Sometimes when you think about our country you
have to rise above what the usual commentators present to us. Forget the petty
party political point scoring arguments that consistently blight our politics. You need to just forget politics and the
traditional nature of ‘Right v Left’ ideals that we all know and love so much.
My reason? Well sometimes there’s a bigger picture to be had.
Two Forces
This bigger picture is something that’s slowly
dawned on me recently. What I’ve actually come to believe is that instead of the
political parties dictating what we do, there are really two higher forces
struggling to dominate this wonderful country of ours. I see these as quite
simply ‘Reinvention’ and ‘Nostalgia’.
Reinvention seeks to imagine and work toward a
better future by changing the status quo, whilst nostalgia insists that things
were better in the past and works to undo change. Both Labour and the Tories
are guilty of supporting both whilst being neither at the same time.
Master of Reinvention
It's no secret where my sympathies lie. I've
always been a big fan of reinvention. My life and career is a testament to it.
There is simply no way that a scared, sickly, simply educated kid from Stockport
gets to live the life he's living now without working hard and being willing to
scrap old, unworkable ideas and start over (Of course it helped that I didn't
have a particularly rosy background to feel nostalgic towards). I was always
determined to do better for myself than my parents ever did and I think I’ve succeeded.
UKIP - Nostalgists
Which brings me to the point of this blog. Whilst
I agree and support UKIP with everything they’re trying to achieve with regards
to the EU they have a part that worries me. It seems there’s an element to
their membership which is not about reinvention at all and is purely about
nostalgia. This element hates change and seems actively to support regression
back to the Seventies and Eighties. It seems based on the wearing of
rose-tinted spectacles and selective memory as from what I remember the country
wasn’t in too good a nick back then either. It comes from the same people who
insist summers were always nicer in their childhood – they weren’t of course,
they were similar to now. So it just confuses me why people want seek to return
to a life that wasn't really that great to begin with.
I get it if you used to be the ruling class. If
your childhood memories include watching your grandparents sipping sherry on
the veranda while being serviced by the upstairs maid, then sure, nostalgia
makes sense. But, if you're like me and didn't know anyone who had a veranda,
let alone a maid, (or even an upstairs for that matter), then why not consider
reinvention?
If UKIP (or for the matter the Tories if we get
that referendum) are successful in taking us out of Europe then nostalgia will
definitely get us nowhere when we have to plough our own furrow in the World
again. It was reinvention that built the Empire and our World trade routes and
it’ll be an innovative reinventive approach that will bring us success in the
future.
Maybe we can make this country a better place to
live. But to do that, we need to stop looking back thinking it was better in my
day. It's certainly a more exciting way to go. You know, an uncertain future,
filled with mystery and adventure. I hope nostalgia doesn’t win the day, and
that we don’t attempt to reverse the course of history, this country would
never have a hope in Hell of being ‘Great’ Britain ever again.
Move Forward Not Back
What all the political parties need to be doing
as we approach next year’s General Election is getting rid of their nostalgia
policies (and people). Yes you can learn from history, but that’s it, learn
from it, don’t go back to it. Move forward - in new ways.
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