The Labour Pundit as Smart Mark: What Pro-wrestling Fandom Can Tell Us About Electoral Politics in the Media
George Osborne's new cap on total welfare spending, which a parliamentary vote will be held on next week, is his least disguised trap for Labour yet. But at his post-Budget briefing to the lobby, Ed Balls made it clear that he won't be falling into it.
In wrestling terminology, a "smart mark" is a fan who believes that they, unlike regular fans (marks), understands what's happening behind the scenes; the term is (sometimes) used in a derogatory way to suggest that the "smart mark" isn't actually as smart as they think they are. That seems like a great description of the kind of wannabe-House-of-Cards schtick that passes as political analysis in the media, as for instance in this article in the New Statesman. The "trap" that George Osborne has apparently set for Labour consists in proposing a policy that Labour may disagree with; but, because the Tories won the last election, evidently the way to win elections is to not disagree with the Tories; so, Ed Balls certainly won't be disagreeing with his political opponents, good lord no.
The "logic" here is obviously incredibly stupid, made all the more tragic by imagining itself to be some kind of incredibly devious Machiavellianism. But it would be a mistake to think that this stupidity is necessarily a problem for the Labour party (that we are the "real" smarts, unlike the pundit "marks"). Because it may be that the pundits are precisely as stupid as is required by the stupidity that is electoral politics.
