Regardless of how you feel about the current political administration and the revolving door that spews out Conservative party leaders – each an equally soulless and vacuous clone of the previous one – there is an underlying wrinkle that seems to be overlooked by most of us.
The first thing to do is to strip away all political allegiances and opinions from yourself, just for a moment. Not an easy task – many of us have our political leanings hard-wired into our morals, our ethics or some other fundamental belief that essentially makes us who we are. But once you place your beliefs to one side, can you honestly tell me the last time that you heard a politician speak and really, truly believed that they “got it”?
I’ll be the first to say I’d struggle. Any MP or MSP from any background, any place, any party : – there is not a man or woman that has made me look up from my phone and genuinely believe that they understand how things are.
Now, it would be unfair and wrong to suggest that they get into politics and stand on platforms of lies and half-truths purely out badness or some need to be seen and heard to the detriment of their fellow man, but even those with the purest of intentions end up the same way as all the others.
Many profess to be from poor areas or to have grown up in tough circumstances, and I’m sure some did, but how many have come into politics from “normal” jobs? How many have had aching hands and backs from manual labour? How many have been mentally drained from dealing with Joe Public every day? Again, some surely have. Simply by the numbers, surely there must be some out there. But I can’t think of any.
The sad reality is that they are entirely disconnected from reality. They get paid seventy odd thousand pounds a year and expense everything under the sun. A couple of hundred extra for every time they go to the House of Commons and participate in the embarrassing pantomime that passes for politics. Jeering, cajoling and waving papers at opposition points while cheering and supporting their own. It’s nothing more than playground mud-slinging writ large and disguised by flowery language and some sort of undeserved sense of importance.
The truth is that regardless of the theatrics and the cunningly worded vitriol that they exchange, they’re all drinking together afterwards at their heavily discounted bar. They are mostly graduates of expensive private educations, many with significant business interests that leave them independently wealthy. Not one of them has been worried about a utility bill once they were in politics or concerned about how they would feed themselves and their loved ones.
Don’t get me wrong, I would love to be shown to be incorrect. I would love to hear examples of politicians who legitimately understand how life is for a normal person and who truly invests time and effort into their community but the impression that I and I think most get is that they are completely detached.
They are in their own special club and we are not invited. The economy is in shambles, people are hungry and cold, the average person on the street is worrying and they consistently reduce themselves to posturing, grandstanding and point-scoring instead of making real change.
All of them, on all sides.
You can put your political allegiance hat back on now.
