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What Strictly can tell us about politics

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27th Oct 2016
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What does Ed Balls on Strictly Come Dancing have to tell us about politics? Quite a lot, I suspect.

For those who need filling in on the plot here, Ed Balls dances like a fairy elephant and week on week is excoriated by the judges, ending up at the bottom on points scored. But that is not the story, because the Great British Public then votes on its mobile phones, and week by week it makes sure that somebody else is voted off while the judges boil with rage. That’s the Great British Public as in the people who gave us Brexit and before that Nigel Farage.

And I would call one more vote as evidence, and that is the saga of Boaty McBoatface.

What the voters are doing in all these cases is what in the sixties we might have called sticking it to the man. We have seen what the great and good or the experts have to say and we say two fingers to all that, we’re going to mess about. The exception so far, oddly enough, has been Parliamentary by-elections, where the normal rules have just about prevailed.

It’s not just here, of course. Donald Trump (and even Bernie Sanders) could be seen as the American equivalent, though (at this point) it looks as though Trump has blown himself away, consoling himself with the magnificently self-centred view that if the polls don’t show he has won, they must be fixed.

Nor is this type of behaviour new; free Barabbas, anyone?

One might well argue here that a little discernment is called for, and that the implausible doings of Ed Balls and Boaty are not actively harmful except to the blood pressure of the self-important, which is well and good. Some things, though, have consequences. But many people have experienced a lifetime of voting in “real” elections in which their vote appears to mean nothing at all I haven’t voted for a winner for 40 years, not out of wilfulness but because I live in the wrong place), and let off the leash for a referendum may swing wildly.

Several people have pointed out that a perfect meritocracy would create a caste of total losers. We don’t have such a thing, nor would it be possible (despite the more bizarre claims of the grammaristas), but we have people who feel they are an underclass and condemned to a life of toiling for really not very much at all – watching the bake-off perhaps?

Aspiration is not enough, if the odds are set firmly enough against you. What else is there to do but take the piss?

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By mickeyparish
31st Oct 2016 12:06

It could also tell us more. Ed Balls is young enough to make a return to politics, and enhancing his visibility/popularity is doing him no harm, viz. Boris appearing on HIGNFY.....that is still one of the best episodes ever, by the way.

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By Disabled Accountant
31st Oct 2016 15:37

It merely confirms my previous opinion of Ed Balls, that he is a useless barrel of lard who serves no useful purpose.

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