Politics – 300 – my copy (paperback) bought for £14.99 from Plymouth Waterstones after the 2010 General Election
- 3 nods
The question is: well, do you want to be the next Blair, the next Brown, or God forbid, the next Bush? If such political aspirations tickle your fancy, Shane Greer’s So You Want To Be A Politician may just be the very book for you.
This book is a breezy collection of articles and essays on the goings on of the political machine; from wanting to become a councillor, to the selection process of the Labour party, campaigning, fundraising and even mastering debates. It is a faced paced book, never lagging, with each of the chapters there to inspire and not bog down the next political wannabes.
The book never takes itself too seriously; and as such, it fails to be an essential in anybody’s political kit. This is no Artists & Writers Year Book as for the budding novelist, nor the fun-filled and comprehensive Guerrilla’s Film Makers HandBook for tomorrow’s Spielbergs and Scorseses. But the book never sets it up to be such a permanent addition to the bookshelf.
The editor, Greer, has done a good job in assembling the key features of political life. More admirable is his defence of modern politics in the books’ introduction: ‘As citizens of a liberal democracy it’s all too easy for us to forget how rare and hard won the freedoms we enjoy really are…. Is our system perfect? Of course not. Are all our politicians’ paragons of virtue? Hardly. But for all our system’s flaws and our politicians’’ shortcomings, we still wake up in the morning and find that the battle to get to No. 10 is fought with words rather than weapons. That alone is something to be proud and fiercely protective of’ (p.5-6).
Okay, please forget becoming the next Blair or Bush. But how about the next Mandela, the next Lincoln or – in a contemporary setting - the next Caroline Lucas. This book is a lively introduction into such a world. Just please, for the Worm’s voting principles, make your choice the right one.
