Why is everything today politicised?

AS is the case with all larger mammals, humankind has an innate propensity to select from their midst someone to admire or revere even, a person who, in modern parlance, is termed a role model.

In earlier times it would perhaps be a tribal chief, a monarch, or maybe a religious leader. In more recent times it could be a movie star or a sports personality. If media attention is any indication of how important someone is, then today it is politicians who fulfil that role.

Every news item or press release seemingly has to lead with a political statement, however irrelevant, however banal. Very strange. It is as if politicians were the fount of all knowledge and even worthy of genuflection.

The great comedian and actor Michael Bentine once proclaimed that in a crisis people would call on all manner of experts, but would never, ever, seek out a politician.

Yet politicians nowadays see crises as an opportunity for political intervention, whatever the calamity. Today, everything has to be politicised. Why?

A century ago, a viral pandemic was addressed by medical and scientific experts without the need for politicians to be involved.

Experts were left to get on with using their expertise. How times change. If common sense had prevailed, politicians would not have interfered when Covid struck, lives would have been saved, livelihoods maintained and the global economy would not have been so seriously and unnecessarily deranged.

It isn’t just medical matters. Pretending that politicians can somehow control the economy is clearly at odds with reality. Currently there is a wide consensus on how the anthropogenic climate crisis needs to be tackled. It very much