43. We’re all going to the polls… signs to look out for in 2024

Some telltale signs that the people asking for your vote may not have your interests at heart

Jan 17, 2024

Thank you to all our new subscribers and readers joining since the New Year. I hope you’ll enjoy my continuing development of what it means to lead, organise and manage humanely AND effectively. These two things are not a tradeoff, they can be mutual reinforcers and amplifiers in building better organisations. This is piece number 43, and the previous 42 are all right here on Substack.

2024 is, by many accounts, going to be the big year of elections. Some 64 countries (plus the EU) are holding polls, with close to half the global population of voting age able to participate. Of course not all these elections are equal; while some will be very free and fair, others will be distorted, manipulated or even rigged. Odds on Vladimir Putin losing in Russia, anyone?

Countries marked in red are due to go to the polls in 2024. (Graphic - TIME magazine)

With this in mind, I’m producing this list of things to watch out for. These are clues that the people concerned are not seeking to govern effectively and humanely (the interests of this Substack) but rather have other ends in mind, usually their own power and financial gain. It’s amazing how people can be convinced to vote against their own interests. Here are some clues that that’s what’s happening.

Zero-sum thinking

This is sometimes referred to as the ‘fixed pie fallacy’. There is only so much to go around, and if I am to get more then you must (automatically and by default) get less. If ‘we’ are to win, then ‘they’ must lose. This is not about elections as such, but about the economies and social policies that are under debate. Notice how this assumption gives a construction of ‘them’ which will appear in several more of these clues.

We have seen this in the UK in the Brexit debate. If ‘we’ are to (say) get jobs, then ‘they’ (typically immigrants’) have to lose them. Never mind that the immigrants are doing both valuable jobs like nursing and care, and are also often doing horrible jobs that nobody else wants to do. It’s extraordinary how many Brexiters wanted reduced immigration, and therefore reserved arduous and unpleasant jobs like potato sorting exclusively for British hands.

Of course, pies can be grown. Its good to look at how everyone involved in a situation can get (at least some of) what they want. That’s how negotiation happens when it works well. I wrote about that in my post about ‘Make agreements you WANT to keep’. It’s very hard to do that when starting from a zero-sum view of the world.

‘Othering’ people who are part of the electorate

The idea in an election is, of course, to get voted in. Depending on the electoral systems involved, that means something like getting more than half the votes. In recent years we have seen the rise of ‘talking to the base’ – addressing more and more communication at the people who already support the party/candidate. It’s good to keep the base happy. But – when that turns into dissing, insulting and excluding the others, that’s not a good thing.

Think about it. Suppose you lost the last election. (Even if you think you didn’t!) The idea must now to be to get more people to vote for you. Insulting them seems like a strange way to go about it. What this does, of course, is spread division among the people you are trying to get to support you. We used to think that leaders were elected to work for everyone. Now it seems that they are not working for their whole nations, or even (in the odd cases of Boris Johnson and Liz Truss) their whole parties! Donald Trump has even turned insulting his party colleagues into an artform – heard of Ron Di Sanctimonious?

When voters are concerned about something, then listening, hearing what they want, building relationships are all key. Turning them into the enemy is not. Much of the populist right seeks to sow division along ethnic grounds. I wrote about the desirability and power of ‘civic nationalism’ in Scotland, where everyone here can be a Scot if they wish. It’s open, it’s inclusive, it’s empowering.

Taking a narrow view

We have seen depressing examples of leaders deliberately taking a narrow view in order to prosecute unwise and partisan strategies. If something is being presented in terms of narrow linear causality (X happened, so we have no alternative but to do Y), be careful. Solutions Focus is one part of a whole world of systemic approaches where we see again and again how simple linear reasoning, if misapplied, leads to force, deadlock, worse.

There is a whole class of things where linear thinking not only produces the problem but then sustains it over years and decades. ‘The war on drugs’ has not moved the dial on drug use in decades; instead, it hands over control to criminal gangs and gives the authorities a big stick with which to beat drug users. Increasingly, making something ‘illegal’ is supposed to stop it. The British government made it illegal to arrive on the UK coast in a small boat a couple of years ago. Has it stopped it – of course not. The first refugees of 2024 arrived on Saturday.

The late Shane MacGowan, former singer and songwriter with The Pogues, was once being asked about the then-novel smoking ban in Irish pubs. “You can’t smoke in pubs in Ireland now”, said the interviewer. Shane interrupted them to say “No, it’s illegal to smoke in pubs.” Of course he (and many others) still did it, perhaps a little more cautiously. Take a look at my piece ‘When in doubt, zoom out’ to get more on the benefits of taking a wider view.

Blaming others (and praising yourself)

It has often been said that ‘a bad workman blames his tools’. A bad politician blames everyone but themselves. A politician who has been in power for years and blames everyone but themselves is not only bad but blinkered too – and apparently thinks it will encourage people to vote for them! It’s odd that not only having failed to do something, but also shirking responsibility, might seem a desirable place from which to campaign. “I can’t do this – vote for me so I can’t do it again’ is a peculiar platform.

I wrote about the credit-blame matrix here a few weeks ago. Top-level leaders share the credit when things go well, and take the blame when they don’t. If you see someone asking for your vote who blames everyone else and takes credit for things they didn’t do, think very hard before giving them your support.

Using language that reinforces past stereotypes and wrongs

This is another angle on the poor practice of ‘othering’ people who are supposed to want to vote for you that I mentioned earlier. Often this kind of language is rooted in the past – past wrongdoings, past images, past divisions. It also relates to explanations and causes – of things which have already happened, of things which are feared, of things which explain the mess we are in now.

Some UK readers may remember that former prime minister David Cameron in 2013 dismissed activists from his own party (and also the UK Independence Party (UKIP) as ‘mad swivel-eyed loons’. When these same activists had won the Brexit referendum, Cameron was left with no alternative but to resign. In the USA, ‘Sleepy Joe’ is under attack from the previous holder of the office of president (despite showing a far broader interest in the economy, climate change and world affairs than his taunter-in-chief). It doesn’t look good – because the odds are that they’d be making up similar names for you if you got anywhere near power.

In Solutions Focus we know about the power of looking to the future. This is not simply ‘selling’ a vision of the future, but rather engaging people in seeing themselves in a better future, playing a part in its creation and being active citizens rather than done-to doormats. I wrote here about the important using ‘Language that draws us forward’ nearly a year ago; it’s still worth thinking about today.

Creating precedents which are clearly unwise (one rule for us, another for them)

In liberal democracies, there is a set of rules and precedents which governs how things are done. These vary between different nations and systems, and have usually evolved to produce a broadly balanced mechanism which underpins the functioning of government, law and society. One alarming trend at the moment is that politicians have started to advocate to be allowed to do things themselves – but which they would refuse to allow others to do (or at least be furious if they did).

In the UK we have a tradition of a neutral Civil Service, where bright people are charged with implementing government policies irrespective of which government is in place. There is no mass change of civil servants after an election (as we see in the USA, for example) – the people in each area know their stuff and are supposed to help enact whatever Parliament votes for. (We all know that there are ways that experienced Whitehall ‘mandarins’ can bamboozle ministers, best caricatured by ‘Sir Humphrey’ in the Yes Minister TV comedy decades ago.)

The last couple of UK governments started to promote the idea of a politicised civil service, with ministers being able to appoint supportive administrators to pursue their policies. What struck me was not that this was being proposed, but that those proposing it hadn’t thought it through. It would be fine while they were in government, but as soon as they were out of power if would (I expect) turn into an attack on civilisation as we know it. Fortunately, the proposal came to nothing. There was a similarly flawed scheme to put government MP in the chair of every select committee – again, fine while you are the government, but disastrous if not.

A very alarming development in the USA (it seems me) is that Donald Trump and his political associates have started referring to those convicted of felonies during the January 6^th 2021 storming of the Capital as ‘hostages’. Trump is, of course, guilty of everything I’ve discussed in this piece, not least that he seems to want to win an election which he has previously claimed is unreliable. Only unreliable if he loses, presumably.

Conclusion

When you are looking at the choice on the ballot, seek the following things:

Seeking win-win and growing the pie for all
Seeking to unite the electorate
Taking a broad view including looking beyond the immediate
Showing some self-reflective capacity in taking responsibility
Using language to draw people together into the future
Working to create a system that’s not obviously partisan

Those are very likely the people who have your interests, and the interests of your nation, at heart. And, of course, get out and vote!

Dates and mates

If you are interested in how politicians frame their positions to attract (or repel) voters, please go and read Framelab, right here on Substack. It’s written by George Lakoff, a giant in the field of linguistics who wrote ‘Metaphors We Live By’ with Mark Johnson as long ago as 1980. That book explored how all language has a metaphorical element which influences how we recieve it, whether we like it or not. It’s good to be aware of how these things work. Although Framelab has a paid-for level, there are lots of great free pieces on it too. Go take a look! (Hint: Orange isn’t Lakoff’s favourite colour...)