Many of these politicians give the impression that they are playing a game, often with their interests in mind, whilst ignoring the fact that their primary duty is to the national interest. In a representative democracy, the key word is representative. Politicians are elected to parliament by the people and are of the people: Their duty is to the electorate. No more, no less! Nobody is saying the job is easy: As I commented in the wake of Jo Cox’s murder, many politicians are “simply community representatives doing a job on our behalf.” But that clearly does not include Boris Johnson. He is, or at least was, the best retail politician in the UK but having effectively been the mouthpiece for the Brexit campaign, he shied away from many of the issues raised on the campaign trail in his Telegraph article last week and compounded his duplicity by shirking his duty to take on the leadership challenge because he suspected he would not win. Surely it would have been incumbent upon him to at least try to fix some of the mess he helped create.
Back in 1983, the Labour party’s election manifesto was described as “the longest suicide note in history”. Much the same could be said of the economic nonsense spouted by the Leave campaign during the last four months. The difference is that the Labour party was heavily defeated in the 1983 election and its policy was never put to the test. This cannot be said of the Leave campaign, which must now show that its inchoate nonsense can be realised. What is worse is that different strands of the Leave campaign were seeking different things from the referendum. The Farage wing were looking to control immigration. Another faction, best represented by Daniel Hannan MEP, were more relaxed about immigration and sought to regain UK sovereignty over its laws with a view to strengthening ties with more rapidly growing parts of the world. When challenged, Hannan will always deny that immigration was ever part of his platform. But it is disingenuous in the extreme to be associated with a Leave campaign in which immigration was the focal point, and then to claim afterwards “nothing to do with me, guv.”
Nothing that has occurred over the past 10 days has done anything to convince the public that politicians have any idea what they are doing. But then perhaps the electorate should hold a mirror to itself and ask what it wants rather than allowing manipulative politicians to put words into their mouths. That may be too much to hope for – it has been a feature of democratic systems since ancient times: Not for nothing did the phrase “bread and circuses” originate in Ancient Rome.
Many people are angry with the status quo, and with good reason. Politicians have repeatedly let down those parts of the electorate which needed the most help. The Brexit vote was a cry of rage against a political system that has failed to meet the aspirations of large chunks of the British electorate. Large swathes of Britain’s former industrial heartland have been stripped away by the forces of globalisation. Over the last 30 years, successive governments have told their electorate that a policy of market-oriented economics will lead to a wider range of choice, which would leave everyone better off. Well, it hasn’t. And now the people have made their choice.
As Malcolm Tucker, the spin doctor in the BBC’s superb political satire The Thick of It put it, when appearing before a parliamentary committee accused of leaking sensitive material, “How dare you come and lay this at my door! How dare you blame me for this! Which is the result of a political class, which has given up on morality and simply pursues popularity at all costs.” Amen!
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