Friday, March 30, 2012

Politics, story telling an Narratives

You have to love politics.

Here goes. There's been a by-election in the UK; where a city elects a new member of parliament, because the previous one resigned, died or any number of things.

Bradford-West in the North of England has many qualities, but the one news touts is its large Muslim population. Until yesterday, it was a shoe-in for the Labour Party. That's the political group led by someone known as Ed Milliband.

Late last evening when the results were announced, to Ed's utter amazement; his speech was all prepared to congratulate his colleague who would win the seat, Labour lost.  By the way his colleague's name, few people know who this person is.

The scale of Labour's loss is eye-wattering. What was a place where they dominated for over 20 years, they lost by 10,000 votes and to of all people a man by the name of George Galloway.

Galloway formed his own party called Respect a while back and then went on reality Big Brother show purring like a cat.

His win was 56% of the electorate vote to his closest rival - that labour person, who won 25 percent. In fact if you put all the losers votes together, they would still fall short of Galloway, known to some as "Gorgeous George".

Now there's a lot more to say about Galloway, but forget him now. Ed Milliband ashen-faced shocked says he's disappointed and that he needs to find out why that's happened.

That's half the story. The backdrop has been this week when the Tories budget which hit middle incomers and gave a tax break to the rich. A week when Pensioners were also hit in the pocket. Oh and tax (VAT) put on those who eat pies. Yes pies. A week when the Tories, the government in power... Oh sorry that would be the Lib-dems. No, that in practice that's the tories have done everything to become unpopular, including yesterday telling everyone to store up petrol because the country will run dry.

So the punch line and this is why you'll love politics. Ed Milliband confused he's lost is being interviewed by all the networks. There's a code you don't cross if you're a political journalist.

Oh you might ask the question, everyone else is thinking, but you'll move on.. And what is that question, that labours own lot and many others think their leader is well, unelectable.

He's so bad, the current government could do anything they wanted, and the electorate won't vote for him. Why not?

Well that's a bigger question, but the long winded point I'm getting at here is that journalism needs to get out from behind the sofa and start stating what everyone else is thinking.