Joe Salmon, 10 March 2024, Tags:
THIS IS ONLY MY OWN THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS AND NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF THE VIEWS OF THE WIDER GREEN GROUP ETC. ETC.
Also apologies I'm only getting this posted now, I recorded this on Saturday morning but it's taken me until now to get this on our youtube channel here
So first and foremost this blogpost / videoblog is about why I’m standing for Parliament. It’s a question i’ve been asked and I've been criticised (and interestingly that criticism has come from a career politician rather than a member of the public) for not expressing enthusiasm for being a politician like some kind of gushing X-factor contestant about how being an MP is a dream of mine.
Being an MP, being involved in politics like I am currently isn’t something I’m doing for fun or personal fulfilment, it’s something I’m doing because I think it needs to be done. If you start to look into politics, locally nationally or whatever in any detail you see a really incestuous corrupt ecosystem of backroom deals, cronyism and jobs and favours for people who really should stay well away from public life.
We’ve seen this here locally with nonsense bodies that do nothing but funnel money to the friends and family of councillors. We seen this nationally with the response to covid where literally billions of public money has been lost and written off to covid fraud.
If you have a dig into how councillors and MPs put food on the table you’ll see a system of legal bribes and backhanders. It’s amazing how much money comes out of the public purse into benevolent sounding organisations that ultimately really primarily provide well paid jobs for the right kind of person, with any charitable or public service work done as an inefficient afterthought.
If you’re watching this video or reading this blog, chances are you very engaged with politics as this is a fairly obscure blog that isn’t being paid promoted or anything like that and are well aware of the issues I’m describing, the lack of transparency, accountability and cronyism.
You are probably also aware of another major issue with our political system and that is that basically all our electoral positions of power have gatekeepers in the forms of the traditional parties, the Tories and Labour that looks to filter out anybody who isn’t onboard with the status quo, which now is fairly openly corrupt.
This works in three ways, firstly myself and the other Green or independent candidates simply won’t be funded to the same level as Tory or Labour candidates. Myself, my campaign to the degree it is funded will be funded exclusively by the proportion of our allowances myself and other councillors donate directly to the local BCP Green party and donations made directly by our members. Conversely when you hear Rachel Reeves or Jeremy Hunt explain that we can’t use our tax money to pay for things like infrastructure or public services they each receive hefty donations from people and organisations benefit from government not doing so.
This allows them to do paid leaflet drops all year round, to have paid staff, paid advertising campaigns etc.
Aside from money through culturally both these parties are run by people who have relationships and similar ideologies to those in positions of power in the media. Locally we see this in how are local rag the echo basically prints word for word whatever press release the leader of the Conservative leader Phil Broadhead puts out, even uncritically printing his last minute budget amendments which had the officers responsible for keeping the council budget in the black shaking their heads in frustration and rolling their eyes at a bloke whose administration oversaw the frittering away of all our council reserves on vanity projects.
It is as rare to see a panel without Labour or the Tories on as it is to see a Green on such a panel, while other organisations that do not poll anywhere near as highly or have our level of electoral success are given platforms because they’re friends with the right people, or simply people with deep pockets.
Finally there is a cultural problem. Like I’ve said if you’ve watched this far you're likely to be much more politically engaged than most people. Most people don’t really vote, or only vote in general elections, and when they do they simply vote for the party their parents voted for, or that their chosen news outlet supports. That’s it. That’s what decides the election in a lot of seats because we have first past the post.
This is gatekeeping is a major problem. It’s one we need to address, and it is one that the Tories or Labour have no interest in addressing as for the people within those parties who’ve made a career out of politics it’s that status quo and gatekeeping that keeps them in employment, and frankly a lot of these people even if they aren’t working the kind of grift experts like Boris Johnson do where they make millions and it just means they’ve got a fairly mundane job as a ‘researcher’ or whatever you realise they are still absolutely 100% committed to the current set up because they wouldn’t currently survive in the competitive jobs market the rest of us are in and would find the transition to a world where it is how well you do your job rather than how loyal you are to an organisation painful.
So I’m running to challenge that status quo, that’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. I don’t “love” being involved in politics, I hate all the back slapping and grandstanding and having to deal with people who positions not because you believe them but because it’s politically expedient.
I think when we’re in a time of ecological and economic crisis if there is one group of people we need to keep well away from political positions of power it’s career politicians who are beholden to the organisations who got us into this mess rather than the electorate.
Now over the next few weeks I’ll put stuff out in more detail on specific policy areas like healthcare or transport, but honestly most of my views are fairly mundane and unsurprising, and if you follow me on social media you’ll already know what they are.
