Robert Webb has said some things in the Telegraph today that have confused me.
I like Robert Webb - like his partner in comedy David Mitchell, he has the intelligence and the passion to talk about politics in a way that connects with people who are not necessarily going to pay a fiver for each manifesto and go through them all with a highlighter. (Incidentally, the Tory one is too expensive for me to buy at the moment - I'm waiting for it to come out in paperback).
But this kind of influence should be taken pretty seriously. None of us are really going to listen to what Geri Halliwell or Alex Reid has got to say, but the words of someone like Webb are likely to hold a bit more sway, particularly with the fairly left-wing middle class people who watch Peep Show.
His article states that "most people decided who to vote for years ago" and suggests that those who haven't yet made up their minds are either kidding themselves or too easily influenced. And I quote:
"You're over 18 and you went to school and you can read and write and
you've seen the news and you know the odd bit of modern history and you're…
what? You let the 'creatives' from marketing companies call you
'undecided'?"
"It just seems that those of us who were interested in politics when we
were teenagers found ourselves to be built a certain way. For the likes of us,
whether Lefties or Righties... that was basically that."
I can see his point - I know that I'm left-wing. I know that I'm not going to vote Tory this time, and I'm very unlikely to ever vote Tory from now until the day I die.
But simply knowing the difference between left- and right-wing politics and knowing which camp your beliefs fall into doesn't necessarily tie you to a certain party. Webb's logic runs this way: I am left-wing, therefore I vote Labour. He says he has always voted Labour and always intends to - isn't this a little narrow-minded?
I'm not saying he shouldn't vote Labour - I've voted Labour before and might still do so this year - but it's not just about choosing a party that suits you and blindly following them your whole life. Your needs change; the country's needs change.
And if he's voting for left-wingedness over everything... am I the only one who thinks the LibDems are coming across as by far the more left-wing party this time around?
The Telegraph article can be found here. It's funny and well-written, and one of the comments below it equates Webb to Robert Mugabe, which is hilarious.
