Speaking my language

by Rick Johansen

My loyal reader will have noted my increasing disillusionment with politics and politicians. It is not just the result of last week’s General Election, although that was bad enough, but it’s the future too. I am rejoining the Labour Party after 12 years of being a friendly Labour supporter, having left when Tony Blair assisted George Bush in taking us into Iraq and later Afghanistan. The imminent publication of the long-awaited and long delayed Chilcott report will hopefully give us some answers about the former, which will I suspect make unpleasant reading for Blair, but we need the truth of what happened out there. I believe both invasions were wrong and have achieved next to nothing for this country.

It’s the succession to Ed Miliband that concerns me most. I actually agree with his brother David’s assessment that Labour lost contact with the “squeezed middle” Ed talked about. Labour was right to focus on those at the bottom – after all, what’s the point Labour otherwise? – but unless you engage the middle classes, you can’t win. It’s not a question of left and right because the best example of socialism I know is the NHS and hardly anyone wants to get rid of it. But who is speaking for me?

David Cameron and George Osborne do not speak my language. They are political tacticians first and foremost. There is no over-arching strategy in anything they do. It’s more about positioning, it’s about simple populist rhetoric. Neither of them have ever lived in my world. Their interviews are packed with buzzwords and statistics. In short, they talk politician-speak and come from a background of the kind of wealth I cannot even begin to relate to. But here’s the thing: which of the Labour candidates to succeed Miliband speaks my language, lives in my world, has done an ordinary job? Do any of them know what it’s like to live in a house with no heating and, as I did for two years, no hot running water? Do any of them know what it’s like to go to the local butcher shop to ask for the cheapest cuts of meat they had, as my mum did, and then have to leave empty-handed because she couldn’t afford anything they had? And do they know what it’s like when the debt collector arrives, you don’t have enough money to pay him and so you and your mother sit quietly in the back room until he has gone? I don’t think they have a clue and in my civil service job I frequently saw people who had even less than I did.

I look at the jobs the Labour leadership candidates had before they went into politics, and it turns out that most of them didn’t have jobs outside of politics. Dan Jarvis, my preferred candidate (but not anymore), did not come from the conventional Labour route, but he fought in Kosovo, Iraq and Afghanistan. He also lost a wife to cancer, he is bringing up three children with his new partner and for that reason, he is not running for the leadership at all. So the candidate who has lived in the so-called real world is staying there.

Burnham, Cooper, Kendall, Umunna, Hunt et al are decent enough candidates and some of them, Burnham for sure, sounds like a human being, but I despair of the future, Tory and Labour alike. If the leaders don’t sound or look like us, I do hope the shadow cabinet more resembles the world in which I live. I really do want to see people who have worked for a living in “normal” jobs representing me.

To me, a keen political animal, politicians are not like me. They don’t talk my language, they don’t seek to serve or represent me. Rather the reverse, they seek to tell me what to do and how I should run my life. More importantly, I want politicians who can relate to the ordinary woman and man on the street and understand what motivates them and to listen to them, not demand to be listened to.

We need more ordinary people in parliament, but the way this country is going we seem to be having less.

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1 comment

Julian Pirog May 12, 2015 - 13:46

Rick,

I too made the decision to re join the party. I will be looking to go to meetings and to put forward the voice of how it is. I will be doing my best, WARNING, buzzword to come, in keeping it real.
Here’s an idea mate. Why not put yourself forward for a role, locally ? Seriously Rick.
From your writing I see we have shared a great many experiences. I am lucky in that my parents stayed together, their Catholicism was the major factor in that, we never had the debt collectors but then, we didn’t have anything that my parents couldn’t afford. It was a case of if we can’t afford it then we saved up, until we could.
We never had a telephone until 1979, that was a big deal for me and I remember it vividly. A Red phone and I remember phoning 16 which was dial a disc. I wonder how many will remember that ?
Anyway, before I go into a diatribe about my past, I would urge you to seriously think about getting more involved.
I don’t think we could ask for anyone else better and you could maybe affect some real change, based upon your very real experiences.
If I wasn’t so emotionally charged then I would consider it myself but I find my emotions can get the better of me and then I lose any real direction. I would, no doubt, get into trouble.
Go for it Rick. It would be such a breath of fresh air to have you being involved.
Cheers mate. As always, an enjoyable and visceral read.

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