The Joy of Language

I woke up the day after selection to the sounds of the Home Secretary on Radio 4 giving details of a new anti-terror initiative. The interviewer was asking very simple questions…”What is new about this?”; “What will actually happen?”. But the Home Secretary could not bring herself to answer the questions. Sentence upon sentence came out of her mouth, full of wonderful poly-syllabic words, but all were completely disconnected and meaningless.

Is this what I will turn into as a politician? Someone who is incapable of answering a simple question by saying what they think?

They asked me lots of questions at the selection meeting. I think I actually answered most of them. But many questions politicians are asked are of the "have you stopped beating your wife?" variety. (I can answer that: I’m divorced. But not because I beat her). Or they are a complex question put in a few words without time for a full reply. So, at the meeting: “Would you put your party or your district first?” “Um..that’s a very good question.”
I said I had a core conservative principle that big Government usually gets things wrong, so it was better to have small achievable government. But accepting overriding core principles, if there was a real conflict the district had to come first. That is actually what I think – but, looking back, I can see the first stirrings of disconnected and meaningless sentences. Hopefully it will stop there.