Why the Tories lose again and again

There's a fascinating article in today's Guardian about the role of emotion in politics. It looks at how the Democratic presidential candidates have failed to understand that voters react much more strongly to stories that politicians tell than to the arguments they make. Clinical logic is not enough, a successful vote winner requires something else. As the author puts it: 'the data is crystal clear: people vote for the candidate who elicits the right feelings, not the candidate who presents the best arguments.' You can watch the author discuss his ideas here.

In Britain it is not on the left but on the right that we find the people, who do not understand the emotional side of politics. The Labour party has successfully created a narrative, first around the idea that it was time for a change and then around providing successful, stable leadership. By contrast, the Conservatives have made a similar mistake to the Democrats. They looked at opinion polls, saw that the public appeared to share their hostility to immigration and the EU, went out and argued for their positions on those issues and were trounced. What they had failed to appreciate was that by carping on about those two issues without presenting any kind of positive vision, that voters would construct their own story about the Conservative party. Instead of being the heroes, the voters made them into negative thinking villains obsessed with foreigners. This was not the kind of party that anyone wants to vote for.

David Cameron understood the need to change the story and when it comes to convincing the public that he is a nice guy, he has succeeded. Opinion polls show that the public believe that Cameron is an affable, non threatening individual. The visits to the arctic and the hoody hugging have served their purpose. However, his attempt to construct a broader narrative about it being a time for a change and him being the man to deliver it has failed. This failure is at the heart of his recent trouble and it has come about for two very good reasons. Firstly, few people believe that he is really that different from the Government he is seeking to replace. It is not for nothing that his political opponents have seized on the similarity between him and Blair. A more significant problem stems from his reluctance to articulate policies, which means that he is unable to tell people what changes he wants. Unless he can produce a more convincing vision for Britain then like his unfortunate predecessors he will carry on losing.

As for the narrative that will propel British politics other perpetual losers back into power, uhh, can I get back to you on that one...

Dispatches from the Crooked Timbers

"Why is politics like sadomasochism?" is not a question you hear very often. It sounds like the start of a bad joke. In fact, it is the question that David Aaronovitch tries to answer in a new series on radio 4.

Via interviews with a range of politicians, academics and therapists, Aaronovitch explains why he believes that 'the electorate is need of psychiatric help.' His argument is that far from making decisions about who to vote for in rational manner, voters are swayed by a range of subconscious neurosis's. Though I am usually skeptical of psychoanalysis, quite a lot of it rings true. Aaronovitch suggests that voters create unrealistic explanations of politicians, so that they can feel a sense of grievance when they are disappointed. If this is true then it would explain the 'Mr/Mrs Angrys' who bombard politicians with furious complaints.

Aaronovitch is certainly not the only person to be suggesting that voters are not as rational as is often assumed. In his new book, the economist Bryan Caplan identifies a number of logical errors that voters commonly make. For example, they tend to equate prosperity with employment rather than consumption. This leads them to support policies that create work rather than wealth. An often cited (and rather extreme) example is a law passed in the state of Oregon that bans self service petrol stations, in order to protect the jobs of petrol pump attendants.

Now at this point you may be asking, so what? You didn't need David Aaronavitch to tell you that voters can be a bit strange at times. You and anyone else with a modicum of common sense already knew that. Well, the reason this matters is because an increasingly influential school of thought ignores this obvious fact.

Over the past few years, a previously obscure subject known as behavioral economics has become fashionable. It uses insights from psychology to understand economic decisions that are otherwise inexplicable. Behavioral economists have time and again shown that consumers and producers are not the rational calculating machines that traditional economics has often assumed them to be. The conclusion that some policy makers have drawn from this is that since economic agents are irrational, there is a case for state intervention to protect people from the consequences of their irrational choices.

The fatal flaw with replacing individual choice with government control in the name of reason is that the governments decisions are not necessarily going to be any more rational. The same people who are making irrational decisions about buying and selling are also electing the government and as we have already seen not going about it in a particularly rational way.

We cannot legislate against bad decisions and we should not sacrifice our freedom in the vain attempt to do so. Afterall, as Immanuel Kant once said: "Out of the crooked timber of humanity no straight thing was ever made."