Political Agents

The journalists have left Edinburgh and the cameras have focused back onto Syria or Obama or Ebola in Sierra Leone. The politicians are now back in the news, leaving the woman in the Muirhouse estate or the man in the crummy, crumbling block of flats to stew in their low income households.

The Scottish Referendum has exposed the brittle connection between us the people and our agents of change, the Westminster politicians. They, the politicians, seem to have almost no understanding of the lives and concerns of their most disadvantaged electors. But this makes no sense. Surely MPs must be bombarded with letters from constituents describing their problems, fears, concerns? How can it be that the politicians believe that a walk through Glasgow's city centre ( http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TMcngLWjOrs) can be enough to demonstrate their concern for our most abandoned compatriots?

Perhaps MPs live in a bubble, whirling around Westminster hearing Westminster news and producing only Westminster-speak. Influenced more by a dinner with a leading banker than by a visit to a run-down housing scheme.

Because as agents of change they are horribly ineffectual. At least as agents of positive, widespread, fair changes that improve the lives of our least favoured people. The sort of change that the British Labour Party should favour (they don't).

We can change agents. Remove the small-c conservative rump of the British Labour Party from Scotland (as suggested by the Wee Ginger Dug http://weegingerdug.wordpress.com/)  and replace it with people who talk to people on the streets and in the neglected housing schemes.

The referendum has shown us that we can do more. So has Catalonia. The Catalans have built a community with one aim (independence) and have painted the streets of Barcelona with a 1.8 million person Senyera ( http://www.lavanguardia.com/temas/diada-de-catalunya/index.html). Their politicians have had to run to keep up with the demands of the voting public.

This is how we should work with our agents of change in Scotland. Keep the momentum of the huge public movement that won 1.6 million voters, and drag the agents of change along behind us.