Politicians still don't get it: They're not special

This week we’re being treated to the spectacle of our Westminster politicians playing out games far divorced from the reality of most lives. The problem is that they still don’t get it. You may have noticed that there’s a Conservative leadership race underway, with a candidate meeting yesterday arranged for the press at which senior Tories demonstrated just how out of touch they were with the real world. It was painful. They did a great job of telling us in what high regard they held themselves, and that it was unreasonable if we did not love them as much as they love themselves. Elsewhere, Tom Harris wrote a piece  explaining that matters such as picking a party leader were far above the capacity of we ordinary folk, and it was something best left to professional politicians. And today, William Hague takes a break from oil-wrestling with his driver to tell us to leave everything to the politicians – that we we can get on peacefully with our dreary lives without bothering our silly heads about these things.

Titanic’s fate is a frequent meme for the future of the EU. But it is not only the EU that is sinking beneath the waves, but our own political elite. The expenses scandal ten years ago should have been the catalysts for widespread and fundamental reform of parliament, but instead they picked a few scapegoats to serve jail time and covered up the crimes of the rest. People haven’t forgotten.

Over 180 years ago the Chartists foresaw the danger of not only the folie de grandeur that being in parliament could induce, but the proclivity to corruption, venality and above all the danger of neglecting to represent those they were sent to Westminster to represent. So the Charter set a maximum term for MPs of one year. It was the only one of the Six Points that we have not achieved since 1838.

What will it take to bang it into the heads of our Westminster elite that they’re not special?