Trust Me, I’m A Politician!
Politics is a thorny subject, and over the years that I have been writing this blog I have kept well away from it. Well, of course I have chatted to you about the ridiculous nature of some political events, the unbelievable actions of some of the people involved, and I may have touched on various policies to do with business and investment, but none have been particularly politically orientated… no seriously. But after Thursday night’s debate on ITV I felt compelled to sit and write about what I saw from Nick Clegg, Gordon Brown and David Cameron, mainly because standing and writing these days gives me a bad back!
Now I want to make it very clear that I am in no way attempting to influence anyone’s political views, and quite frankly I’m not actually suggesting what mine are, but it was the men themselves who I was looking at during this televised political punch-up.
I’m a cynic and always have been. They say that admission is the first step to cure, but I’m quite happy being a cynic as anyone who knows me will tell you. If someone says, “the sky is blue” I say, “then prove it to me”, therefore politics has been an arena that I have avoided like the plague. Full of manipulators of the truth and individuals more interested in self-promotion and gain than the ideals of their career choice would suggest there should be. The old joke goes, “How do you know when a politician is lying to you? Their mouth is moving!” is how I have quietly considered the profession for most of my adult life. Now of course there are some excellent politicians out there who do great things for their communities and are committed to their responsibilities, but the problem for me has always been that the profession has a slightly tarnished reputation. A reputation that quite frankly has not been helped by the expenses scandal that we’re all still angry about. So when I heard that there was going to be a political debate on TV I was quite surprised by my reaction which was to want to watch it in the first place.
Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg all looked slightly uneasy as they were introduced, and not surprising as millions of people were watching just waiting for any one of them to make a mistake that they can use to justify not voting for them, or simply not voting at all. I’m proud to say that I was one of these people.
But as the show went on one thing became blatantly obvious to me and, if the post programme polls are anything to go by, to everyone else, and that was that Nick Clegg was by far the better orator. Yes you heard me right, Nick Clegg, a politician, and therefore someone I’m sworn to distrust was actually quite good, no strike that, he ran rings around the other two.
The main problem seems to be that Brown and Cameron seemed so caught up in their own arguments that they seem to have underestimated the underdog, and Nick Clegg seriously bit back. While Brown and Cameron were spouting rhetoric which, for a habitual cynic like me with my bullshit detector on maximum was pretty typical and something I’ve learnt to tune out, Nick Clegg seemed to be sticking to the facts. Now I use the word ‘facts’ lightly here because of course I’ve no idea whether he was telling the truth or simply is a better truth manipulator than the other two, which is why I used the word ‘seemed’. While the other two were playing the usual game of twisting the audience’s questions to their own agendas Nick Clegg was the only one focussed on answering them, and while he was doing it talking directly to the questioner not his political peers.
Now as the vast majority of people in this country are uninterested in politics, don’t know who their local representative is and don’t care to, and are unhappy with the way things have been run in recent years, I’m sure that both Cameron and Brown are now a little more worried about their futures than they were before the debate. Nick Clegg surprised a lot of people, and if he’s not going to surprise us as the first Liberal Prime Minister since Lloyd George’s coalition government expired in 1922, then the other two will have to sack their image consultants and get some proper political debating training. Maybe that will engender the sort of trust that Nick Clegg seemed to instil on Thursday night.
Image © Liberal Democrats
