I don’t want to get bogged down in American politics. The USA is, after all, a foreign country, and one which dumped a load of perfectly good tea into the harbour over the ability to decide things for itself. Americans are grown-ups and don’t need the likes of me telling them how to vote, so I don’t bother.
Looking past the media, which does pay attention to the USA at the expense of even home politics, and I start to worry. It’s not just Trump; groups like Alternative fΓΌr Deutschland and the French Front National are gaining a share of the vote. If the UKIP can keep Nigel Farage, who seems to be the only party member who can walk and talk at the same time, its success will continue. After the Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed to death by a man with links to Britain First and other far-right groups, a Guardian article talked about Britain’s political class being under attack.
Of course it is, even if Jo Cox was not a member of it.
It’s ridiculous that Britain, the USA, or anywhere that isn’t an absolute monarchy still has a political class. But inertia, and a sense of entitlement that borders on freemasonry, has kept one there. Now there’s talk of making Michelle Obama the Democratic candidate for president in 2020; time would be better spent not offering more of the same if it no longer works. Labour took an almighty gamble putting Jeremy Corbyn in charge, but at least he’s not another clone of either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.
Every day at work I pass a poster for the Ashok Kumar Fellowship. Ashok Kumar was a Labour MP for Middlesborough from 1997 and the only chemical engineer to be an MP at the time. After his death in 2010, the Institution of Chemical Engineers has run the fellowship in his memory. Maybe the institution is onto something. Nurses, architects, sailors, schoolteachers and farmers may feel that they too have been short-changed. What if political parties recruited from a true spectrum of our society, with all the different careers and social backgrounds it has, rather than the rather tight profile of accountants* and lawyers currently on offer? Perhaps frustrated voters will be tempted away from random demagogues.
* - I was at school and university with someone who is now prominent in the Conservative party. Even if he were to represent a party that I would vote for, I would not go near him as his only qualification is in politics, and his short career in accountancy is largely there to pursuade voters that he is something other than a "party animal". After testing him out in a constituency where he stood no chance of being elected - a common Conservative method of hardening its candidates - he is now MP in one of their safest seats.
Looking past the media, which does pay attention to the USA at the expense of even home politics, and I start to worry. It’s not just Trump; groups like Alternative fΓΌr Deutschland and the French Front National are gaining a share of the vote. If the UKIP can keep Nigel Farage, who seems to be the only party member who can walk and talk at the same time, its success will continue. After the Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed to death by a man with links to Britain First and other far-right groups, a Guardian article talked about Britain’s political class being under attack.
Of course it is, even if Jo Cox was not a member of it.
It’s ridiculous that Britain, the USA, or anywhere that isn’t an absolute monarchy still has a political class. But inertia, and a sense of entitlement that borders on freemasonry, has kept one there. Now there’s talk of making Michelle Obama the Democratic candidate for president in 2020; time would be better spent not offering more of the same if it no longer works. Labour took an almighty gamble putting Jeremy Corbyn in charge, but at least he’s not another clone of either Tony Blair or Gordon Brown.
Every day at work I pass a poster for the Ashok Kumar Fellowship. Ashok Kumar was a Labour MP for Middlesborough from 1997 and the only chemical engineer to be an MP at the time. After his death in 2010, the Institution of Chemical Engineers has run the fellowship in his memory. Maybe the institution is onto something. Nurses, architects, sailors, schoolteachers and farmers may feel that they too have been short-changed. What if political parties recruited from a true spectrum of our society, with all the different careers and social backgrounds it has, rather than the rather tight profile of accountants* and lawyers currently on offer? Perhaps frustrated voters will be tempted away from random demagogues.
* - I was at school and university with someone who is now prominent in the Conservative party. Even if he were to represent a party that I would vote for, I would not go near him as his only qualification is in politics, and his short career in accountancy is largely there to pursuade voters that he is something other than a "party animal". After testing him out in a constituency where he stood no chance of being elected - a common Conservative method of hardening its candidates - he is now MP in one of their safest seats.
