The mysteries of the public mind

The two by-election results in Britian this morning, in which both major parties fared badly, will no doubt prompt much puzzling amongst the great and the good over the mysterious workings of the public mind. In the Guardian, Jonathan Freedland gives a flavour of what we can expect from the general commentary to come. He says that, "In these two seats, both main parties were punished by their traditional supporters, angry over the drift to the centre."

The two main parties have only drifted to the centre if the public opinion is excluded from the political spectrum. The British Social Attitudes survey, widely accepted as the barometer of public opinion in the UK, clearly shows that on the central issues (aside from immigration - unsurprisingly given the tabloid hate-campaign) the public is to the left of the entire political class; corporate media and politicians alike. The survey has consistently shown that a majority advocate public ownership of key services and a rebalancing of the tax system so the wealthiest pay their fair share, amongst other unthinkably extreme positions - at least unthinkable for those in power.

So uncontroversially - assuming that (a) public opinion is relevant in a democracy and (b) the facts matter - the main parties are not drifting toward the centre but fighting over the a small patch of ground on the right. We can therefore dispense with the image of “traditional” voters angry about “modernisation”: red-faced luddites shaking their fists and railing against the sober and steady march of progress.

A lot of the widespread mystification, speculation and conjecture amongst said political class over the question of why people distrust politicians and increasingly don't vote in elections, whilst a fascinating diversion I'm sure, can probably be put to bed once we acknowledge the basic fact of where the “centre” is, and where public policy stands in relation to it. We might then move to the more interesting questions of who politicians are aiming their policies at if not at us and, more crucially, how we can establish genuinely representative government. The dynamics at work are not peculiar to Britain, the evidence for us to study is plentiful, so some answers should not be too hard to find.