But it will take something very special to clear up the mess they’ve created
I recently heard it said that politicians are all psychopaths. It may have been in the script of some comedy-based show or drama I was watching. But the sentiment and what it reminded me of from my own experience of being in politics and working with many different politicians really struck home.
Whilst we can be certain that not all politicians are psychopaths, the evidence of our own eyes certainly suggests that the Government is under the control of either psychopaths, people with psychopathic tendencies or people who certainly behave like them; for the simple reason that no matter what the messaging from government and the establishment may say, the impact and delivery of both governance and policy is not focused upon what’s good for the electorate and our communities in any kind of good or human way.
However, before running away with the conclusion that every well known name we hear on the news is a psycho, it might be a better idea to consider the reality that things are more likely to have turned to complete shit, because of the way that the politicians we have behave so badly, selfishly and inconsiderately, and because of the character flaws and traits they typically have in common between them, that are impacting what they do and therefore us, in so many different ways.
Who really wants to be a politician and why?
This is a question that we should all be asking ourselves, a lot more frequently than we do.
The answer – when we really think about this and consider the real mechanics of how the political system puts its people onto the list of candidates on our ballot papers at election time – will soon begin to reveal many of the answers, not only to this, but to many other pressing questions about the way the U.K. is being run, that we all need to know.
Before going further, I will insert the caveat, that in my own experience, many people put themselves forward to become political party candidates with what we might all agree as being the best of intentions.
But that’s as far as any default allowance should ever go.
As even the best intentions can only really be considered for what they are, once we look at each candidate and ask the question ‘The best of intentions for who?’
Who politicians really serve is also an important and very timely question. Because if the current polls and polling are to be believed, the benches of our parliament and councils up and down the UK will soon be filled with people who’ve never been politicians before.
People who have nonetheless stepped up and become candidates for some political party like Reform, armed only with what for many of them will be the sincere belief that they will be the person to break the downward trend of everything we know and once elected will get things done.
But what things will they get done? And the things they aim to achieve will be good for who?
Beliefs built without foundation quickly get blown away then replaced
Few of those who are newbies to politics realise that there is a whole new set of rules at work for anyone and everyone to follow and work with in frontline or elected politics, just as soon as they have walked through the electoral door to an electoral ‘seat’.
By newbies I mean anyone who hasn’t personally held an elected office of any kind, at any level – whether they’ve never been politically active before, been on a pathway, been a lobby journalist or even an activist or commentator of some kind who has racked up millions of likes and followers on YouTube, because their words connect with people in some way.
If any candidate ‘won’ a ‘seat’ by being on a party ticket – no matter which party ticket they aligned their name with to get there, they will be on their own, rejected and probably on their way straight back out of the door, if they don’t do whatever they are told and say yes to whoever seems to be running things, whether they agree with it or not, from the moment the euphoria of ‘their’ election has died down.
Yes, finding common ground with other newbies and giving themselves a group voice can and will give them influence over some things.
But those things won’t be anything that will really change the things that really need to be changed in the way most entrants to politics sincerely intended, before they walked through the ‘elected’ door.
Most newbies, if not all, will find themselves facing a rather stark and deflating reality. That they have the choice of becoming part of the machine. Or at best to annoy their so-called political colleagues by attempting to do what is actually the right thing for the people who elected them and use their own voice – as they were elected to do so. Leaving them with very little they can do, when as a public representative, they should have been able to do so much.
The choice is rarely one that’s thought through consciously by those who have ‘arrived’. And that’s where many of the real problems with this mess of a political system begin.
Politics today is addictive for those foolish enough to believe the spin
Do ask yourself how many elected politicians you see, at any level, who resign the party whip at any point in a council or parliamentary term, and don’t immediately ‘walk the floor’ to join another party.
The reality is that very few do. And of those that do, most will have themselves been pushed out or in all likelihood found themselves questioning the whole purpose of politics; the electoral system and what being there or being part of it is really for – once they have seen the truth of how things really work.
The people who stay or try to move to another party, aren’t people who are there to represent you or I.
Being ‘in it to win it’, ‘staying in the tent’, or anything along those lines is a self serving myth that gives unscrupulous and ambitious politicians the excuse that they are ‘keeping their powder dry’ until it’s the right time – or rather when they get to the top. By which time they will of course no longer recognise any such need.
We have a party political and electoral system that guarantees the top-down functionality that minimises our influence
Politics in the UK isn’t the place for people who have the skills, experience and ability to change the things that need to be changed in this Country, today.
The party and electoral system that we have currently combine to ensure we either don’t get the right people in the majority of elected roles. Or that they are rejected by the party that put them there when there is even the smallest hint that we do.
The reality that any politician joining parliament, a council or entering any elected government role faces, is that the only politicians who are making meaningful decisions – or getting in the way of those that could stop people being harmed in some way, are those who are right at the very top of the top-down hierarchy that keeps them insulated from what people like you and me need.
Some truths about U.K. politics and our Electoral system, today
We say we have a democracy in the UK. Many believe that we do.
But we don’t choose the candidates on a ballot paper that we choose from.
We don’t choose the politicians who take key jobs in councils, in parliament or those who become mayors.
When we’ve voted and the votes have been counted, that’s the last moment that anything we have to say about anything will count or have meaning for anyone. Right up until the moment that the next election is called.
The system works and is controlled by the political parties who are all running in very similar ways to each other, by people with the same motives and same wishes to make it big in politics and be seen to be ‘the one’ who is in charge.
The only people who become political candidates, get elected, then stay, acquiesce, take part and contribute to what is a supposedly democratic form of government today by doing exactly whatever they are told, are yes men and yes women.
People who do and can only do well because they are on message and turn a blind eye to the needs of the people who put them there.
These people aren’t leaders or capable of leadership.
They are fools who live in fear of losing the roles that once elected they quickly perceive as being rightfully theirs.
All the time they are blind and deaf to the true responsibilities of what being a public representative demands them to be.
A downward system that takes everything downward as it keeps going down
The so-called leaders that we believe we currently have are just the latest incumbents on an intergenerational chain of weak, yes-men/yes-women politicians who have continuously said yes until they have found themselves right at the top.
Yet they can only maintain the pretence of leadership by saying yes to any advisor or specialist who tells them what to do, because they are not used to saying, meaning and being prepared to risk everything for themselves by putting those they represent first by saying no.
These people should never possess the power and responsibility they have, as they continually harm others by obsessively running from anything they believe will cause harm to themselves and the roles they now have.
This is not how leadership works. This is not how real change gets done.
These people are out of their depth. They have little or no view of real life or how the world works beyond their own perspective.
The politicians we have today have typically been corrupted by the power and influence that comes from having a role where they confuse having a microphone or camera rammed in their face, from the moment they are elected, as being only because they have been elected. Rather than it being because they are just the latest person to have been elected by voters or appointed by their political piers to carry out a particular role which commands public and media interest, no matter who they are.
Control, feeling in control, being seen to be in control, demonstrating that they are in control. These are the only things that are important to the would-be leaders we have in politics who cannot lead even themselves in any way.
Everyone and everything are a risk or threat to their position, once they reach the top.
So, they surround themselves with politicians who are even weaker and more inept or incompetent than they are.
The even weaker versions of themselves take over from them when their moment in the sun is done.
Then the process of replacing the weak with the even weaker begins all over again.
Fear and Power are a very dangerous mix
These politicians are people just like you and me.
But instead of being different in the ways that their position would make many of us expect, they are fearful in ways that everyday people fail to understand.
The level of fear of loss today’s political class have for themselves also makes them vulnerable to the whims and influence of those they look up to.
Much like an orphan meeting the parent that they never believed it possible to have, being certain that they will be protected in ways that will make them invulnerable against anything bad that they feel might otherwise lay in store.
The reality of our ‘leaders’
Some of those who have stepped into politics and made it to the political equivalent of the C suite without being rejected, spat out, sidelined or becoming victim to the many temptations that befall so many who have found themselves in these positions, and fallen into the trap of believing it was something special about themselves, began the process by being genuine in their desire to do something good.
However, this certainly wasn’t the case with them all.
There are many who have ended up on this gravy train, that has made life so intolerably bad for people who we all pass by in the streets each and every day, for no better reason than they wanted the job and the glory they believed it would give them. Probably from an early age.
But they also had no concept of what political influence can and should enable good public representatives to do.
They therefore have no passion for the responsibility they have and they lack the talent, skill and ability that responsibility to others also requires; that politics done for all the right reason inevitably always involves.
People who could be good politicians and have the selflessness and sense of public service that change requires, are either put off by what they discern as being no better than a circus of egos. Or they soon find out once they have stepped inside the system, that politics in the UK is no better than a fun house at a run-down traveling fair creating irreparable damage to every bit of ground it stands on.
The people who enter and stay in politics today and the people who really think they and only they can make the difference that none of the people they have watched on TV have managed so far, are the fools that have made the UK political system a fool’s paradise where those within believe that they really do know better than anyone else, and that their actions have no real life consequences for us all, beyond the immediate focus of whatever they have been led to believe they are doing.
The truth is that anyone who can say yes, look and sound the part, and not think twice to do whatever is demanded of them, to gain whatever they have been promised as the reward, will fit right into the political machine that exists in the UK today.
The political party or apparent political leaning of whatever the group or movement out in front of everyone else might be called doesn’t matter in any way.
The people who thrive in this system, at the cost of everyone they are supposed to represent, are fundamentally the same.
Uk Politics today is a game for fools, run by fools, that benefits only fools, and treats everyone outside of politics as if they are the fools.
We are all suffering now, as the direct result.
Adam Tugwell 