This is in response to the Rochdale by-election (and many others) where the growing disconnect between the average person and those meant to represent and serve them in Parliament has become wider than the Mississippi delta. It also picks up on some of the issues mentioned in a thread lower down the board on George Galloway's win in Rochdale, particularly Ken Waldron's excellent comments.
Our current political system seems, at least to me, to be broken beyond repair. Everyone I know, chat to on public transport or in coffee bars feels completed alienated from the political class. I am constantly amazed by the ignorance, arrogance and folly of those in government. It shocks me (and I don't use that word as hyperbole) that such people are making decisions that will affect the UK for decades. And I can't be the only person who looks around at the mess we're in and thinks it totally wrong that those who created it should get off scot-free. Anyone dong a bog-standard job as badly would be sacked; f**k up the country, however, and get a knighthood, a huge pension, 'soft' interview offers as an 'elder statesman' and lucrative private contracts from parasites anxious to tap your connections.
What do the main parties actually represent? The Tories appear to believe in nothing apart from Britain being a shop where everything is for sale for the highest (although not sufficiently competent in most cases to get that) price and to favour a peculiar form of state capitalism which transfers public money into private pockets rapidly and efficiently. Labour is no better - it clearly despises its working class roots and is lost amongst identitarian issues. And I long ago abandoned trying to understand the LibDems.
Root and branch reform of our political system is needed - we have the wrong parties choosing the wrong candidates who have zero accountability for anything once they're in Westminster. What would a better political system look like and how could it be brought about?
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