It is rare for me to say, but Melanie Phillips is absolutely right when she writes this:
Cynical as this may sound, there is no doubt that appealing to public sympathy is now a way to score political points or a 'get out of jail free' card in public debate.
We see this when politicians use personal adversity to tug at the heart-strings. And what all but silences any cynicism is that such politicians' personal anguish is all too real.
We saw it over David Cameron's disabled young son, Ivan, who, before he died a year ago, featured in many moving interviews with Cameron and accounts of his family life.
Some found this tasteless and exploitative; Cameron himself simply said that Ivan was a part of his life he was not prepared to conceal.
What was undeniable was the wave of public sympathy this engendered for Cameron, and the way this humanised the hitherto callous and uncaring image of a Tory politician.
Now we learn that in a forthcoming TV interview, Gordon Brown is overcome by emotion when talking about his daughter who died in 2002, ten days after being born prematurely.
The politics of the Me era is about feelings and images (the two are interrelated). People both want to watch grand spectacles, which explain why politics is more theatrical and to feel/get "the self" of their politicians so that they can be reassured that later s/he will feel their pain. It's not about empathy, it's about egocentrism and the increasing difficulty for uncultured or discultured electorates to resort to cold analysis when it comes to politics.
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