Shadowplay: Plato’s Cave and Political Spin

by Mark Gullick (September 2015)

Much sport has been made recently concerning the career path of the average British politician. Travel smoothly from graduation to internship, from SpAd (or special adviser) to policy adviser, possibly with a brief sojourn in advertising, PR, publishing or journalism, and Westminster is your oyster. The route is bland, anodyne and lacking in anything but mastery of the managerial and technocratic arts, and gives us a political class to match. There is nothing of substance, nothing which could remotely be called life experience. There is one rite of passage for the elites, however, which may hold the key to this world of artifice and salesmanship.  more>>>