The Spectator’s Notes | 16 April 2005

This is the first general election campaign since 1983 in which I have not been the editor of a publication (or, in 1992, the deputy editor). And in all previous campaigns since my birth I was vicariously involved because my father was always a Liberal candidate. My new detachment gives me the possibly illusory feeling that I at last understand what elections are really like. Among journalists (and, of course, candidates), elections are times of frenetic activity. Huge effort is put into covering them truly, madly, deeply. Politicians and proprietors worry tremendously what the papers say. For almost everyone else in Britain, though, elections are a quiet period, one in which markets mark time, public services wait to see who’ll come out on top and most people realise that this is a bad moment to make any long-term decision. ‘Apathy’ is the word always applied to modern voters, but it seems a bit unfair. It is rather a rational sense that the difference between the likely winners is not overwhelming, and that what you, as an individual, can do about the result is limited. Once this is understood, it becomes clear that politicians are actually better at fighting elections than the media are at covering them. We journalists yearn, naturally, for excitement, disaster, huge swings in the polls, and so we hunt for it frenetically. On the day I write, the frenzy of the moment is about whether Michael Howard quoted the right chief constable about immigration rules and whether or not a particular Tory ‘sum’ adds up. It is almost impossible to describe the extent to which these disputes do not matter, but the press cannot admit it. The able politicians, on the other hand, ride over it, and plug on with a few simple messages which may just make the difference they need.