Ed Balls and the Politics of Shame

It's Saturday night: his face is green. His round paunch is packed into a yellow suit and his feet are chopping moves on a polished wooden floor. He is, he believes, replicating Jim Carrey's maniacal performance in The Mask. Yet, the thick paint that adorns his face has trapped him in a state of expression somewhere between fear and mourning. He moves with the elegance of a man in perpetual motion. His centre of gravity – pulled to and fro by the density of his torso – has him lurching like a seal on a unicycle. He seems weirdly devoted to the idea that maybe, just maybe, if he tries really hard, he might suddenly become an amazing dancer. There's an affected determination in his eyes, like a five-year-old trying desperately to complete a really hard sum on the blackboard while his whole class watches on, gormless.

A year and a half ago Ed Balls was the second most important man in the Labour party and expected by most to become Chancellor of the Exchequer after the 2015 election. Now he is the worst contestant on Strictly Come Dancing, consistently coming at the bottom of the judges' leaderboard.

Of course, people are desperate for him to stay in to see how he will embarrass himself next. He has twice been saved by the public vote. He is transforming into a figure of fun. The Loose Women Twitter account recently posted the sentence, "Awwwww, we can't get enough of @edballs." Both Diane Abbott and Ed Miliband have spoken of him as becoming – or having become – a national treasure.

Seventeen months earlier, Ed Balls was watching his career, his world, crumble. He won 422 votes less than the victorious Conservative candidate Andrea Jenkyns in the Morley and Outwood constituency of West Yorkshire. The footage of them announcing the result remains the clearest death knell for the Labour party's electability – one of the most high-profile figures in British politics couldn't even hold on to his safe seat.

Balls' fall from grace and subsequent transformation into a dancing goon is part of a trend sweeping modern politics. Balls – now dressed up in any number of bargain bin costumes, forced to pull mock "surprise" faces while a woman half his age thrusts her legs across his crotch – is ostensibly embarrassing himself. He is behaving in a completely un-statesmanlike way, not only rejecting the norms of his previous profession but replacing them with something frivolous and gaudy. Not only that, but he sucks at it. It's not like he danced as a young man and now he's left politics he's picking it up again. He's seemingly exited from politics in order to cavort around the stage, nearly-but-not-quite falling over and now and again shouting, "Somebody stop me!" at Len Goodman. Yet rather than diagnosing this situation with a wry "how the mighty have fallen", it would be wiser to see Ed's appearance on Strictly as a power play.

Of course, Balls doesn't currently have a seat and as such his influence over policy is zero. Yet, in terms of populist opinion – and if 2016's political climate is a measuring stick, populist opinion rules all – he is probably the most powerful political figure in the country right now. On the 2nd of October, Strictly was watched by 9.2 million viewers – only 100,000 less than the number of people who voted for Labour in the last election. Ed Balls alone is speaking to the people. A far cry for his own fate in the most recent general election, and an ever further cry from the mainstream appeal of the Labour Party in its current form. The shift he is currently undergoing will see him recalibrated as someone fun, someone relatable – an everyman. In terms of rebranding Labour, he's doing a much better job than Seumas Milne.

I texted my mum about Ed Balls as I was writing this article, to get the opinion of someone who is both an avid Strictly fan and also someone with an almost genetic aversion to voting for Labour.

"I think he is a real gem," she replied.

He isn't the first politician to try to transcend politics in an attempt to become nationally adored. Many before him have had a go at "showing another side of themselves" to the British public, either after or during their time in office. Both Vince Cable and Ann Widdecombe enjoyed popular stints on Strictly, the latter gaining particular notoriety when – like the ghost of yer nan – she flew through the air in a pink cardigan during her tango.

But the most effective operative in this arena is Boris Johnson. Before becoming Mayor of London, before he rose to prominence as the sort of man who'd willingly lead his country out of the European Union in order to have a pop at becoming the Prime Minister, he was best known for presenting Have I Got News for You. During his appearances on the show he managed to play up to his Family Guy-cutaway posh English character so effectively that people actually started to like him. And not just "let's give him an antique-hunting show on BBC Two" like him; more, "Let's trust him, in part, with the course of British history."

In the eyes of the public he became little more than a Harry Enfield character, yet in this process he empowered himself – pushing his harmless public persona into becoming one of the most wasteful, career-minded politicians in memory. Not only was Johnson unharmed by gaffes and goofs, they helped him. His image was already softened, accepted and loved. His suggestion that Barack Obama's Kenyan heritage had led to his pro-EU position was placed in the same oafish category as his brutal rugby tackle of a 10-year-old Japanese child. By playing the clown, Boris Johnson made himself failure-proof.

This distraction technique isn't exclusive to the right. There's a liberal version of it that's been employed by Barack Obama across his presidency. A man who has most likely secured himself a generous spot in most centre-to-left people's memories simply via his smooth and capable performances in any number of comedy sketches. To be clear, we are talking about a serving president who has appeared on Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee, Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis, Marc Maron's WTF podcast and even filmed his own spoof retirement video for the end of his second term. Barack Obama has a longer film and TV credit list than Steve Buscemi. He is a devastatingly effective stand-up comedian, and as such associating him with acts of war, or even global economics, becomes difficult – it becomes clouded. Drone strikes are far easier to forget when the president is more like Harry Hill than Henry Hoover.

At the time of writing, the presidential race in America remains undecided. Donald Trump's campaign highlights the shocking power of shame-proofing in modern politics. This man is a reality TV star of the highest order – a man with reel after reel of schlocky steak adverts, pizza hut endorsements, WWE smackdowns and musical Emmy performances. He was Comedy Central Roasted, for fuck's sake. Crucially, he was never a politician in the first place – his chances of being an untouched, revered head of state disappeared the second he made a cameo on the Fresh Prince of Bel Air. Yet with no pulpit on high from which to fall, he has also remained impervious to scandal. Whatever the papers say about him, it's never really going to shock or appall a nation already used to seeing him judge beauty pageants. Just look at the outraged reactions of many left-leaning commentators when Trump made a recent appearance on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. Many remarked how incongruous it was to see Fallon ruffling the hair of a man who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the country. Yet it isn't incongruous at all. That's exactly where he belongs.

In his podcast Revisionist History, writer Malcolm Gladwell chastises comedian Tina Fey's impression of Sarah Palin, in particular her decision to appear on SNL with Palin herself. He says of this move, "Saturday Night Live has taken out its dentures and is sipping the political situation through a straw." In Gladwell's eyes, the attempt at satire loses any power – any teeth – as soon as the target is in on the joke.

But what Gladwell doesn't recognise is how hard it must be for political satirists working in the current landscape. How are you supposed to effectively mock politicians when they are prepared – no, eager – to do it to themselves? How, for example, could you possibly mock Ed Balls? What impression of him would ever come close to the ludicrousness of the real thing? Ed Balls. Ed Balls in a tight yellow suit. Ed Balls doing a salsa. The answer is you can't. He is protected by his own agency. By making himself the butt of his own joke, he has taken the control away from everybody else. He has made himself failure-proof.

There are obviously different types of politico-celebrity – Ed Balls and Donald Trump, for instance, are not equivalents in the power-grabbing via cynical self-promotion stakes. Yet the last decade or so has seen the emergence of politicians made stronger by their healthy relationships with light entertainment. Dancing the Charleston, appearing on The Last Leg, eating kangaroo bollocks, all the while consolidating their presence and protecting themselves from third-party humiliation.

Laugh at Ed Balls in his yellow suit. Laugh at his sub-par Paso Doble. Laugh at his Jim Carrey impression. But know this: he is making himself invincible.

@a_n_g_u_s

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