Politicians are corrupt

Oh how I hated Margaret Thatcher (British prime minister of the 80's who curbed Union power and cut back the welfare state)  I hated her beliefs, I hated her policies, but there is one aspect of Margaret Thatcher that I have that I have been forced to acknowledge as admirable when I compare her to the majority of politicians of today .. she was a conviction politician.  What I see in today's politicians, from the Prime Minister down, is an overriding pre-occupation with their prospects of re-election.

Margaret Thatcher's politics started with her conviction, and ended with her election having convinced enough people that her convictions were probably worth following.

If your primary concern is your electability, you constrain your policies and lie to the electorate about who are.  So much of what you do and say is a false construct designed to make you acceptable to the majority.

These politicians excuse their behaviour under the banner of pragmatism.  They say "We must get elected so that we can at least do some good".  But once they are elected they remain constrained because there is always the next election to think about.  

With all these politicians fighting to be whatever the electorate want, rather than fighting to convince the electorate in the rightness of their position it really doesn't matter who gets elected.  Whichever political party gets elected the resulting policies will be very similar to those that would have been implemented by any of the other mainstream parties.  

Politics has been reduced to individuals fighting over who gets the pay cheque, more akin to employees fighting for promotion than people fighting for a cause.  Every now and again when their election is in doubt you will see politicians switch parties. It is not a common occurrence because it generally looks bad to the electorate, laying bare the lack of principle involved, but I believe that many make this kind of career decision when they initially decide which party to belong to.  The important issue being career opportunities rather than beliefs.

I consider this to be corruption.  

If I was to tell you of a politician who promoted a set of policies in exchange for money I hope you would agree with me that that politician was a corrupt politician.  Substitute the word "money"  for "wage", and I hope you can see what I am getting at, and why I say non conviction, career climbing politicians of today are corrupt.

Of course there are politicians out there whose convictions happily coincide with this generic electable stereotype.  But I'd argue that these politicians while not corrupt  themselves are the beneficiaries of the corruption of others, selected to represent their party to the exclusion of others primarily because of their electability.   

Better to be out of power, integrity in tact, fighting for what you believe than to be in power, corrupt, fighting for someone else's beliefs.