How out of touch with reality are politicians?

[TheReligion]

Two things have cropped up the past few days which have prompted this thread. There's many more examples you could add but it begs the question why do they seem so out of touch with what's going on in a world where we're actually far more connected than ever and literally all MPs feed into social media?

The two things I found odd (although sadly not surprising) were Boris Johnson apparently only hearing about Marcus Rashfords campaign the day he changed government policy when it's been going on pretty much all summer and then today Dominic Raab suggesting he has never heard about taking a knee and couldn't understand how it relates to the BLM movement and anti racism in general.

Considering how media savvy these people are meant to be and the huge teams they have behind them to help and support with PR why is it the consistently do and say things like this?

 

[Deery]

The Dominic Raab one was particularly worrying considering he’s meant to be Foreign Secretary.

I don’t get it myself either but this is a government that rolled out Universal Credit so being in touch with the people is something alien to them.

 

[Ish]

Aye, I was thinking something similar the other day TR. The entire profession seems to be based on lies, deceit, smear campaigns against your opponent - basically saying anything to get elected. And it’s apparent to the general public (for the most part anyway), and yet very few are ever held accountable for their words or actions.

 

[VorZakone]

Many of them live in very nice homes, dine in fancy restaurants, book 4/5 star hotels regularly during traveling. They simply don't live the same lifestyles as the average Joe. How could they not be out of touch?
Also, like @Ish has mentioned, their profession is actually quite dirty if you think of it. They're power-hungry folks.

 

[Buster15]

The government is not out of touch.
The world class track and trace app which was supposed to have gone live at the start of June and has now been abandoned isn't their fault.
It is the fault of Apple for not changing their software.

No. The government is completely in touch as long as you don't have an Apple device....

 

[dumbo]

It's all part of that preordained sense of entitlement and superiority that the privileged class live by and that produces these overeducated, careerist sociopaths.

 

[iluvoursolskjær]

2/3rds of Boris' cabinet and around half of MP's sitting in HOC are privately educated. Not that it should go against an individual so long as they are morally sound, but it is reflective of class representation in politics.

I find it more absurd that such a large proportion of the country feel their interests are represented by the Tories. Indicative of the tactics employed if anything, and then there's the main stream media who've no integrity so to maintain their sources and exclusives. A couple arms of a huge machine that works to maintain the status quo.

 

[Skills]

Many of them live in very nice homes, dine in fancy restaurants, book 4/5 star hotels regularly during traveling. They simply don't live the same lifestyles as the average Joe. How could they not be out of touch?
Also, like @Ish has mentioned, their profession is actually quite dirty if you think of it. They're power-hungry folks.

I would say :

They simply have never lived the same lifestyles as the average Joe.

 

[entropy]

Wild that this was less than a week ago

Spoiler

 

[Eugenius]

Two things have cropped up the past few days which have prompted this thread. There's many more examples you could add but it begs the question why do they seem so out of touch with what's going on in a world where we're actually far more connected than ever and literally all MPs feed into social media?

The two things I found odd (although sadly not surprising) were Boris Johnson apparently only hearing about Marcus Rashfords campaign the day he changed government policy when it's been going on pretty much all summer and then today Dominic Raab suggesting he has never heard about taking a knee and couldn't understand how it relates to the BLM movement and anti racism in general.

Considering how media savvy these people are meant to be and the huge teams they have behind them to help and support with PR why is it the consistently do and say things like this?

Johnson and Raab knew exactly what they were doing in both instances.

Boris was feigning ignorance to avoid having been seen as changing his mind.

Raab has been doing the whole brexiteer / strong man / angry working class man champion thing. The reality is BLM is primarily a movement by young and liberal people which doesn't resonate with people on the other side of the divide. He knows who the tories are trying to woo (hint: it's the sort of people who went down to 'protect statues' on the weekend). It's a page out of the alt-right trolls in the US.

 

[sullydnl]

Depends on the country and depends on the politicians.

In the Johnson case mentioned in the OP though, it was self-serving to say he had only just heard about the campaign rather than admit that he had initially ignored that campaign before being forced into a U-turn. So in some cases they may just be lying when they claim not to know about certain things.

 

[sammsky1]

Johnson and Raab knew exactly what they were doing in both instances.

Boris was feigning ignorance to avoid having been seen as changing his mind.

Raab has been doing the whole brexiteer / strong man / angry working class man champion thing. The reality is BLM is primarily a movement by young and liberal people which doesn't resonate with people on the other side of the divide. He knows who the tories are trying to woo (hint: it's the sort of people who went down to 'protect statues' on the weekend). It's a page out of the alt-right trolls in the US.

On the one hand you’re right.

but in reality, they are also very busy people, in a malicious and back stabbing industry that thrives on gossip and lies. Wouldn’t surprise me if Raab or BJ weren’t aware of either issue.

And by definition, they work at the very top of the ivory tower, and their personal family circumstances are at least decent middle class with a lot of perks.

Several childhood friends of mine are MPs or very senior civil servents and I’m always shocked at how little they understand about the smell of the street, and I myself am not that in touch with reality in the first place.

A minority mean well but the majority are sociopath career politicians addicted to life up and down the greasy poll.

 

[Drawfull]

Coffey's* reply to Rashford's Twitter thread summed them all up in 5 words.

They live in ivory towers, and it's been like this for as far back as I can remember. It's not just the Tories, either. They continually take photo ops to pretend to be down with the common people (Miliband bacon sandwich, May's chips, Boris being a fat cnut hiding in a fridge).

Raab commented yesterday about proposing to the 'Mrs' (personally no issue with that term, but it seems forced from him) but that he wasn't sure about kneeling as they had had too much 'champagne'. It's just an unnecessary detail, but then there's that pic of crates of bubbly being delivered to number 10, too. Should they or indeed anyone be allowed to celebrate? Yeah, but rubbing noses in it too? Not so much, especially considering what's around the corner for millions of families after Covid.

Johnson referred to his £250,000 salary from the Telegraph as chicken feed relatively recently as well.

They are all wankers.

Spoiler: The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Ladies and Gentlemen

 

[Sky1981]

They're not out of touch, they're not as dumb as we thought they are

Problem is we're not on their target market, and most of the times our votes doesn't matter. They're not catering to us, they're catering to the majority demograhic (or specific minority if that's where your niche is)

What's stupid and seems out of touch with reality for one is a cold hard facts for other.

 

[11101]

Most of them have never lived a normal life, Labour or Conservative. They went to the top public schools and the best Universities and have never known normal people. They ones who didnt are so power hungry they act as though they did.

However, it's not totally surprising, or necessary, for them to know the latest trends. Obama said in an interview once that he never watched the news as President. He had people to tell him what was important.

 

[Adisa]

My job has given me the opportunity to interact with some of their aides.
It's not "out of touch" per say, it's contempt. You should hear the way some of them speak about their constituents. They genuinely believe the public are fools and they are right.

 

[Vernon Philander]

The "I only found out about it today" was proven as a lie btw. His own spokesperson said the day before that Boris was looking into it and would make a response shortly.

 

[Kag]

Many of them are, yes. As has been stated already, around half of MPs are privately educated as is most of the current cabinet. Most of them have never been as far as the North East, only doing so when trying to woo them for votes through means of socially conservative dribble.

The bigger worry is that many people seem to quite like it this way. Politicians like Angela Rayner are pulled apart for their accent and delivery in spite of being genuine examples of social mobility and success. No wonder there is an imbalance.

 

[SilentWitness]

There was a study in the 1920s that showed tha 70% of the Labour Party (at that stage/format) were from working class backgrounds and in 2018 it was down to 8% of them being working class.

I was watching a discussion about MP wages on The Pledge and they were commenting on how costly it is to run for election and then actually be an MP. You need to pay a £500 deposit just to try and get elected and a lot of average joes don't have that to take the risk initially (You only get it back if you get over 5% of the vote). A study recently showed that on average (across all seats) an MP spent £11,000 to stand, including loss of earnings because of having to attend events/campaign/travel etc.

There are probably a lot of people who just don't think that type of risk is worth it as you can do all of that and you won't be guaranteed to win so it obviously favours people from higher paid/higher class backgrounds. Even university comes into play. Less than 1% of us go to Oxford/Cambridge but a large chunk of our PMs have. There is still a stigma around people who aren't university educated or upon which university attended.

That doesn't excuse them from not knowing about basic fundamentals like this. If you have a massive campaign in BLM which has dominated the papers, social media, protests in the city which parliament is etc. you should absolutely know what the references are behind taking the knee. If you have a massive campaign with a figurehead at the top like Rashford has been, dominating social media and the papers with his name everywhere, you should absolutely not be getting his name wrong or not knowing about the campaign. These are just people being stupid rather than out of touch, but overall they massively are and have no idea what it is like to try and survive on benefits or have to juggle your GCSEs with full time caring duties for your mum.

 

[Grinner]

Maybe they need to read The Caf.

 

[Drifter]

Most of them are out of touch and weird to. Especially when some are trying to relate by adopting a football team, Blair and Newcastle ,Cameron and Villa or was it West Ham.

 

[buchansleftleg]

It's wilful misdirection rather than being out of touch. The headlines will be about their silly comments rather than holding their feet to the fire over....

Releasing the Russia report
Misuse of parliamentary procedures endangering the lives of workers in parliament
The wilful failure to reach agreement with Europe
The failure of the track and trace app
Corruption in handing out contracts in relation to Track and trace...PPE...Private sector NHS involvement...£20million of PPE disappearing from Stores
Deciding to pursue a herd immunity approach to COvid initially, just to keep our friends in the horse racing and hospitality industry happy.
Making fudgey deals with Richard Desmond to get around planning issues in return for donations
The release of Covid patients into care homes without testing leading to exponential deaths
The economic damage a prolonged lock-down will cause because of a failure to act earlier
The piles of dead people which could have easily been avoided if they had taken the prompt actions countries like Germany, Ireland, New Zealand did
The glittering cluster-feck that Brexit will become, given how badly they have handled a relatively simple pandemic response that was all game-planned out for them and issues investigated over a decade ago. Good luck exploring untested waters with these imbeciles in charge.

It's the strategy of a bad stage magician from the working men's clubs...a bit of misdirection and a flash of T&A for the dads. In any other Country we would have stormed the stage and shoved the mike so far up their arse we could hear their vocal chords hum.

 

[VeevaVee]

The profession not only invites people that are out of touch from the off, but appears to make them worse because of the nature of it and the whole culture around it.

Ego, manipulation, making their mark (even if it's sometimes ridiculous), getting one over others, and climbing the ladder no matter the cost, presumably to hold more weight amongst their peers.
That's what it all seems to revolve around. I think the ego part is a huge element too.

 

[led_scholes]

I can speak for my country: Greece. Our prime minister is a private educated person (of course not in Greece) who has worked for 2 years and has been a MP for almost 20 years. His father was also a prime minister and MP, his grandfather was also a MP from the late 50s till mid 00s, his niece is now the mayor of Athens. His sister is a MP since 1990. This specific family has a representative in the Greek parliament since 1915!

Therefore, its absolutely normal that he is out of touch with reality. He had never been to a public school, public hospital, never waited for a bus in 40 degrees or in rain and snow. He never experienced fear of unemployment or poverty. And like him there are many in our parliament and every parliament in this world.

What is abnormal is that people vote for people like him and expect that he cares about them.

 

[Vidyoyo]

I imagine most of them are more concerned with the backstabbing and potential discord than representing the people. Too many are involved that don't have anybody's interests at heart other than their own, which is largely what happens in any organisation where politics rules (think about your own job).

It's not politicians as much as party politics that is utterly broken. I also think leaning too much on media (their chums or otherwise) is an issue because it constantly threatens to make them reactive to problems rather than coordinating a long-term response to a particular issue.