Left or right.

 Subject: Left or right.





Has representative government had its day. As I watch the UK parliaments procedural voting divisions, from the Scotish Parliament's electronic count, to Westminster’s antiquated methodology with the sight of MPs trooping out to the voting lobby, one is left with a strong sense that our representatives, the MPs, are playing a game which shuffles the act of voting into the long grass by the procedural obscurity of a yes no answer.

Few questions, especially the ones which affect millions of constituents are a question of a“yes or no”answer. Of course ‘debate’ is supposed to whittle away contentious issues if not resolve them. Everyone has an opinion based on their own personal experience, collectively under political ideology these views are codified as party ideology and the ‘personal’ is lost amongst the need for collectivism. And here the distortions appear, the centrist's, the socialists, far right, far left and this within one party, is it any wonder that consensus is almost impossible. Deeply held views about matters close to one’s heart have to be jettisoned in favour of the ruling cabal and in the case of Jeremy Corbyn, Diane Abbott, and Russell Moyles, all labour politicians who fell foul of Kier Starmer for their left wing views and who for me represented the socialism I want for the county.

For too long the market has ridden rough-shod over the needs of people. It could be argued that the people don’t have needs, if the benefit system takes care of their needs and aspirations and only the middle to upper middle class aspire to needing anything better. We obsess over the “lumpen proletariat” the lads and lasses out over the weekend intent on becoming drunk one tends to forget the privately educated cocaine snorting set who carry their prop into the office meeting in an effort to strike the right pose.

I’m not a fan of televised head to head broadcasts, there’s too much focus on the participants and therefore their need to perform which means the broadcast descends into a ideological shouting match from which nothing is gleaned other than who is the smoothest operator. Rishi Sunak’s polished Goldman Sachs tutoring comes through, the flashing smile the sharp punctuated sentences, never mind if they are lies he wins the debate not on factual’s but on debating polish. It’s become a modern trend this media training, part of subliminal techniques we have become accustomed to accepting the words without looking for meaning.

Starmer in contrast often looks like an animal caught in the cross lights of the event, his words carried meaning and reality but without the panache it was buried by the showman’s spiel.

This is what politics has come to, an echo chamber, hearing what we want to hear whole television channels, (funded by Murdock) and opened to transmit mendacity and swamp what’s left of our minds with untruths dressed as potentially possible.

It’s become the Etonian debating skill against the well meaning protester who carries their heart on there sleeve. Rhetorical tools are in use which were designed from the days of Socrates deflecting a question by asking another which philosophically is attuned to a parlour game only for those who can afford it.