I have long since had the feeling that something isn’t right in the world and I have struggled with the idea that it is getting worse. Don’t pretend you haven’t got the same feeling, I know you do, but you are ignoring it, just like I did.

As I watch governments roll out policies it increasingly feels like it is just one set of people’s agenda rather that something that forms a direct relationship with what people want. When I say people I mean the genuine majority of people, not a tiny percentage with a loud voice or money.

Ultimately what is the point of having elections if the policies that come out of governments are just what they want to do. The fall back position might be that they are manifesto pledges therefore hold a mandate. But the reality is that most people, and I am going to go out limb here, pretty much all people, including MPs, Local Councillors party members and me, don’t even read the manifesto, so they aren’t really voting for it. It’s all a load of nonsense, more tricky arguments to evade accountability and any sense that politicians serve the people. They serve themselves and their followers.

The last bit I can handle, but the important thing to remember is that there are a lot of people in the country and if their view isn’t being served, and they are a real majority of people then once again we have been duped. I am so tired of being duped.

Let’s take the asylum seeker issue. Do most people in the country want to have a boat housing people waiting to have their claim processed? The conditions seem pretty shabby, these people are being treated as criminals, and no doubt some of them are, but most are unfortunate people fleeing poverty war or persecution of some sort. Do we want people to be in the asylum system for years? Unable to work and contribute to society which they want to join? To clear the backlog the home office needs to make 2200 decisions a day, they are currently making 1300 a week (home office select committee numbers). None of this seems to solve any problems for the people coming or the people in our country.

Criminal gangs are the problem we are told, the government are staffing up to get to the right levels at the end of the year we are told (it will require an almost tenfold increase in decisions needed) and we are told it is the number one issue for people in the UK, it is even one of Sunak’s 5 pledges to clear the backlog.

But the reality for most people is that their mortgages have more than doubled, for the foreseeable future or that their energy bills are unaffordable, or they cannot afford food, you know, the basics. Add to that the difficulty of gaining access to healthcare at present and there do seem to be more pressing issues.

We are not stupid. Or at least I hope we are not. What I cannot understand is that despite the clear distinction between what is actually troubling people and what the government is doing, there does not seem to be any dissenting voices being heard. If you are interested in the issues facing people as they see it here is the report from the office of National Statistics so you can see for yourself. No mention of small boats of asylum seekers here.

So my question is if this is not what people want, how can it be a vote winner? Why would our government pursue these policies? Even worse they dominate the headlines, there is endless obfuscation of the facts and a constant denial of the issues. This issue is not unique to the UK, I am sure we can name a few instances of this in other countries

The consistent theme is that it is the fault of minorities, and definitely not the fault of the ruling politicians regardless of how long they have been in power. In the UK it is 13 years, and will be 14 by the time we have another chance to vote this lot out. By any measure a 14 year period of governance is a long time.

Personally I think that if you have overseen the following, you are responsible.

• Austerity policies – funding bank bail outs by squeezing the population who didnt cause the problem
• Brexit – fundamentally changing all of our trading relationships and freedom of movement, which in turn affect the cost of goods and immigration
• Covid mistakes – making pretty much every wrong decision during covid causing death, confusion and further poverty
• Liz Truss – Increasing the cost of government borrowing and causing an unrecoverable position on our international credibility and confidence in our economy. What the actual fuck happened here ? How was this even possible?
• Running down social services – health, education, defence, you name it it’s been cut. Where is the money? Paying down debt? Who knows. See National Audit office information on public sector fraud during the conservative government’s tenure here. (spoiler alert £7.3 Billion lost in Covid Temporary schemes alone)

These are 5 major effects on our country that are indisputable, 4 of which are directly the collective decision of the ruling party and one which they could not help but failed dramatically in addressing. If you took these decisions, how can you believe that you are not accountable. Each leader assumes they were not involved in the previous leaders mistakes, as if its a fresh slate. But the reality is they are all culpable.

So where does this leave us? A set of decisions that affects people that they generally don’t want or didn’t understand when they agreed (Brexit). It is my believe that political and economic dogma sit at the heart of this.

Where is the plan for people? Where is the plan for the environment? Where is a plan to tackle inflation that isn’t solely based on interest rate rises? Labour are terrified to speak about anything in case they get hammered with the same old nonsense about not being trusted with the economy. The conservatives run amok making themselves and their friends richer by pumping public money into private hands. Meanwhile we can’t afford to live.

Think of the enormous numerical advantage normal people affected by all of these issues have in numbers when we enter the ballot box? Yet in the last few elections in the UK we have given that advantage away and been left with what we have now.

There was a recent report about English cricket being Elitist, Sexist and Racist, and people across the sport and the UK throw their hands up. My observation is this is Britain today, the elite run things and keep the door behind them closed whilst pumping racist messaging out to keep our eye off the real problems whilst keeping social mobility for gender and race to a minimum. Cricket is a microcosm of the UK, there is nothing here that isn’t everywhere in our country.

As I speak to my international friends, they cannot believe what is happening in our country. Once the bastion of genuine freedom, a standard bearer for decency within international relations and the peak of democratic government, seems all but gone. I wonder if we will fall for the same old shit next time we walk up to the ballot box in 2024. If we do we will only have ourselves to blame.