I hate this f*cking country
Many moons ago I was down the youth club doing youth things when the subject of politics arose.
My good friend Sarah looked ever so down. I couldn't understand why. We were 15years old. Why would she be upset about a looming election? I didn't really understand who was running for it and what policies they had and arrogantly assumed she didn’t either.
It was only when I confronted her and asked what the issue was that she told me something that has forever stuck in my mind. A statement that has rattled around my head for 30years or more and if I'm honest hasn't helped my outlook.
“It doesn't matter who gets into power, Chris they’ll always be in charge of us.”
As a first year student of anarchy, this didn't bode well.
So it began my never-ending thought train of life and power and government and the principles it ought to bring with it.
The idea of a government is to govern, right? To oversee its electorate. The people who voted them into power; to govern. Under a modern-day - Western if you like - democracy there is a written agreement between the government and its people called a mandate, to uphold the policies and promises it won its power with throughout the term.
Sarah’s initial fears - that shortly after became mine - were that once in power these people who’ve been traipsing the streets of the UK begging for your votes could, once in No.10 sit back and do naff all. And then laugh at us. They’ve no need to actually fulfil their facile policies but now have access to one of the world’s largest chequebooks with no one to scrutinise its use.
It’s them versus us.
And the older I get the more I see a bigger divide.
The thought process of this one statement and years struggling to comprehend the principles of governance have led me to my very own statement;
The people who get into power are governed by those who want to retain it.
Right now there is a massive financial crisis in the UK and the plight of the British people is everywhere. Turn on your TV or radio and you’ll hear Martha from Widnes telling you about having to wear her dead mother’s underwear as she can’t afford her own. Jane in Dagenham works a 60-hour week to put food on the table for her three kids. Then, once they are out of the kitchen, she has a bowl of Aldi own brand Weetabix for her tea. With water as milk is too dear. Ethel in Eastleigh is doing 50 hours a week cleaning. She gets up in the dark at 4 a.m. and cleans until it’s dark again. Just to get by. She’s 65.
All the while we have a conservative government that can’t decide who they want to lead the party. The reason they can’t choose is because they've run out of people who want the job. Genuinely want the job. Genuinely want the job because they want to make a difference to Ethel, Jane and Martha.
For too long now we've had leaders whose primary interest is power.
Boris Johnson only ever wanted to be in No.10. He considered it his god-given right to be Prime Minister. He lied and cheated his way to the top and once there, floundered his power to the point he was the first PM in my memory to be forcefully evicted from Downing Street - by his own party.
The principles of Conservatism are clear in the first seven letters: CONSERV(E). ie to preserve the status quo.
You only have to look at Jacob Rees Mogg - the Minister for the 17th century - to see exactly how it is put into practice. Every time there’s a problem within the conservative party - daily it seems - they wheel him out across the television networks to condescend to the masses in a style only he can perform.
Talking with a plum in his mouth and being over six foot tall he can look down his nose at any reporter he likes and patronise them in his croaky fashion regardless of the subject matter or question asked.
He is the epitome of everything that is wrong with this country. He’s made his money and wants to keep it. He will do whatever he can to preserve his wealth and therefore his power.
Brexit was the perfect notion for a man like JRM. Get rid of all the grubby foreigners so we can keep all our money here in the UK and more importantly in his account. Break ties with the European Union so that he doesn't have to pay any tax on his offshore accounts.
If he had it his way he’d bring back hanging, flogging and send ships around the world colonising developing countries again. Ramming the idea of tea and “the British way” down the throats of ancient tribes of Papua New Guinea.
Sadly, my dreams of an anarchic society aren't likely to happen now. Or ever for that matter. But something has to change.
Modernising the immortal words of Sarah, even if Kier Starmer and the Labour Party succeed in coming to power, nothing will change that much. Anything has to be better than the Tories but essentially another party will enter into power and have the same quandary staring them in the face.
That quandary is: how do we keep the British public happy AND the 1% who have all the money and therefore the power?
In other words, once again it doesn’t matter who is in power the same problems are there. Starmer can carry on all he likes about saving the NHS and levelling up the country but once in power, he’ll have the exact same problem the Tories have; of keeping the wealthy wealthy and the powerful powerful.
In my pea brain, the money is in the wrong place.
If your company is turning over £100m a year and after all outgoings, wages, expenses and taxes, you look into your account and see £25m in profits, you’re charging too much for whatever it is that you do.
I have ongoing arguments with wealthy friends of mine who are always going to be Tory voters. Regardless of the perils of Brexit and the state of the party and country at the moment, they will always vote conservative because they will always look after the wealthy.
Some friends have spoken about losing £100,000 a year after Brexit and are STILL convinced it’s for the best. When you question them on it they simply say. “We could've had Jeremy Corbyn.”
One of the reasons we are where we are is because Labour and Corbyn didn't put up much of a fight at the last election. They sat on the fence when it came to Brexit, still not convinced if it was a good idea or not. In the three years that had passed since the referendum we’d learned a lot - well I had - had you posed the Brexit question again I guarantee the swing would've been 60/40 to remain and yet Labour didn't cash in on that. They simply sat there and said they’d do whatever the British People wanted. Weak as piss.
Three years on and we have Sir Kier Starmer continuing the Labour party’s stance and sitting on the fence. Deciding instead to run the notion of, “Making Brexit work”. A theory we all know won’t.
It leaves me politically homeless and exasperated and as I invariably fall on the flight mode of the old expression, I now actually have nowhere to run to. My go-to escape when things got tough in the UK would always be my second home in the French Alps. I can’t just go and live there for a year or two anymore. I am stuck in the UK. And hate it.
In an attempt to pander to those who didn't want to see brown people in Asda anymore, this government has not only removed freedom of movement from the workforce it so desperately misses and won’t admit to, but even its own people can’t live in Europe anymore.
The freedoms I once had to travel around Europe as free as a bird in the 90s have been stripped for future generations. When I decided to go and spend a ski season in the Alps, I could. I loved it so much I decided to move there. I didn’t even need to ask anyone. I just bought a van, loaded up and went.
That freedom has been taken away from the next generation and likely the next. All of those people who wanted to retire to Spain, wallpaper their villa in Alicante and watch daytime UK telly, now can’t. They're stuck in Runcorn until the day they die with an ailing NHS that they've helped fund all their lives that, thanks to this lot won’t be there for them.
This government should be not only ashamed of what they've done to this country but put on trial for it. Starting with Boris Johnson.
