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