(Photo © AP)
So, what would a Berber tribesman from a mountainous desert region in a country that once stretched from Andalusia to Timbuktu make of the UK’s General Election?
Bear in mind the land he comes from has had a constitutional monarchy for 1200 years, has an unbridgeable gap between rich and poor, more bazaars and souks than supermarkets, as many donkey carts as cars, and only a very recent grasp of the concept of democracy. A land in which there’s no such thing as an NHS, where energy management often just means banking up the goat-dung fire, where the melting pot has always been a way of life, where cultures meet to trade, and a stranger is just a friend you haven’t yet shared a tagine with.
Let’s call this newcomer Omar.
It’s his first time in the UK, but his English is pretty good. He watches the TV news, he reads the newspapers, follows events on the internet. But something about the politicians' speeches puzzles him mightily. What is all this talk of immigration and foreigners? Everyone he sees looks British to him, whether they are pale skinned, dark skinned or olive skinned. They are just people. In his own country you see people of all different colours and types. No one would ever dream of calling them foreigners – in his country it would be impolite to refer to them as anything other than ‘brother’ or ‘sister’. To ask them when they’re leaving, or worse, not to let them in at all, would be the height of rudeness.
And what sort of country is this in which everyone is trying to make everyone else afraid? All the political parties are trading on fear.
Fear of the future.
Fear their children will have no future.
Fear of dying old, alone and penniless.
Fear of war.
Fear of Europe.
Fear of terrorism.
Fear of foreigners.
That morning, when Omar went to buy his milk and newspaper, he smiled warmly at an old lady in the shop, but she scurried past him with a look of suspicion. Outside on the street, he said ‘Good morning’ to a man with a dog. The dog wagged its tail: but the man just glared at him and strode on. Omar caught sight of his reflection in a shop window. Was he really that frightening? He was wearing jeans and a jacket; his hair was cut short to the skull, he had no beard. He had brown skin, the colour of an acorn. He didn’t think he looked threatening; but it was true, he didn’t have white skin.
Colours seem to be important here. He has noticed that the political parties have all chosen certain colours to represent themselves: blue for the Conservatives, red for Labour, yellow for the Liberal Democrats, green for the Green Party, and a really rather horrible combination of yellow and purple for UKIP.
Twenty years ago in his country the political parties were also differentiated by colour. You went into the polling station and chose one of a dozen differently coloured papers to signify your choice of party and put it in an envelope, then into the ballot box. But people got confused as to which colour was which. Was that yellow or amber? Turquoise or blue? And what if you were colour-blind? His mother had chosen one of each colour and put them all together in one envelope, “So that the king can decide which one is best.” She had never quite got the hang of democracy.
They had come up with a different method. There were still a lot of people in his country who could not read or write so rather than having printed names, each party was represented by a symbol. A lion. A gazelle. A tractor. A book. A lantern. A horse. A set of scales. A key. A camel.
Funnily enough, though, no donkeys or monkeys, dogs or clowns…
There seemed to be a number of clowns standing for parliament in the UK General Election. They posed for photos - in factories and at building sites and cafes and schools - and smiled and smiled and smiled. But what really baffled Omar was that people here didn’t seem to be able to tell the difference between a genuine smile and one that did not touch the eyes or come from the heart.
For some reason, they did not seem to recognise that the clowns were a lot more dangerous than he was.