WHAT HAVE I GOT MYSELF INTO?

The most in­ter­est I’d ever shown in pol­i­tics was a major ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the ’Yes min­is­ter’ and ’Yes, prime min­is­ter’ com­edy se­ries of the 1980s. Gen­uine tours de force that de­serve a watch if you’ve never seen them.

And yet on May 28, I found my­self sit­ting on an un­com­fort­able fold­ing chair in the local school, ner­vously chew­ing on my fin­ger­nails as the votes in the local elec­tion were counted. “Please let us win, please let us win,” was the mantra run­ning through my mind.

“Us”? A cou­ple of months ear­lier the other peo­ple in the party had been just neigh­bours who at most would get a ’bon dia’ from me as we passed each other in the street. Now we were “us”.

The local elec­tion was the first time I’d ever stood for a pub­lic po­si­tion and to be hon­est only one of a few times I’d even gone out to vote. Yet in a mat­ter of weeks I’d gone from being slightly cyn­i­cal and sus­pi­cious of the mo­tives of peo­ple who stand for pub­lic of­fice to be­com­ing an en­thu­si­as­tic, and I hope use­ful, mem­ber of a close team of peo­ple who had sac­ri­ficed so much time and so much ef­fort to the cause of win­ning a local elec­tion.

And “we” did win, al­beit with the caveat that we were a few per­cent­age points short of an ab­solute ma­jor­ity, which means the com­ing weeks will be spent try­ing to forge agree­ments with groups of peo­ple who don’t like us very much. And in order to do that will re­quire yet more hours of meet­ings late into the night. But I’m up for it.

It was my wife who sug­gested I should stand for elec­tion, ar­gu­ing that I’d be re­ally good at it. My re­ac­tion was to laugh it off and put her com­ments down to drug abuse. But then I began think­ing, and re­alised that with 30 years work­ing in dif­fer­ent fields with dif­fer­ent peo­ple, bring­ing up two kids, fac­ing crises, solv­ing prob­lems and mak­ing dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions, I had ac­cu­mu­lated skills and ex­pe­ri­ence that could be use­ful. I called one of my local par­ties, spoke to a few peo­ple, de­cided to take the plunge, and I haven’t looked back.

De­spite my cyn­i­cism and scep­ti­cism, work­ing closely with a team of peo­ple who are de­voted to a sin­gle cause has been in­vig­o­rat­ing. Every­one brings a dif­fer­ent strength and the sum of our parts makes us a very ef­fec­tive fight­ing force.

Then there’s the part about want­ing to help the local com­mu­nity. Surely politi­cians don’t re­ally mean that when they say it? Surely it’s just self-serv­ing lip ser­vice and their real mo­tive is pure ego­tism or lin­ing their own pock­ets? Per­haps, but in my ad­mit­tedly lim­ited ex­pe­ri­ence that has not been the case. When I stood up and faced my neigh­bours and promised them that I would work hard for them if they voted for me I gen­uinely meant it, and no one was more sur­prised than me.

I’m sure pol­i­tics is not for every­one, and I’m still not con­vinced it’s for me de­spite my pos­i­tive ex­pe­ri­ence so far. But if you’re look­ing for a change of di­rec­tion, or to in­ject some pur­pose into your life, if you like a chal­lenge and want to con­nect with like-minded peo­ple, if you don’t want your abil­i­ties and knowl­edge to go to waste and are at­tracted to the idea of doing more than just pay­ing the rent and being of some use to oth­ers, then pol­i­tics may be for you. At the very least, I would rec­om­mend watch­ing ’Yes min­is­ter’, you won’t re­gret it.

opin­ion