STRATEGI | Har strategin att lägga sig i mitten nått vägs ände i politiken? Nya arga väljare sätter press på etablerade partier i både USA och Europa.
Runt om i både Europa och USA ser vi väljare som inte längre tycker sig se någon skillnad på partierna på höger- och vänsterkanten.
Redan innan folkomröstningen i Skottland konstaterade The Spectator i en ledare att nya trender håller på att förändra det politiska landskapet i Europa.
Idén bakom denna mittenstrategi är enkel. En majoritet väljare befinner sig i en vagt definierad mitt och som konsekvens måste alla partier som söker väljarnas förtroende lägga sig både ideologiskt och politiskt i mitten.
Men om de etablerade partierna bara bjuder på vanilj kommer garanterat nya partier bjuda på en lång rad olika smaker. Inte konstigt om dessa nya partier vinner nya – och ofta entusiastiska – väljare.
Och hur ser då lösningen ut om de gamla partierna vill överleva? De etablerade partierna på vänster och högerkanten måste, enligt The Spectator, vara beredda att bli mer principfasta.
Genom att lyfta fram ideologiska ståndpunkter vinner man respekt från väljarna. Och genom att vara principfasta kan man också övertyga nya väljare. Detta även om en stor grupp väljare kommer att gå i taket och protestera högljutt.
For years, politicians have laughed about voters who are ‘mad as hell, and not going to take it any more’. That joke is no longer funny. People have derided, lamented or lampooned the death of the Tory party’s grass roots. But the independence debate revealed that in Scotland the Labour party has suffered the same fate.
[…]
The Westminster system is broken, because it has been taken over by professional politicians who focus on their opposite numbers rather than on the people they’re supposed to represent. That this led to mass apathy and resentment did not trouble them at first: to a professional politician, those who don’t vote might as well not exist. But now the abstainers have found new champions in the insurgent parties. People are turning up to vote for the first time in years. A grumble has grown into a war cry, as we saw in Scotland.
[…]
Everywhere in Europe the political class is working to a late-1990s playbook: the leading parties copy each other, avoid difficult issues and end up losing the distinctive features that made them popular in the first place.
Voters want parties to be different, and principled. The PR men think otherwise. If the teaching unions don’t like Michael Gove, then the Conservative party gets rid of him and ‘neutralises’ the issue. Voters are worried about the NHS, so the government pledges not to seek any savings in the health budget and ‘neutralises’ that too. Such tactics worked for Tony Blair and other social democratic leaders in the 1990s. But the public has changed. They no longer believe that the system is working for them. There may be a recovery but wages remain stagnant. Real issues remain unaddressed.
[…]
Cameron has spent his time playing political chess with Labour, and accommodating the sensitivities of Liberal Democrats, when he should have been worried about bigger shifts within the British electorate. Only recently, insurgent politicians such as Salmond, Le Pen and Grillo were seen as novelties — the type who do well in Euro elections and can then be forgotten about for four years. Now these anti-establishment politicians (however risible the entitlement of some of them to that claim actually is) are knocking on the door of power and sometimes breaking through it.
It is crucial to recognise that the current ‘anti-politics’ mood is not an anomaly or a cry of pain. It is the start of a new political order, one in which people want bold ideas to get out of what they see as a political and societal morass.
Bild: Jeff Parker, Florida Today.
the Campaign Dossier 
Kommentera