6th
Politics
Caroline Spelman was speaking on radio 4 this morning. I can’t find the exact quote but she said something like, “it’s great that Tories are winning in the Midlands and the North because they are the battlegrounds”. We all know what she meant: the lower classes in the industrial towns have not been known to vote Tory, and now they are, that makes a Tory victory at a General Election more likely. An analysis that is hard not to agree with. But something about it really struck home how power hungry and goal driven politicians have become.
These local elections are meant to be about helping people locally, devolved power, local solutions for local problems, etc etc etc. A Tory successes locally should mean more parent focussed schools with greater discipline, recycling incentives and zero waste strategies, real time transport information and reduced congestion, all things that local councils can change and that the Tories are ‘committed’ to (www.conservatives.com/Policy/Where_we_stand/Community_Relations.aspx). I might not think that Tory controlled local councils are a good thing, but Caroline certainly does, yet instead of celebrating the lives that will be changed, the communities that will function better and the environment that will be greener as a result of the local elections, she looks only to what this indicates for a General Election in a month or maybe a years time.
It’s about the end goal, the big win, the power, the prestige, the grace and favour homes, and the red breifcase with very little focus on why any of it matters. Now, I don’t want to sound like Gordon, just banging on about their lack of policies, mainly because he’s just as bad. John McDonnell wrote a great Comment is Free article about the party ambition and political purpose that is lacking from the Labour party, replaced instead by personal ambition and survivalist purpose.The expenses scandal comes from a greed for power without a local grounding, and yet even after the MPs have been through the mill they still don’t seem to get it. It’s not about who wins, how hard the others lose, or what the percentages are, it’s about what that means for real peoples lives.
For me, this is exactly what old (current) politics is, an unbridaled drive for yet greater power without using power you have and celebrating the changes you can make. Whatever ‘new’ politics emerges out of this mess I hope it can see the reason for its existence.
