MPs should ditch the focus groups and speak from the heart

To paraphrase a former prime minister, a new dawn has broken, has it not? But the question is whether the politicians from the two and a half main parties have woken up to it, or if they’re still fumbling around in the dark.

I refer of course to how MPs old and new are reacting to what some see as the advent of four-party politics. Politicians of all parties did what they always do after shock election defeats, and promised to “listen and learn”. But are they? And is the media?

One reason why so many people voted for Ukip is because the party leader Nigel Farage – despite having a public school education to rival his establishment rivals, and despite having five times stood for parliament himself – managed to persuade the electorate he was an ordinary bloke who’d stand you a pint (or two) at your local.

So you’d expect mainstream politicians to emulate his success by honing their ordinary credentials. The problem is, though, that we the media are so attuned to political soundbites that when MPs start speaking normally, telling the truth and shooting from the hip, we can’t take it.

So it was on this weekend’s Marr Programme, when the Defence Minister Anna Soubry (pictured above) had this to say about her constituents’ views on immigration: “When you make the case with people who come and see me in my constituency surgery who say, “I’m really worried about immigration” you say really, why? This is Broxtowe. We don’t have a problem with immigrants. When you explain that to them, they get it. Not all of them – some people have prejudices, some people are frankly racist, but there are many who just don’t know the argument.”

The Daily Mail had a fit of the vapours, headlining its story: “Another own goal for Tories: the minister who says her constituents are racist.”

But wasn’t Soubry just being honest? A few days ago, a poll suggested a third of Britons admitted being racially prejudiced. Some of them will be Soubry’s constituents.

Farage spoke plainly about immigration and some voters loved it. Now Soubry’s put in her ha’penny worth, without worrying about what the spin doctors will say, and no doubt some voters will love that too – they just won’t be the ones who voted Ukip a week or so ago.

Surely if the local and European elections told us anything, it’s that the public is sick of the political classes, and all the conniving and cunning deployed by MPs in the name of democracy. So the more MPs ditch the focus groups and speak from the heart the better. Otherwise voters might as well put a cross in the box marked “robot”.

Parliamentarians with a character and a viewpoint are sadly few and far between these days. And those who look and speak like a fully paid-up member of the human race tend to find themselves out of a government job pretty quickly. That’s why MPs with opinions, like Sarah Wollaston, for example, tend to plough their own furrows on the backbenches.

So it’s heartening to hear that the likes of Soubry and the Employment Minister Esther McVey, who don’t necessarily subscribe to the line to take, and don’t look like the stereotypical besuited Tory either, are tipped for promotion in the next reshuffle. And equally depressing after Soubry’s supposed immigration “gaffe” that the right-wing press has got the knives out for her.

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