Non fiction

Politics & Class: A Tangent

Most people don't like those above them. Working class people don't like lower middle class people, lower middle class people don't like middle class people and no one likes upper class people but themselves. Where else do upper class people have to go on the hate scale but down? If you get the impression someone who comes from money is looking down on you, it's because they can't help it. While you've been standing on your tip-toes to get a can of soup off the top shelf they've had it brought to them, opened and put in a bowl—and they got it from Waitrose. Pricks.

Obviously I'm unfairly generalising, which I will continue to do from now on (until the end of this article and until I'm dead).

I've often had little moments when I think I'd be good in politics, that I'd be better than all these people that I hate or who I at least roll my eyes at when they start talking at the camera like they've never talked to humans before. Politicians have that way of talking, don't they? Gesturing a bit with their hands and looking the interviewer dead in the eye because they've been told it makes them seem trustworthy; it's just unsettling. When someone primped Ed Milliband's hair up a bit and told him to smile more it just looked so uncomfortable that you felt a bit sorry for him. That's what he inspires in me mostly, pity. I'll still vote for him though, won't I? At least he's working for the right side (the left side). Rather an awkward, uninspiring overgrown boy than the Torybot 2000, deluxe shiny pink automotwat.

Most people don't trust politicians, and I don't think that's a thoughtless reaction. Some of them probably went in with the best intentions, like I would: I'd go in as a proper representative of the working class, a person of the people with a Yorkshire accent and a policy of never backing down on my morals. I'd be a rock star politician, yeah? But if you think about it, plenty of politicians most likely didn't get their position intending to go back on their word or fiddle their expenses. Not saying none of them did, but I can't believe every single MP got there to toss it off on the benches and live next to St James' park with a mistress and an antique bird bath. It seems like being a politician is the best way to have your idealism beaten out of you; go into it with people thinking you're an arse and you go out either confirming it or not making enough of a difference to be noticed. I'm pontificating, obviously, but it's enough to keep me on a Literature course and away from any inclination I could to change anything.

If you think about politicians that people actually like you're not in for a very long session of deep thought. You may be thinking: people like Boris Johnson, right? His name inspires a chuckle and a sort of, 'uh-oh, what's that scamp done now?' reaction even in my neck of the woods, like he isn't another massively over-privileged, sneering, right-wing, dismayingly powerful person. Admittedly, I've got purple bruises on my legs because my knee-jerk reaction to finding out someone is a Conservative is that severe, but any disdain for him he has completely worked for. Why does he get away with people just tutting and laughing at the reality of what he is when his peers inspire seething hatred? It's because you're allowed to be a dangerous and damaging tit as long as you make 'em laugh.

Plenty of people think politicians are purely a group of soporific, unscrupulous bastards, and that's for them to decide. I think the inkling that a lot of people shy of 20, who are a generation or two away from working class but have a social conscience and want to be in government and have a voice, can be perceived as naïve, and perhaps rightly so. It's not the thought that you want to help better things that makes you naïve, it's the fact that you think the systems in place are going to allow that.

Maybe a revolution then? No? Maybe later. Cup of tea? Aye, I'm gasping.

Emma Jones