In the two days since Russell Brand was interviewed on Newsnight calling for revolution the Youtube download has been watched over 3 million times. Anything over a million is ‘viral’ so for a late-night political geek-show like Newsnight this is unprecedented. The nearest any politician on Newsnight has achieved in terms of Youtube rebroadcasts is when Jeremy Paxman has made them look inept (Chloe Smith 800,000 views) or they have repeatedly dodged the same question (Michael Howard 500,000 views). Alastair Campbell clocked up over 200,000 for an attack on the Daily Mail, but as Simon Kellner writes in The Independent most politicians don’t lay a glove on Paxman. Yet ‘Brand made him look uncomfortable and faintly ridiculous’. While some will dismiss this as the garrulous rant of a pampered celebrity (a portrait Brand revels in his humorous, but monstrously-overwritten editorial in New Statesman) others see a devastating broadside on the state of politics, Parliament and our country. The content has clearly struck a chord with millions that feel unrepresented by, or simply pissed-off at, a political class protecting (as Brand argues) corporate power, bankers and millionaires, rather than the electorate.
While you may disagree with the suggestion that people shouldn’t vote (declining voter turnout in US and UK has just reinforced the status quo) it was a joy to see him stick a verbal two fingers at Paxman at his sneering and patronising worst. Brand became murderously focused as he spoke out for the politically disillusioned and dispossessed who do not give a damn about politics. He also spoke for that large swathe of middle class voters who resent being swindled as national assets are sold off, the cost of living rises and politicians cynically bait-and-switch on issues like tuition fees to get elected.
If I was a politician I’d be worried. The results of this year’s annual survey of British social attitudes revealed another sharp reduction in those who identify with any political party[1]. The standing of Westminster has according to this survey never been lower with only 20% trusting government to put the nation’s needs above those of a political party. A recent report by the London School of Economics showed that only 12% of young people aged 16-25 intended to vote at the next election. If true this represents a collapse in Parliament’s legitimacy to represent the whole nation.
Sometimes it seems as if politicians might even be doing this on purpose. With less people voting, and most young people turned off by party politics, candidates at elections only have to worry about the desperately small number of people who are still members of a party at all, and a rump of elderly, relatively prosperous citizens who appreciate the value of their vote. It is no wonder that pensioners have managed to maintain some of their rightfully-earned privileges. They are amongst the few ‘troublemakers’ left whose promise to withdraw their votes is taken seriously by the political class.
Is there anything to be learnt from this depressing state of affairs? One lesson may lie in the single piece of legislation from this miserable Parliament on which there was a government U turn. That was on the proposed privatisation of our forests – a move which disgusted enough people across the political spectrum to cause a huge online rebellion through websites such as 38 degrees. While such online petitions are sometimes little more than an irritation to MPs, in the case of the forests the petitions were so large that politicians couldn’t ignore it. Interestingly, something similar happened over the Government’s plans to strike at Syria and the results of that climb-down have led, in part, to significant disarmament moves by the Syrian regime. This remains a single ray of hope in the darkness of that savage civil war.
So perhaps the revolution Brand is talking about has already started. It began with the collapse in trust in politicians, spread online through websites and social networks that were not in the grip of the old boy network that keeps political reporting safe. And it may end when enough people are as disillusioned and angry with the state of our politics as Russell Brand is. That, as with the fall of the Berlin Wall, may just happen sooner than anyone thought.
David McQueen
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