It’s winner takes all on Brexit island, because the audience demands it

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/nov/04/winner-takes-all-brexit-island-judiciary

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Like so many of the biggest formats in the golden era of reality TV, Brexit is set on an island. Back in the early years of the millennium, you were nothing in unscripted programming unless you were marooned on an island or in a McMansion, then forced to fight your way to the prize by scheming, screaming, demeaning, and not forgetting the lyrics to Dance with My Father. The transatlantic spirit of the age was Simon Cowell, a populist whose love of plebiscites did little to disguise his totalitarian ambition. When he declared, “No one is ever going to publish a book called Simon Cowell, My Struggle’’, I wept for the loss of the German edition.

The holy grail of reality formats was conflict, as orchestrated by cynical, unseen producers, who manipulated participants into degrading themselves and the public into voting – at financial cost – for the result. Absurd props and esoteric MacGuffins were spoken of as solemnly as if they were articles of a country’s constitution. Tribal Council. The Diary Room. Bushtucker Trials. The £350m Bus . Judges’ Houses. Unelected Judges’ Houses. Hang on – a couple of those have ended up in the wrong list. Still, you get the idea.

As any number of dystopian fictions from Rollerball to The Hunger Games have long warned us, the future is a televised contest played for the highest stakes. So we must have known the current shitshow was in the post. Either way, it turns out all those who used to tut, “How low can reality TV go?” were totally asking the wrong question. Look how high it’s gone! Never mind history repeating itself as farce – reality TV is repeating itself as history. On the other side of the Atlantic, arguably the biggest reality star of that golden era is currently the Republican nominee for the presidency. Over this side, to many narcotised by two decades of the genre, the uncomplicated certainties of its voting are regarded as less of a conspiracy than judicial process.

With the exception of X Factor, where the hostility was more covert, reality TV voting was always disapproval voting. You voted off. You voted out. And that was that. A significant section of the population believe the EU was voted off on 23 June, and now are beginning to openly dismiss the rule of law, as though it were Jedward, or a Survivor contestant who disparaged the Ulong tribe’s plans for a shelter with an awesome sex crib attached. Who does Cayla even think she is? What even is the rule of law? Who made it queen of everything? Tory MP David Davies doesn’t believe in it; half the papers don’t believe in it; others have already taken their lead without encouragement. Maybe the rule of law’s “journey” on the show has come to an end, and we should crank up Everybody Hurts and bid it farewell with a montage of its best bits.

Today’s Daily Express front page likened the “threat” of a high court ruling on the triggering of article 50 to that of Hitler. Guys – if you hate Hitler so much, stop publishing front pages that read like future exhibits in a museum show called Before the Militias. The second most WTF-laden intro was in the Daily Mail, which assigned ark-of-the-covenant-like qualities to a leaflet whose only prior claim to fame was being dismissed as a biased disgrace in the Daily Mail. As Friday’s paper had it: “MPs last night accused judges of failing to read the £9m taxpayer-funded publicity leaflet that stated the referendum result would be followed directly by ministers.” Wait – MPs accused judges of failing to read a leaflet? Did they also accuse them of failing to follow the rules of Bootcamp? Can we settle this with an immunity task/a sing-off in the karaokosseum/ a catfight between the leaflet and the bus? Also: didn’t the Daily Mail watch the shows? The mean judge is always a Brit – and in this case, there are three of them. Can’t at least one of these leaflet-shunners be replaced by X Factor judge – and Brexiteer – Sharon Osbourne?

Having banged on about their failure to remotely understand what they were asking for at the time, I do have to offer another slow handclap for the generation of politicians such as Gordon Brown – a man so obsessed with the X Factor that he once wrote personal letters to the finalists – who were forever on about wanting “an X Factor politics”. Newsflash, Gordon: this is what X Factor politics looks like. Try not to choke on it!

Now his ratings are on the slide, Cowell can at least take comfort that his plan to “give politics the X Factor” has come to pass. “The fact we’re allowing the public to make the decisions most of the time is a really good thing,” Cowell once mused of his various shows. “The great thing is when you start seeing it in places like China and Afghanistan. It’s democracy. We’ve kinda given democracy back to the world.” Man, he had it all figured out, didn’t he? A bit like his best mate Philip Green – whose report into government efficiency concluded that running the vast and complex machinery of the state was akin to retail – Cowell’s reputation as a man with the answer to everything is likely to oxidise rapidly.

At one stage he punted the idea of a TV show where the public voted every week on a political issue – and perhaps Simon passed on this faith in frequent referendums to David Cameron, whom he backed in a major Sun splash on the eve of the 2010 election. Cameron, he reckoned, was a man of “substance” with “the stomach to navigate us through difficult times”.

In the end, it’s amazing – considering how histrionic and uncivilised many found it at the time – quite how rule-abiding and righteous reality TV now looks compared to actual reality. There were parameters on the shows, even on many of the ghastlier ones. I mean, at least soundstages were frequently equipped with lie detectors. Imagine how much better this US election would have been with a polygraph. Imagine how much better the referendum campaign would have been with a polygraph. Imagine how much better both would have been if politicians had been bleeped and called into the producers when they said something racist.

Please don’t take all this as the view from above. It is hardly a matter of pride, but I suspect I am as unwittingly, hopelessly addicted to the horrifyingly debased dramas of today’s politics as many others. I used to watch lots of reality shows, but they haven’t done it for me for years now. Maybe the hit I used to get off their dramas and conflicts – was it dopamine? – requires a bigger stimulus. In the mad fever dream of the US election and the increasingly frightening divisions of Brexit, both amplified by social media, maybe I and countless others have found it. This used to be the way we watched. Now it’s the way we seek to govern; the way we govern; the way we live.