esequiba state and the development of an accelerated plan for comprehensive care for the current and future population of that territory, which includes, among others, the granting of citizenship and identity card? Venezuela, in accordance with the Geneva Agreement and International Law, consequently incorporating said state on the map of Venezuelan territory?”

In effect that question asks the people if they support taking possession of the region with no reference to whether Guyana agrees, though they do say it would be in line with international law. Probably some creative twist on international law though. Yet it’s unlikely Guyana would just let Venezuela take the land – I didn’t mention this situation arose because of a big oil find in the region, did I?

So, it would require war between the two countries, with the many deaths and injuries that come for free with war.

Ignoring the reports of possible fraud in the referendum, the question I copied above was supported by 96.37% of all the voters. Who’d have thought war was so popular?

Of course, the voters weren’t thinking about war, they were voting for reclaiming land that they’d been told was rightfully theirs and that contains loads of oil that could make them rich. No-one said anything about them or perhaps family or friends dying for the land.

Let’s imagine a crazy scenario.

The government of Guyana say that they will give the land to Venezuela if a second vote achieves a majority in favour of the question above. There’s one little stipulation though. Every person who votes yes should immediately play a round of Russian Roulette. Basically, they have to hold a revolver loaded with one bullet to their head and pull the trigger, with a one to five chance they’re going to kill themselves. War would kill a lot of people, so this is just getting the killing out of the way up front.

Can we role-play with you as a Venezuelan who voted yes in the first referendum?

How do you think you’d vote this time?

You’re Toni, 21 years of age and you’ve arrived at the polling station early, though it’s already 20ºC. You expect to be the first to vote, but as you walk in, a large figure is already marking a ballot.

They turn, drop the ballot in the box and grin broadly at you, giving you a big thumbs-up. They’re huge, you’d happily go to war with this man at your side or, better still, just in front of you. They look like the kind of man that dates bears and you imagine bullets would just bounce off them.

Smiling, you return the thumbs up and walk forward to the booth, the sound of the door to the side room latching shut barely registering in your consciousness. You pick up the black ink biro that had been in the man’s hand a moment before and a sharp flash of light between the door and frame explodes shockingly into your periphery vision.

29.12 milliseconds after the flash of light, the crack of the gunshot impacts your eardrums and you pee yourself. Don’t worry, it’s not enough to soak through the denim of your new jeans.

Still, you can feel the dampness in the fabric of your underwear, as the sound of the man’s huge but now lifeless body folding onto the floor reverberates like a tree that’s been felled in the forest.

You look at the pen as it shakes gently in your hand. Is there a draught in here? Then you look at the two boxes on the ballot. “Yes” or “No”.

Are you still going to vote for “Yes”?

Politicians of all parties and countries rarely sweat the details or worry about unforeseen adverse future consequences. They live in the moment and know the kind of things that people want to hear, so they focus on saying exactly those things. Those are the things that will get the people hot and excited about their message.

They’re just like the sex workers on the end of phone sex lines making crazy claims and promises to their callers, responding to them in any way that they think will make the caller happy.

“You want to hear me pee? Sure, here goes. No, really I am, I’m honestly not just squeezing water out of a recycled washing-up liquid bottle into a bucket of water. That’s the kind of behaviour you should expect from the Labour party. And remember, vote Conservative for lower taxes and a booming economy.”

In fairness to politicians, it’s not all their fault. In the phone line sex workers analogy, we’re the ones picking up the phone and asking them to talk dirty to us.

As has often been said, if you can see a politician’s lips moving, they’re lying. However, far too often, if the politician is one we generally agree with, many of us are happy to forget that.

Fast Friends

This growth in lying has been accompanied by a decrease in bipartisanism among politicians. Politicians are elected to serve the people and that should mean working together to achieve positive outcomes for the people. What we often see instead is political parties trying to block their opponents from doing things simply because they’re a different political party.

The world of politics has always been a combative place, but where once there seemed to be some respect for others, that seems to have been replaced by open hatred of political opponents in many cases.

Obviously, that’s not good for the people who these politicians are meant to serve, but it’s not good for the politicians either. I know I’ve expressed little sympathy for politicians, but I’d still hope that there were many, perhaps a majority, who are actually trying to do the best for their constituents. A toxic workplace where opponents throw shade at each other isn’t going to encourage the best of society to want to serve. And those who do make the decision may not feel inclined to stay in the role for long.

You may have heard the story of how Benjamin Franklin turned a rival into a lifelong friend. He asked to borrow a rare book from the man and though he was generally cold to Franklin, he obliged the request. Franklin returned the book a week later and the friendship was born.

That relates to a story Robert Cialdini shares early in one of his books, probably Presuasion, when he spent a day shadowing the consistently most successful salesperson for a business that sold to their customers in their homes. It may have been windows being sold, but I forget. The oddity of this one person’s sales success though, was that the business used scripted presentations, so all the sales staff were giving the same pitch.

Anyway, every house call started the same way, with the salesman giving the homeowners a questionnaire to complete. A minute or so later he’d discover he’d left an important document in his car and rather than disturbing the homeowner from the questionnaire, would ask if they would give him the front door key so he could let himself back in.

After witnessing this “absent-minded” scenario several times, Cialdini asked the man about the act. The salesman explained that people only give their front door keys to people they trust. So at an unconscious level, the homeowners were establishing that they trusted the salesman, making his sales pitch that bit easier. It took me an age to get my head around the idea that our actions can influence our beliefs, but read the book and you’ll likely be persuaded too.

I guess both of these stories feel a little deceptive and manipulative, but they illustrate we can be very easy to reprogram, certainly in terms of feeling trust and friendship for others, even when the roles are adversarial to a degree.

Which leads me to the work of Arthur Aron, the creator of the Fast Friends exercise.

The Fast Friends exercise is a practical example of how people are people, wherever we’re from.

The process is designed to run over 45 minutes, split into three 15-minute periods. During each period, partners have a set of 12 questions that they take turns to answer and they don’t all have to be answered if there’s not enough time.⁸ The questions in each set get progressively more personal.

For example, the very first question is “Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”.

One from the second set is “What is your most terrible memory?”

And one from the last set is “If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven’t you told them yet?”

This technique has proven time again that even people with strongly opposing viewpoints can build solid and rewarding relationships in a very short period of time.

Why don’t we insist that our politicians go through this exercise after each election?

Perhaps after each election, all those returned to represent the people have to set aside an hour a week for the first five weeks to complete the Fast Friends exercise with another randomly selected politician. Ideally, at least three of those should be from opposing parties.

Considering the success of the programme in other situations, we’d potentially see a greater level of understanding between opposing politicians and rather than spending their time fighting each other in the name of their parties, we might expect them to spend more time working together to serve the people they represent.

Perhaps just as importantly, though, it will offer the representatives more support in their roles. If a politician is doing their job properly, they’re making significant sacrifices for us and are regularly involved in considering and making decisions on complex and difficult concepts. Often while far away from the support of family and friends. Even if Fast Friends only led to them making a meaningful connection with one or two other people, it would give them an understanding support network at times when their role seems overwhelming. The support of others who understand exactly how they feel, because they’re in the same position. Anything that helps support our politicians and maintains positive mental health for them has to be positive for us as they make big decisions on our behalf.

Maybe it’s just idealistic thinking, but anything that might pull our politicians out of the spiral of partisanship has to be worth trying doesn’t it?

Why Do We Need Politicians Anyway?

Of course, even if politicians develop better relationships between each other, it doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be more trustworthy, so if we can’t trust politicians to work in our best interest, why not get rid of them altogether?

We live in a world with advanced technology, wouldn’t the obvious answer for modern democracies be to use that technology to allow everyone to vote on every new policy and law idea?

What do you think, good idea or not?

Personally, while at first glance it seems to make sense, I’m not convinced it’s a good idea in reality.

Establishing the laws that run a country is a big and complex job. How much time would you want to spend reading through the many different arguments for each law that comes up and then spending time thinking through the potential positives and negatives that could arise from passing the new law?

You’re a busy person, right? Can you really dedicate the necessary time to carefully consider every new law or change to existing law that is presented to the people?

Even if you think you could, right now think of the group of 100 people I asked you to form in your mind at the beginning of this book. How many of those do you really think you could trust to read through all the information and then carefully consider the full implications before casting their vote?

Bill Clinton’s 1992 election campaign popularised the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid”, meaning that the number one thing the voters care about is the economy or rather the effect it has on the money in their pocket.

When talking about the GTH question, I pointed to the IPSOS poll of economists before the 2016 Brexit vote that found just 4% of economists thought Brexit would make the UK richer, while 88% thought it would make the UK poorer.

That information was available for anyone to easily find if they wanted to carefully assess the pros and cons of Brexit. Don’t you think the Clinton campaign nailed it with their assessment of the importance of the economy?

If the average working-class Brit had read the stark assessment of experts that voting for Brexit would make them poorer, do you think, when most still hadn’t recovered from the impact of the 2007–2008 financial crisis, they’d have voted to become even poorer?

That’s what they did though.⁹ Why?

My guess is that most of the press was supporting Brexit and so the IPSOS poll wasn’t widely shared. It was easy enough to find by anyone wanting to consider the arguments from both sides, but in a busy world, most people get their news from one or two sources only and base their whole worldview upon that.

Can we the people really be trusted to make all the important decisions that affect how our societies are run?

This is why having politicians represent us to make these important decisions on our behalf makes such sense. Someone working full-time as a politician should have the time to carefully assess all sides of the argument for every important decision, and knowing the feelings of their constituents, be best placed to make the decisions that will be in the best interest of those they serve.

In theory, anyway. It falls over often because of the power of political parties. Rather than doing what’s best for the people they serve, too many politicians put what’s best for their party first.

Following the 2016 Brexit, the Tory government struggled for years with the terms of leaving and the ongoing relationship with the EU. At times some wondered if Brexit would ever actually happen and I recall a Tory MP on the radio (I can’t remember who) saying that the government had to complete Brexit or it would be the end of the Conservative party.

That’s not a reason for doing something. Politicians are elected to do what’s in the best interest of the people, not what’s in the best interest of their party.

In the late 1990s, the Democrat President of the USA, Bill Clinton was the subject of impeachment hearings. Two of the votes in the House of Representatives were in favour of passing those articles to the Senate to hold a trial.¹⁰ Both of those votes saw representatives voting very much on party lines, with Democrats voting against and Republicans for the President to face trial. Similarly in the Senate trial, the votes of the Senators largely split along party lines again.

They were all hearing the same evidence and yet they almost all voted in the way that was in their party’s best interests. Surely politicians of one of the parties must have been ignoring the evidence. And it was a similar situation with the impeachments of Donald Trump, with the votes on both occasions largely following party lines too.¹¹

The silly thing is, this blind loyalty to political parties isn’t unique to politicians. Many of us are just as guilty of putting too much faith in one party.

It’s not uncommon for people to choose a political party and stick with it for years, based on their original rationale. Some even proudly declare that they’ve been a lifelong supporter of one single party, like it’s an achievement to be marveled at, or go so far as to join a party.

Blindly committing to a single party is like turning up for a first date stripped from the waist down. They know they’re not going to have try very hard, so why bother worrying about what people like that think when they can put their time and effort into trying to win over people who aren’t gagging for them?

Political parties are not like sports teams.

Giving your undying loyalty to a football or basketball team that you chose at a young age, even when they’re performing like a group of donkeys, is one of the frustrating, yet wonderful things about following a sport.

It can bring shared experiences with others and, despite the lows, when the highs come, they make all the frustration worthwhile.

When your team wins a cup, the outpouring of joy is automatic and immediate. The players made a promise to you the fans that they would do all they could to bring your team success. You can celebrate because they delivered on that promise.

So why do so many people celebrate a political party’s election victory like it’s a huge win for the people?

The party hasn’t done anything yet other than make promises.

They’re the only winners at this point and now they don’t need the voters for another four or five years.

The time to celebrate is when the next election comes, so be sure to make a note of the promises they made that won your vote. If you use an online calendar, set a reminder for a few years’ time, when the next election will be coming up, with the important promises that were made.

Then when a reminder lands in your inbox or pops up on your phone screen you can look back at what the individual and the party achieved in the last term. Did they do the things they promised? Great, then celebrate, but not on the election night.

In fact, if you ever find yourself at an election event where the result is being announced, keep an eye on the winner.

A glass of Champagne is deserved, but if you see them going for a second, introduce yourself and remind them that they work for you now and they’ll probably work better with a clear head in the morning.

You’re not a monster though. Why not invite them to join you in a few years time to celebrate all of their promises after they’ve actually fulfilled them?

Can’t make it to your local election results. No problem, most politicians make it nice and easy to send them a message through their websites. As soon as possible after an election, be sure to send them a message reminding them that “You’re my little puppy dog, bow wow wow.”¹²

And remember, they’re your little puppy dog whether you voted for them or not.

Don’t Fight For The Right To Party¹³

In all things we look for easy solutions. That’s one positive of political parties. They seem to offer a shortcut to decision-making when choosing who to vote for. However, they also encourage groupthink and misplaced loyalties to ideologies rather than the people. We all feel stronger as part of a groups we identify with and politicians are no different.

George Washington said of political parties that they “may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”

So clearly not a fan of parties. His warning that parties will help the wrong people into power seems particularly relevant looking at various democratic nations today.

At different points in history, people have suggested banning political parties. As attractive as that sounds, considering the way parties often undermine the work of individual politicians, banning them probably isn’t a workable option.

It would likely be impossible to police such a law. Groups of like-minded people form naturally in all sorts of circumstances, so it’s quite natural for similar politicians to group together. It might be loose and informal initially, growing into a stronger and tighter group later. Certainly during that early informal stage how would it be possible to identify if individuals were actually acting together in the same way they would within a political party?

In addition, without parties, elections and the forming of governments afterwards would likely be quite chaotic. However, similar to how wildfires can give nature a chance to start again from a blank sheet, maybe the rejuvenating effect on an occasional basis wouldn’t be such a bad thing.

Perhaps banning all existing political parties once every other generation or so could be made to work. In reality, I feel we probably should just accept that political parties are a necessary evil within democracies where the people vote for their representatives.

Should We Ban Voting?

Stepping across to the left-field, maybe voting is the problem.

Do democracies have to rely on a system where the people vote for the people to represent them and to make decisions on their behalf?

Clearly at first glance that appears to be a stupid question from someone who’s been banging on about the importance of democracy, but is it really?

We’ve seen that too many politicians get into politics through a desire for power rather than to serve the people. Many of them feel that they’re entitled to the position as if it’s their career. And political parties interfere with the ability for politicians to work together.

The system of electing our representatives has many problems, but we accept them because we want to live in a democracy where the people govern society.

Could it be possible to have a democratic society where the people govern, without the need for electing representatives?

Most democratic countries use a jury system to try criminal cases. A jury made up of ordinary citizens is put together and they are trusted to listen carefully to evidence presented by both the prosecution and defence teams. After that, we trust them to carefully consider all that evidence and to reach a decision as to the defendant’s guilt or innocence on our behalf.

Unlike politicians, jurors aren’t elected to the juries they serve on, they’re picked quite randomly like the balls in a lottery. Beyond that, in some countries, the defence and prosecution get to select the jurors that they’re happy with from a large pool of possible jurors.

Why couldn’t a society remain a fully functioning democracy if they adopted a similar system for the selection of representatives in government?

The actual mechanism of how it would work in practice would need some thinking through of course.

Would they be selected to decide on a single issue or for a fixed period of time? If a fixed time, how long would someone have to serve? Who would select departmental ministers or secretaries, or would they not be required with ideas for bills coming from and chosen by the public and departmental decisions taken by the selected members voting rather than a departmental head?

Or would people be selected to work for a single department and only vote on those policies?

And what would happen in times of national emergencies, such as war with another nation?

It might not be a feasible idea and perhaps in reality could have as many negative aspects as electing parties and politicians that crave power. But, oh if it could be made to work, wouldn’t waving goodbye to career politicians be a delightful moment?

Talk Dirty To Me Big Boy

Fast Friends

Why Do We Need Politicians Anyway?

Don’t Fight For The Right To Party13

Should We Ban Voting?

Don’t Fight For The Right To Party¹³