With so much that needs to be corrected and changed for the better, it may seem a little trivial to go full circle back to the issue of how politics works, where Levelling Level first began.

However, we are in the mess that we are in, and we are faced with the huge challenge of addressing that mess, because we have had the wrong people in politics for such a long time.

We have touched on the reasons for this issue in different places throughout this book, but the problems that poor leaders create for the rest of us will not be solved and will just be changed or transformed into a different form of those problems, for as long as we don’t set values-based rules or boundaries around the quality and ability of the people that we choose to elect.

Like everything else today, too many politicians are recruited by the existing political parties based on how their candidacy will look. The majority don’t have the life skills or experience to make decisions that will have an effect on other people’s lives, and even those who could offer something useful don’t have the conviction and confidence to stand up to a system that rejects or ejects those who do not conform.

Politics or rather public representation is NOT a job. Despite having a system or accepted career pathway for wannabes who have decided they will be Prime Minister when they are children and then do degrees and early career jobs that line them up as perfect tick-box candidates for the existing political parties, public representation or being an MP is NOT a career too.

We have fallen into the trap of thinking that things like popularity, the ability to speak or argue in public and being able to stay on message are the attributes that make a politician good.

But they are not good for anyone, when the key attribute of a good politician is having a real understanding and appreciation of how life works for different people in very different circumstances, and what strategy looks and feels like for others, when it is implemented and then put to work.

If our political system is to be healthy and work on behalf of us all, rather than be maintained by people who are only out for themselves, we must only elect people who see the role of being a public representative as a vocation or calling based on rich and meaningful life experience, and not on personal agendas in any form.