Are You With Me?

It’s always tricky, appealing to the masses, particularly when you're relying on them to prove your opponent wrong. That’s what David Cameron found, when he turned to the British public to silence those annoying Eurosceptics; that’s what the Labour backbenchers found when they turned to the Party Members to prove just how unelectable Jeremy Corby is; and that’s what Southern Rail found when they turned to Twitter to ask commuters to give striking employees a piece of their mind. People let their feelings be known all right, but it was Southern Rail themselves, and not the workers, that the anger was directed at. It turns out that, after years of cancellations, missed services and excuses such as ‘this train is late due to a delay to the previous train’, commuters were in no doubt as to where the blame lay. If you’re going to ask the public to support you, you really need make sure they’re not already backing the other side.

Jeremy Hunt, that famous man of the people, made a series of similar mistakes during his various stints in office. As health secretary, he took the fascinating decision to demonize doctors, figuring that the one profession the public was most likely to revile would be the one’s who devote their lives to curing the sick and healing the injured. First of all he attacked junior doctors. These monsters, he told us, had the temerity to only work 60 hours a week and sometimes even had weekends off. For some reason, this didn’t play very well with those us who have been hearing for years about the long hours doctors work and have rather more sympathy with them than, for instance, a privately educated politician whose contribution to society seems to be long holidays and expenses scandals.

Having learnt his lesson, Hunt then went on to attack senior doctors for their excessive pay, and the fact that some of them work for the private sector on top of what they already do for the NHS. Mr. Hunt is presumably on a standard MP’s salary of around £75,000 plus expenses plus travel plus a second home allowance and on top of that, Jeremy Hunt has a second income from his company Hotcourses, which nets him about half a million a year. Just to reiterate, he wanted us to back him in saying that the nice people who make us feel better when we’re poorly, or take the hurt away when we’re in pain, are the one’s who are overpaid. I’m not saying he’s right or wrong, I’m just saying he may not entirely have judged the temperature of the room.

For most of us, a misjudged appeal is a much more personal thing. When we get the mood wrong, it’s often our friends, rather than strangers, who we think will support us, and it can feel extremely hurtful when they don’t. It feels like a direct challenge even though, in reality, they simply have their own opinions. 

So what causes us to make these ill-judged statements? What causes us to walk into a room full of vegetarians and order the steak, or a Democrat convention and tell them how much you respect the opinions of Donald Trump? Well, ultimately, it’s a desire to be liked. We all send out signals all the time that say ‘Looking for Group’. We want to be part of something. When we tell a joke, we hope for laughter because it tells us our signal has been accepted.

Wanting to be part of something is not a problem. It’s good to belong. But if you’re Jeremy Hunt, or David Cameron, or the PR department of Southern Rail, be careful trying to hijack that desire. You may think we’re all idiots who can be manipulated. We’re not. We have our own opinions. We are the public, and we have divided empires, brought down governments, and named a British flagship Boaty McBoatface.

Together we can change the world. Let's make sure we change it right.