A REVOLUTIONARY situation is developing south of the Border.
The elected mayor of Liverpool has advised Labour leader Ed Miliband to (pause for dramatic drumroll and the parp of a solitary kazoo): listen to the people.
Joe Anderson, a Labour man himself, was inspired by the democratic engagement of the Scottish referendum, but believed things were going the other way in Londonshire and that Ed was becoming trapped in the "Westminster bubble".
It's an interesting notion, this bubble business, and I'm not sure we Scots are immune from it either. First, there are our boys - to borrow the military term - down there, manoeuvring on their magnificent leathery benches, with talk of X going into a coalition with Y, who hates X but is not as bad as Z.
As someone said on the Letters Pages, this makes the hitherto morally superior X - fearlessly, I identify them as the SNP - look as bad as Y, the party that no one expects to act in a principled manner. That would be - all together now - Labour. Correct. (The Z's are the Tories, the party that would end everything).
It all seems a million miles away from the joy and fervour of the independence referendum, when for a brief moment politics became real rather than realpolitik. Now, business as usual has resumed, with the suits running the show.
Is there a Holyrood bubble? I spent about 10 years in the place, or at least there and its predecessor on the Mound, and would say that, to a degree, there is. It's inevitable really.
Your own workplace will be a bubble for you, as will be your family. We bob about from bubble to bubble, so you can't expect Holyrood to be immune. And it is Suitworld Supreme.
Those associated with power - principally the legal establishment and the media - dress similarly, at least in the case of the latter when they are out hobnobbing. It's not a big deal, but it symbolises a different world, one that is effectively a cut above.
There is a place for the suits, I think, and it isn't necessarily the dustbin of history. Norway's suits performed a valuable leadership role after the Breivik atrocities and, while it's early days, those in France appear to be doing fairly well after the Charlie Hebdo attack. Even George Bush, wars aside, did all right after 9/11.
But back in Britland, I can't help feeling, in the wake of the referendum, that something has been lost already, and that Liverpool Joe's point about a Westminster bubble is even worse for us, being that bit further away from it.
According to The Guardian, Mr Anderson warned Mr Miliband that he was in danger of being "caught up in getting advised by people who have got no life experience rather than by people who understand what it's like in the world". Good heavens, Ed's being advised by Jim Murphy?
I assume that, being Labour, Liverpool's mayor isn't talking about getting in business people. Right-wing sorts often get animated about putting these in parliament because they know how to run things and turn a profit.
Not on my watch, matey. You only have to watch The Apprentice to realise that, quite often, business people are not very bright. Apart from that, they'd run the country on a shoestring - how novel - and drive wages down even lower than they are already.
You might think they'd make parliament more austere, but that's hardly likely as they don't go in for austerity themselves. Something of the bubbly, otherworldly nature of the House of Commons appeared on a notice at the Debate canteen this week. It read: "Due to circumstances beyond our control we are unable to open the ice cream freezer. The locksmith has been notified and is working to rectify the problem.
"Should you require ice cream please ask a member of the Debate staff who will be happy to help."
I'm surprised the Prime Minister didn't summon an emergency meeting of Cobra. Perhaps your businessman in parliament would shut the ice cream freezer down - but only for those below a certain pay grade.
No, I'd rather the country were run by cool people knowledgeable about literature and, preferably, fluent in Latin and ancient Greek.
Marcus Terentius Varro believed that man is a bubble (homo bulla), meaning he was fragile and transient. From the outside, sometimes democracy feels like that. But, inside the bubble, its denizens feel safe and secure for ever.
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