Cleaving to the Winner

I'm Sorry, Dave, I can't let you do that...

Something I have observed for a long time is people do like winners and nowhere else more so than in politics

People are hard-wired to cleave to winners. People might agree with somebody's viewpoints, but they want to belong and support the WINNER who has at least some of the viewpoints they agree with, the glossy coat and the impression of backing and access to resources. It might be odd, but it would not surprise me if people filter on winner first, then select amongst the potential winners who they will back. I guess this is primeval, as if you are on the losing side you might just get a Tapir jawbone whumped into your noggin.



Why bring this up now? I saw this extract of a GMTV interview with George Osborne courtesy of Iain Dale on the topic of MP defections:

Ozzy: We’ve got councillors who have switched over to us and there’s a real sense at the moment that the excitement is with us, that people are coming to join us. In my own local area people are coming to join my local party. And you know there are quite a lot of ideological soulmates out there who say ‘Well hold on, actually the Conservative party are the future and actually this lot have had their go and they’re the past.’

I think this is more to do with "they are the losers. Look a our shiny new feathers!"

People want to back winners, but it does not work properly if you keep getting the same MP pond-life floating from one rock-pool to the next each time the tide looks like going out.

This country is hamstrung by floating constituencies as it is. Worse still if it has a nebulous community of self-interested MPs.

Oh, sorry, forgot. We already have one.