The Mandelson scandal has revealed a democracy so broken and a politics so toxic that it isn’t worth saving, argues our Writer at Large

What could be a better metaphor for the rotted collapse of late-stage democracy than the so-called Mother of Parliaments crumbling into the muddy waters of the Thames?

The Houses of Parliament are disintegrating. It will, we’re told, cost up to £40 billion and take 61 years to refurbish the Commons and the Lords.

I’ve mentioned this to dozens of folk of all political positions and none over the last few days. Each of them, with varying degrees of spleen and four-letter fusillades, spoke with one voice: let the damn place rot.

These folk shared a singular trait. None was a politician. They were working-class, middle-class, from the public sector, the private sector, blue collar, white collar. Folk like you or I who work, worry about the bills and our children, pay taxes and keep this country running while professional politicians undermine every dream, and feed on every fear, we have.

Nihilism feels like a terrible personal failing, akin to the Christian sin despair. As humans – whether atheist or believer – we’re programmed that hope must and should be our default setting.

But what hope can there be in the British politics of today? Like the building they’re housed in, our rulers are rotten and the system they preside over is rotten. To claim hope in this climate is to say that strychnine tastes of life.

We’re told repeatedly that Britain is broken – whichever party is out of power blames the other for the smashed-up state of the UK. It isn’t Britain that’s........

© Herald Scotland