Voter Forgiveness

For every fickle citizen who seems to have a shorter memory than a ‘Masterchef’ judge, there is somebody else who has a memory like an elephant.

The media barons tell politicians their skilled fake news cycles and puff pastry issues can obscure the truth, bury history and make big important things – like giving the green light to parties while issuing friendly advise like “don’t kill Granny” to the country – can be buried under a shit storm involving the latest git off Love Island. But it’s a phallacy. Voters do remember. And it does inform their decisions.Bad example but one of my relatives never voted for Labour because he never forgot the ‘winter of discontent’ and the ‘three day week’. Labour’s twelve year stint in No.10 has done nothing – nothing – to strip him of the certain belief Labour are not fit to govern. People don’t forget.What stops a political faux-pa from becoming a poisoned well is usually measured by it’s afterlife, and nothing preserves the afterlife of something you’d rather forget, than a good stand-up comedian. At one time you couldn’t move for panel shows and the revolving conveyor of comedians that visited them. It was around this time David Cameron’s dalliance (or whatever he did) with a dead pig in college hit the news. Subsequently mined for every gram of comic potential, it stayed in the public consciousness. A friend of mine said in 2019 he wouldn’t vote Tory because he “doesn’t support pig fuckers”. That had to be at least five years after the debacle faded into ‘yesterday’s news.” Voters don’t forget.Labour MP John McDonnell asked the other day in a piece for the Guardian, “The risk is that when the millions involved go to the polls next will be asking the question of the labour leader, where were you when we needed you?” John knows this; some voters don’t forget, and like my dad, seldom forgive. People will remember ‘partygate’ for years, possibly decades to comeThat’s the thing about memory – when the subject considers they have enough data, the thing becomes yesterday’s news. It’s not so easy for outside influencers to to poke and prod a memory, because very soon the thing the subject remembers coalesces into something rather harder, like an opinion. Oh sure, opinions can be changed, moulded, but it’s far from easy. And with some voters, like my friend who won’t support “pig fuckers”, it won’t ever go away.“Thatcher, Thatcher the milk snatcher.” Need I say more?

By the WC Journo

29/07/2022 copyright NoScriptFor Life

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