the brilliantly leaping gazelle

I know that I can be less than complimentary about politicians, often casting doubt on them personally, the motives, policies and priorities of parties they represent. And the failures of them both to properly act in the best interests of those who did – and didn’t – vote for them. 

Given the new name under which subsequent posts will be tiled, ’34; 63 presents’ – highlighting as it does what I discern to be the most fundamental flaw in our ‘democratic ‘system, namely how it is that  34% of the votes somehow means 63% of seats – suggests that this will be a constant theme of this blog.

Well one of them anyway. Politics doesn’t exist in a vacuum. Just as much as politics embodies the best and worst in our society, that society is also partly responsible for the politics and  politicians it creates. Politicians were once children too. They didn’t just materialise as fully formed venal narcissists with low morals. 

That whole era of aggressive Thatcherism, of privatising as many of the publicly owned utilities as she could and of her being able to declare ‘that was no such thing as society’, ironically, could only happen in a society where such a politician, espousing such divisive politics, was repeatedly given power.

Sorry, went off one there.

So before I start with all of the scathing cynicism and the withering scorn that this blog will soon be full of, I just want to take a moment to acknowledge that there is one politician who I genuinely admire.

Kemi Badenock.

Not for her staunch defence of the rights of women – proper ones, the ones with vaginas and ovaries,  not penises and delusions – although in this day and age, its an almost heretical belief and admirable enough as that is, though, it isn’t that. In fact it hasn’t got anything to do with politics whatsoever, and is something that I only discovered by accident, when searching the internet, trying to find a speech that she’d made. 

As the BBC puts it,

‘Born in Wimbledon, south London, to parents of Nigerian origin, the 44-year-old grew up in the US and Nigeria, where her psychology professor mother had lecturing jobs.

She returned to the UK at the age of 16, and studied for her A-levels at a college in south London while working at a branch of McDonald’s.

After completing a degree in computer systems engineering at Sussex University, she developed a career as a systems analyst while working part-time to gain a second degree in Law from Birkbeck University’

That to me is way beyond impressive. 

A’ Levels, McAncne, two degrees and one of them from Birkbeck? I know exactly how difficult that is, because I got my politics degree there in 2002. On the first day of the course in 1998 there were nearly 60 students. Only 14 of us graduated and politics is a piece of piss compared to law. To do that and hold down a full-time job, its hard to put into words just how difficult that is. How focused and single minded one needs to be. How ruthless, selfish and indefatigable.

That’s why she has my respect, because I’ve walked in shoes she has, and I know how uncomfortable they can be. That’s why she alone will called by her name on this blog, and not as every other politician is treated. They deserve me using some arcane cultural reference known only to me, a sly reference to a long forgotten misdeed of theirs or just some peculiar bit of devilment on my part that I think they’re deserving of, to mock them.

She doesn’t deserve that. But what she does deserve massive respect for is never mentioning it, especially how in this day and age where politicians are always searching  to have an emotional backstory. Something that humanises them, makes them seem just like one of us – like they were on the fucking ‘X Factor’ and they were doing it for their nan who had died of cancer – or else some other thing that makes them ‘relatable’. 

I bet that you never knew that about her, but I bet you could tell me what Plonkers dad did for a living, couldn’t you? 

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It just occurred to me that Plonker is just like Willy Clinton, inasmuch as he tells his own version of the truth, according to what he understands the truth to be.

When Willy Clinton denied that had had ‘sexual relations’ with Monica Lewinsky, he was sort of telling the truth. I mean to the average person, if you get a blowjob off someone, then that someone uses a cigar to masturbate with and then you smoke that cigar as you cover her dress in hundreds and thousands, that’s sex. 

But that definition of sex that had been agreed by his lawyers and those wanting to impeach him allowed him the necessary wriggle room to claim that sex had never actually happened.  

That’s what Plonker is doing, not the cigar thing – he doesn’t seem that imaginative for one thing – but over Brexit. I recall him  just as the election campaign was nearing its close, saying that under Labour government Britain wouldn’t rejoin the E.U.

What he didn’t say however, was that Labour had been conducting secret talks with the EU about closer co-operation on a wide range of issues. Or that one of the first things that the new Foreign Secretary, OnTheLam would do, was to hold face to face talks with EU leaders to signal a reset in relations.

So whilst he wasn’t lying, neither was he being completely honest. Not for the first, and certainly not the last time , he was practising the political variant of Schrodinger’s cat. He had to keep his own party happy and not lie to the British people which he has done, although the British people have suffered the same indignity that befell Monica Lewinsky’s dress.

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