Let us imagine for a moment that you are a visitor from the Planet Zarg, a civilised and agreeable world somewhere near the great gaseous star Proxima Centauri. Your spaceship landed here a few weeks ago as part of an interplanetary inclusive outreach scheme funded, on your own planet, by a sort of sophisticated private-finance initiative. Your mission is to observe Earth and its multifarious political and cultural doings, and so, with that in mind, you park your ship on Shepherd’s Bush Green, just down from the delectable Nando’s chicken franchise on the Uxbridge Road. And you start to observe.
By now, week four, you are deeply confused and befuddled. You have been watching too much television and reading too many newspapers. And the thing that confuses you is this: stuff happens, down here on Earth, or in Britain, at least – stuff which you have seen with your own eyes. And then the pundits and the broadcasters either ignore it or tell you – citing no evidence whatsoever – that precisely the opposite has happened and that what you actually saw was wrong.
Your bewilderment comes to a head while watching a very long television programme about some elections. There’s this cumbersome and derided political party led by a balding, boring man who coughs a lot and whom nobody seems to like, and quite clearly, in front of your eyes, this useless party wins the election by a mile. You know this because the results of each council vote are flashed up on the screen: ‘Con Gain’ it keeps saying. But the people on the television tell you that the Cons have done really badly and that the balding man won’t be with us for much longer because he’s so crap. And the people on the television tell you that Labour, the other party, the one everybody seems to like, has done pretty much OK, really.
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