This morning on BBC Radio 4, Ed Balls the Labour's Shadow Chancellor, was asked a straight forward question "do you think it is fair that MPs with a Scottish constituency can vote on matters that that will only pertain to England and Wales and have no effect upon Scotland, whilst MPs with an English or Welsh constituency cannot vote on matters that impact upon Scotland?"
Balls' first response was to waffle about "what we in the Labour Party are going to do when we win the next election blah blah blah..."
She asked the same question again. There was more waffle from Balls.
When Ed paused for breath, the presenter pointed out that it was a pretty simple question and that, no matter how complex the actual solution to the issue may have to be, the fundamental answer to the question should be an easy one for anyone to have an opinion about. "Do you think that it is fair; yes or no?"
Bizarrely Mr Balls simply ploughed on spouting incoherent management speak waffle at us.
Is he really too stupid, or too seduced by the authority of his status, to see that he would have won himself and the Labour Party great political benefit if he had just answered the question in a straightforward and honest way.
When the elite of politics and public life ponder over why the " bloody stupid idiots" (that's us by the way) have started voting in large numbers for the 'new' politics, best represented by Britain's 'UKIP' and Respect parties, the French 'Front National' and America's 'Tea Party', what they fail to grasp is that this political revolution has happened not because the 'new politics' is so inspiring, but because the politics that the existing political establishment present us with is so unworthy of our trust.
There is a grand irony in the fact that it is these very people, the ones who seem to be most concerned about why there is such a swing towards the extremes of both right and left, who are actually responsible for the changes they so deplore.
The rise of the 'new politics' is not the fault of charismatic right wingers, the evil 'Murdoch' empire or the stupidity of the 'masses'; it's not even the fault of the invidious influence of the internet; no, the changes that we are witnessing across the Democratic world are due to the detachment of the incumbent political elite.
It is their arrogance that has brought about this mass alienation. It is their aloofness, evasiveness and refusal to answer a straight forward question with a straightforward and honest answer, that has left people searching for someone, anyone, who'll just "gimme some truth".
Why do the British people like Nigel Farage? I would suggest that despite being a tiresome and egocentric twit of the first order, we like him because he answers questions honestly and his answers show an understanding and experience of the realities of the lives of the people he is asking to vote for him.
Farage clearly has a set of values that don't change weekly on the basis of whatever his Public Relations manager has told him "the polls are saying".
The people trust Farage and these other 'new politicians', not necessarily because they like them or agree with them, but because they are not evasive; with Farage, Marine Le Pen, Rand Paul and George Galloway, what you see is what you get and that's the big difference between them and the hollow careerists who've been holding the reigns of power for the past 30 years
When Nigel Farage talks I am interested in what he has got to say; when Ed Balls talks I just don't believe him.
