The death of a politician- another tragic day.

 The death of a politician- another tragic day

Just when you thought things couldn't get any worse than they have. You'd have thought that after all the suffering and sorrow endured over the last year and half that maybe, just maybe we'd wake up one morning and find that everything was good in the world, that the misfortunes and ailments of the world would be swept away into the distance and just for once something nice would happen, that the news agenda would be unremittingly optimistic and something would go right for a change. Not a hope, though.

Over the weekend the Right Honourable member for Leigh on Sea in Southend Sir David Amess, a noble, sensitive, understanding, caring and sharing politician, was stabbed to death outside his local surgery. He was a decent bloke, honourable, upstanding, kind and thoughtful. He was just listening to the good people of Southend, inquiring about their welfare, kindly suggesting proposals for the future, in tune with the popular consensus, shaking the hands of those who just wanted to say thankyou. He was recognising their understandable concerns because that's who he was. In some ways he was a man of the people. 

And yet because he was a politician he paid the penalty for being a high profile public figure who may not have been to everybody's taste. Politicians love to be controversial and divisive, utterly objectionable at times, unbearably selfish at others. They love to stand on a platform and speak their minds, expressing opinions that could be interpreted as ill thought out and ill conceived. Then they expose themselves to fearsome ridicule and humiliation around the country since they may appear to be silly and deliberately contentious. Never to try to argue with a politician because they know best. 

For many years the wonderfully charismatic Dennis Skinner has been the butt of so many jokes at his own expense that you may have been forgiven for thinking that Skinner would have been far more suited to a comedy club rather than the House of Commons. But then you give this whole subject of politics some consideration and wonder why on earth you'd  want to spend the best part of a working week being booed, heckled, yelled at and relentlessly harangued. It can't be pleasant and besides they must have known what they were getting into when they entered the Palace of Westminster. 

So it is that this morning Britain awoke once again, sore, shocked and outraged, looking at the mirror and wondering whether this was just a figment of their imagination. Several years Jo Cox, a very competent and highly respected Labour politician, was also murdered in a senseless attack that still leaves you numb and dumbfounded whenever you think about it. Both Cox and Amess were innocently going about their business trying desperately to do the right thing for their communities but then realised that it was their duty to serve the very people who had elected them in the first place.

It is easy to despair of humanity at times. You cherish family and close friends but then you widen your focus and look at the outside world and convince yourself that this latest horror was symptomatic of a much deeper sickness and malaise within society. How many more times are we going to watch weeping families bury their children or simply respectable members of our world who just wanted to leave a mark on it?

In the world of politics the right decisions and the correct choices can often seem physically impossible. You stand up in the House of Commons at Prime Minister's Question Time and subject yourself to a horrific and harrowing examination. If you pass the test you may think you've cracked it. You'll rise to your feet with papers in hand and reputation on the line, either defending your innocence, presenting very convincing arguments and then finally sitting down as the boisterous jeers threaten to deafen the assembled throng. 

Sir David Amess had served his constituency for 40 years which is indeed a long time. Not a week but 40 years and the man had a commendably impressive CV. But last Friday, after carrying out his daily tasks in his surgery he left the building and was then knifed to death in an act of mindless brutality. This may not have been what Amess signed up for when he first became an MP but this is the 21st century and some things never change. Vicious and unforgivable violence on the streets of Britain has almost become like a broken record. We express our revulsion but then it happens again.

At some point in the history of humankind we will actually refrain from war and aggression, hatred and intolerance, believing in our heart of hearts that it achieves nothing of any significance and only makes things more complicated than they may seem at the time. Of course most of us, if not all of us, conduct ourselves in a civilised fashion without resorting to the knife, gun, rifle or bomb. Sadly, though a small ignorant minority would rather spread the gospel of wickedness and genocide and in a world already stunned by a major pandemic, hoping that one day, in some Utopian society we can get on with each other.

But the fact remains that there was a  highly esteemed gentleman whose only wish was to be a benevolent humanitarian, pay his taxes, smile for the TV cameras and then settle down to watch BBC's Question Time, trusting the word of the great British public. Admittedly Amess was wrong and fallible at  times but you can hardly imagine why this despicable atrocity has been allowed to happen in a Britain that just wants to keep its nose clean and make a continued recovery from a global virus. Surely it can't be too much to ask for.