Politics

THE MOST important rule in politics, the electoral equivalent of Occam's Razor, the clarifying maxim that should be displayed above the desktop monitors of hyper-active politicians, advisers and journalists in Westminster, is this:
Most things don't matter.
Almost all of the tactics, strategies, messages, campaigns, gambits, revamps, speeches, briefings, reshuffles and even policies that politicians and their advisers work on, and that lobby hacks analyse, are of zero enduring significance electorally. Very little of this political activity ever "cuts through" (in the Westminster argot) to voters, and even less of it manages to shift public opinion for anything but a few weeks. It is noise.
Elections are decided by a few fundamentals, such as the political cycle (the longer the government has been in power, the more hostile the public will feel towards it), the economic cycle (the more prosperous the country is feeling, the more likely they are to vote for the government) and, above all, the party leaders. Perhaps the only meaningful thing a political party can ever do to help its fortunes is elect a leader who has that "prime ministerial" quality that is hard to define but easy to recognise when one sees it.
Of course a party's economic credibility and closeness to the centre-ground matter, and these things are conveyed to voters via speeches, policies, campaigns, etc. But how well a party scores on these fronts is derivative, ultimately, of its leader. If a leader has a grasp of the national mood, and the will and the skill to reflect it, the party will be thought credible and centrist. If he does not, no amount of political activity by colleagues and advisers will compensate (in any case, if he is not a good leader the activity will be misjudged because the colleagues and advisers will be badly chosen).
Why am I telling you all this?

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