A Tory toast to politics as entertainment

A little British row is rolling about this summer, waiting for its time to become - or to fail to become - a scandal. A television documentary is planned, to be aired some time before the next general election, on the Bullingdon Club, a champagne and window-smashing resort of Oxford toffs to which David Cameron, leader of the Conservative party, George Osborne, his shadow chancellor, and Boris Johnson, the Conservative mayor of London, all belonged. There are sensitivities that too vivid an exposure might undermine Mr Cameron's determined rebranding of his party.

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If Mr Berlusconi is the patron saint of politics as a show (even though he has said, with trademark modesty: "I'm no saint"), the movement also has its Machiavelli. Drew Westen, the American psychologist, has written that "the political brain is an emotional brain". This has been interpreted by political operatives to mean: make them laugh, make them cry, make them go "How awful!" But above all, keep them entertained. Politics' Faustian pact with television has, of course, a yawning gate of hell beneath it: the flick of the remote button. Most people do not know much about most events most of the time. The media bombard them with entertainment and have, in the past two decades or so, made politicians a large part of that. Politicians must enter into the spirit, appearing on the chat shows and demonstrating that they can take a joke. They must also emote in public, though they must be careful to get the tone right. For a shift of emotional sensibility has occurred. Where we once admired discipline, restraint and emotional disguise, we now prefer the opposite: Princess Diana wrote the primer for this. The undisciplined, unrestrained and emotionally open persona is prized: and the sinner may be pardoned, even embraced, if he or she does it, with some style, on television. This shift means that many feel more comfortable with politicians such as Mr Berlusconi. A man of show business, he has injected its values deep into politics. He has certainly started a trend that crosses the political divide: Beppe Grillo, Italy's most famed comedian and blogger - whose show is a brilliant rant against the Italian political class - has announced that he will stand for the leadership of the Democratic party, the main party of the left.

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