At its roots, political campaigning is all about self-esteem and credibility . Examine almost any statement from the political platform and you will find it contains elements designed to establish the speaker’s credibility and bolster the audience’s self-esteem.   Indeed, ability to exploit the ‘feel good factor’ is crucial to the success of any appeal to the general public.   At the same time the campaigner has to buttress his or her own credibility against any scepticism, suspicions and damaging criticisms arising from past performance and behaviour.  But the well-briefed and  seasoned campaigner is usually persuasive enough to get by most of the time, especially with less sophisticated audiences.  On each occasion,of course, the informational content of his or her address has to meet certain minimal expectations;  but however carefully compiled and presented it stands or falls on the speaker’s credibility.

These somewhat trite observations are a necessary preamble to a more penetrating scrutiny of political behaviour in the public domain.  

Overriding all the other factors said to influence human attitudes and behaviour is the need for self-esteem.  Without this sense of self-worth nobody can function adequately in any society;  and therefore no explanation of social policy and behaviour can afford to ignore it.  After all, personal behaviour is conditioned from childhood by the reactions of other people, especially those seen as peer-group leaders or authority figures; these reactions tending to reinforce or discourage particular forms of behaviour in the individual.

Given the right sort of behavioural coaching,therefore, the individual acquires enough social competence to become a valued and trustworthy member of society .  But his or her self-regard will continue to be crucially dependent on the reactions of other people in the home, school, workplace or any other social context.  Not surprisingly then, the individual is always at pains to protect and bolster his or her self-regard, and is apt to grow particularly anxious when   anything seems to threaten it.  For how can one be self-assertive anywhere when it appears his or her particular brand of selfhood is unacceptable to other people ?

In short, self-assurance and all the benefits it can attract is socially determined. It follows from this that each of us has to come to terms with adverse social reactions from time to time , normally by amending our behaviour or at the very least apologising for it, or offering some explanation which  serves to absolve one from damaging character flaws. 

But apologising means acceptance of guilt…a naturally self-diminishing experience  to be avoided if possible.  Likewise, amending one’s behaviour to suit other people is  apt to be accompanied by more or less resentment.  We all like doing things our own way.  Consequently the option of being able to talk our way out of these uncomfortable self-diminishing situations is bound to preferred at least some of the time.

Fortunately for society, most people have enough good sense and regard for other people to amend their own behaviour when obviously necessary and to offer sincere apologies for the occasional lapses.   But there are all too many individuals who fail to make this accommodation, preferring instead to exploit exculpatory , that is to say blame-avoiding tactics,  And once this becomes ingrained habitual behaviour such people become examples of what I have termed the RPI Syndrome….Rationalisation of Personal Inadequacy. (In the psychological context ‘rationalisation’ means resorting to spurious  exculpatory ‘explanations’ for otherwise inexcusable behaviour). Individuals exhibiting this syndrome  - that is to say for whom blame is always elsewhere  - are naturally drawn to protest movements of one kind or another ;  they provide a kind of catharsis for their personal resentments and frustrations.  Cloaking themselves in a self-righteous protest campaign allows them to vent their frustrations without exposing their own character flaws.  It becomes a crafty career-advancement tactic for the chronically disgruntled.

This tactical behaviour is particularly evident in the political domain :  politicians after all are crucially dependent on public approval ;  added to which most of them emerge from a background of protest against the status quo , of wanting to change the world they find themselves in.  Nothing wrong with that, of course, except when this iconoclasm is driven not by altruism but a character flaw inclining them to blame everybody but themselves for the frustrations they encounter, such as failure to elevate their own status in society.     A classic example is the former anti-Apartheid campaigner, Peter Hain ; a political featherweight with a totally undistinguished and indeed disreputable background.   All such individuals are defined not by what they are for, but by what they are prominently seen to be against.  Like the witch-hunting zealots of medieval times, they hope to acquire a reputation for virtue by engaging in well-publicised persecution of those maligned as evil .   The type infests politics . It is seen at its crudest in the self-styled ‘anti-Nazi’ mobsters ; people who make ‘Nazism’ as they seem to define it an attractive ideology.

The professional protesters find all officialdom obnoxious so long as they are excluded from it.  However unworthy, they always present themselves as ‘underprivileged’. 

Needless to say their campaigns attract every malcontent and ‘minority group’ for miles around just as the witch-hunters did;  for nobody was seen to be too disreputable to enlist in these paranoid campaigns. 

The tragedy is that many of these self-serving zealots inveigle themselves into the upper ranks of mostly left-wing political parties, and even into government office .        

From that point on, their customary ‘opposition’ now no longer serving as an excuse, they have to scratch around for other ‘explanations’ when their own  performance is seen to be failing before the wider public.   Hence the likes of Gordon Brown pointing accusatory fingers at foreign targets while the country is collapsing around him. Blame American bankers, Afghan warlords, global warming, the price of oil, the Russians…..blame is always elsewhere for these ikons of the RPI Syndrome.

So , you may well ask, how do they nevertheless attract such a sizeable following ?   Well, like death and taxes, the malcontents are always with us . And in present-day Britain the hordes of clamant immigrants and welfare parasites are always going to vote for politicians blaming other peoples’ prejudice and selfishness for the country’s social and economic problems. It soothes their self-esteem.

Meanwhile the ordinary hardworking and law-abiding British native doesn’t actually have to anything at all to become the scapegoat for all these malcontents’ frustrations and resentments. Anything and anybody likely to expose the RPI subject’s inherent character flaws triggers their self-justifying outbursts and distracting demonstrations. .  

So much then for the problem.  Which way forward ? 

No quick fix here I’m afraid.  The RPI condition is literally a self-preservation instinct and trumps every argument in which the subject is engaged.  His or her repertoire of excuses is inexhaustible .  So the populist politician who massages their resentments and focuses blame everywhere else has an assured following.

Only one thing jolts people out of this self-justifying trance: namely, in the late Harold McMillan’s words ‘Events, dear boy, events’. 

Footnote: I trust this will not be regarded as a partisan thesis.  Your typical Tory grandee comes from a privileged background, so his politics are essentially self-preservatory. But he is just as likely to exhibit the RPI syndrome rather than altruism as his left-wing opponents, although in a more sophisticated form..