When Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party lost to Donald Trump and the Republicans in the US presidential election, America’s worst centrist commentators fell back on their favourite excuse: blame the voters. British centrists love this excuse too, but they’re now outdoing their American cousins by blaming voters for elections that haven’t even happened yet. A case in point is Sonia Sodha in the Observer:
So what’s going on here?
Observer: “voters must learn”
For those who don’t know, author Sonia Sodha is one of the dullest minds in the British commentariat (as the British commentariat is populated almost entirely by smooth-brained dullards, that’s really saying something). Fair play to her, Sodha also blamed voters before the most recent election, as the Canary’s Hannah Sharland reported:
Sodha unironically titled her article: It is foolish and self-indulgent for the anti-Starmer left to split the Labour vote
Setting aside that it’s laughable she thinks there’s such as thing as the ‘Starmer left’, Sodha’s premise is barmy. People on X articulated a number of reasons why.
For one, it showed staggering cognitive dissonance from [a long-time Corbyn detractor like Sodha]
Love the lack of self-awareness of the ‘I could never vote for Corbyn’ crowd.
Its art. pic.twitter.com/2I2Hg4SI1C
— Tez (@tezilyas) June 24, 2024
The reason it’s stupid to blame voters is because it’s not up to them to support political parties; it’s up to political parties to support a vision which voters can get behind. Keir Starmer has a mostly right-wing policy platform, which is why many left-wing voters opted not to vote for him. They were never ‘Starmer voters’; they were citizens with a vote who would have voted for him eagerly had he given them reason to.
In the end, enough voters opted for Starmer over other parties, and the Labour Party won in a landslide.
How have things gone since Starmer’s policy platform has become clearer to those who voted for it?
❗️NEW: Tories lead, Labour plunge to 25% 😱
🟦 CON 28% (+4)
🟥 LAB 25% (-10)
🟪 REF 19% (+4)
🟧 LD 13% (+1)
🟩 GRN 8% (+1)Via @Moreincommon_, 19-21 Nov (+/- vs GE2024) pic.twitter.com/ePfcbqEFO2
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) November 21, 2024
❗️Is Keir Starmer doing well or badly as PM?
✅ Well: 29% (-1)
❌ Badly: 62% (+1)Starmer's net rating (-32) trails Badenoch's (-14).
Via @DeltaPollUK, 14-18 Nov (+/- vs 7 Oct) pic.twitter.com/j5IoTLakS9
— Stats for Lefties 🍉🏳️⚧️ (@LeftieStats) November 23, 2024
So why are things going to poorly? Sodha begins her latest piece by arguing:
Labour has got off to a shaky start in government. It’s time it told the truth about the state we’re in
There are two major problems with what she’s saying here.
The first problem is that the “truth about the state we’re in” is that income inequality is tearing the UK apart, with more and more money held by fewer and fewer people:
If the government want to fix the UK's problems, taxing the rich more isn't just an option.
It's the only option. pic.twitter.com/zCZOkYiV9p
— Gary Stevenson (@garyseconomics) August 27, 2024
It’s not an accident that every year the rich get richer while the rest of us get poorer – that public services suffer greater and greater cuts. This isn’t what Sodha means, though. Sodha has bought the line spewed by Labour and the Tories that the public needs to suffer to maintain the status quo. Accordingly, she doesn’t talk about the sort of drastic wealth taxes we’d need to kick inequality into reverse.
The second problem is that given Sodha accepts Labour’s version of “the truth about the state we’re in”, it’s beyond stupid to suggest Labour haven’t talked about it. All they did in the run up to the budget was talk about how fucked we are to justify the economic fumbling they had planned. They did it so much that it seems to have negatively impacted the one thing they claim to care about – namely economic growth (i.e. more profits for businesses – not more wealth for the workers who power the economy).
Things must only get worser
This is how Sonia Sodha sums up her argument:
I wonder if voters would end up respecting ministers more if they found a way to be more honest about how difficult things are, and how the solutions have to be long term, in a way that isn’t simply about blaming the last lot and saying you’re the fix.
Does she actually “wonder” this? Because if she does, it seems like her brain is even smoother than we suggested – so smooth it very possibly slipped out of her ears at some point without anyone noticing.
Of course voters wouldn’t respect ministers more if they said: ‘you know the pitiful improvements to your living standards we promised? Yeah, well it turns out we can’t even deliver that’.
We literally just saw this play out in the US election, with Donald Trump promising to improve the economy, and Kamala Harris saying she wouldn’t have done anything different than Joe Biden (an historically unpopular president who oversaw a global cost of living crisis which was driven in part by price gouging companies):
Q: “If anything, would you have done something differently than President Biden during the past four years?”
Kamala Harris: “There is not a thing that comes to mind.”
Confirmation of what we all knew to be true: Her administration would be a continuation of the past 4 years.. pic.twitter.com/WTPCp5EE0t
— America (@america) October 8, 2024
‘Everything is shit and you need to suck it up’
People online are neatly summing up Sonia Sodha’s Observer piece:
Tl;dr: "Everything is shit and you need to suck it up." There appears to be a concerted effort at the Observer to defend the govt by casting the public as ungrateful & naive. This is dumb analysis but also likely to alienate readers.https://t.co/ts9fp5sgzC
— David Timoney (@fromarsetoelbow) November 24, 2024
Absolutely no change whatsoever update.
— Tony Gurney (@tonygurney.bsky.social) 2024-11-24T10:10:37.959Z
A tough message from the Observer?
That’s undoubtedly a tough message to communicate but, unlike the other political pitches out there, it has the advantage of being the truth.
It’s not the truth that things must inevitably stagnate and worsen. We can all see where the money is going, and the process can be reversed:
Since the pandemic, major companies hiked profit margins by average of 30%, many by more.
Electricity generation companies by 198%;
Electricity and gas supply, 363%;
Health & social work, 118%
Water/Sewage companies, 44%.Yet no curbs on profiteering.https://t.co/L9SGuDdxXX
— Prem Sikka (@premnsikka) October 14, 2024
If Sodha thinks nothing can get better, then why even bother writing about politics?
Oh yes, that’s right; it’s because these braindead opinion writers would be unemployable in literally any other line of work.
Featured image via Leeds International Festival of Ideas
