Bring Out Your Dead!

It started with brexit. Every old duffer with a history in politics - not to mention a seat in the House of Lords - has been trotted out to tell us how important Britain (England) is in the world and how life  will be so-o-o-o much better once the UK has shaken off the shackles of the EU. 

So we've had Nigel Lawson. Nigel wanted the UK to leave the EU but he wanted to live in France. Sadly (for us, though not for the French) his application to remain (irony alert!) in France was rejected and he's back in Blighty. 

Now we've got Ann Widdecombe deserting the sinking ship of Torydom to join Farage's Brexit Party. 

And George Galloway...well, the less said about him the better. You'd need slo-mo eyesight to keep up with the number of party changes George has made in his time.

So what have these styumers (Glasgow word - speaks for itself, I think) got in common? 

They are old. 

Farage is 55. Galloway is 64. Widdecombe is 71. Lawson is 87. If you, reading this, are under 40 and even thinking of voting for this lot, let me plead with you: in no time at all, these old duffers will be dead and gone and you, the young, will be dealing with rising poverty, the declining value of the pound, the loss of the NHS, the constant struggle to get work - and still trying to work out what the hell went wrong. You'll still have the unelected House of Lords making decisions about your life. You'll still have a voting system for the House of Commons that leaves about half the population disenfranchised at every election. And the political parties around you will still be made up of mostly male millionaires who've never done a proper day's work in their lives. But they won't have the EU to blame any more!

What should you do? Make sure you're registered to vote. Use your vote every chance you get. Join a political party that reflects your beliefs rather than your parents'. Sign petitions. Join marches. Put posters up in your windows. Above all else, don't settle for more of the same.

Of course, those of us who live in Scotland will have a different problem. The very mention of a second independence referendum brings out a whole clutch of useless ex-politicians of pension age to tell us all how awful independence will be, how we can't afford to go our own way, how we need the protection of the bigger UK, how we'll be out of the EU (really?), how we won't have a currency of our own, how pensions will suffer, etc. Of course, we've heard (and discredited) all this before - 5 years ago - and from the same people: Gordon Brown (68), Alistair Darling (65), George Robertson (73), George Foulkes (77), Malcolm Rifkind (72) - and the rest. 

But the same advice works for young people in Scotland as for young voters across the UK: if you're under 40 and you allow yourself to be persuaded by these old duffers, long after they have given up the ghost, you'll be left with the problems I mentioned up above. Don't be fooled. 

One of the biggest problems of the British state has been inertia: the political classes far too often like things the way they are and don't want change. But change must come and it can only come through you, the younger people. So it's as I said above: get out there, get active in politics. Make a country you want for your own children and their children.