The Theft of Political Clothes

From time to time, we hear one political party fretting about another party stealing their clothes. If people want their ideas and policies adopted, isn’t it a good thing that even their opponents are coming round to promoting them? On the surface, that might seem so. But more often than not, such ‘borrowing’ of ideas is not to be welcome at all. Here are four reasons to be wary.

First of all, the sheer incompetence of the other side can give any policy they adopt a bad name and end up discrediting it completely. After thirteen years of mismanaging public services, failing to build desperately needed homes despite repeated announcements of new initiatives, mishandling everything from the economy to policing, it is understandable that a Tory government picking up a new policy may well be followed by the most muddled, disorganised execution of that policy, creating the impression that the policy itself is inherently undeliverable. The Tory policy commitment to Net Zero is a prime example.

Secondly, when it comes to policies with major funding implications, one has to watch for the half-hearted mimics. One party may want to close the funding gap for the health service, or provide what is necessary to reduce flooding. But the other side could come out to say that they are tackling the funding shortfalls in headline terms, when in fact they are not making available even half of what is actually needed, then the public – hearing figures about so many millions, or billions being added to current budgets – might think the financial challenge is met, and come to believe that one must not “throw any more money at the problem”.

Thirdly, we have the time-wasting tokenistic gesture of adopting a well thought out policy so that the party which had formulated that policy is not viewed by voters as the one with a distinctly good offer. In reality, once people no longer associate that policy with the party that sincerely seeks to implement it, the copycat brigade would put it on the backburner, or hand it to a small team with neither the staffing nor financial support for its development. The policy will never see the light of day, and many would have forgotten whose idea it was anyway.

Last but not least, there is the tactic of cynical undermining. This works by one party welcoming a policy idea which it does not want those who devised it to get a chance to secure its implementation. Having ‘adopted’ the policy, the manipulators would proceed to give it ‘special attention’ – by setting up a commission, a review team, etc. to determine how it should be taken forward. After months and years, lots of obstacles would be identified, and recommendations would be drafted and then discarded. The process would eventually achieve its aim of associating that policy with numerous insurmountable problems.

Next time we hear progressive reformists complaining about reactionary parties stealing their clothes, we should not blame them. Rather, we ought to help raise awareness about the lack of honour amongst those thieves.