UK Elections: What for?

Who has real power? Elected representatives? the mass media? the trade unions?

When an MP, for whatever reason, falls from grace, what happens to democracy? Since the last General Election, and since other elections, we have seen Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and other elected representatives exposed as either incompetent, corrupt or both. We can say as justification that those elected are as fallible and as vulnerable as anybody else, but we cannot avoid the consequences. Because they are constantly in the public domain and being talked about, their failings lead to lack of trust not just in them, but also lead to lack of trust in the democratic process.

This afternoon, a Police officer told me about his feeling about how the system to deal with mental health patients is not working and about how he encounters the same kind of situation on a daily basis. He said that having taken a mental health patient to an Accident and Emergency Department, the said patient usually ended up staying in the Accident and Emergency Department for more than 24 hours under police custody because he or she was not admitted into proper dedicated wards inside the hospital. He also told me about how patients are being discharged without proper treatment only to relapse to get involved being involved in life-threatening events. Departments meant to deal with mental health patients are over-capacity and tend to discharge patients before it is safe to do so. 

Now, this is a mental health issue, but it is also a political issue. One government after another, of all political colours, have failed to address the issue of what is done with mental health patients. We are dealing with mental health patients born and bred in the United Kingdom and we are dealing with people who arrive in the UK with mental health issues. We care more about dogs and cats than we care about people. We have more safeguards concerning dogs and cats, than we have safeguards concerning people. The recent Covid Pandemic is a perfect example. How long it took to close borders to present the spread of the disease? Were borders closed at all? On a daily basis we are admitting people who come into the country illegally and there are no safeguards regarding public health.

Even trust in Police forces is falling due to well-known incidents and this has been made worse by the fact that those in charge of Police forces have publicly stated that they don't have the tools to get rid of 'bad apples'. We know that there are individuals in uniform that are a certain liability when it comes to public safety and we accept it as fait accompli. We are supposed to elect representatives that will deal with these matters. So many failures tell you that democracy is not working. So much mismanagement and so many failures happen for a reason. Changing one political party for another will do nothing to change the core reasons that lead to such mismanagement and failures.There is something fundamentally wrong regarding the system itself.