Career politicians’ PR-trained mendacity has emptied parliamentary stakes into debate-game form

Evidence

Blair isn’t just contingently a liar, he is, like the new breed of career politician he heads, a professional liar. As a lawyer turned politician, it’s no surprise that Blair treats reality as a distraction from PR. He has been complicit in producing a situation in which there is no more at stake in parliamentary democracy than “beating the other side”, as in a “debate” at the Oxford Union. His I-am-innately-good moral righteousness is as much a testament to his public school and Oxbridge education as anything else: you see, glinting in the eyes, the unwavering certainty of the truly imbecilic. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1393

Categorization

• XREF: Recalls ch52’s point that mandatory-jokey political TV signals political disengagement — parliamentary democracy reduced to the Oxford Union debate style parallels that.