Dear god, not brat politics...

Robin McAlpine

So you sort of, you know, partied too hard and accidentally start a war in the Middle East because you said something dumb, and then you know you kind of feel yourself and maybe have a bit of a breakdown but, like, you just drink your way through it and get on with it. The important thing is that you don't wear a bra so that people can kind of see your nipples and that you have a disposable lighter.

There is a not-zero chance that this means not a thing to you. It would not be unreasonable if you rather felt that this all sounds somewhere between a distinctly bad idea and deeply, deeply dangerous, all the while being utterly juvenile. But what I've written above is a decent sort of parsing of the otherwise impenetrable meaning of 'Kamala is Brat'.

OK, I can feel I may have to talk some of you through this a little but first I probably need to explain why I'm writing about this at all. It's because dear god could we start choosing our leaders based on the evidence of their ability to do the job they're asking to do and not based on some desperate attempt to squeeze them into a relatable story that fits on Instagram?

Because (allow me to be boring here), the fate of the world may genuinely be at stake, and I can't tell you enough that letting your nipples show through a strappy white vest isn't going to help.

First, in case this has slipped by you, Brat is an album by British artist Charli XCX. It is an extremely well regarded album musically and Charli XCX is an artist I have a lot of respect for (though her wall-to-wall use of autotune makes it a difficult listen for an autotune-phobe like me).

It is pretty well the zeitgeisty album of this summer, so when Charli XCX puts out a tweet saying 'Kamala Is Brat' it is enough to kick of a social phenomenon. Almost immediately the Harris campaign was promoting the tweet relentlessly and they immediately altered the campaign branding of the Harris campaign to reflect the striking lime-green design of the album.

It's just that, when asked to define brat, the artist described it in the rather vacuous and yet still fairly impenetrable terms above. It is someone who parties, says something dumb or offensive, feels bad about it and gets a bit depressed but deals with it by pressing on anyway. The aesthetic is dancing in a strappy white top with your pals and your nipples showing while holding a disposable cigarette lighted and a packet of cigarettes. 

This isn't one of those articles in which a middle aged man is confused by contemporary culture. I get it instantly. That's just my 20s (though not so much the nipples and I didn't smoke). In fact, that was most of my friends and acquaintances in my 20s. I feel for everyone in the wonderful-thrilling-petrifying-awful-wonderful-again phase of their life when they're in a 'party, regret, anxiety, party' cycle. I wouldn't have swapped it for the world.

It's just that applying it to politics not only doesn't make sense, it is actively counterproductive. Kamala Harris is, frankly, is one of the least brat people I can think of. Her career has been calculatingly designed to keep her inside the establishment. The world needs Trump defeated, but under any sane circumstances you'd want voters to be looking at Harris's actual track record.

That is much less brat, much more cynical triangulator without an awful lot of a sense what her fundamental political ideology is. I'll bite your hand off if that is the alternative to Trump, but I'm currently not desperately sold on Harris. I want better to understand what she will bring to government not because I'd be swithering over who to vote for but because I would want to know what kind of government the world is getting.

There is something deeply corrosive in a political debate which is about false personality projection. I stood arguing with an acquaintance for an hour because he'd voted Reform on the basis that he believed Nigel Farage was ready to take on the corrupt City of London financiers. I tried to explain that he is one of them, but that couldn't shake the image in the guy's head.

See, Farage is pretty brat, obviously just without the nipples thing. Or the self-reflection or regret. So basically just the 'drinks and says something offensive and then drinks' bit. The US voted for George W Bush largely on the basis (according to political research from the US) that voters thought he'd be better company to have a beer with than Al Gore. This is probably true. But, having got over the shite Gore banter in the pub, which of the two was less likely to set fire to the entire Middle East?

Everywhere is beset with this 'if we can manufacture a likeable persona for our candidate and avoid the tricky bit where we've got to talk about politics, this will go great' mentality. Let me give you a snapshot of this in Scotland.

One of the kind of fundamental narratives about Humza Yousaf was that he displayed his deep humanity when he was heckled by a woman at an event, then hushed others who booed her and left the platform to go down and give her a cuddle. It showed enormous emotional intelligence, real humanity and an instinct for taking a risk.

Thing is, I've been helping out the group of people whom Theresa was heckling on behalf of (the victims of Tayside butcher-surgeon Eljamel) so I know that the campaign group informed the media the night before, that someone in the media leaked it to the SNP leadership and that a senior staffer was waiting at the door to meet Theresa to try and talk her down. The whole response to her heckle had therefore been carefully planned and choreographed in advance.

I don't say that as criticism – hats off, that is great political management and it created really effective political theatre. It just didn't tell you anything fundamental other than they got a leak from the media, and believing otherwise is part of the problem.

The public thinks it is now savvy to the tricks of the trade in politics, the tricks which help political managers manufacture personas that enable them to sidestep more forensic scrutiny. I can promise you the public is no such thing. You honestly think Rachel Reeves just discovered that there is a giant hole in the UK public finances? Nonsense, that was pantomime. But I know people who said to me 'dear god, have you heard about this hole in public finances?' like it was a bombshell.

Politicians are humans. We must never forget that. But so are heart surgeons and we don't promote them based on their levels of likeability. Leadership is slightly different – the real nature of a person's character is not irrelevant to deciding who should lead. But it should come a long, long way behind a clear-headed analysis of what they are promising to do and whether they have a track record that might make you believe they can actually do it.

This is a modern phenomenon. No-one picked Atlee on the basis of the likelihood that he'd be good company in the pub and Gladstone didn't win because of the endorsement of Marie Lloyd (the leading music hall stars of the era). The social democratisation of politics has been welcome in many ways but the idea that we need leaders who are 'a bit like us' is a dreadful one.

Politics has always been a process of manufacturing image and persona – the efforts used to disguise Franklin Roosevelt's wheelchair were extensive. But if we want our politics to be something better than a variety show by other means, we need to get our cynicism back on. 

Our leaders aren't our pals. There is a good chance the leader you need isn't really all that much like you at all. There is clearly a chance that the character who is a bit more like you is a disaster in government. Personality is not the be-all and end-all of politics and the more that we have imposed our own desire for a leader in whom we identify on the political process, the worse things have got.

The world is a depressing place right now. I'm all for a brat summer. Frankly I wish I could drink and party my way through it to take my mind of what is actually going on. But we need brat politics like a hole in the head, and absolutely no good has ever come from cults and messiahs.

Remember, we tried that already. It ends with Trump and Farage. Please can we have some boring politicians... just as long as they're boring and competent.