On the back of the recent US mid term elections, where the incumbent President, Barrack Obama, found himself surrounded by unsympathetic Republicans, one has to go back to look at the reasons why Obama was elected in the first place. And I believe that the overwhelming reason for his election was the hope that this new kid on the block could make a difference. There was hope.
Fast forward six years and that hope is all but gone. The fickle nature of “what’s in it for me” voters changing their colours faster than a chameleon rushing to back the next ‘hope’ for a better future, while disenfranchised Democrat true believers live in apathetic unwillingness to stand up for the ideology they once endorsed so enthusiastically.
Hope. Almost like a Keynesian aspiration of ‘animal spirit’ that drives consumer confidence; so the politicians tap into it like an opiate, attempting to leech out every last drop of it from the mistrusting electorate. And now politicians clamber over each other in their attempt to rationalise why, within their ideological political bubble, the drugs don’t work anymore?
Here in the UK, as I believe is typical of the entire Western world, people have grown weary of empty promises, endless spin, mendacity and meaningless bickering between parties. Throw in a few paedophiles, some financial scandals and the odd corporate outrage and there is not much room for the ordinary people. Recently in the US there was a report that implied that the country was no longer a democracy but an oligarchy. I believe much could be said for most countries in the Western World. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
It astounded me when I heard a politician suggest that ‘hope’ was somehow the primary ingredient to making a successful government. It was Charles Kennedy, former leader of the Liberal Democrats in the UK, who said on the TV programme ‘Question Time’ that politicians needed to offer the people hope. The original questioner had asked if the main political parties believed that they were in crisis. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_k2C_O4ye0 Every politician preferred to use the word ‘challenge’ rather than crisis; semantics already confirming an accusation yet to come.
Prior to this, the general mood of the people reflected the current grievances surrounding unmanaged immigration, politicians being out of touch with the people and how much they did not listen.
The Conservative minister for housing, Brandon Lewis even paid lip service, as so many politicians do, that they needed to listen to the people.
A member of the audience observed that people don’t relate with the party political leaders Miliband (Labour), Cameron (Conservative) or Clegg (Liberal Democrat). He went on to say that this is the reason why UKIP (United Kingdom Independence Party) has become so popular. Indeed one of the reasons why it was suggested that UKIP was so popular is because its leader, Nigel Farage, was able to speak plainly and without political party twaddle.
Douglas Alexander (Labour) then gave us a fantastic example of that very twaddle. by saying,
“The party that will prevail in the general election in six month’s time will be the party that can most convincingly capture the sentiment for change because what is ubiquitous ...in every part of this country is a desire for change to move on from the sense of pessimism and anxiety that people fear today.”
On the basis of this kind of delivery, you can understand why there is no hope to be found among the main political parties of the UK.
People do not go to work to earn hope. They cannot get the weekly shopping and pay for it with a wallet full of hope. They cannot keep a roof over their head with hope. The promise of ‘jam tomorrow’ has been promised once too often.
Abraham Maslow created a useful model that he named the ‘Hierarchy of Needs’. On the very top was food, water, warmth, shelter. These are some of the most basic needs and, curious though it might appear to politicians, hope is not on the list. None of these, incidentally, appear on the top of any corporate businesses list; The top of their hierarchy of needs is just one word - profit.
In 2014, the general population is looking to politicians to help them obtain the most basic of needs. In contrast, the current Conservative / Liberal Democrat coalition are not addressing it. Food prices go up, utilities of electricity and gas go up, house prices soar beyond reach and rents outrun wages. Welfare benefits slashed and - not to leave out the water (which also goes up) - support of fracking in the face of fierce opposition from the majority of the UK electorate.
And what do they tell us? They said jobs are up and taxes have been cut. And yet in relative terms that means nothing to the person who is not in work or to the person on a minimum wage where no amount of tax cuts will make a difference, or to the rent payer whose rent has risen beyond their ability to pay. Hope does not live in a society where there is no living wage.
Mr Brandon Lewis and all of his Conservative colleagues can listen but it is not enough to listen if the ideology they hold does not allow them to understand that only an egalitarian society can produce a stable and healthy society. Politicians need to be able to act and respond positively to the needs of the people and not to the needs of their ideology or those of the corporations who are really running the country.
In some ways I suspect that Douglas Alexander is right but I truly wish that he was not. The party that will prevail will, as every government in the Western World is doing, sell some pie in the sky hope for change where the only real change will be who the taxpayer pays to do nothing meaningful to our country. So the best that I can hope for is another hung Parliament where we pay different people to do nothing good as usual.
What Mr Alexander described as the sense of pessimism and anxiety cannot be washed away by some forlorn hope. No matter what government is formed, austerity will continue, the European recession that is just around the corner now will deepen the economic crisis experienced around the world. No amount of hope can change this. Only the reform of money and the way we do banking can change this.
No amount of hope, it would seem, is going to stop politicians from being led by corporate interest rather than by the people. As Mark Twain said, if voting made a difference they wouldn’t let us do it, proving that the oligarchy has been around for decades and they simply dress it up as democracy.
Politicians are fed by civil servants - by ‘Sir Humphreys’, alluding to a popular TV programme ‘Yes Minister’ that encapsulates how the young enthusiastic politician is gradually sucked into the quagmire of the political system, only to swim helplessly in ever deepening bureaucracy.
For example, recently there has been attempts to appoint an appropriate person to head an enquiry into paedophilia within the political establishment. So far two appointees have had to resign because they are also part of the same establishment and could not be seen to be independent. A bright lad in the audience on the same Question Time programme suggested that the appointee should be from another country - brilliant suggestion but begs the question why the government or their advisers did not come up with it sooner. But it does point the finger at the system behind the politicians as a huge part of the problem.
The same kind of problem with the system is what has stifled the plans Barrack Obama had for the United States. His programmes have been filibustered more times than any other President in history. For what is supposed to the most powerful country in the world, it’s people are fed crumbs from the trickle down policies led by the oil, gun, pharmaceutical , financial and military corporate machines.
There is no hope while corporations strangle governments and nations in pursuit of profit and main stream media cannot report the difference between what we need to hear and what the corporations that own them want us to know. In my opinion this is not true journalism and there should be an international law defining the distinction between what is corporate or state sponsored reporting and what is independent journalism.
With the US Dollar and the Euro in serious trouble, there is nothing that politicians can offer us that will give hope. And yet, as we who seek beyond the lies, know what is just around the corner now, the politicians do not offer us the truth either. Charles Kennedy said on the programme mentioned above that the electorate needed to be treated as adults but I see no evidence of it here. So many of the electorate are left in the dark because governments do not tell them the truth, the electorate has no interest in current affairs or because there is absolutely no main stream ‘independent’ media reporting it.
Is it any wonder that if hope is the currency of politicians - and in times of austerity and need, the currency of people is money - the solution is that politicians have to be able to give people the hope of money... and then deliver it. Clearly this is not going to happen any time soon.
This is why the task that everyone must bend their efforts towards is reform of money and the system in which it operates.
It took thousands of ordinary people, the electorate in the UK to force politicians to hold a debate on ‘Money creation’. 38 degrees was instrumental in managing the petition that led to the historical debate that has not occurred for 170 years. It found that 7 out of 10 politicians believed that only the government can create money, when in truth 97% of money is created by banks in the form of loans. https://www.positivemoney.org/2014/11/press-release-debate-money-creation-parliament-heres-mps-must-attend/
Now if our politicians do not know this simple truth, what hope could there be for any meaningful reform? In fact what hope is there for any of us if our political elite are not in command of the most fundamental basics of economics?
Hope does nothing without results. Politicians need to change their currency by changing our currency. In short, they will get enough hope to be elected on when we get enough money to live on.
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