Saturday 16 May 2015

#UKIP have won the promise of an #EU Referendum - battle lines are being drawn.

Consider politicians.

Politicians are very powerful people - the closer to government they are the more powerful they are - remember the government are responsible for half of everything spent in the UK - the states spending power is equivalent to the total spending power of every person in the UK. UK is still one of the top economies in the world, and the prime minister directly controls the spending of half of all the wealth we produces.

I think everyone has now seen that regardless of the reason a person enters politics, once someone is a politician with future income tied to outcomes their perspective will almost certainly change, and it will change to benefit themselves first and foremost.

It is human nature to consider your situation 'normal' and 'average' and set about improving it - then, having improved it and briefly felt pleased starting to feel that you new situation is again just 'normal' and 'average' and set about improving it again - than having improved it again and briefly feeling pleased starting the whole loop over again and again and if unchecked rapidly looping through to become a Robert Mugabe, Idi Amin - or other bit shot convinced that it is all well deserved and hard earned, but that there are still improvements to be made. 

Where does this bring us?  It brings us to consider the self interest of politicians, the most powerful class of people in our country today.

Some politicians position and very existence is irrevocably tied to a particular position - for instance Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, he is the politician of an Independent UK free of the EU, this defines him as a politician and in the publics mind defines him as a person.

However in recent decades, newer politicians have released themselves from such a self limiting burdens. Consider Tony Blair - it was often said the he could have originally joined the Labour or the Conservative party, I think not only is that true, but his policies and actions could all have been done just as well as a conservative or labour politician. Aside from the practical considerations of keeping the confidence of his party (which ever one he chose) there was nothing about Tony Blair that wasn't so flexible it could be changed.

Looking at the younger MP's in parliament today, apart from rhetorical key phrases there is little to separate those from different parties.

What is this blog actually about you may be asking yourself. It is about where politicians, those most powerful of people, will be standing on the EU referendum debate.

The UK leaving the EU, or 'Brindependence' (a positive tag rather than the negative 'Brexit') will shake up UK politics hugely - 'the times they'll be a changin'. Change will almost certainly be bad for those currently at the top - there is only one direction they can go - but those at the top have huge power over those below them and all the way to the bottom - they have the power of half the entire UK economy. How many politicians would support something that was bad for them personally? The last one to obviously do that was Mark Reckless - his sacrifice helped cement David Camerons promise of an EU referendum - however it was a clear sacrifice, of Mark's security as an MP and a sacrifice of a voice for Brindependence in parliament. The problem with sacrifice is that your numbers get depleted, while your opponents numbers remain.

I suspect most MPs will be standing where ever they think their own, short(ish) term. personal interest lie - and that is a huge amount of power that the 'in' campaign will be wielding...

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