Britain’s real democratic crisis? The broken link between voters and MPs | Aditya Chakrabortty

Politicians have little in common with the people who pay for them. It’s a national failure that they fail to reflect their views

You may have heard that Britain is in crisis. Indeed, there’s a good chance that you will have heard little else. Turn on the TV, and a political reporter brings tidings of a fresh crisis for Theresa May. Flick on the radio, glance across the front pages, and one word will be splashed over and over again. Some mornings it seems the UK is under aerial bombardment from a noun.

But what a funny, contained emergency it is, full of Westminster people doing Westminster maths and deploying their Westminster terms. It is as if someone has drawn a thick red line along the perimeter of the parliamentary estate and labelled it, in big and self-important letters: National Crisis. Look at the politicians and pundits cramming the studio sofas, chattering about John Bercow and processology, swapping a Cooper-Boles for an Erskine May, and so excited that they crackle like acrylic jumpers.

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from The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Joehq5
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