Weird

I guess David Cameron must be taking some comfort from the fact that, in the latest polling, a mere 27 percent of those asked classified him as 'very weird' or 'somewhat weird'. This certainly put him well clear of Ed Milliband - 41 percent - and, occupying the middle ground of political weirdness, Nick Clegg, on 34 percent. The worrying thing about all this is that the polls reflect a sad truth - today's politicians are, for the most part, more or less weird. Perhaps you have to be pretty weird even to want to get into serious politics these days but, more to the point, today's politicians are increasingly only politicians - a  caste apart, with little direct contact with or experience of what most of us would call the 'real world'. The voters feel increasingly alienated from the political elite - hence the rise of UKIP and the like...
 But when did all this start - this perception of politicians as 'weird'? I blame Tony Blair - a weird man himself, if ever there was one - whose idea of political debate was to point at the Tory front bench and cry 'Weird! Weird! Weird!' And of course he had a point... Before that, 'weird' was not a word you ever heard in this context - politicians, whatever their faults and quirks, seemed more or less like us, or at least recognisably human, didn't they? Apart from Ted Heath, of course...