When I was following politics at school and university, I suffered one particular misunderstanding of news and politics which might be useful to share.
Basically, my problem was that I underestimated the role of personality, jealousy, rivalry, pride, revenge, and gossip in politics and current events.
One problem was that the high-status people who were my sources of insight into politics (teachers, professors) were serious and well-reasoned people. Surely, I thought, those even closer to power would be similar.
I also thought of focusing on personality etc as low-status — what less-educated people and tabloids obsessed over. I remember approving of Tony Benn’s call for politics to be “about issues, not personalities”.
Also, the way I was taught politics and history tended to avoid these factors in favour of structure, theory, models and other theoretical approaches.
Interest in these issues also seemed to accompany a cynicism about politics and life in general (”they’re all a bunch of crooks!”) that I instinctively rejected.
But it turns out (of course!) that if you are interested in trying to accurately understand how things work, these factors are key.
Journalist Andrew Rawnsley's accounts of the Blair years were my first shock. Even accounting for Rawnsley’s exaggeration, it was clear Blair & Brown (the adults I looked up to) and their actions were being shaped by personality and “psychodrama”.
Later, three years in Westminster as the series producer on #bbcqt gave me more insight into this. Of course, it’s not all gossip etc, there’s lots of hard policy problems too. But still, it was a big update for me.
Originally tweeted by Brendan Miller (@brenkjm) on January 4, 2023.