'The Tory Party's problems won't be fixed by tax cuts - here's why'
You have just been served a plate filled with a delicious roast dinner: gravy, spuds, everything done by the book.
Only that perfect roast dinner has just spent 24 hours in the human digestive system, and what's on your plate, while warm and with a definite whiff of Bisto, is making you pull exactly the face you're wearing reading this: your upper lip is curled, your teeth bared, the mouth turned down.
That is the standard look of disgust, the visceral response to the things that we learned to avoid, long before anyone knew about germs or bacteria. Our guts churn, we arch our tongues, we wrinkle our faces. It's how we've survived this long, and by telegraphing it to others with our body language, we help each other understand what's too foul for words.
And that instinct is the biggest barrier to Rishi Sunak's re-election. Because that bone-deep revulsion to poop or rotten meat is also seen, in humans, when people are treated badly.
"Well that's... not in my programming. Can you explain?" (PA)You pulled that same face when you heard about grandmother Esther Martin being mauled to death by two XL Bully-type dogs, four days after they were supposed to have been banned. You looked like that when your mortgage payments quadrupled, your energy bills went thermonuclear, and you tried to work out how much childcare you would need to earn enough money to pay for the childcare.
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You may not have heard, because it's not being trumpeted by most news outlets apart from the Mirror, but under the Tories there are more babies dying. According to a report by the Academy of Medical Sciences, 4 in every 1,000 children born in the UK die before they're a year old. The figure has been stable for a decade. But in Japan, Sweden, Finland, Slovenia, it's less than 2.
One in 5 children is obese by the time they start school. One in 4 has tooth decay. Since the Tories came to power, child poverty has gone up by 20%, the worst rate among 39 of the world's richest nations. Vaccination rates have plummeted, demand for children's mental health services has soared, and a generation of children are growing up sick - if they get to grow up at all.
Read that again: 20% of 5-year-olds are obese, 25% of children have rotten teeth, 4.2million children live in poverty. That's almost a third of all children in the country, the majority of whom have parents who are in work. If your face is not currently showing disgust, you're probably a serial killer.
"What am I supposed do with this data?" (PA)Science has spent a long time studying disgust. So have PR professionals, who have worked out how to leverage it. So if you have a patio-cleaning firm, show the icky sludge getting blasted off it. If you want to sell bleach, have a cartoon poo hop out of the loo to mock customers. And if you want people to distrust migrants, show pictures of men-who-might-be-terrorists, people-who-look-ill, or mums-with-many-babies.
That's why you don't see TV footage of attractive, smiling, healthy migrants with a better work ethic than you. And there's another element to it - if you can trigger the disgust response, the person who is disgusted makes harsher decisions.
Researchers exposed people to images or smells of foulness, and found that they became less rational and more emotional. They opted to take money away from people, to offer less in the first palce, to be more unfair, than if those same people were asked the same questions without the disgusting stimuli. Added to that, you can't not poke it with a stick - ugh, look at it, hey you come and smell this. Ooh, it reeks.
So those who see images of migrants-as-problems will have more emotional, less sensible reactions than if they see migrants as hardworkers. And they're gripped by it, keep returning to it. If you're a Tory strategist, it's that response you try to create with every issue in your media grid, with Rishi Sunak as the bleach-wielding patio-cleaner who can blast it all away.
There is just one problem with this genius PR move. It also works in reverse.
So if you're the guy who keeps waving the bad-migrants-trope around, you're contaminated. If the migrants seem to be your personal dingleberry, then you will be the focus of disgust. And after 14 years in power, there isn't anyone the Tories haven't disgusted.
They disgust racists, because immigration is higher than it's ever been. NHS patients, because the nurses are run off their feet and there's no help. Parents, because childcare promises aren't turning into actual childcare. The rich, the poor, the in-betweens, homeowners, wannabe homeowners, child-focused, child-free, pensioners and teens. Many animals show disgust to things that are rotten or a health hazard, but it seems humans alone display it when they see unfairness.
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The Tories have not talked about equality and social justice since the days of David Cameron, who has rejoined the Cabinet as the undead. Brexit has appalled Leave and Remain voters alike, and the culture wars - be it trans rights, Black Lives Matter, or some other confected minority row - stoked a disgust that has bounced back on the stokers.
This weekend it was reported that Tory strategists are advising the party the next election is still winnable, if they pull together. Jeremy Hunt wants to make 'smart tax cuts' whatever they are, while Rishi's policy platform has been on the same downward spiral as a New Year diet - a pledge becomes a priority, gets downgraded to an ambition, and by February it's a joke.
The Tories are doing everything by the book: tax cuts, dog whistles, and Labour loons. But Sunak could put a £1m cheque in the post to every voter, and they'll still be revolted by him, his record, and his stinking helicopter. There is only one thing that cancels out a sense of disgust, and it is removing yourself from the disgusting thing.
You bury the body, you flush the sour milk, and when it comes to politicians, you wipe babykillers away with the ballot paper. That's how we all survive.
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