We've screwed up.

There’s a problem in Britain. You don’t me me to tell you that. But the thing is, no one is exactly sure what the problem is. Like a drunk with a shopping trolley, we career from left to right and back again, never quite sure of our destination yet certain beyond all belief everything we believe is unquestionably correct.

A brief time scanning the seemingly endless talk stations in the UK, with their multifarious phone ins and talking points, ultimately only giving rise to the suspicion that we’ve descended into some hellscape where if stupidity was currency the callers would put Musk in the poor house.

At some point, in any situation, you have to trust someone else. Be it the person who set the timings on the safe to cross signals to Premiers and Prime Ministers. There has to be an element of giving up your own agency and relying on that of another to do what they say or supposed to do. To fix the car, to complete their end of the transaction, to honour their warranty. When the plumber leaves the house telling you ‘any problems give me a call’, you return to find your kitchen flooded and a mysteriously disconnected phone number, as you pace up and down, sloshing about in what is less a kitchen and more an unwanted footbath.

Literally decades of Politicians and public figures making undertakings they had no intention of carrying out, of promises and certainties which were broken or never materialised, of Manifesto commitments which were never intended to hold firm, have made us tired, jaded and angry. And we don’t know, really, why. Like a word which sits on the tip of our tongue, deep down we know why we are angry, it’s just there’s not much we can do about it and that’s the admittance we simply don’t want to make. But we have to.

I could write about Lowe and his funding, or Farage and his personal donations. I could talk about Starmer or Reeves or Lammy or Badenoch or Philp or Stride. I could even wax lyrical about Robinson, Musk and the numerous other agitators who live anywhere but here. But there’d be little point. Because they are all, basically, the same thing. Either hamstringed by circumstance, hampered by greed, harassed by their own hubris. Or all three. I didn’t mention Ed Davey there because he was busy setting out a new social care policy whilst hangliding with his head in a lions’ mouth over an active volcano. Or something.

And that last sentence is probably a large percentage of what is wrong; we treat Politics as we treat football or reality television or a pub quiz machine. We treat it as entertainment. Like children at a magic show, if the conjuror doesn’t deliver astonishment every minute, our attention starts to wander and we grow restless for whatever is going on elsewhere. And whether or not we are entertained, we miss the detail; blinded by the outer shell, the presentation, the bright lights and pretty colours, we miss what is going on beneath. What is means for us. Because entertainment is the momentary release; it’s not what you say, it’s how you present it.

And this deregation of relatively important things like our future to little more than a verbal fireworks display has done little of benefit to us than making us angry, bitter and resentful. It’s done wonders for the Politicians because now they can get away with all manner of chicanery. They have always done that, but along with this normalisation it’s become happenstance to his the festering boil of their intent under some whipped cream. In fact, we get angry if we’re not distracted from their malfeasance and lies. “Lie to me, damn you! I demand you reassure me with a thin tissue of complete bullshit”.

It used to be clever wordplay; there’s a admirable skill in that. For example, when Tony Blair said – which that smile which was matched only by a shark just prior to you needed a prosthetic – that the draconian withdrawel of rights “would only be used on terrorists”. Which is a nice sentence until you take it apart. That it “would only be used” implies, by its’ very structure, that it can be used on anyone. And the fact that ‘terrorist’ is, in legislative terms at least, nebulous. Yes, it conjures up desperados and malcontents with weaponary, merciless rebels without conscience. But that’s a psychological image. And while the public may go along with this on the not difficult to understand reluctance to be blown up, they might have something to say twenty years later when that definition still hasn’t be defined and pensioners are being jailed for having an opinion.

There should be uproar. There isn’t. And that’s a big part of what’s wrong. It’s not the opinion which is in question, it’s the right to have an opinion. But that’s not an entertaining concept. It’s not fun and chuckles.

And so we arrive at today. We are still very much in the shadow of Johnson, arguably the worst Prime Minister we have ever suffered; but he was – for a while – entertaining. That sheen slowly wore off as the corruption, greed, entitlement and hubris of his administration became more and more stark. It is possible, had not the pandemic happened, he would have survived in office. But like the comedian who won’t leave the stage despite the avalanche of rotting fruit, the audience became bored.

But what he represented wasn’t new; it was just more acute. The act of a bumbling incompetent hiding a malevolent, malicious and entitled personality. Soon others followed; if Johnson could make so much money from his devious machinations, how much could they make? The energy and time previously expended in hiding their doings could now be spent literally more profitably.

It doesn’t matter anymore about dexterous wordplay or interpretation. Now all they had to do is present something which entertains, that makes people laugh, cry or, maybe and most effectively, angry. We’re one step away from a pie in the face at a party conference just after announcing pogroms. Make people miss the point. Always assuming there is one.

So when Farage is quizzed over his ‘donations’, or Lowe is quizzed about his views, or Starmer or Burnham or Reeves or Badenoch or Davey or Polanski are questioned over their sudden changes of policy following donations or sweeteners, remember, whatever they say, there are no consequences. Only benefits. Because it’s just entertainment.

It’s not to much to ask for the people we pay to do the job we ask them to do. They’re not entertainers, they are not personalities, they are steering the nation. It’s not too much to ask them to act with probity, with dignity, with good intent for the nation and not for their personal agrandisment. To take the job, the direction of the country, the lives of the people who live there, seriously, soberly and with care. It’s not much to ask. But we should, at least, ask.

And we need to ask soon. While we still can. There’s a reason why Politics and Entertainment are different words.