My first blog.
I am becoming increasingly frustrated with the choices that our political system is offering me but am not really sure there is anything much I can do about it.
Just a few markers to outline my position
Firstly, I have little respect for any of the top names in any of the political parties.
(In passing, this reminds me of a conversation that took place many a year ago between the then Prime Minister and AN Other. The latter complaining to the PM about his appointee as the new Poet Laureate. The PM's reply, after a short pause, went something along the lines of "I seem to recall that there weren't any other applicants for the job").
Secondly, I was again reminded, when seeing Alistair Campbell's performance at the Chilcot inquiry, of those feelings of annoyance and frustration that I frequently experienced during the Blair-spin-era, as Alistair wove his now well worked theme of denial and his inability/refusal to avoid answering directly important questions. All politicians do this - but AC is a master of the art so I just pick on him as an example for study for anyone who seeks to achieve an A grade in that particular subject !
Thirdly, worryingly, I know why the politicians take this line of avoidance. It is because they are locked into a Catch22 system. Let me expand. Nobody in life, whether it be a politician, or us as individuals goes through life telling everyone what our true thoughts are about others, none of us do things 100% correctly, and most particularly, none of us, if we can avoid it, volunteers information about the things we have messed up (unless we are forced into a corner). It is an impossibility to do all these - that is a plain fact of life. And yet we the public, the media and every other entity crucify publicly any politician if they basically own up to being or behaving as anything but the Archangel Gabriel. So it is no wonder our public figures are on the whole paranoid about the media. This all makes for a very difficult environment for our political representatives to ply their trade in and we end up with a relationship between them and us, the voters, of suspiscion and mistrust. Neither side trusting the other.
Clearly - a most unhealthy relationship. And it is not fair just to blame the politicians - there are reasons why they behave as they do - as explained above. This does not mean I am defending everything they do. Of course I don't. But much of the way politics has evolved in the latter part of the 20th Century onwards has been down by the effect of a very intrusive media, which has in the main been fully supported and endorsed by us the by voters. Very few on the voters side of the fence seem to appreciate the difficulties we have created for those on the other side of the fence.
I used to think that maybe there was a way round this Catch 22 - and that was for a politician to be honest and open with the media and to speak the truth. But I can see in practice this would simply not work - because of the unforgiving nature of the forces acting within our current political system - the opposition parties, the media and us the voting public - we would very quickly make mincemeat of such an approach because genuine errors (as well as shoddy activity) inevitably happen in the day to day running of government and both would (and are) treated as one and the same.
And so now we have reached a stage where our demcracy, which we adopted as a system of government to try to prevent abuse of power, is now limping along in a most unhealthy condition and in dire need of some radical medical treatment.
So how does this leave us - what can the physicians of political systems prescribe ? Has our democracy become immune to past remedies ? Is it time for us to to invest in new "medical research" to find a miracle cure for our political malaise ? We can see the symptoms - but there is no cure I am aware of on the horizon.
For the forseeable future, while the media has such an intrusive influence it looks like it will be a case of us having to put up with ill-health. Maybe a cure will arise in time, I don't know. If so - when ? again - I can't tell. Til then it looks like it is going to be a case of putting on a brave face and having to trying not to get too worked up at the Alisair Campbells of this world.
Winston Churchil once remarked about Neville Chamberlain " a modest man, with much to be modest about". Unfortuantely we do still have Neville Chamberlains in abundance in our political life , but even those politicians from our past who we might regard as being made of sterner stuff than Mr Chamberlain, yes, even the best of these, would without doubt find it extremely difficult going in the stiffling goldfishbowl of the current set-up.
