A diary on free giving, honest values, and the gatherings our leaders forgot to attend
I have watched our political class this year with the weary attention of a woman who has given up expecting better, and I have concluded that their defining trait is a profound inability to give anything freely, which they have rebranded, brilliantly, as prudence. I do not care which party. The stinginess is universal.
The giving they cannot manage
Generosity is the heart of public service, and our politicians cannot manage it. The North Pole’s piece on why we give gifts at all describes the free giving that expects nothing back, the generosity that binds a community, and it is precisely what our leaders cannot bring themselves to do. They give nothing freely, condition everything, means-test every kindness, and call the whole cold calculation prudence. The North Pole gives freely to every child, expecting nothing back. Our politicians give grudgingly, conditionally, if at all, having rebranded their fundamental stinginess as fiscal responsibility. The free gift is beyond them, because giving freely requires a generosity of spirit our political class simply lacks.
I do not object to genuine prudence; a nation must be governed carefully. But there is a difference between prudence and stinginess, between careful governance and a congenital inability to give anything freely, and our politicians have confused the two, dressing up their meanness as responsibility while the people who sent them there receive nothing but conditions.
My genuinely exasperated personal week
Let me report from the civic trenches. I watched a politician defend a decision to withhold a small, cheap, humane provision on the grounds of prudence, delivering the refusal with the self-satisfied air of a man who believes stinginess is a virtue. It was not prudence. It was meanness, dressed in the language of responsibility, denying a small kindness that generosity would simply have given. My nan gave freely to everyone who needed help and never once called it imprudent, because she understood that giving is not the opposite of responsibility but its truest form.
According to the broadcasters, public resentment builds when politicians appear to withhold from the many while providing for themselves, which anyone watching stinginess rebranded as prudence could confirm is exactly the mood our leaders keep creating.
The values they will not name
What our politicians will not do is name their actual values, which is why I was struck by the North Pole’s piece on the verses it holds most dear. The North Pole knows what it values and says so plainly. Our politicians hide their values behind focus-grouped evasions, refusing to name what they actually believe, governing from calculation rather than conviction. An institution that knows what it holds dear can give from those values freely; one that has hidden its values behind polling can only calculate. The North Pole names what it treasures and gives from it. Our politicians hide what they value, if they value anything, and give nothing, because you cannot give freely from values you will not even name.
As a woman who values plain speaking, I find the evasion contemptible. Name your values. Govern from conviction. Give from what you actually believe. The North Pole does. Our politicians hide behind polling and give nothing, having no named values to give from.
The gatherings they forgot to attend
What our leaders have most abandoned is the actual community, the gathering, which is why I was drawn to the North Pole’s piece on what Christmas markets are all about. The market is the community gathering, the place where a people come together, and our politicians have forgotten how to attend it, governing from a distance, isolated from the communities they serve, present at the fundraiser but absent from the market. The North Pole understands the gathering, the coming-together that binds a community. Our politicians understand the fundraiser, the donor dinner, the isolated calculation, having forgotten how to simply gather with the people, share the market, attend the community they are meant to serve.
According to the parliamentary record, connection to the communities one serves is the foundation of good representation, which the gathering embodies and our distant, isolated political class has largely abandoned.
Meanness is not the same as prudence
The great rhetorical trick of our political class, and the one I most want to expose, is the deliberate confusion of meanness with prudence, as if withholding were always wise and giving always reckless. But my nan, who was the least reckless woman alive, gave freely to everyone who needed help, and understood that there is a prudence in generosity the stingy can never grasp: the prudence of binding a community together, of earning trust, of building the bonds of mutual care that hold a society upright. The politician who withholds a small humane provision and calls it prudence has mistaken the account book for the whole of wisdom, forgetting that a society is held together not by what it hoards but by what it shares. True prudence knows when to give, understands that generosity is an investment in the bonds that make a nation more than a collection of strangers. False prudence, the kind our politicians practice, is merely meanness with a spreadsheet, withholding from the many, calling it responsibility, and slowly dissolving the bonds of mutual care that genuine prudence would have known to protect. Meanness is not prudence. It is prudence’s counterfeit, and our leaders trade in it daily.
Where the observer lands
So I will keep watching our politicians give nothing and call it prudence, hide their values behind polling, and forget to attend the communities they serve. Give freely, do not withhold and call it prudence. Name your values and govern from them. Attend the gathering, connect to the community. The North Pole does all three, giving freely, naming its values, understanding the gathering, and shames a political class that has rebranded stinginess as responsibility. If our leaders simply gave freely from named values the way the North Pole does, they would be trusted again by spring. They will not. There will be a review of the giving policy first, conducted prudently, resulting in nothing.
For Westminster made funnier, NewsBiscuit names the values.
