Often forgotten beside A Rake’s Progress, William Hogarth satirised the 18th century democratic process in his series The Humours of an Election. From flagrant bribery of electors to shenanigans on polling day, he paints a graphic picture of a democratic system entering necrosis.
As the sacred act of voting occurs, criminals, the nearly-dead and the visibly mentally deranged are wheeled out before their minders receive payment. In the background, an ornate coach representing Britannia breaks down while the coachmen and footmen play cards.
We might be tempted to view such representations of historical politics and comfort ourselves over the stupidity and corruption of our forebears.
However, the last laugh may well be with Hogarth. The first week of campaigning has shown that, far from belonging in a museum, The Humours of an Election could be painted just as vividly today. It won’t be, however. At least in the 18th century they werehonest about their chicanery.
Consider Hogarth’s primary theme: the omnipresence of bribes. This is the bribery election, perhaps the most shameless of my lifetime. All sides appear to be reverting to their basest instincts with ill-thought-out policies designed not for the national interest but to cajole an unenthused base. The equivalent of free electoral viagra handed out at the world’s ugliest orgy.
Labour, for instance, isn’t even bothering to argue the principled case for giving the vote to children. Interviewed by GB News, shadow paymaster general Jonathan Ashworth gulped and gawped in the general direction of the camera when asked for statistics about how many under-18s actually pay tax or join the Army, or to explain the logical inconsistency of giving 16-year-olds the vote while preventing them from being tried as adults, buying a cigarette, or even being shown food adverts.
The truth was he didn’t know, nor, it appeared, did he care. The presenters’ mistake was to apply logical arguments to a purely cynical decision.
The Conservatives have assumed the other extreme – luring their core electorate with a pensions “triple lock plus”; designed to drag the faithful elderly out on a cavalry charge of Zimmer frames and so save a few Tory seats. Mel Stride, the stuttering ying to Mr Ashworth’s yang, blustered his way through an interview about why this was wise when he’d admitted just last year that he believed even a triple lock was “unsustainable”.
I’m sure Mr Stride still believes this, but the real reason for such a policy has nothing to do with what’s sensible or sustainable but, as with Labour, pure bribery. What’s next; votes for zygotes? Nationalise Stannah stairlifts? Viking River Cruises for all?
Such pledges stretch credulity. You sense that they’re not quite meant to be taken seriously. Meanwhile, the major issues of the day – defence, stagnant growth – are studiously ignored. This is decadence worthy of late-Rome; arguing about nothing while the nation stares into theabyss.
Also present in Hogarth is a sense that the whole thing is something of a charade. There is no obvious distinction between his Tory and Whig candidates other than bribing voters at differently-named pubs. So, too, today. This election was billed as an era-defining moment; and indeed a change of government seems inevitable after 14 years.
You might have expected some bold offer for the country, a grown-up programme for change from Labour or a genuine statement of ideology from the Tories (which, frankly, they’ll need in Opposition). Instead, we receive a set of half-promises amounting to little more than the greasing of palms.
Alongside the bungs for pensioners and the youth gerrymandering, there is Labour’s spiteful tax on private schools, which even party insiders quietly admit will raise less than a whip round after a school fete.
Then there is the Tories’ ill-conceived National Service idea, belched out with little detail earlier this week. It seems designed to nuke still further the already irradiated wasteland that is Tory polling among the under-40s. Both policies appear calculated to punish “the other side”. Neither suggests long-term thinking or a hopeful vision for Britain’s future. Probably because neither side has or can afford one.
All this seems to point to a modern version of Hogarth’s overarching theme: deep contempt for the voters bya political class that is itself profoundly unimpressive.
His final panel depicts an MP incapable of controlling a crowd of grotesques who carry him to the town hall, all led by a monkey banging a drum. Still, an ape might do a better job than whichever CCHQ double agent is responsible for planting Rishi Sunak in a series of increasingly awkward encounters with the general public. Where next? A vox pop at a funeral? A policy announcement in an abattoir?
Labour’s dealings with the electorate are little better. A video surfaced of Angela Rayner, wearing an unusually long dress, bellowing at a room of Muslim men – and only men – in a series of high-volume pleas for their votes because she will “help rebuild Gaza”. At least Sir Ed Davey repeatedly falling off a paddleboard on Lake Windermere was funny in a Hogarthian sort of way.
The parties try to insist that this election will shape 21st-century Britain: in fact it seems more like a return to the contemptuous and petty politics of another age. But with fewer laughs, and no monkey banging a drum.
