In the Brown Stuff - Part Deux.

You may have heard that Gordon Brown didn’t turn his mic off. What happened next and the response to it is, however, the real story.

After all, and whether you agree with Brown said or not, was this not a private conversation? All politicians have them and no doubt say all sorts of things the public would be shocked to hear, and yet we all can reasonably assume that things like this are said all the time. And what about the things we all say in private that are all too different from what we say in polite society? Double standards, anyone? Or is Brown's real crime that he got caught?

And while some may say that different rules should apply to politicians, this seems quite self-serving. One moment, we want our politicians to be like us, and the next minute we want them to be inhumanly perfect. We can't have both. Perhaps we need to stop seeing politics as a calling or a means to the Promised Land, or an epic battle between good 'n evil, but merely as a job full of conflicted, compromised, weak and silly people like us. And in a similar vein, so should politicians themselves.

But the real hypocrisy lies in the response to what Brown said. We demand candour and openness from our politicians and even avoid the ballot box because 'they're all as bad as each other'. Well, actually, they're not and such immoral and lazy thinking is the root cause of our political malaise, along with a dysfunctional relationship with politics itself. Do we really know what we want our MPs to do? It seems to change day by day.

And as ever, it is the voters who are the main villains here. If Gillian Duffy can say what she wants, then so should Brown. Yet we refuse to hear honest opinions if they clash with our preconceptions. This will have dire consequences. On the one hand, it has lead to spin, dishonesty, doublespeak and secrecy on the part of those who need our votes, which has lead in turn to corruption, embezzlement and indeed £1645 duck houses. We have to take a fair share of the blame for this.

But it is even more harmful than that. Whoever gets in next week will have to make cuts. Very big cuts. And so, a lot of enemies. Yet where is the honest debate? Where are the figures? The discussion? The bare facts? You won't get them because no sane politician is going to tell the truth to the public. We would rip them apart because they dared rouse us from our La-La-World retreat from reality. We all know it will come to pass but we're too spineless and stupid to face up to it. We then get the leaders we deserve.

I hate Brown, but I hate humbug and the 'have-cake-and-eat-it' mentality of the British body politic even more. Isn't it sad that Brown is done down, in the end, not for lies but for an honest opinion? And as I have said before, this story has only made the news because we have collectively decided he is a loser again. Never mind why Brown or Clegg or Cameron should be PM – why would anyone want to run a country with such a blind and pig-foul electorate in the first place?