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Dr Alastair Masser is a Director at Trafalgar Strategy and a former Government Special Adviser.
Love him or hate him, Elon Musk has done us all a favour. The rape gang scandal has appalled the public and rocked their faith in politicians’ ability to do what is right. Musk has used his profile and platform to pose some uncomfortable questions to Britain’s leaders. Their inability to answer them has caused consternation.
Branding people who have seen merit in Musk’s questions as amplifying the far right entirely misses the point. These are legitimate questions that demand answers, however uncomfortable.
Many people have genuine concerns about migration, multiculturalism, and integration. This is nothing new. But whilst most have hitherto been content to grumble quietly to themselves, this scandal has provided a growing number with concrete proof of the failure of all three. Categorising anyone holding such views as harbouring some form of unreconstructed xenophobia entirely misses the point and means voters will look to more fringe politicians to provide the answers.
Voters have made repeated cries for help. Immigration was the leading issue among people polled prior to 2016 EU referendum, with one in three cited identifying it as their first concern. Many of those who subsequently voted to leave did so because they thought it would allow the government to regain control of our borders. It hasn’t.
A government that doesn’t take the concerns of voters seriously will not be a government for long. Labour’s historic landslide last year masked an alarming fact: around half of all people eligible to vote in the UK didn’t bother. July’s general election saw voter turnout fall to 60 per cent amongst registered voters. When you add those who didn’t even register, it paints a sorry picture.
Disengagement on this scale reflects public frustration over successive governments’ inability to do the basics: namely deliver. People can point to few things that politicians have done in recent years that have made a real difference to their lives. They are left scratching their heads as to why politics dominates the front pages when little appears to change.
Keir Starmer has been in office for six months but is still delivering speeches detailing his ‘plan for change’. People don’t want to hear about the plan. They want to see the change.
Most couldn’t care less if Britain’s railways are nationalised or privatised. They just want rail travel to be cheaper and more reliable. But instead, rail fare increases continue to outpace inflation, while rail replacement bus services now appear to be a permanent feature of British life.
The NHS is another issue where public cynicism has become entrenched. No one got excited about the prime minister’s recent ‘prescription’ for the NHS because no one believes anything will feel any different this time next year. Or the year after that. If anything, such pronouncements make voters feel like the victims of a not-so-artful form of gaslighting. With impeccable timing, Starmer’s prescription found itself competing for coverage last week with the news that 11 hospitals across the UK were imploring people to stay away from A&E departments due to overwhelming demand and waiting times approaching 48 hours.
This is not to beat up solely on the prime minister. Rishi Sunak only managed to deliver two of his five pledges. Whilst halving inflation undoubtedly had a big impact on household budgets, it is now creeping back up. And the former prime minister’s attempts to celebrate a meagre 0.6 per cent growth in the first quarter of 2024 didn’t fool anyone in July. Meanwhile boats weren’t stopped, NHS waiting times weren’t reduced, and debt didn’t fall.
People increasingly feel that politicians talk a good game but seem incapable of changing anything for the better. Amongst those who did vote Labour last year, a depressing number acknowledge they did not expect anything to really change. The Tories just needed to be out of government. Having spent his time in Opposition lobbing grenades at successive stumbling Tory leaders, Starmer is finding that incumbency is more complex than he imagined.
His government is failing to give the people what they want: action. It is in fact the prime minister who is the one amplifying the far right – by creating a vacuum for it. A recent poll of UK voters found him to be less popular than Donald Trump, whilst Nigel Farage’s Reform are now neck and neck with Labour.
For people to keep faith with representative democracy, their representatives have to take their concerns seriously. Voters aren’t stupid.
Most understand that money is tight, and that change takes time. Dismissing such concerns and the people that raise them is a recipe for disaster. ‘Get Shit Done’ would make for a more popular slogan than ‘Plan for Change’.
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