Issues? What issues? The general election campaign is increasingly becoming about personalities. They are linked to an issue, yes, and there can be no bigger ones than corruption. But the peg is people, so far a minister and a deputy leader. I say so far because the campaign has three more weeks to go. Heaven knows what will be churned up by the time it ends.
So far we have been regaled with traps set on phone recorders. Next thing we know it will be pictures, for do not exclude that private lives will also be brought into the game.
All is grist that comes to this particular mill. And, to be fair to those involved in raising questions and demanding explanations, transparency and accountability should be key objectives of the practice of politics. Point is, though, that the practice is ongoing. It doesn’t just switch on at election time.
The demand for rectitude by investigating MPs and journalists should take place all the year round. That is the case for some of them. For others it is clearly part of the immediate script of partisan politics, not of the perennial objectives of transparency and accountability.
The reaction to so much political play was symbolised on Saturday.
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