I hate this election already

Annndddd theyyy’rreee off!

The general election begins and already Boris Johnson had donned his white NHS labcoat with Union flag emblazoned jogging bottoms. Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn hugs a nurse before slipping into his Xanax mode, oozing a quiet gentility that’s meant to convince the electorate that he’d never climb a barricade or march on the Winter Palace.

Isn’t it always the same? The general election clichés pile up quicker than a Lib Dem leaflet drop. Much of it is risible. Some of it is effective. Little of this is about you or me. It isn’t for those of us who read political websites. The next five weeks are about reaching that section of the electorate only ever asked to decide the most difficult matters. They are the politically indifferent, known in polite society as “the undecideds”.

It results in the kind of blatant grab for votes that seems like a good idea for however long that news cycle lasts. Not so good when you surprisingly go into a coalition government and that policy becomes the key promise you gruesomely sacrifice in the name of unity. “’I will never again make a pledge unless as a party we are absolutely clear about how we can keep it” said Nick Clegg, once the great hope for centrist politics and now doing media spin for Facebook. Tempus edax rerum, as our Prime Minister would say.

That was 2010. In 2019, we hardly seem to have moved on. Policy making of the hoof is more fashionable than ever. A ban on fracking? What a good idea! Except didn’t someone spend the past few years laughing off the concerns of old folk shaking in their Blackpool bungalows? And what’s that I hear? The first benefits raise since 2015 is coming next April? And by a whopping 1.7%? Just don’t let the mathematically challenged know they can’t do much with an extra £1.34 a week…

And, yes, of course, it is unfair to hammer the Tories. All parties use the power afforded to them when in government in order to grease the slipway ahead of their manifesto launch. It’s also foolish to treat manifestos in the absolute. After George W. Bush famously told America in 1988 to “read my lips” and promised “no new taxes”, it was rather honourable that he then broke that promise, despite knowing the political hellstorm that it would unleash.

Manifestos are about intent rather than prophesy but that does not mean that barefaced opportunism shouldn’t be called out wherever it exists. There is, after all, a difference between policy and ideology. The former can and should change according to circumstance, but the latter is meant to be the expression of your firmest held political beliefs. It goes to the heart of Labour’s Brexit problem. Just what does Jeremy Corbyn believe rather than what he now says he believes? And if austerity was a clear-sighted Tory solution to a national crisis (and many a good argument was made to that end) you can’t simply abandon it in order to throw cash at a general election.

Surviving a general election isn’t just about getting your mind around the staggering opportunism on display. We must also witness one of the oddest sights in the animal kingdom and that’s politicians promoting their manifestos by meeting actual members of the public. The media will, of course, “go ape” whenever the Boris Johnson gets heckled. But it tells us no more about the national mood than when Good King Corbyn is ecstatically greeted by his true believers at a rally.

Because what really is the national mood? Well, if Johnson is going to spend the next five weeks addressing us with “Hi folks”, then my own part of the national mood won’t be particularly good at all. There will be zealotry on all sides, of course. Set against that is a fickle public who can always be dragged into one or another corner.

They also won’t be dragged to your cause if you leave your microphone on. So-called “hot mics” have become a feature of recent elections. If we’re lucky, we’ll have one as fine as Gordon Brown’s from 2010 which set a high standard for winning over a voter by calling her a “bigoted woman”. If you’re running a sweepstake, you’d be wise to pick “Week 3”, “Nigel Farage”, and “But I’ll be irrelevant if we allow Brexit to go ahead.”

More realistic is the chance that most of us will pass the next five weeks without catching even a fleeting glimpse of a prospective MP. Not unless you live in a marginal, though Brexit means that the marginals of 2016 might not be the marginals of 2019. Then there’s talk about Conservatives winning big in the North and talk too of Lib Dems winning around London. Much depends on what the aforementioned Nigel does or does not do. It will also depend on how the parties play their ground game.

“It is clear that the Conservatives’ path to victory runs through working-class rugby league towns like Workington, Warrington and Wigan,” said Will Tanner, director of Onward, the think tank that last week came up with a headline-grabbing strategy for the Tories. They might be right and have statistics to prove it. All I know, living smack between Wigan and Warrington, is that the prevailing mood seems to be the usual indifference to Westminster. Can the Tories do well in this relatively poor northern Labour safe seat, the kind of place where Workington Man supposedly lives? Well, not if they repeat their usual trick of parachuting in a Hampshire zillionaire who arrives wearing a house-check tweed shooting jacket and swinging a cane.

And that really is the point. Politics, above all things, is the art of the necessary, but just because parties “need” to expand their appeal to new constituencies doesn’t mean they can do so by reframing everything for a five-week period in May (or, in this case, December). Electorates aren’t just for Christmas, remember. Boris Johnson can scream “One Nation Tory” as much as he wishes. He might even believe it. Jeremy Corbyn, meanwhile, can demand that his party’s moderates get behind him. Jo Swinson can even claim she’s on a path to victory. Brexit might dominate headlines but the electorate’s calculations go beyond the binary choice of leave or remain.

Johnson must also find a serious reply to the homeless and mental-health crises, NHS staffing levels, a failing rail network, fears about deregulation and his toxic proximity to Trump, and a demoralised public sector. Corbyn must address antisemitism, bullying, as well as his party’s shift to the hard Left. As far as the electorate is concerned, old prejudices will matter as much as new imperatives.