The great Scottish poet Robbie Burns’ famous quote “O wad some Power the giftie gie us to see oursels as ithers see us!" could well have been written solely for politics because politicians often have the greatest capacity for self-delusion. History is littered with examples – big and small – of politicians whose understanding of their circumstances has been completely, almost sadly, out of touch with the reality of their situation.  

After last weekend’s local government elections defeated Wellington mayoral candidate Ray Chung woefully admitted he had been so confident of victory that he had pre-ordered a $90,000 Rolex watch to celebrate his victory. However, in fact Chung finished a distant third in the mayoral race and only narrowly held on to his council seat. In a similar vein, former Wellington mayor Tory Whanau said she was “shocked” not to have been returned to the council through the Māori ward seat.

Yet most impartial observers of the Wellington scene would have been able to tell Chung and Whanau of the fates that awaited them, long before the elections took place. Chung’s mayoral chances had evaporated when the salacious e-mail he had circulated about Whanau a couple of years ago surfaced, and Whanau’s fate in the Māori ward was sealed when she failed to get the endorsement of local iwi. While their determination to carry on in the face of such setbacks was admirable, it does not justify the stunned surprise both displayed when the election results were declared.

Of course, Chung and Whanau are not the first, nor will they be the last, politicians to be caught out by their self-delusion. Therefore, the bigger question becomes how is it that politicians, who supposedly have such a good sense of what people are thinking, so consistently fail to see the signs of public disillusionment with them?

In part, it is a simple matter of personal ego and self-belief, that their cause is right and that they have the answers and the capability to deal with the problems their community or country is facing. That of itself is no bad thing, but it needs to be tempered by a dose of Burns-like reality about how they and their proposed solutions are perceived by the communities they want to serve. People seldom vote for politicians they consider out of touch with their daily reality.

Politicians often live in an echo-chamber. They are surrounded by key advisers and workers who support their goals and want to see them succeed. This group therefore focuses on the positives of their campaigns and often avoids telling the politician the true reality of external perceptions. Negative feedback or information is kept at arm’s length, lest it detract from the cause that is being pursued. Again, history provides many examples of this bunker mentality at work.

Right now, as the race for next year’s general election tightens, these factors are clearly at play within all the political parties, National and Labour in particular. Both continue to be trapped within their bubble, viewing the state of the country through their own ideological prism, and taking little account of outside thinking. In a changing world, each is still promoting the same old policy directions they have always promoted. There is little evidence yet of new or dynamic thinking.

The same goes for their support parties, although not to quite the same extent. There are signs within ACT, for example, that it is seeking to soften its flinty hard-right approach, so beloved by its activists and key supporters, in favour of attempting to become more voter friendly. Similarly, New Zealand First is working to broaden the base of its support, successfully so far if the opinion polls which it consistently ridicules are any guide, but the party remains centred around the leader and the tight inner core that supports and dares not cross him.

On the centre-left, the Green Party has remained staunchly within its quietly growing support base, apparently untroubled by, and indeed wearing as a badge of honour, the increasingly strident attacks that it is living in a fantasy world of its own. The apparent sense of defiance and insularity now emerging within Te Pati Māori’s leadership following the revelation of the party’s internal divisions raises in a different way the question of whether it is so consumed with its own issues as to not care, let alone acknowledge, the impact of external perceptions.

In their different ways, none of the parties is currently focusing on how voters perceive them. They are all too inwardly focused. But in the type of tightly defined political marketplace we have today the solutions the country is seeking go beyond the narrow interests of one group of parties or another. The need to find common ground on key issues like improving our woeful economic performance and declining standard of living, promoting social cohesion, and showing greater tolerance for cultural and ethnic diversity has never been stronger.

Voters generally care little for the parties’ view of the overall state of the world. As Norman Kirk once said, “there are four things that matter to people: they have to have somewhere to live, they have to have food to eat, they have to have clothing to wear, and they have to have something to hope for.” They look to political parties to provide the opportunity for them to attain these. Nothing more, nothing less.

Our politicians and their parties all need to step outside their bubbles of self-delusion and recognise that Kirk’s statement remains as relevant today as it was when he first made it well over fifty years ago. And then, having absorbed the message, they need to shape their policy programmes accordingly.