Toeing the Party Line

 It is extremely hard to seem authentic in politics, A central task of the job - selling yourself to voters - burdens you with an obvious ulterior motive from the start. Even if your values coincide exactly with what you are saying, your audience may suspect otherwise. How can they trust you? How can they trust any doorstep salesman? You have an agenda after all.

Feast of Fools
Frans Floris the elder (c. 1517-1570)
Photo Credit: Shakespeare Birthplace Trust [CC  BY-NC-ND]

To make matters worse, you have a party line to stick to. It's impossible to seem genuine when every single one of your colleagues is saying exactly the same thing. Then, too, collective discipline means you must sometimes defend indefensible colleagues, or seem enthusiastic about policies you hate. Worst of all, you are sometimes required to trot out a particular form of words when navigating a delicate subject. It is here, in the hands of a probing interviewer, that politicians are at their most insincere. All they can do is repeat themselves and dodge the questions; even the best actors can struggle to seem spontaneous when saying their lines for the twentieth time...

Here's an extra catch: the harder you try to seem sincere, the more disingenuous you may appear, as voters guess, quite accurately, that this is all a marketing scheme...

For  International Women's Day last month, Sunak [British Prime Minister] revealed details of how he split household chores with his wife. He enjoyed dishwater stacking, he said, and making the bed. The reaction was disdainful. The prime minister was trying to seem normal, people said. He was attempting to fool them.

Occasionally, a politician does manage to square the circle. Last week, shadow minister Darren Jones won praise for seeming unusually honest. During an LBC panel debate with Iain Dale, he was asked for his take on ID cards, and replied he didn't know, because he wasn't sure what his party's position was. Later in the programme he received the information by text. "I've got my lines!" he announced, before reading them out...

(Martha Gill, The Observer, 2024)

"You have a party line to stick to." Any political party, be it in the East or West, any religious organisation or any club requires that you follow a set of rules. Deviation from the rules disqualifies you from "the club". How many times do you see on the television  politicians of various ideologies dodge the question? You have to sing "from the same hymn sheet". This is the antithesis of the critical spirit.