Listening to her, I thought: this disgust with politicians is now universal in democratic - and capitalist - countries.
It started in France, I think, when furious voters started to go in for protest voting and quite quickly the racist, right-wing Front National became a force in the land. There was even a presidential election where it took an appeal by figureheads of the French Socialist Party to persuade people if they didn't go out and vote, they would find themselves with a Front National president. They avoided it that time, but may not be able to avoid it in 2017.
Austria has now been obliged to re-run the presidential election because, basically, the result was too close to call. Austria too looks like facing the risk of having a far right president.
The British press made a big deal out of the far-right politician Geert Wilders's claim that the Netherlands wants to leave the EU, but this is so obviously untrue it has come to nothing. But he remains a threat to democracy because he demands and gets so much attention in the media.
The other night, one of Sky News's bagmen said smugly that, while the Labour Party is tearing itself to shreds, the Tories have clung together quite well. He had to be reminded that UKIP is the protest vote we got against the Tories. Labour voters in Scotland could turn to the SNP and the Greens - and they have but at the last general election, Labour voters in Wales voted UKIP, as did many in the north-east of England because they had no protest party to vote for. And as we know, that polarisation resulted in the UK being forced out of the EU.
The US, of course, had its alternative candidate in Bernie Sanders but not enough Democrat delegates
wanted him and he - perhaps unwisely - fell in behind Hillary Clinton, effectively neutralising him.
What will it take to persuade politicians that a lot of voters don't like what they're doing? That they are not doing the job voters think they were elected to do? That capitalist societies are not going the way the voters want them to go? That voters feel impoverished while the very rich get even richer?
I don't believe every politician is in the pocket of big business. But they do seem as a group to be unable to think of a way to rein in the banks, hedge funds and huge corporations that devote their time to making large amounts of money for their CEOs and shareholders. For these entities to go on making vast amounts of cash, politicians have to pauperise the rest of us, so they get tax avoidance schemes and we get lower wages, lower social security provision, poorer health services, pensions and education - even though we the workers command the 'means of production.'
That, of course, is a phrase from Communism and Socialism, and these days it is almost a capital crime to express any support for those philosophies. I've been told often in recent years that my support for social medicine, state education, the green philosophy and the living wage is the 'enemy' of progress. I think it's interesting that the poorest people in the UK made most progress after 1945, when they asserted themselves, voted against the grand old man who had saved the world during World War 2 (actually the people of Europe, the USA, UK and various colonies of the British Empire saved the world) and demanded change.
The current upheaval in politics in quite a few countries is not due to perverse voters - a bit dim, stupid even*, conned by snake-oil salesmen, etc - but due to the failure of politics to meet the needs of the population. Who will be the first politician to admit it and do something about it?
* Could somebody tell Alan Cumming to shut up, please?
Shades of the late '30s indeed Jean...
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