A View Of Politics From The United Kingdom:
The
'Swamp' On The Other Side Of the Pond
Hard-Ball
Politics, 'Gutter-Seeking' Scandal-Obsessed Politicians and Political
Correctness Are 'Orders Of The Day' ('L'ordre du jour')
In The Anglo-Saxon-Speaking World
Do we not
have fun in poking gibes at our political elites? It is a national
sport and pursued nowhere with more gusto than in the UK, where by
tradition we like to cut people down to size, and stamp on hubris.
Where are the Churchills and the Cromwells, the iron men or the Iron
Lady, of our past? No more do we expect to behold the spectacle of
Colossi stalking our corridors of power. The present motley
crew (according to some) who crawl those hallowed precincts in the
Palace of Westminster, so the argument goes, call more to mind the
‘beetle men’ envisaged by George Orwell. Those creepy-crawlies
in human form, the reader may recall, were of a type best adapted to
come to the fore in his dystopia of 1984. If not actual insects,
most would agree that we are governed nowadays by Pygmies. And how
we like to sneer at them! Notable exceptions of course are around.
But…Whose
fault is it that we have this supposedly lowered level of leadership?
Insidious undercurrents of opinion create a climate of reference.
They affect the subconscious geist. Whether we be pinko or
blue-o, we should recognize as objective fact the notion that the
cut-glass accent is as passé as the playing fields of
Eton. Our badges of honor, these days, are a background of
deprivation against which we have struggled to make something of
ourselves, unaided by the chance of privilege. In some ways that
may be to the good; but not all. There is a baby in the bathwater. He
is not yet ‘thrown out’ but he is gasping and he wears mottled
expression and …how long is he for this world?
Time and
again, the types and characters who in the past would have been the
standard bearers of our country are now lost to the public weal.
Whether they be public school educated patriots who are not trying
for the political heights, or whether they try but are rejected by
selection committees concerned not to antagonize Vox Populi,
we now vaunt to the hilltops those types who in the past would have
hardly had a look-in to the magic circle of power unless they were of
exceptional ability. What counts today in the selection of our
leaders is the class system in reverse, writ large.Why then
do we look down on those we have set up to lead us?It is an
oddity of history that in assessing the reasons why the French
Revolution descended into The Terror and then miscued into the
installing of an Emperor, historians do not rate as significant the
intake of the Parliaments of the early 1790s. Non-entities
all, those delegates were. Their virtue was that they were ‘The
Common Man’ drawn from all parts of France. Against that
backcloth, a man of Robespierre’s ‘provincial’ mind could swell
in proportion. The point can be argued back and forth; it can be said
that the 'Aristos' of that day also were too effete, insular or
selfish. Either way, the point is that the emergence of a type of
man to set the then French system to rights was not encouraged.Our
country surely has not lost its native talent, still less its newly
imported talent. There is a statistical constant, it can be said, of
talent. But those who have the ability to make headway are that much
the less likely to gravitate to the old Commanding Heights of our
nation. Voters do not respect holders of power; the leaders are
there to be pilloried. The ambitious and clever man or woman very
often is deterred from seeking to enter that ‘hot kitchen’. The
world of IT or business offers the flower of our nation the greater
scope, or so they could be forgiven for thinking.How many
good people have we lost through this geist? How many people
who were trained and educated in a boarding school system that was
designed to produce leaders of men no longer are up for a life of
public service? We have the politicians we ask for. Why whinge?
Adam
Eagleton, December 2017
