"An ape like me / can learn to be human too"

The Ian Oakley story in my last post has me thinking about the way those of us involved in politics regard ourselves, and how that comes across to voters. Over the years I've been criticised as a nationalist for apparently practising 'identity politics'. Arguably identity politics - if there is such a thing - is no more part of a genuine liberal nationalist vision than o any other ideology - but I'll leave that one for another day. Differentiate the practice of politics from its philosophy though, and it's obvious that identity - insofar as how politicians are seen - is at the heart of the beast - and how it feeds.

Practical politics needs figures that voters can relate to. Demographic divides amongst public spokespersons - to give one example - matter because subconsciously or consciously some voters can see a shortage of their particular subset fronting an organisation and wonder why that organisation can't find people like them to argue for it. Demographics like gender, class, nationality, religion and sexuality are all big players - and boy do the last two often interact like cobra and mongoose - but there is x-factor as well.

The woman to the right is a candidate for the US House of Representatives in Washington state whose house burned down at the start of July. Her instant on-site TV reaction, from which this is a screenshot, gave an unscripted insight into who she was - and the T-shirt she was wearing instantly endeared her to the geeky end of Democratic blogosphere, who saw it as proof that she was "one of us". (You really have to know HTML to appreciate the t-shirt.)

Done deliberately, sometimes this works and sometimes it flops - the Labour Party tried a particularly condescending glossy magazine, complete with problem page, in 2005. I also remember Labour broadcasts showing older people answering the door to canvassers - not staged in any way - and saying, in so many words, "I've been Labour all my days." I'm not criticising this as a tactic - everybody does it - but it does give some insight into the minds of the modern politico.

I often think that this is increasingly one of the (many) big problems with youth involvement in party politics. Young people don't have positive partisan role models, and if they do wander in to a political party the first meeting of their local branch or constituency will usually give them a shock comparable to urinating on a cattle fence. Except in places where there are critical masses of similar young people - universities spring to mind - even youth or student wings can fall into the trap of being self-selected groups of those who can put up with three-hour meetings about constitutional amendments and boundary revisions (mmm, boundary revisions) and end up being otherwise indistinguishable. Scottish party youth wings can only look across the Irish Sea in envy at Fianna Fail's, who claim a staggering 5,000 members.

Now, there are political figures who can reach out - David Cameron's ability to ride out the toff attacks and continue to do well across the board (although minus the whole of Scotland) springs to mind. He has however done everything he can to allow groups formerly alienated by the Conservatives to relate to them - people who are homosexual being the prime example. Scots will still take some work - he is a Tory after all. I suspect my countrymen will continue to vote Tory in fewer numbers than Mirror-reading social workers who live in Newcastle council estates for some considerable time.

The upshot of all of this is why parties need to reflect the electorate if they are to be successful. For one rare occasion the incentives from the electoral process are healthy, given how often they lead more towards bland common-denominator poll-tested boredomism. That is a good thing. We are all identity politicians now.