As the general election gets closer, there is lively debate on the left about what the coming Labour government should look like and what it should do. Susan Hillier believes Labour should be bold – and that we should have politicians with more experience of real life:
I write as the daughter of an active Trade unionist. I was brought up in the fifties and sixties when responsibility, public service and accountability in office meant something. I started work at fifteen years old, went to evening classes after work to get my GCEs, and as a mature student went to university and gained a BA Hons in Economics and History. I give this much detail to explain my following comments which are not based on any kind of prejudice or misplaced ‘envy’ of the public schools in the UK. Quite the contrary, I feel that the private public schools, and degree certificates from Oxford and Cambridge give a very limited education from which to build a career in public service at high level.
Vacuous political leaders
The country has had enough of the vacuous political leaders with their ‘partial’ limited education in the top private sector schools and universities. They are to be pitied, not acclaimed, for their backgrounds. Their blank looks when challenged by the public and media speak volumes to their limitations. Such a very limited education has not led them on to achieve the wider intelligence that comes from working with the public in general from an early age and, of course, it is not planned that from their high early echelons that they should even attempt to do so.
Once in power, they are reduced to attempting to look the part, in rolled up shirt sleeves, with every sound-bite pre-programmed, and their audiences tediously selected. Indeed, the United Kingdom very nearly split apart recently when Cameron and Co had to race up to Scotland to beg for their jobs. Who can forget their haunted faces, as the Scots took revenge on these sadly lacking public schoolboys. It wasn’t even a real contest, they looked and sounded ridiculous. Gordon Brown’s very timely intervention in the debate at the last minute highlighted the current glaring lack of statesmanship in Parliament. Now he has to use his skills to push his promises through.
Centrist policies
This country should demand that its leaders are widely educated from schools and universities around the country, having experienced work from a young age and to be seen as possessing the innate skills to understand life from all levels. There is still time to bring in some older, wise, more experienced people from around the country to face up to the challenge from Farage, with his pint of beer and broad grin, who has tapped into immigration and exiting Europe as a means to power. This of course speaks volumes to those communities around the country suffering the results of the ‘centrist’ policies of our so called ‘bright’ boys in Westminster.
Labour should be offering us a programme of hope – a real alternative to the Tories and Lib Dems, and UKIP, instead of a Tory-lite agenda. They should be boldly anti-austerity, pro-growth, pro fair taxation, defending the poor and the environment, explaining the benefits that immigration has brought us, together with tighter border controls and providing a fair, national education system. And for goodness sake, let’s have people who look and sounds as if they represent the general public in the UK.