If you are able to overlook the impact and outcomes that come from such a chaotic mess, the current political environment and the media circus that surround it can certainly provide a lot of entertainment.
Sadly, growing numbers of us are either feeling the pain of many years of political incompetence or at the very least having our breath taken away by the constant flow of unbelievable actions and decisions that politicians are taking not just in the UK, but across the world.
In the UK, many who had been hoping that the Reform UK party would prove to be our saviours when the next General Election comes (whenever that might actually be) have found themselves awakening with a jolt this week as the real character and depth of the Party has been exposed by the expulsion of MP Rupert Lowe and the allegations that have been made, after he openly questioned the prime ministerial credentials of Nigel Farage.
However, behind the ‘let’s back whatever we can see as being different’ facade – which is regrettably just a second attempt at what the UK basically voted into No.10 last July – there exists the rather unsettling reality for everyone that Reform offer nothing that is fundamentally different to any of the other Political Parties that we currently recognise.
The Reform MPs and active members who are working towards elections and seats across the Country are motivated like the majority of the political class that exists in and across the UK today, in the very same way. And doing more of the same, isn’t going to deliver change, no matter how different the choice may seem or look.
A good example of the many problems that any political movement or group that has a genuine desire to change anything that the UK government and public sector system faces, can be illustrated by how well people (especially on the political ‘right’) have been responding to DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency) in the USA, since Trump returned to Office and Elon Musk began his ‘job’. As it demonstrates just how out of touch with the way our own system of government and the public sector in the UK works, and how little regard there is for the consequences and impact of doing anything with public policy in isolation, without considering the interconnectedness and links between all policies and how everything works.
Regrettably, it is unlikely that even a Parliament filled with 650 of the best MPs that we could identify as being available and willing to take on the real responsibility that each of them has to the British Public would be able to deliver the kind of change that we need in the UK today, because they wouldn’t be able to agree on the way to make change work, without having to reach compromises and going down the same routes where all of today’s problems could be viewed as having began.
Whilst the idea conjures up all sorts of negative parallels, the reality we face is that achieving the type and level of change that decades of the wrong politicians has given us now requires a level of single-mindedness that can only come from having one person at the very top.
Yes, that one person would have to be a very unique kind of leader, who not only understands the true realities and depth of all the problems alongside how everything works; they would also have to be incorruptible and driven with a sense of public service and selflessness that we simply haven’t seen in politics as we know it at any time before.
No, it’s not impossible. But it’s certainly a lot to ask.
However, with things going as they are and in the circumstances we are already experiencing and where many of us are now realising where everything is already heading, there may never before have been such a need for a Good Dictator and the leap of faith from us all that would back them to do what it will take to get everything done.
Adam Tugwell 