What’s wrong with our politics? Now that more and people are turning to ‘anti-politics’ parties, this question is becoming steadily more fashionable and urgent. It’s now even got its own BBC Three documentary (the ultimate sign that an issue is dead serious, natch), called An Idiot’s Guide to Politics, presented by Jolyon Rubinstein from the Revolution Will Be Televised. The idea behind the programme was that Rubinstein would examine why people, particularly young adults, are so disengaged from politics and don’t want to vote, and why politics is in such a mess.
The picture Rubinstein presented was rather depressing for two reasons. The first was that politicians do break promises and this upsets voters, and politicians have to hustle to get enough money to campaign, which looks pretty dreadful from the outside. That is miserable, and the programme found plenty of people who were miserable about it. The second depressing thing was Rubinstein himself, prancing round various locations being rude to politicians and party apparatchiks, all the while suggesting that their baffled reactions — or, worse, the baffled reactions of their receptionists who had no more to do with the problems with politics than those watching — just underlined how out of touch Westminster politicians are.
Rubinstein, oddly, was out of touch with Westminster, in the sense that he didn’t really bother to examine it at all, other than driving round with a truck with a pile of ‘bullshit’ (which actually looked like rather good topsoil) and invading various party HQs (again to the consternation of the poor people working on reception rather than the scheming politicians upstairs, though the best bit of the programme was Nigel Farage managing to escape from the cameras by dressing...
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