Should politics be guided by public opinion?

Moral Maze

BBC

Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.5 • 609 Ratings

🗓️ 22 November 2023

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Should politicians respect, despise, accommodate or ignore public opinion?

Rishi Sunak is looking for a policy he can pop into place between now and the general election that will avoid a Labour landslide. He is being advised that abolishing inheritance tax will tickle the tummies of the Tory not-so-faithful. Meanwhile, Sir Keir Starmer wants government planners to “bulldoze” local objections when deciding where to put new housing developments. Can a government get away with ignoring public opinion? Well, it can in constituencies it’s never going to win.

Politics nowadays is not merely ‘guided’ by polls, surveys, databases and focus groups… it is controlled by them. But is that good for the country? Is the advice they generate either wise or moral? Are the public obsessed with issues that don’t matter, while they ignore the ones that do? There is a case to be made against taking any notice of what the public thinks about anything. We know that the public thinks short-term, and that its opinions on political issues are ill-informed. Public opinion is inconsistent, incoherent and volatile.

And yet democracy is built on the principle that the majority must get its way. And it’s not just politicians (and Simon Cowell) who flatter the electorate with talk of the ‘wisdom’ of the Great British Public. Lots of people seem to think that majority opinion will usually be wise, kind and helpful. But then, many also believe the moon landing was staged.

Panellists: Anne McElvoy, Melanie Philips, Mona Siddiqui & Matthew Taylor

Presenter: Michael Buerk Producers: Peter Everett & Jonathan Hallewell Editor: Tim Pemberton

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts.
0:04.8	Good evening. Vox Populi, Vox Dei. The voice of the people is the voice of God.
0:09.8	Well, up to a point, the first man known to have used that phrase, the scholar Alcuin of York,
0:15.3	seems to have invented the idea there was a particular virtue in the public's view of things,
0:20.0	only to rubbish it, telling his
0:22.0	boss the Emperor Charlemagne to ignore public opinion, as it was, as he put it, riotous madness.
0:28.3	Fast forward a millennium and a half. Our present leader Rishi Sunak is reported to be looking
0:32.6	for policies that will sway public opinion in the run-up to an election the polls suggest
0:36.9	he's odds on to lose.
0:39.1	Cutting inheritance tax is one idea that's been floated.
0:42.4	For his part, Sequea Stama is held by some to be flouting public opinion
0:46.6	by threatening to bulldoze the Greenbelt to build new homes.
0:50.6	In truth, it's a matter of which constituency you're playing to.
0:55.9	And politicians of all stripes watch the temperature of the public as anxiously as a mother with a fevered child. Is that a good
1:02.1	thing? Most surveys show the public to be alarmingly ignorant about even the basics of most issues.
1:08.2	Our collective views are often held to be emotional, fickle, short-termist,
1:12.9	intolerant and unkind. We'd still have the death penalty and hardly any immigrants if it had its way.
1:19.2	And yet what is democracy, if not the political expression of public opinion? And now we have
1:24.0	the technological ability to calibrate the public mood on an almost daily basis.
1:28.6	Surely a true government for the people by the people is actually in reach.
1:33.7	Shouldn't public opinion play a much bigger part in the decisions that govern our lives?
1:38.7	Should politicians respect, despise, accommodate or ignore it?
	...

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