Over the top

By Nandini Ramachandran

A White Man Who Ran

That before I snuff it, the whole
Boiling will be bricked in
Except for the tourist parts -
First slum of Europe: a role
It won’t be hard to win,
With a cast of crooks and tarts.

And that will be England gone,
The shadows, the meadows, the lanes,
The guildhalls, the carved choirs.
There’ll be books; it will linger on
In galleries; but all that remains
For us will be concrete and tyres.

– From: Going, Going by Philip Larkin.

Britain goes to polls on 6^th May 2010. In a single day, the tiny island will elect more legislators than the masses of India do over the course of two months. Clearly, British elections are not the mela we are used to around here during election season, where skeletons are harried out of closets for months in order to provide the electorate with a good show. All the same, 13 years under the same government is bound to make anyone twitchy, and the Britons are determined to make the best of a bad job. As Hugh Rifkind noted yesterday, this has proved to be an excellent election for bullshitters, and the only thing that need constrain one’s observations is one’s imagination.

For years, one would be laughed out of any British pub (or Indian clubs frequented by posh folk who ‘followed’ politics in the mother country) at the very mention of the Liberal Democrats (Lib-Dems). One such Albion-acolyte, an avuncular, scotch-swilling gentleman, suggested my breath and ‘youthful exuberance’ were better wasted upon the Greens. Astonishingly, in just under a month, the British media has resurrected the party and concocted a passable (and regrettably pale) shadow of Obama for the Scotch Uncles to get excited about. We are all (those of us who inhabit countries where elections remain a thankfully periodic affair) a few elections into the new century now, and we demand our jollies. It is a decade in which the liberal-left has felt singularly defeated; we now demand politicians come with a firm fix of messiah.

The omnipresence of information in our decade sometimes blinds us to how easily manipulated it remains, especially in the era of publicity politics – and one is easily seduced into buying into left-liberal pinups Obama-style. The usually clamourous Brit papers seem fully committed to Cleggmania; as with Obama, one must head to the Chomskyland, the world of Z magazine and Spiked! Online, to find anything resembling a critical appraisal of the man and his politics slanted from the left. The Guardian granted him a fanboy-editorial, and the Independent, a paper one can usually count on for nastiness, is being remarkably effusive. It is all eerily similar to the American press a year-and-a-half ago, in full grip of Obama-mania, converting a complex political dilemma into a simplified personal faith.

The chief difference is the length of the campaigns – Obama’s mojo took years in the making and penetrated every level of popular culture (I was initially introduced to Obama as Rory Gilmore’s post-college job back in 2007): but then it was undertaken at an epic scale. British productions are, of necessity, subdued. In any case, the goal of the Obama-campaign was infinitely more ambitious: it convinced citizens that a system as politically infantile as rigidly bipartisan democracy is sustainable and capable of innovation. Cleggmania is merely intended to buffer the bumpy road to coalition politics; a cross any mature democracy in the postmodern world has to learn to bear.

Nonetheless, if this media gush-fest should succeed, it will only strengthen the narrative and ensure sequels, as each new faux-Obama slowly chips away at the real one’s achievements. Rahul Gandhi , for instance, looks very well set up to be 2014’s Obama, with a complimentary campaign of Change! Irony is so last century. Or maybe they’ll launch the Kaun Banega Obama? show, where politicians from across the globe compete to receive six months of great press and the Nobel Peace Prize. All too soon, the historic Black Man Who Could could only be remembered as the first in a dynasty of media-fashioned political leaders, propelled along by the power of the headline. It took Obama less than a year to bring everyone thudding back to earth – it will likely take Clegg, should he slip into power, correspondingly less. That said, I can’t deny I would rather see Clegg flamenco into Downing Street than watch Britain go wholly Tory in denial. Hilarity, if nothing else, is guaranteed.

I say this as a young Indian not particularly invested in the next British PM. I like the sound of accessible visas and university funding, and I am told the Lib-Dems have the best policy on both (of course, given my taste in media, it is unlikely that I would be told otherwise). If I were British-Asian, I suspect my calculations would be more agonised. It would then be a choice between representation and ideology. I would be intensely suspicious of the Lib-Dem’s miserable record when it comes to representing women and people of colour: it has the lowest number of MPs from both groups.

Of the 15 ethnic minority MPs in the last Parliament, 13 were Labour and 2 Tory; there were no African or Asian MPs in the 63-strong Lib-Dem contingent. The party is fielding only four this time with a shot at winning. In contrast, the Tories have opened up their party under David Cameron (though not without a fight). The Tories are fielding as many minority candidates as Labour (44), ten of whom are standing from reasonably safe seats. In an election where even the Tories are making a point about diversity and encouraging ethnic-minority candidates for the first time (albeit dubious ones, such as the ultra-right PR goddess Priti Patel), the Lib-Dem apathy must be looking especially dismal. In other constituencies and on the other extreme, political parties such as Respect, founded on the sole plank of identity politics, threaten Labour even in London’s solidly red East End and might swing marginal districts to the Tories if their bid to power fails (Respect is a Bangladeshi-focused party founded, weirdly, by a Scot).

Even worse, the party that does best with catapulting my community and gender to elected office- Labour – would be the worst hit by a Lib-Dem victory. In some areas the clash is especially poignant: Diane Abbott, the first black woman in British Parliament, is defending her seat against a 20-something white man standing on the Lib-Dem ticket. To quote the local newspaper:

“Meanwhile the Lib Dem challenger Keith Angus reckons, in this campaign video posted on YouTube, that it’s a two-horse race between him and Abbott. Well, yes, but only in the sense that one horse is a Grand National winner and the other is a Blackpool beach donkey.”

I am glad I am not this hypothetical British voter, bewildered amidst political psychosis, as surely as she is glad not to be me. It is true we have romanticised and embellished versions of each other’s lives. That is as much part of the diaspora as a consequence of it, and it is unlikely that I will ever stop checking in with the Scotch Uncles to try get a better glimpse into her world. The fact is we both make the same series of non-choices in our political lives: between converging forces more apart in rhetoric than in reality; but that is not something we enjoy being reminded about. Rather, we engage in the metaphysics of coalitions; the subtle skill of calculating when and whether undercutting can lead to undermining. This is expertise better sought from the study of third world democracy, where the coalition was mastered, than from first world variants hostile to the form. To that limited extent, I would say I am the luckier of the pair of us.

Nandini Ramachandran lives and writes in Bangalore. She plans to blog about media and politics in the region for Himal.