Beware the Populist Politician

Much has been made in the past few days of Obama's comments about BP in the aftermath of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. While it is wrong to paint BP as a complete innocent in the story, there can be little doubt that Obama's comments have had implications that were easy to predict - it has damaged BP as a company, it has put strain on the special relationship with the UK and it has left the US wide open to charges of hypocrisy when you consider incidents like the Bhopal disaster. Plus, y'know, this BP bashing doesn't actually help to resolve the issue - it is in everyone's, including BP's, best interest that this disaster is dealt with as quickly as possible. Now, I'm pretty sure Obama is intelligent enough to have anticipated at least some of these consequences, which does rather beg the question of why he went ahead and made his comments anyway. The answer is obvious - a little bit of short-term populism; a chance to identify an enemy of the American people (in this case BP) and then a chance to look tough by bullying that enemy.

You can see another example of the same phenomena here in the UK with Ed Ball's sudden conversion to the need to restrict immigration or, to put it another way, Ball's recent conversion to immigrant bashing. Now I don't think that Balls - who for all the world comes across as an economic policy wonk (as well as nasty little wanker, but that's not the main point here for once) - really has a problem with immigration. However, he saw his boss taking a (deserved) kicking for ducking a debate with a voter about immigration, and has decided that he doesn't want the same thing to happen to him. Plus, he's in the contest to be Labour leader and needs something to differentiate himself from the other candidates other than most people who know of him seem to think that he is a bit of a prick. Therefore, jump on the bash the immigrant bandwagon, and maybe even score some nice headlines from The Sun and The Daily Hate Mail while you're at it.

Of course, this approach from Balls misses the point in a number of ways. Part of the reason why Labour lost the last election was because of immigration. However, there were a number of other factors that were also crucial in creating that staggering defeat. Like the fact that they shafted the economy, the education system, civil liberties and the armed forces over a 13 year period. Balls is also missing the point that the reason why so many people in the UK feel uncomfortable about immigration is because Nu Labour studiously refused to engage with anyone on any sort of a debate over immigration - meaning that it has almost become a bit of a political taboo. What Nu Labour should have done is have made the case for immigration - to have pointed out during their years in power that the economy is dependent on immigrant labour and on immigrant spending. Instead, by saying nothing, they allowed the BNP to grow and for immigration to become something sightly sinister in the eyes of some voters. Of course, Balls could try to make this case now rather than bashing immigration. But he isn't, because that's a debate that needs to be had over a long period of time, whereas he may be able to benefit from immigrant bashing right here, right now.

Both Obama and Balls (surely this is one of the first times that the two have been directly compared and found to be similar) are playing tactical, rather than strategic, political games. They are chasing headlines, and trying to make themselves look tough in the eyes of the media. The problem with this is that politicians chasing headlines are never politicians at their best. In fact, they tend to be at their self-serving and cowardly worst when they're doing things like this. And there is a real danger to politicians in that they might get caught up in responding to events rather than trying to think strategically about what they want to achieve overall. There is a fundamental difference between a politician with a determination to implement a vision and a politician determined to chase headlines/respond to events. It is the difference between a Thatcher and a Major, and an Attlee and a Blair.

So beware of politicians flirting with populism. Beware of those politicians chasing headlines. Beware of politicians trying to look tough for the media. Because this is where we tend to see politicians at their most untrustworthy, self-serving and shallow.