IN THE AGE OF THE SOUNDBITE, politicians over recent years seemed to have clubbed together, somewhat in the same manner as football players, in order to use the same type of language when talking about issue, as if fearful of saying the wrong thing had led them to stick to tried and trusted vocabulary and expressions in their search for linguistic safety.
OF COURSE IN THE CASE of footballers, using "over the moon" and "sick as a parrot", this became something of a cruel joke, when it was patently obvious that subjecting someone who had minutes previously scored the winning goal in a cup final to an interview on television for which he was clearly linguistically unprepared would only result in ridicule.
YET ONE WOULD NATURALLY expect higher things in terms of lexicon from our leaders, many of whom, including politicians on the left of the spectrum, went to our best schools and universities.
UNFORTUNATELY FOR MANY OF THESE POLITICIANS, going to a "good" school may not be the best preparation for being able to maintain a grip on the reality of the country one is supposed to be governing, and thus being hopelessly out of touch with the so-called 'common man' has paradoxically become more the norm as parliamentary democracy has advanced in the West, resulting, some might say, in the phenomena that have led to triumphs for Trump, Farage and Brexit recently, and to the rise of Le Pen in France and the coming demise of Merkel in Germany next year.
THE DIFFICULTY APPEARS TO REVOLVE around the curious emotion of empathy. Happily, our politicians in the UK have never stooped to the embarrassingly gooey depths of American politicians, as witnessed by both Clintons on campaign repeatedly stating "I feel your pain" in order to gain votes -- a remarkable strategy coming from two millionaire lawyers when talking to unemployed black families on minimum state benefits, but one which at least worked for Bill.
AND IT IS THE NOTION OF WORK that has inspired this latest missive. In purely linguistic terms, it is difficult for politicians in a country ridden by class discrimination to know how to address what used to be called the "working classes", and naturally it is even harder to be able to relate to them when one knows nothing about how they live, where they work and how much they earn, what they buy with this money, what they wear and eat, where and how they relax and what they want and enjoy.
THUS ENORMOUS GAFFES occasionally appear, such as Gordon Brown's stating that he used to watch "The Eastenders", and promised ever pensioner in Britain an extra 75 pence a week in their pensions. What he imagined one could buy with this money to liven up one's week is anyone's guess, but it clearly showed he had no idea how much a cup of tea and jam roly-poly cost in a local cafe.
OVER RECENT YEARS OUR SPIN DOCTORS have tried to come up with new terms for the people they would rather never meet but who are essential for an election victory. Having abandoned “the working classes” (and more than just linguistically) they have turned to “hard-working families”, which was replaced shortly afterwards by “hard-working people”, itself ditched before the last election as it was deemed that middle-class office workers felt guiltily insulted.
NOW THERESA MAY’S TEAM has come up with a new term to take the place of the rather unfortunate but self-appointed term “strugglers”. These are those who are in work but finding life difficult; i.e., those for whom the “living wage” (a new expression for the old “working wage” is not even as comfortable as the laughably optimistic “minimum wage”. Thus we have the “Just About Managing” or “The Jams”
WHILE SOME OF THOSE WHO ARE IN TOUCH with popular culture may be reminded of the “pop” group The Jams, and their exciting album What the Fuck is Going On?, others may recall the band The Jam, the most vociferously anti-Thatcher and anti-Conservative musical ensemble since the beginning of rock music. Yet others will no doubt be reminded of the iconic album by Detroit group MC5, Kick out the Jams, no doubt something the Conservatives would be pleased to do given the chance. And no doubt something that will lead to this new term being dropped by the government before any future elections.
(My photo shows our Prime Minister wearing leather trousers from Turkey, for which she is paying 75 pence per week to Littlewood's online catalogue.)
