Controlled, defensive and risk-averse: this is the José Mourinho election
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Version 0 of 1. Neither of the main parties in this election really wants to win – they just don’t want to lose. This was all foreshadowed in the appointment of Roy Hodgson as England manager, obviously – but we’ll come to that in a bit. (Along with the requisite apologies to the other home nations for the analogy.) Future historians may have greater visibility on the exact moment when the holy grail of British electioneering became the absence of risk. But I think it’s fair to say it had already passed when David Cameron started making speeches in empty cowsheds. It is now politic not to meet the voters. (One ambushing by a hen party doesn’t count.) As Sherlock Holmes didn’t say: once you have eliminated risk, whatever remains, no matter how unwatchable, must be the election. Reading an excellent article by my colleague Jonathan Wilson, I was struck that the rules of modern south-of-the-border electioneering have already been codified – in Diego Torres’s biography of José Mourinho, of all places. 1. The game is won by the team that commits fewer errors. 2. Football favours whoever provokes more errors in the opposition. 3. Away from home, instead of trying to be superior to the opposition, it’s better to encourage their mistakes. 4. Whoever has the ball is more likely to make a mistake. 5. Whoever renounces possession reduces the possibility of making a mistake. 6. Whoever has the ball has fear. 7. Whoever does not have it is thereby stronger. The masterful Mourinho, of course, has a trophy cabinet (and once advanced to the Champions’ League final after a game with 19% possession), whereas neither of the main parties in this election has anything approaching one. Labour hasn’t had a leader who has won an election since 2007, and the Tories haven’t won an election in 23 years. Furthermore, unless the polls wake from their coma before 7 May, neither party is going to win anything that could be constituted as a trophy except by their most self-defeatingly one-eyed supporters. We have thus far endured not 90 minutes of soul-crushingly unwatchable defensive play, but almost four weeks of it. I’m not sure who counts as Westminster’s oligarch owner in this era of a diminished Rupert Murdoch – but whoever it is should sack the lot of them for serving up such uninspiring fare. Anyway, back to Hodgson, who has the caution but not the tactics. For what minuscule amount it’s worth, I was all for Roy winning out over Harry Redknapp in the contest for the England manager’s job. I like risk as much as the next non-politician, but even I had to draw the line at a man who’d once opened a Monaco bank account in the name of his dog. The PM is currently holding a rally in Cornwall, in what appears to be a massive cow shed pic.twitter.com/eJh6RrnsQ6 Plus with Harry there would have been hope – which forces me to wheel out that favourite line from Clockwise yet again. “It’s not the despair,” groans John Cleese. “I can stand the despair. It’s the hope …” Hodgson felt like the right man for a nation finally coming to terms with its own mediocrity. We were basically accepting footballing parity with Switzerland. But the next line I draw is at politicians appearing to take inspiration from Roy’s playbook. Both Labour and Tories kicked off this campaign playing for the draw. There had long been talk of Labour’s 35% strategy. And the prime minister has just been asked by the Spectator why it is that people think he doesn’t look like he wants to win. “I don’t know,” says Cameron. “There is something about me – I always manage to portray a calm smoothness or something.” What else could you do on a hermetically sealed campaign trail that feels like the result of the world’s most over-zealous risk assessment? The Guardian is kept out of a Tory event; the Sun is kept out of Labour ones. No one in their right mind would expect you to shed tears at news that journalists are having a bit of hassle – but be aware that both Ed Miliband and Cameron have refused to go on Radio 4’s Election Call despite repeated requests for months. Since 1974 this has been a phone-in for real people to put their questions, and it has been graced by almost every PM from that date, and all Labour leaders in opposition. But not these two. Their election strategies suggest there is no deadlier peril than meeting unscreened voters. If you are near a voter, you have fear. Whoever is not near a voter is thereby stronger. Just as in football, people who don’t really understand what is wrong suggest that improving poll ratings is a matter of the leaders showing more “passion”. It’s not. What you are watching now is what poor teams who are nonetheless well organised do, because it takes them furthest. They practise penalties and play for the draw. But then what? After all, you can grind your way out of the group stages like this – but what are you going to do when you get there? What have you really got, you who would lead a country you’re too prudent to meet? Not that there are even going to be penalties. Our electoral system no longer appears to be swiftly decisive. That used to be its selling point, as the political scientist David Runciman recently summarised. “You might not like the result, you might not even think it fair, but at least it’s quick.” No one is likely to be saying that on 8 May. Or 9 May. Or, possibly, 20 May. Yet bad workmen will always blame their system. Maybe it’s not the system that’s broken so much as the politicians. Like characters in a poor movie, they are beaten before it starts. There’s no real character development because there’s no jeopardy, so – as the flatlining polls show – there can be no real drama. Time and again when faced with a dysfunctional narrative (fictional or real), I recall a brilliant memo that David Mamet once sent to the writers working on one of his television shows. “The audience will not tune in to watch information,” he explained. “You wouldn’t, I wouldn’t. No one would or will. The audience will only tune in and stay tuned to watch drama. Question: so what is drama? Drama, again, is the quest of the hero to overcome those things which prevent him from achieving a specific, acute goal.” You can’t top that, so I merely conclude with a plea to the so-called designing intelligences of the two main parties’ 2015 election campaigns: heroes wanted, quests wanted, drama wanted. We’re fine for empty barns, thanks. |