You may fool all the people some of the time; you can even fool some of the people all the time; but you can't fool all of the people all the time.
Abraham Lincoln
We live in strange times. So much is unconvincing and becoming even less convincing year on year. So much that was supposed to convince a few decades ago now doesn’t.
Suppose we begin with UK politics which never was convincing, but politicians did at least play the role with some conviction. Not now.
Most UK MPs don’t do politics in the sense that they don’t provide voters with some attempt at political oversight of the machinery of government. They don’t repeal and enact legislation towards that end. They act out the role of politicians but don’t do it well and barely attempt the hard bit, the political oversight.
In this sense, Keir Starmer isn’t the UK Prime Minister in that he doesn’t even act out the role to any worthwhile standard. Overseas meetings, reliance on threadbare ideology and a few photo opportunities do nothing to enhance his attempts at the role. His ministers are just as poor.
We have no Chancellor of the Exchequer, no Foreign Secretary, no Home Secretary and so on. All we have is an excessive reliance on weak acting and not enough ability to flesh out the role into something worth voting for. Weak slogans, transparent evasion and dim-witted intransigence are not enough to play the role, let alone do the political oversight.
We see all of this at the moment. UK politicians appear to know well enough that they have to be more convincing, yet most don’t know how. Perhaps it’s voters too, maybe the willingness to be convinced is fading.
Most UK MPs don’t do politics in the sense that they don’t provide voters with some attempt at political oversight of the machinery of government. They don’t repeal and enact legislation towards that end. They act out the role of politicians but don’t do it well and barely attempt the hard bit, the political oversight.
In this sense, Keir Starmer isn’t the UK Prime Minister in that he doesn’t even act out the role to any worthwhile standard. Overseas meetings, reliance on threadbare ideology and a few photo opportunities do nothing to enhance his attempts at the role. His ministers are just as poor.
We have no Chancellor of the Exchequer, no Foreign Secretary, no Home Secretary and so on. All we have is an excessive reliance on weak acting and not enough ability to flesh out the role into something worth voting for. Weak slogans, transparent evasion and dim-witted intransigence are not enough to play the role, let alone do the political oversight.
We see all of this at the moment. UK politicians appear to know well enough that they have to be more convincing, yet most don’t know how. Perhaps it’s voters too, maybe the willingness to be convinced is fading.
2 comments:
Sir Greased Piglet indulges in ham acting. That's about the size of it.
One thing that strikes me is that a couple of his front benchers even look evil - Angela Whatsherface, and the Witch of Education.
dearieme - to my eye the Witch of Education looks more evil than any of them, although I saw a photo of her among young school children where she had a pleasant smile - rather like Kim Jong Un.
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