Voters fed up with game players
NEW Labour’s Prince o’er the Water, David Miliband, has described himself as “an ex-politician”, raising doubts about whether he has plans to return to UK politics.
Although being a politician, he has not entirely ruled it out.
It is just like George Osborne saying he is leaving politics to edit the Evening Standard “for now” or Zac Goldsmith renouncing the Tory party over Heathrow but then so anxious to be back in the club that he is standing in Richmond, under the flightpath, for the Tories.
Do they think they can dip in and out of constituencies and treat politics as a game?
What did Miliband have in common with South Shields, or Osborne with Tatton, apart from they were a direct route to the House of Commons?
If the political elite have learned anything from Brexit it is surely not to take voters in places far from the centre of political gravity for granted.
The voters, feeling neglected by this generation of metropolitan photocopier boys turned politicos, are developing a habit of biting back.
The same game of musical chairs is going on with party bosses in London attempting to parachute favourites into far-off constituencies that have a soft enough landing cushion.
Katy Clark, former Scottish Labour MP, now a powerful figure in Jeremy Corbyn’s office, is being lined up for Rochdale, where suspended Labour MP Simon Danczuk is for the high jump.
What was wrong with North Ayrshire and Arran, her old constituency? Ah, an SNP majority of 13,573 votes.