I think I am politically depressed!

As a new academic year kicks off for another round of the seasonal clock, I find myself back behind the steering wheel and darting all over the country to deliver my talks. A busy lifestyle but it has always felt worthwhile. Even just knowing the next generation of school leavers will launch themselves into the world with at least a tiny awareness that our prison system is a disaster and most prisoners are not monsters but people, with stories and needs for help rather than punishment. That’s always been enough.

Something has changed though.

In the rare moments of stillness between bookings I’m noticing the edges of a void appearing, a new blackness where the lights of the future once twinkled. It is as if the stars have been dimmed and the clanking sounds of activity muffled. I can’t hear a single strong voice of leadership I want to follow. I can’t see any sharp outlines defining a destination I want to reach. I can’t get a sense of where we are going and even the vocal activist in me feels subdued, as if there is no longer much point contributing to the discourse, it’s all happening as it is anyway. Does anyone else – or does everyone – feel like this?

From the Life of Pi

A friend recently articulated that this is the first time in her politically aware life that she doesn’t feel represented in parliament. I feel the same. And I’d take it further. I don’t feel represented anywhere in the world. As I see it, there’s Trump and Clinton presenting a both farcical and terrifying picture of a Superpower gone mad; admirable, grounded Angela Merkel is slipping down the slope of political decline; humane Nick Clegg and the liberal Lib Dems have all but evaporated; and Michael Gove’s self-implosion lost him the position as the most forward thinking, compassionate Justice Secretary we have ever had. And with him go many of our excited hopes for imminent and radical prison reform. Then there’s unelected Theresa May offering an increasingly scary version of the right and Jeremy Corbyn a worthy but slightly lack-lustre left and hovering around them in the wings are Putin, Assad, ISIS, Chinese-controlled Nuclear Power Stations… But above all, there’s this thing, this – what is the collective noun for a mass of “unknowns”? Like the carnivorous algae island in The Life of Pi, the ground we have taken for granted for so long, has become a heaving jellyfish that consumes existing strategies and ideas; a bouncy castle that is hard to walk on without slipping down the sides; a brexit of unknowns.

Maybe that’s what it is! Maybe, above all, it’s this post-Brexit / pre-actual Brexit place we are now in that is preventing so many of us from moving forward with the confident strides we used to. We are collectively fumbling in the dark, uncertainty everywhere creating a fertile ground for hesitation and indecision, which can easily grow into inertia and despondency until a sense of helpless despair stops people dead in their tracks. We are facing years of disruption both to the enormous mechanisms of our society as well as the minutiae of everyday life. Change is good, I am so for change, and life is good in so many ways, but this, this blobby no-man’s land littered with question marks is distracting too much from the urgent issues affecting some peoples’ lives right now and temporarily shelving reforms for a day when the ground stops moving. Which is… when…?

Ok, I am definitely politically depressed! Take no notice of me. It’ll pass.