To suggest this, of course, is to say nothing new. Complaints about the implicit cynicism of turning the democratic process into a species of advertising campaign have been resounding through Westminster (and Washington, where it all began) since the advent of the word “spin”. But there may be more to this than a simple dislike of the notion that principle should be replaced by pandering.  It could be that the basic concept is flawed: that public opinion is far more fluid, dynamic and elusive than the techniques which are being used to measure and manipulate it allow. In fact, it may be that the very act of studying it – of creating the artificial conditions in which it can be studied – affects the results in quite misleading ways. Focus groups are surely influenced (as are all juries) by the most articulate and forceful people in their midst. I have always wanted to conduct an experiment in which the same exceptionally eloquent speaker was planted in two focus groups, making precisely opposite arguments in each case. Would both groups follow his lead and thus produce exactly opposite conclusions?  But even if the wizards claim that they can eliminate, or discount, such a possibility, can they ever remove the fundamental social self-consciousness that participation in this kind of exercise involves? Do people necessarily say what they truly believe, or express their most visceral feelings on controversial issues, among a group of strangers with whose views they are unfamiliar – as opposed to among their family and like-minded friends?  The theory is that what is said under such constrained, laboratory conditions actually constitutes a pure, objective reality as opposed to the sloppy anecdotal business of people talking in the bus queue or at the pub or even in the MP’s surgery. But does it? Isn’t the more natural, uninhibited setting of a real conversation more likely to give genuine insight into what voters think and want?  And, for that matter, do respondents in opinion polling actually tell the full and unvarnished truth when asked for their views on, say, poverty or social equality where the media have made certain kinds of robust views virtually unutterable? Even assuming that the questions are not leading, and the interpretations not tendentious, can any sampling technique ever capture the full, vital mix of emotion and reason, inconsistency and human sympathy which constitutes “public opinion” in its constant mercurial flux?  Using faux-scientific, artificial contrivances can surely only lead to artificial results which have the pernicious appearance of scientific truth – and can thus be used to silence those who believe they have a sound grasp of what voters actually want that is based on real-life encounters.  Many MPs, who report to their party HQs having been accosted in the street, button-holed in their constituencies and harangued in their surgeries by voters expressing their dissatisfaction with policy, are confronted by the robotic rebuff: “Focus-group-says-no.” Although, oddly enough, this apparently incontrovertible dictum never seems to sink policies which the wizards have decided – with no objective evidence – will make their party more acceptable to the electorate (viz gay marriage for the Tories; opposition to welfare cuts for Labour). It may be significant that the “purely objective” evidence is only ever used to rebuff opinions which are considered to be undesirable by the leadership – for reasons that are subjective and often highly personal.  All of this stuff, as I noted earlier, first gained credibility in the US with Bill Clinton’s successful campaign for the presidency. Nobody seems to recollect that Clinton was a stupendously compelling political personality who would probably have won office without all the pseudo-science. And the people who overlook that fact also forget that John Major won the most unlikely election victory in British post-war history by standing on a soap box and talking directly to people in the street. There has to be a lesson in there somewhere.
Politicians have never been so unpopular, while never has so much effort been   expended in finding out what voters think and want.