Remember John Major and his trusty soapbox in 1992? Tony Blair being confronted by the irate partner of a cancer patient at a Birmingham hospital in 2001? Gordon Brown, unwittingly and therefore revealingly, broadcasting his contempt for Gillian Duffy, a Labour supporter, as a “sort of bigoted woman” in 2010? Such up close and personal interaction between political leaders and uncensored, unscreened, unfiltered voters has been absent in this election campaign. Even the traditional morning press conference has been abandoned. The long descent into risk-averse, stage-managed television- friendly events has surely reached its nadir in 2024.
Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer have met only the faithful. Sir Ed Davey has staged a six-week fancy-dress parade. While David Cameron and Theresa May have done their stint on the doorstep, of the front-rank campaigners, only Nigel Farage has consistently mingled with voters on ground of their choosing rather than his, braving the jeers and the banana milkshakes. For such accessibility, if nothing else, he deserves credit.
Ordinary MPs are understandably reluctant, in an era when many sport anti-stab vests at public gatherings, to make themselves as available on the hustings as they once did. Leaving aside physical threats, verbal and written abuse of MPs and candidates has reached an intolerable level. Yet most voters, while they may heckle, harbour no personal animosity, they merely want to be heard.
The scores of new MPs being elected this week will arrive at Westminster having been more insulated, by background and now by the hermetic nature of this campaign, than any previous cohort. Such isolation is unhealthy. Politicians should be both gregarious and attentive, and thus attuned to the mood and needs of the people. This growing gulf between professional politicians, from top to bottom, and the great mass of the electorate is corrosive for democracy. The new intake must strive to narrow the divide.
