A dishonourable profession

I was rather too kind about Alan Clarke in this rant. Mainly because I read and thoroughly enjoyed his Diaries.




Politics is such a dirty word these days don't you think? Can you think of a single politician whom you consider to be trustworthy? Or who has ideological convictions? It's not really the easiest task in the world is it?
Okay, I've started off with four questions, and it really is rather unreasonable of me to get you to basically write this for me, so I shall forge on with a few statements.

I've started off by saying that politics is disreputable "these days" but I'm wondering whether it has ever been considered to be a reputable occupation. It was back in the late fifties and early sixties (particularly after the P.M. Antony Eden made such a pigs ear of the Suez Canal crisis by trying to invade Egypt with French support. The silly man should have known not to go along with any enterprise that the French approved of...) that satirists such as Peter Cook and Willie Rushton pointed out just how inept our ruling classes were. Before then a certain awe of our leadership was encouraged, though satire has been around since the Middle Ages (albeit initially in the form of a court jester). It wasn't quite to the degree of a belief in a divine right to rule but it was certainly an arrogance that cannot really be approached these days (except by me when I'm drunk of course).

However, no matter what the actual behaviour of politicians before then, the perception of them has certainly changed. I remember when the then Labour leader John Smith died and the BBC were interviewing some of his constituents in an effort to get glowing tributes to match those already given by his colleagues. The nicest thing that anyone had said (at least I assume so as this was the only clip of a member of the public that was shown) was "...for a politician he wasn't a bad bloke." Hmm, damned with faint praise methinks.

So, when one bears in mind our general opinion concerning politicians, what the bloody hell are we doing electing them again and again? We wouldn't trust these people to be alone in our houses, yet we cheerfully give them supreme power over our lives! What exactly are we thinking? Are we really possessed of such short memories that we'll elect people whose shortcomings we've spent the last four years bemoaning? Unfortunately, I think we are. Most people are viewing the election as a straight contest between the Labour and Conservative parties. Not really much of a choice is it? No one trusts the Tories and not many people like Labour due to the last few months of making a pigs ear (yes, yes cheap pun I know…) of the Foot and Mouth crisis. But we'll still troop out to the polling stations and cast our votes one way or the other.

What happened to the idea of a multiparty democracy? (My, I am full of questions today...) We have a multitude of other voting options; LibDem, Green, UK Independence, Socialist, Welsh/Scottish nationalists, various fringe parties, but we ignore them for the most part. We're willingly following the 2 party model of the U.S., which is good in all respects apart from the fact that it doesn’t work. Only 40% of the U.S. electorate voted at the last election (the moral of that story being vote or else we'll end up with someone like Dubya in power). Counting irregularities aside, just a few hundred more people voting would have made the difference between Gore and Dubya (assuming that they could count that high...does anybody actually know why they had such difficulties?!? Were they counting using fingers and toes? If so, it's a pity that the deadlock didn't happen in Alabama as they'll have been able to count up to at least 26 using just fingers and toes...) The massive voter apathy was a result of the perception that one party was much like the other, and no matter whom they voted for nothing would really change. The same is rapidly becoming true over here. When the Conservatives were ousted we lost a government who preached tough immigration policies, were hard on crime, demanded tougher jail sentences for a range of offences, and offered low taxes whilst raising money elsewhere via increases in alcohol/tobacco/petrol duties. They were replaced with a Labour government who...oh.

It's quickly getting to the stage where we don't have to make any choices between political ideas. It's simply a popularity contest between 2 pragmatic sides who will say or do anything to try and get your vote. Tony Blair has received an awful lot of criticism for the stage-managed announcement of the General Election. You may recall that he announced it whilst on a visit to a girls school (perks of the job I suppose...) where coincidentally a multitude of journalists had gathered. He was accused of cynical manipulation in doing this. Well of course he did! He's a politician, and through our own apathy we encourage politicians to do this sort of thing. We're either suckered in by it or we ignore it. We all blame politicians for messing up the country, but who exactly elects them?

Perhaps the problem is that not enough emphasis is put on the importance of actually voting. In Australia, voting is compulsory. Once you get to a polling station you can put whatever you want of course, hell you can wipe your backside with the ballot paper if you so desire but the point is you have to go the polling station to do so. This way, no one can complain that whatever disaster befalls the country was "nothing to do with me". Everyone has some responsibility for their government; they feel involved. I would submit that we don't have nearly the same feeling of involvement here, especially among my generation. Whether that is due to the inherent cynicism of the Thatcher generation, or whether we're just irresponsible, I don't know (and if I did, I'd probably run for Parliament myself). Whatever the reason, it's something that we do need to sort out or we can look forward to a succession of governments elected by a minority of the people.

The main political parties themselves do not aid matters by their similarity to one another, both in terms of policies and personalities (well...such personalities as politicians have anyway). Jack Straw is equally as humourless and heartless as Michael Howard ever was; Robin Cook is as ineffectual as Francis Maude is; both sides have remarkably similar policies on everything from taxation to law and order to foreign investment. I deplore this loss of personality in politics (although I admit I'm probably harking back to a nostalgic period that never actually was). One of my all time heroes of politics (even after I stopped being a Tory) was Alan Clarke. He was as right wing as they come, had the most dreadfully outdated views on class structure, and was accused of having links to the National Front (for the record, he didn't. They liked him because, as a historian, we wrote a book about Hitler’s strengths as a leader such as his economic reforms. Ethically speaking, he denounced Hitler as a grade A git).

I thought he was fantastic. At the time when John Major had embarked on his ill advised "Back to Basics" campaign, and Tories were being exposed as sexual hypocrites (promoting family values whilst humping ones secretary is fairly inadvisable) it emerged that AC had bedded not only a judges wife, but his two daughters as well. When faced with the press asking if these allegations were true, not only did he freely admit to it but also pretty much said that it had been bloody good fun! If we're going to elect morally reprehensible politicians, couldn't we at least elect people as entertaining as him rather than the corrupt grey suits full of nothing that we currently plump for?

Well, I seem to have rambled on with very little real purpose here, so I promise that I shall do my utmost to make this my last political rant for a while. But I hope that I have perhaps impressed on you that if this country really is turning to shit, and if we really are just replacing one awful government with another, then we have absolutely no one to blame but ourselves. If that is the case, I'm afraid it is actually up to us to do something about it. We do it by using our vote and not just letting another election pass us by.