Looking for a Leader - An Uplifting Political Article

This article must begin with an apology - I'm sorry but this is not going to be uplifting. If you think it is at all possible to write an uplifting article with regards to British politics at the moment you must be living in La La Land (dream world or film, it matters not).

I have stopped watching the news, I have stopped reading the papers and I have been actively avoiding political Facebook posts and I feel guilty. I feel guilty because I have friends whose very way of life right now depends on what happens with Europe and I have friends who are being deeply affected by the dismantlement of the NHS. I think this probably makes me a bad friend but I came to a point in the last six months where my levels of anxiety were just too high to continue to try and process the unchallenged madness going on around me.

Unchallenged is the significant word here. We currently have a government installed that is going almost completely unchallenged in the face of enormous public pressure to scrap Brexit and save the NHS. An entire generation of young people (and those of us a little beyond 'young') feel let down, misrepresented and disillusioned. What's the point? That's a question I frequently ask myself. I have no one to back, no one to champion, no one that represents me. Labour has neutered itself with in-fighting and a leader about as charismatic as a door knob, the Greens champion everything I do but regardless of their sound (logical and compassionate) political judgement, their image is yet to be professional enough for someone without deep environmental and anti-capitalist sentiments to go along with and the Liberal Democrats? Who in their right mind of my generation will ever vote for a party in their lifetime that shunted them on tuition fees? Not me. That's grudge that will be hard to erase.

With the triggering of Article 50 signalling our imminent departure from Europe (along with it no doubt our human rights, NHS and any scrap of common sense too) and the biggest sell off the NHS we've ever seen (all thanks to your friendly neighbourhood conservative MP), that fist of tension and anxiety that resides in my chest is only becoming more suffocating.

It is worth acknowledging that protesting is a great release of this tension but that's effectively all it is, isn't it? When was the last time a protest changed anyone's mind who had the power to make any difference? In this country, not in my lifetime as far as I am aware. The only thing that protests do is ease that lump of tension I have and remind me that I am not alone in feeling the way I do but the fizzle that inevitably follows feels more disheartening than ever. With no real leader and no one even on the horizon to champion what is morally right (and finding ways of balancing the books accordingly - i.e. not making the poorest of us suffer even more), I feel completely ineffectual, nothing short of useless.

It's easy to tell me to do something, but what? The Millennial in me tells me nothing I can do will be of any worth. As my European friends are openly considered by the government to be of no value to this country, is it enough to repeat over and over and over again in protest after protest that they are? With no one in the political sphere to take that message to the top, aren't our protests just falling on deaf ears and only serving to comfort us in the belief that this many people can't be wrong? Solutions come in the form of politics, not protests and with that in mind this movement needs a leader, and soon.

~ Looking for a Leader