Confession is Good for the Soul

Apparently..

So in the immoral words of that scottish prick Duncan Ballantyne, let me tell you where I'm at.

I used to support the Labour party. More than that, I used to work for an MP. For free, for 6 months. I eventually got paid but was ditched when someone more attractive was available. It was a harsh lesson. But I have no regrets because it taught me a lot about how things work in the political world.

I'm fascinated by politics. It's the field that supposedly generates leaders at every level, and contains the people who shape the landscape and determine the budgets that make everything from international institutions to local nurseries work. Yet no politician requires qualifications or even competence to do this. Political authority is based on deference from others. How that works is the thing that fascinates more than any other. Developing the idea that simply by acting as though you have authority and people will grant it to you sub-consciously has been a big part of my career success so far.

In my working life I have taken in public and private sector and observed how people work and interact in a number of different areas, marketing, accounting, admin, data analysis, management. The most successful are the ones that work from the bottom up, the operational people do stuff and the managers help them do it. If the operational people don't do stuff or get it wrong, managers take responsibility. Politics works completely in reverse, and that's why it generally doesn't really work. I did my best work for the MP when they were on holiday or in chamber or generally as far away from me as possible. I actually helped people. I didn't change the world, but for those people I changed their lives for the better. ome battles I won, some I lost. Some deserved it, and some didn't, but I did a good job regardless. Being forced out for shallow reasons was a brutal but well learned lesson, and I'm not bitter. Besides, the MP is completely fucked in the next election anyway.

So anyway. Labour. Why did I support them? I genuinely believed (and still believe to some extent) that the Labour Party was the party that, at some level, actually gives a shit. I know a lot of Conservatives, and some of them are even my best friends. They are all bastards. But in a good way. Labour seemed to me the most likely to go out their way when people were in trouble and Conservatives would let nature take it's course. Life fucks you? tough.

In the last year though I have had to seriously reconsider this. Gordon Brown is without question the most incompetent and shallow coward we have ever had the misfortune to have as our Prime Minister. Even worse is his penchant for surrounding himself with knuckle dragging henchmen of diminished intellect and competence to carry out his deranged orders. I have now come to realise and accept that socialism cannot and never could actually work. I am still no Tory (as my political leaning graph shows) but I am no longer a Labour supporter either. Where to go next? perhaps this blog will help me decide.