Does every General Election, as the Doctor intimated at the start of the new series of Dr Who, entail an act of forgetting? Forgetting, or trying to forget, that some of our most senior politicians have thrown basic decency aside in the pursuit of personal profit. Forgetting that unconscionable things have been allowed to happen in secret even as new initiatives are trumpeted in public, even as we get wrapped up in the celebrity lives of our leaders – Sam Cam’s fashion sense, Brown’s quarrels with colleagues.

Writing in this month’s Reform, Ekklesia journalist Jill Segger argues that the cult of personality has overtaken politics, leaving little room for the thorough thrashing out of political ideas. It’s not that there are no big ideas in politics today, it is just that neither we nor our political representatives are fully focused upon understanding and developing them. We are distracted by image, soundbites, polls, gossip. It matters. Because the less committed we are to agitating for change, the less our leaders will feel impelled to try and bring it about. The more closely we are following reports of tensions between cabinet personalities, the less likely we are to notice that Britain may have been quietly complicit in the torture of terror suspects.

We are a long way from arriving at the “tipping point” that American author and former monk Thomas Moore envisions in an interview for Reform this month, where our understanding of the human condition could transform our society. We need to understand, as Jesus did, “how we can be saved from our unconsciousness – out of which we kill, steal and abuse each other.”

Such an understanding would lead us to the ultimate metanoia – that is, an ultimate change of heart and vision. It would mean, for example, that not one of us could continue to sleep in our beds knowing that the children of asylum seekers are suffering the ruinous trauma of being locked up in British detention centres. No government minister would accept the rationale that these children’s parents cannot be allowed to abscond and that imprisonment for both parties is a better option than separation. Whatever the cost, we would find places for these families within our communities and look after them.

We have to be hopeful at the beginning of a new government term, however we voted. It’s a fresh start, for us as well as our political representatives. Most of us in this country have the privilege of freedom to think, move and act. And whether through supporting, criticising, lobbying or just staying abreast of things, we should try to make the most of it.

This article appeared in the May 2010 issue of Reform.

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