Why do we accept these crazy politics?

THERE are times when a short period – maybe just a single hour – can bring a whole series of revelations capable of altering your perspective.

It happened to me this week as I entered Exeter’s vast Marsh Barton industrial estate to have my windscreen replaced. Maybe it was the giant crack across the screen which was altering my perspective, but three things came along in the following 60 minutes that gave me the theme for this column.

First the car radio told me that the Prime Minister’s Cabinet reshuffle was underway. This, not for the first time, made me think what a strange, cut-throat and illogical world politics is. You wouldn’t run a stable and sustainable business in the way in which humans run countries. Cabinet reshuffles are a case in point.

For ages the public is treated to endless ringing endorsements of this minister or that as their bosses are called to defend them in the media. “So-and-So has been working hard on this,” they declare. “No, when he was on holiday he was actually busy in his hotel room working on the problem morning, noon and night. We have absolute confidence in him.”

Then suddenly So-and-So has gone. It turns out the senior politician had no confidence in that particular minister and was simply trotting out the usual untruths. For “absolute confidence in him” read “Daft plonker! He’s for the chop in the next reshuffle”.

I cannot think of any other type of person who would act like this. In most walks of life there would be chaos if whole swathes of managers were sacked or moved sideways with such regularity.

But in politics they’ve been stabbing one another in the back since Cicero was fighting his corner at the Roman senate. And the great clueless and gullible public seems to accept it all because politics tends to be presented, and accepted, as some sort of game. Full of winners and losers.

In business only a shallow-minded and ineffectual boss would bring in a bunch of department heads simply because they were the least likely to cause him or her trouble or wobble their boat. I have never been one, but I imagine top executives choose their managers because those individuals are good at their jobs. No one could have ever said that about the recently departed Secretary for Education.

It is bewildering – and I don’t only mean the way in which politics is run, but also the way in which we voters seem happy to accept that it should be such a crazy circus.

Why can’t we just say: “Stop messing around you lot – and get on with the boring managerial task of running the country!” We never do and the media makes sure we don’t because it feeds off the art of presenting politics as a colourful game full of winners and losers. In reality of course it’s all the boring stuff like making sure the buses run on time which actually makes a nation tick day after day, but the likes of Kuenssberg and Peston are never going to attract an audience by analysing the latest thoughts on refuse collection.

For them, and inevitably for us, a Cabinet reshuffle is a thriller in the making – the stuff of legend – a narrative capable of garnering dramatic epithets such as Night of the Long Knives.

And we soak it up because we humans are enchanted by the idea of intrigue. We like having heroes and villains. For us mere mortals, there is nothing better than watching the high-and-mighty in the act of falling.

It’s the ultimate soap opera, but not a single drip of it oils the machinery that is the governance of municipal Britain.

By enjoying the spectacle we are viewing a very strange perspective of what should be reality. Just like I was viewing a very weird perspective of the road in front of me thanks to my badly cracked windscreen.

What I didn’t know was that a modern windscreen is not just a bit of laminated glass. Thank goodness mine was insured! I was told it would cost nearly £1,000 to replace: “You’ve got a rain detector, a light detector and a lane detection camera in that screen,” I was informed.

The sheer complexity meant I had to undertake a 120-mile round-trip to a specialist workshop – and what do you do if you’ve got two hours to kill in the heart of a huge industrial estate?

I went for a walk and found a warehouse selling walking gear. Having wiled away an hour I went to the till where my purchases added up to over £250. Even my limited mental arithmetic told me that must be wrong.

“The prices you see aren’t the real prices,” the guy at the till explained.

“This is a discount store. You need one of our discount cards – they’re £5 to buy as a one-off purchase. Now your bill has come down to £130.”

Call me old-fashioned, but when I shop I expect the price on the item to be the price I’ll pay. Not in this modern world of smoke, mirrors and strange perspectives, it isn’t. I can only wonder if that particular store isn’t run by a bunch of recently sacked politicians…

We soak up Cabinet reshuffles because we’re enchanted by intrigue... love heroes and villains