Politics: an outsider's game

As last week's TV election debate showed, the contest for outsider status in the UK election has rarely been more fierce. But then this is one of the most coveted positions for an ambitious politician - as long, of course, as it is only temporary. An outsider who stays outside for too long might be there for good. Then you are just George Galloway.

The real trick, therefore, is merely to look like an outsider. This is really difficult - so hard, in fact, that only a really gifted insider can normally pull off the role of a plausible outsider. A real outsider looks amateurish and peaks early; what the country really wants is the best inside-outer.

Take Barack Obama. When he declared for the presidency, this particular outsider was a graduate of Harvard Law School, a United States senator and already anointed as the great hope of the Democratic party. He was, of course, African-American, but his main claim to outsider status was that he ran about four years earlier than expected and against Hillary Clinton.

The great advantage of posing as an outsider is that it allows candidates to pander to the voters' contempt for existing politicians. In claiming this status, it is not enough simply to represent a different view or ideology from the mainstream parties. The true inside-outer will want to suggest that they personify a different, cleaner way of "doing politics". The inside-outers do not merely offer change, they are the change.

A favourite outsider gambit is to attack the London elite. This is particularly popular with nationalists. Nigel Farage talks often of the London metropolitan elite, deaf to the concerns of normal people, which does seem a bit rich, coming from a privately educated, pin-striped City trader. The Ukip leader would counter that he is a political outsider, whose views separate him from the political mainstream. This is true. On the other hand, is a man who has been an MEP for 16 years and a five-time parliamentary candidate truly cut from a different cloth to those politicians he affects to despise? The main difference, perhaps, is that he is less successful.

Another good technique is to denounce politics as a "boys' club". Of course, if you are going to play this card, it does help to be a woman. Step forward, Nicola Sturgeon. She's different: she's definitely not a boy and she's not even standing for Westminster at the election (although she has done in the past). But again, can you really claim outsider status if you are first minister of Scotland, a former Scottish health minister and someone who first stood for election to Westminster when she was 21 and has been in the Scottish parliament from its first day? In other words, she's an accomplished operator and a season-ticket holder in the political class.

The same can be said of Alex Salmond, former Scottish first minister, 23-year Westminster veteran, and a man with a legitimate claim to being the most effective politician in Britain. Indeed, perhaps his greatest skill is that after eight years in power in Scotland, he has still managed to position the SNP as an insurgency.

But in the battle for outsider status, there is one who outclasses them all. A man who has managed to secure outsider status against all odds and all evidence. Step forward, Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, Eton and Oxford, member of the Bullingdon Club and president of the Oxford Union, journalist on The Times and Daily Telegraph, editor of The Spectator, Conservative MP, Mayor of London and likely next leader of the Conservative party. This is not exactly a CV that screams anti-establishment. It is one thing to claim outsider status in a minor party; to do it as a leading Conservative is quite another.

All these leaders are successfully claiming unpolitician status, even if, to me at least, this is actually proof that they are the biggest political operators of the lot. But they should be wary. Outsider status, except in the hands of the truly gifted, is a short-term strategy. People attracted by your outside cred tend to hold it against you once you win power and turn out to be another insider. Just ask Nick Clegg.

[email protected]; Twitter: @robertshrimsley

Illustration by Lucas Varela

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