More than simple short term interest

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It has been suggested that many of those supporting Leave did so for reasons which were more to do with their own personal enrichment than with the interests of the country as a whole.  It certainly seems to be the case that rich Brexiteers will, by and large, either make money out of the decision taken, or at least be no worse off.  But so what?  There’s no rule preventing people from supporting decisions from which they will benefit – and the fact that they will benefit from a particular decision does not preclude the possibility that they also happen to believe that decision to be the best for the country as a whole as well.

Clearly there was a degree of mendacity about many of their statements; there’s something farcical about Farage claiming retrospectively that he never said that we’d all be better off when there is so much evidence to show that actually he did say exactly that.  But this isn’t one-sided either; is anyone going to argue that none on the Remain side thought that they would be better off if the country rejected Brexit?  Why is it only the winning side whose motives should be questioned?

There’s something more than a little hypocritical about anyone complaining that campaigners on either side were acting out of personal self-interest when the whole campaign strategy of both sides was based almost entirely on an appeal to voters to understand where their economic interests lay, and to vote accordingly.  Both campaigns were more to do with how much people would gain or lose individually as a result of the decision taken than with any consideration of what sort of Europe and world we want to live in.

The odd thing is that although the campaigns might have been based so strongly around the idea that people would vote for their own economic self-interest, and although many people will justify their votes in those terms, I’m far from certain that such rationalisations have much to do with reality.  I suspect that it was more about (conscious or unconscious) pre-existing beliefs.  It’s much easier to oppose immigration based on false arguments about depressing wages than on an innate hostility to foreigners or to oppose contributing to the EU budget on grounds of not paying in more than we take out rather than on not wanting to help poorer regions.  And it’s much easier to stress the economic benefits of the single market than to argue that integration and harmonisation are good things in themselves.

With Brexit increasingly looking like an impossible task in anything resembling the timetable being demanded by the Brexiteers, debate will inevitably move, over coming months, to a reconsideration of the principle rather than simple the detail.  The sad thing is that I see no real prospect of holding a debate which is any more honest about the choice of futures facing us than was the last one. Neither side seems capable of extricating itself from the fundamental assumption that the only thing that matters to anyone is his or her own short term financial gain.

Motivation and cynicism

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A couple of weeks ago, Roger Scully’s Elections in Wales blog carried a guest post by a new colleague of his, Dr Stuart Fox.  It dealt with the subject of young voters and how to appeal to them.  It concluded, in essence, that the difference between younger voters and their older peers isn’t about the issues that concern them so much as about their willingness to vote at all; in broad terms, their concerns largely mirror those of other sections of the electorate.

I thought that it was an interesting conclusion.  By and large, the thrust of what the various parties are doing to attract younger voters assumes almost the direct opposite, and is largely based on the assumption that younger voters do have a different agenda and can be motivated to go out and vote for party X by an electoral offering which targets those policy areas which the parties assume are of direct personal interest to the target group.

In a sense, the parties are behaving in a consistent fashion here in assuming that issues like tuition fees and voting age will motivate younger voters – they also assume that issues such as pensions will motivate older voters, and so on.  It’s possible of course that the parties are right and the pollsters are wrong on this.  By that, I don’t necessarily mean that the pollsters are wrong in the numbers or in their analysis of the numbers – the post shows plenty of evidence to support the conclusions and analysis drawn from them.

But the validity of all that depends on the veracity of the responses given by people when asked the questions, and there are two obvious ways in which the answers might be invalid.  The first is that people might just be lying.  It is at least possible that people might say one thing (because they might not want to appear selfish) but do another; I seem to remember that there was some evidence of that phenomenon a few years ago in relation to the idea of an income tax rise.  The other is that people might be drawing a distinction in their own minds between what they see as being the ‘most important issues’ facing the country and what might actually motivate them to vote as individuals.  If either of those were to be true, than perhaps the parties have got it right after all.

But what if they’re not?  What if the responses given are entirely truthful, so that the analysis and conclusions drawn are entirely valid?  That would suggest (and not just for young people) that the electorate was going to decide much more on the basis of what they feel is right for the country as a whole rather than on a narrowly selfish basis. (And I realise, of course, that ‘group selfishness’ in this context isn’t at all the same thing as altruism).  That would suggest that continued and repeated appeals to the more selfish instincts of particular groups of people might simply add to the cynicism about politicians and parties rather than improve the motivation to participate.   

And I suspect that that cynicism, coupled with a feeling that ‘it doesn’t really make any difference’ (given that the offerings are all so similar) might actually be a more accurate reason for low turnout than any failure to ‘press the right buttons’ for any particular section of the electorate.

Voting for 'me'

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Earlier this week, an opinion poll suggested that the health service would be the top priority issue for people voting in the Assembly elections in May.  Whilst I can’t dispute the findings of the poll itself – I’m sure that it’s an accurate reflection of what people said – I wonder what it actually means.  The implication is that those who see health as their top issue will sit down and carefully compare the detailed promises of each party on the subject and come to a conclusion about which party is proposing the policies which will do most to improve the health service in Wales before going out and making their mark alongside the name of the appropriate party and candidate.

Years of political campaigning, however, tell me that it hasn’t worked that way in the past, and it is unlikely to work that way in the future.  It seems to me much more likely that voters will use their general perceptions and prejudices about parties to justify voting in much the same way as they would have voted anyway; the number of voters swayed by detailed policy commitments is a lot lower than politicians and the media would have us believe.

The question of what motivates people to vote as they do has also come up in comments on a few recent posts on this blog, most recently here.  One of my anonymous ‘friends’ argued that “People vote 'for' a reasonable expectation of a better standard of living.  And people vote 'against' anything that is likely to get in the way of an anticipated improvement in standard of living”.  In a rather more nuanced contribution, Democritus argued that “when it comes to votes of first order importance … the main issue tends to revolve around which choice is likely on balance to make the polity as a whole or the voter as an individual better, or at least not worse, off”.

If it were really true that most people vote in accordance with the more extreme interpretation of that perspective, then it would set a very high – (perhaps impossible, for reasons I’ve touched on before and will return to in the future) – bar to achieving independence, because it would require us to convince the majority of people in Wales that they could be certain of being personally materially better off as a result.  Even the more nuanced position which ‘merely’ requires people to be convinced that we’d be materially better off as a whole (or at least no worse off) is still a fairly high bar to set.

Personally, I’m not so certain that either of these positions stands up well to detailed examination, although I’m closer to agreeing with the second than the first. 

Whilst there are some individuals who really do vote at elections on the basis of naked short term self-interest, I wonder how general that really is.  I'd agree that it has become more common in recent years; I’d put the turning point at around 1979 - although whether the election of that year led to a change in attitude or caught a mood which was growing anyway is more of a moot point.  In either event, from that point on, the Tories positively encouraged a more selfish and self-interested approach, and Labour caught up under Blair.  Much of what passes for politics since then has seen parties (and not just those two – the infection has spread) carefully crafting their offerings to seek to appeal to the perceived self-interest of selected target groups.  And the media have aided and abetted in that process.  But does it really govern the voting behaviour of the majority?

It’s also possible to argue, of course, that even people who don’t vote on the basis of such narrow personal interests nevertheless vote for what they see as being the best outcome for some larger group of which they are members, which is still voting on the basis of self-interest albeit in a more diffuse fashion.  They could be voting for what they think is best for their children or grandchildren; for their socio-economic class; for their nation; or even for the planet as a whole.  All of these can be interpreted as self-interest of a form, even if at one or more removes.

There are occasions, however, when what looks like a vote in favour of an economic self-interest is actually little more than a rationalisation of a much darker motive dressed in the clothing of economics.  I’m thinking here of the antipathy towards immigration, usually expressed in terms of jobs or economic costs such as benefits no matter how much that rationalisation is at variance with the facts.  But if we were to interpret self-interest more widely again, then I suppose that we could see ‘not wanting to have more foreigners in the country’ as little more than a variant on the theme of self-interest.

All of the above assumes, in one way or another, that electors are considering all the options before voting and that voting is a considered and rational act.  I wonder.  In my time at university I read about the work of Graham Wallas who argued as long ago as 1908 (Human Nature in Politics) that voting is largely the result of habit based on irrational assumptions.  That still seems as perspicacious an assessment now as it did when I first read about in in 1971.  To the extent that the electorate as a whole votes on the basis of self-interest, I rather suspect that it is more a question of viewing self-interest through a prism based on pre-existing prejudices and assumptions.  That includes the rather simplistic, and hopelessly out-of-date, perception that Labour is for the workers and the Tories are for the bosses.

None of the above means that voting behaviour can’t and won’t change, but it helps to explain why change is often slow.  Even where change appears sudden (Scotland for instance?), that is usually the result of a process where perceptions have been changed over a much longer period.  Sudden voting change doesn’t come from nowhere.

What does all this mean for the independence project in Wales?  Two things, it seems to me.  The first is that a vote for independence can only follow – never precede – a lengthy process of changing the perceptions through which people view the issue; and we will never do that by simply parking the issue until things ‘get better’ by themselves.  And secondly, that convincing people that we should be independent isn’t simply a question of demonstrating direct and incontrovertible economic benefit; those who argue that it is are not merely postponing the question, they’re setting what looks to be an unsurmountable barrier, which simply makes me wonder about their real commitment to the aim.

Are businesses really business-friendly?

Tweet Politicians and parties often try to out-do each other as to which can be the most business-friendly.  And each party criticises the others for not being sufficiently business-friendly.  I wonder, though, what they mean, because there is a huge, and not generally understood, difference between being friendly to business in the generic sense and being friendly to existing businesses in the specific.

What I mean by that is that businesses, once established, will always seek to ensure that the environment in which they operate is the one which is most favourable to their interests.  Whether that be in terms of tax breaks, employment legislation, health and safety or environmental protection, they will lobby for the regime which most protects their interests.  And most politicians seem to see being business-friendly as doing what these lobbyists request and gaining their support and endorsement (and potentially, funding for themselves?).

But ‘business’ in the generic goes much wider than that.  It is an essential element of the capitalist system that some businesses will fail.  Creative destruction of some businesses as a result of innovation and change is one of the essential economic drivers.  Preserving ‘what-is’ in aspic, and supporting the continuation of existing businesses in the face of new challenges is potentially inimical to the interests of ‘business’ more generally.  The only reason that this isn’t a great deal more obvious is because economic (and political) power is wielded by existing businesses; those which haven’t even been imagined yet are, by definition, powerless and unable to lobby.

Sometimes, it may well be that those things which existing businesses lobby for would also benefit the businesses of the future; but that’s more by accident than design.  They’re really only pursuing their own narrow interests, even if they try and make it sound otherwise.  In that sense, even existing businesses themselves aren’t always business-friendly in the more generic sense.

Am I saying that business isn’t important?  Of course not; under the current economic system, it’s an essential driver of employment and economic activity.  But what I am arguing is that creating a climate which fosters that is not at all the same thing as assisting current businesses to carry on doing what they’re doing – assistance which may even, at times, prevent or delay innovation and change.  Yet that's often what politicians mean when they talk about supporting business.  In truth, their claims need to be scrutinised a lot more closely to understand whether that simply means that they’re supporting existing vested interests.