"I do not want your vote so you can stick it wherever best pleases you", says Labour politician - Refreshing or just downright Rude?

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Permalink Reply by matt on July 2, 2008 at 9:51

If I was a Labour politician I'd be frantically engaging with the local issues of my constituency, putting less effort into central party politics because, not even a '5000' seat majority is safe any more, in London or any where else. Elections are only 2 years away.

Maybe Labour politicians have already given up and are planning their next career move outside parliamentary life. I sincerely hope that's not the case for our Tottenham MP.

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Permalink Reply by Liz on July 2, 2008 at 10:49

We all get tired of our jobs in the end and 23 years is a long time. As an ex union rep and school governor, I also think representing people can be a thankless task. Often people expect more from you than you can hope to deliver and become quite unpleasant when they don't get want they want yet when you give them the opportunity to take on the role themselves by offering to step down, they quickly change their tune. 'It's a dirty job' n all that.
That said the political class have always seen themselves as slightly separate from the rest of us and it is only a relatively recent development that MPs are expected to represent the 'poor and down trodden' and not the monied and propertied who usually put them there in the first place. They know that they have a relatively short time to make their mark and form the right connections to ensure that they have somewhere to go before the voting mood changes, is it surprising that they prefer to sit down with the captains of industry and the Eurocrats rather than the "nincompoops, bigots, curmudgeons and twerps who infest local government bodies and committees " (quote from article, not my opinion)? Who is going to look after them in the long run? The Jeremy Corbyns/Dennis Skinners/Bob Marshall Andrews of this world who buck the Party Machine and say what they think are rare indeed.
Politicians cannot even rely on people voting according to party politics anymore, people prefer to pick and choose their opinions on issues from a wide variety of sources these days and not have them filtered through the propoganda of the Party. For the politicians this is a hard fact to cope with and, particularly on the Left, one that they are not yet prepared to face.
Engagement with the 'common folk' is quite tough and given that many of them are highly (expensively) educated and drawn from area like law and journalism, I'm not surprised that they find the ramblings of people from more humble beginnings 'mind numbing', when have they ever had to deal with normal people? Most of them probably only saw a 'normal' person out of the window of the car. (with apologies to Alan Johnston the health minister, a postman since the age of 16).
Still, like it or not, we are stuck with this system and since most people can't or don't want to engage more than once every 5 years with the political process, we'll have to accept its shortcomings and judge individual politicians on their achievements. That David Lammy's office has chosen to join the site is pleasing, perhaps it shows that he is interested in what is happening here and not only in the hallowed halls of Westminster. There are other local politicians who would do well to follow his example and engage with us a bit more often than they choose to do at present.

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