Chapter Four – Politics and More Bollocks (Part Two)
When politicians tell us they’re “modernising” the country, I’ve learnt to reach instinctively for my wallet. Modernisation generally seems to involve spending an astonishing amount of money to make something work rather less effectively than it did before.
Take public services. Every government arrives promising efficiency, accountability and value for money. A few years later they’ve spent billions on consultants, reorganised everything into a bewildering collection of agencies with names nobody can remember, and somehow the bloke who actually empties your bin still can’t tell you why he missed your street.
Progress, apparently.
The trouble with politics is that it’s become more about presentation than principle. The announcement matters more than the achievement. If something goes spectacularly wrong, no problem—appoint an inquiry. By the time the inquiry reports, everyone involved has either retired, been promoted or moved into consultancy.
Nobody is ever actually responsible.
It’s a remarkable career path. In most occupations, repeated failure gets you sacked. In politics it seems to qualify you for the House of Lords.
Of course, every party insists it possesses the answer. The trouble is that the answer changes depending on which opinion poll they’ve just commissioned. Manifestos have become less a statement of conviction than an exercise in market research.
The voter, meanwhile, is expected to be grateful for being offered a choice between two remarkably similar flavours of disappointment.
Election campaigns are another curious spectacle. Millions are spent persuading us that one group of perfectly ordinary human beings possesses almost supernatural wisdom, while the other lot represent the imminent collapse of civilisation.
A few months after the election, they all seem to end up drinking together in the same bars anyway.
Funny, that.
I’ve often wondered what would happen if politicians were employed like the rest of us. Imagine applying for a job with a CV proudly announcing:
“Successfully increased expenditure, failed to meet objectives, alienated most of the workforce and left the organisation considerably worse than I found it.”
Most employers would politely escort you to the door.
Westminster would probably offer you a ministerial portfolio.
Then there’s the language. They never tell you they’re increasing taxes. They’re rebalancing fiscal priorities. They don’t waste money—they invest. They don’t abandon policies—they move forward. Somewhere, George Orwell must be quietly shaking his head.
Still, I suppose we shouldn’t be too harsh.
Running a country can’t be easy.
Running one while constantly trying to avoid answering perfectly straightforward questions must be almost impossible.
Sometimes I think the greatest political achievement would be convincing somebody to answer an interview with a simple “yes” or “no” instead of a five-minute speech that somehow avoids addressing the question altogether.
Now that would deserve a standing ovation.
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