Jared O'Mara: so this is why the UK political system is broken

Hi guys, allow me to share a story that has been in the news in the UK, it is quite an extraordinary story about how a former MP has been jailed - whilst a BBC article has covered the details of how former MP Jared O'Mara had gone from obscurity to MP to now a convict behind bars, it doesn't really explain the reasons why he got elected in the first place. We don't expect our politicians to be as pure as nuns, but at the very least, most of us don't expect them to be criminals that get locked away in jail. So in a nutshell, the story begins in 2017 when O'Mara got elected as MP for the seat of Sheffield Hallam, defeating then deputy PM Nick Clegg of the Liberal Democrats. Clegg had become hugely unpopular in his time as deputy PM, having made a lot of poor decisions and compromises - hence his defeat didn't come as much of a surprise. In fact, some of us were even surprised that he had the nerve to stand for election again in 2017 knowing that the chances of him winning were at best, very slim. This meant that the seat probably going to be won by the Labour party - looking at the track record of the voters in Sheffield Hallam, since 1997, they have either gone for Labour (left wing) or Libberal Democrats (centrist) and you would have to go way back to 1992 when they last voted for a Conservative (right wing) candidate. Thus, it was with good reason to assume that the Labour candidate had a pretty high chance of winning in that election, yet bizarrely enough, Labour chose to field Jared O'Mara in that election and sure enough, he swept to an easy victory over Clegg with a reasonably comfortable margin. This defeat marked Clegg's departure from politics and put O'Mara in the spotlight despite having had very little experience in politic,- he had been a member of the Labour party but his selection as the candidate to run in 2017 took many by surprise. Back then, O'Mara had been this music venue in Sheffield called West Street Live - he wasn't even an obvious choice to be their candidate. 

O'Mara turned out to be the worst possible MP on record: firstly, after his election, it was discovered that he had made really crass, sexist, homophobic, racist and other offensive comments on social media. He was like a lose cannon who had no concept of self-censorship and a lot of that was verging on hate crime. This begged the question - did nobody in the Labour party do any background checks on O'Mara before selecting him to run in that election? Then on top of that, he sexually harassed members of his own team. But of course, all this was nothing compared to the fraud he was committing in his time as an MP - you see, MPs are not only paid a generous salary but they can also claim expenses for the work they do. O'Mara was a drug addict and an alcoholic - these drugs don't come cheap and O'Mara was heavily in debt to his drug dealers. That was when he started fabricating expenses claims to get more money to fuel his drug habit and eventually, it was his own team who turned him in and made the police report. O'Mara was not a well-organized criminal, quite the opposite: he left a trail of evidence for the police to pick over. And in the meantime, none of the work as an MP got done whilst he was busy spending the tax payers' money on  drugs and partying - you might think, well that should teach the voters of Sheffield Hallam a lesson for electing someone like that! But what did they do next? They elected yet another Labour MP after O'Mara stepped down and I shake my head thinking, that's the problem with democracy. You get what you voted for and this is a good example of Turkeys voting for Christmas. The last Labour MP Sheffield Hallam voted for turned out to be the worst on record and what do they do? They vote for Labour again as if O'Mara had left such a great legacy - that is the story so far in a nutshell, but I wanted to analyze this ridiculous situation.

British politics has always been run by the wealthy elites - let's take Rishi Sunak for example, he made headlines around the world as our first Asian prime minister, but he is also ludicrously rich and has nothing in common with white working class voters in places like Sheffield. This is a trend that is repeated over and over again when you look at the kind of ministers in charge of running the country for the last few decades and thus I can see why voters in a place like Sheffield which is poorer and more working class would be happy to vote for someone like O'Mara who clearly isn't part of the rich, elites who went to Oxford before embarking on a career in investment banking. A working class voter would think: maybe someone like O'Mara would understand what it is like for us common folks to struggle to make ends meet, he will understand our problems and challenges, so he will help us. That's why traditionally working class, poorer areas tend to vote for Labour most of the time. However, in the case of O'Mara, it demonstrated that this was a wrongful assumption to make: once O'Mara was an MP, he had zero intention to help the poor, he just wanted to use his position as an MP to get as much money as possible to feed his drug addiction and he barely did any work as an MP.  Working class people don't automatically want to help other working class people - that's a wrongful assumption of course but quite a common one actually. This is because a poor working class man is unlikely to be good friends or neighbours with someone as rich as Rishi Sunak; his social networks would mostly be within his own working class community and therefore if he was going to ask for help, he would have to default to asking another working class person for help; not because they are so kind and generous, but because he has no one else to ask! However, that is not a good enough basis to simply assume that a working class MP would be the better choice, as social class is not the right criteria to make that choice at the ballot box. 

Hence that's why the Labour party has somehow gotten away with the O'Mara debacle and they still hold the Sheffield Hallam seat today with another MP. As shocking as the story of O'Mara is, the voters in Sheffield Hallam still feel like voting Labour is the best choice for them. This reminds me of a situation of what happened in America under Obama - when Obama was running for president, it was historic as it was the first time Americans had the chance to vote for a black president. Thus in those elections, black American voters had the choice between Obama and an old white Republican candidate and so most just assumed that it was a foregone conclusion that the vast majority of black Americans would simply pick Obama (which was exactly what happened) but what are the consequences of this then? The Republicans don't bother chasing the black vote as they think they have no chance of persuading them to pick their candidate over Obama but by the same token, the Democrats presume that they already have secured the black vote, so they focus their efforts elsewhere like the Latino or the Asian vote. As a result, the needs of the black voters are not prioritized by either party and ironically, they are the ones who benefit the least from having a black president. Likewise, in the UK, traditionally the poorer, working class voters will default to voting for Labour as they are left wing whilst the richer, more middle class voters will lean towards either the centrist or the right wing parties. Thus we end up in the same situation in Sheffield Hallam, Labour knows that they have the working class vote pretty much sewn up as the working classes resent the right wing government in Westminster - therefore the voters put their faith an MP like O'Mara and pay a very high price for their folly when he did virtually no work at all in his term as their MP, because he was a drug addict! 

Another reason why the voters in Sheffield Hallam voted for O'Mara was because a lot of people are simply politically apathetic: they generally have a pretty good idea whether they are left or right wing on the political spectrum but when it comes to elections, they don't invest the time to do any research into any of the candidates who are standing for election. That was why Labour got away with selecting O'Mara despite the fact that he was woefully incompetent and unsuitable but the voters were still happy to vote for him. Part of the reason why people often have this mentality is because they live in a 'safe seat' - take the two parts of London where I had lived in the last 20 years. I spent part of those years in Westminster, which is a Conservative safe seat and then I moved to Camden, which is a Labour safe seat. That means the results of each election is a foregone conclusion because the same party always wins without any exception so by that token, my vote will not change the result, no matter whom I vote for. I never vote for the party that I know will win in a safe seat because I feel it is important to at least cut their margin of victory, to keep them on their toes rather than let them feel complacent but even then, that's an empty gesture - a protest vote that has no impact at all. I remember back in 2010 when the eruption of the volcano Eyjafjallajökull caused all flights to be suspended across Europe - that meant that my trip to Sri Lanka had to be delayed and there was a period when I had no idea when I would fly to Colombo and when I would be back as all the flights were messed up. So by the time I managed to arrange my new flights, I realized I would miss the local elections and I was like, oh no, I will miss my opportunity to make that empty gesture of protest by casting a vote that will have no impact whatsoever. That is why so many people in this country don't even bother to vote. 

In the interest of balance, I don't want you to think that this is an attack on the Labour party though it is still unreal to even try to begin to understand why they ever thought O'Mara would be a half-decent human being rather than an awfully sexist, homophobic, misogynistic sex pest, alcoholic, drug addict and criminal - the ruling party in the UK is the Conservative party and they are equally corrupt. They handed the Covid-19 pandemic terribly by using it as an opportunity to hand out the most lucrative contracts to their friends and family. Thus as I gaze across the political divide from left to right, I end up with the conclusion that they are all just as corrupt as each other and despite their differences, The common theme I see is that both parties get away with such blatant corruption because the voters are so set in their ways and the areas which get the best politicians standing as MPs are known as 'swing seats' - that means that the results in these seats are usually very close and the winning party usually wins by a razor thin margin. That way, if any party wants to win that seat, they would have to field their very best candidate (so definitely not Jared O'Mara) and they would put in an incredible amount of effort to convince the voters that they will work very hard to improve every aspect of life there. Even after a party wins that swing seat, they know they would have to work very hard to deliver on all their promises or else the voters will simply vote for a different party the next time round. Hence these swing seats get the best treatment by the government whilst the safe seats are the ones who end up with MPs like O'Mara. In politics, voter loyalty isn't rewarded - quite the opposite happens, those most loyal safe seats are treated the worst and ignored whilst the most fickle swing seats gets all the goodies that come in the form of investment into local services and infrastructure. 

So you could look at the case study of how Jared O'Mara and wonder, will things change in British politics after this disgraceful episode? Actually no, we only have to go back to 2009 when there was another big scandal in British politics that was so similar. A large number of MPs and members of the House of Lords had submitted false expenses claims and quite a number of them were actually jailed as they were effectively committing financial fraud and stealing from the government. Politicians from both sides of the divide, from both the left and from the right, were found guilty and jailed which shows that they are both just as corrupt as each other. Thus what O'Mara did several years later was simply a repeat of what happened back in 2009 and sure enough, we saw the same outcome: O'Mara was arrested for his crimes, trialed and subsequently jailed. The fact that something like that can happen again reveals unfortunately that no lessons were learnt after 2009 episode when so many politicians were jailed for the very same type of crime that O'Mara committed - this also indicates that O'Mara won't be the last who goes down this road, others will follow in his footsteps as long as long as the system doesn't change. The only way for us to see a fundamental change in the system is if all seats effectively become swing seats and that would then involve all voters holding their politicians and political parties to account, so in the case of Sheffield Hallam, if the voters were to do that, they would have voted for an MP from another party in order to punish the Labour party over the O'Mara scandal. But of course, that's not what happened, they simply defaulted to voting for yet another Labour MP instead of punishing the Labour party. This is a vicious cycle: the O'Mara case leaves voters very cynical about politicians, they become political apathetic as a result, so they stop holding their politicians to account or even bother to vote. That then create the kind of environment where political parties get away with more corruption and then the next scandal leaves voters even more cynical - so how can we break this cycle then? 

Thus the answer is very obvious: enough people need to get politically involved and show political parties that they will hold politicians to account at the ballot box. We need to break this pattern whereby most voters' choice is predetermined by their social class and economic status. Will we see another O'Mara in British politics? Yes we will, but there are plenty of corrupt politicians who are a lot more careful about abusing their privilege and position - O'Mara's folly was in slaying the goose that laid the golden egg by going way too far in his fraudulent expenses claims. Actually, a wiser, far more astute politician would make a lot more money by using that position of power to receive bribes and backhanders (which would make O'Mara's expenses claims look like spare change) and they can still look completely innocent to the public if they are good enough at covering their tracks. Thus corruption and the abuse of power still goes on everyday in the world of politics - that's a fact of life when it comes to British politics, hence it is a question of whether a politician would be as careless as O'Mara to leave a trail of evidence for the judge to examine when deciding how many years to sentence him to. I suppose O'Mara will be remembered as the one who got too greedy too quickly, the one who foolishly slayed the goose that laid the golden eggs instead of patiently collecting those eggs. So I would like to end with stating the obvious: you simply cannot assume a working class MP will care about working class people. You cannot assume that a black MP will care about black people. You cannot assume that a gay MP will care about gay people. You cannot assume a disabled MP will care about disabled people. Thus you cannot assume anything about anyone based on a box they have ticked and you ought to judge each politician by their actions and track record, instead of assuming anything about them. 

Okay, that's it from me on this topic, what do you think? Have you heard about the story of Jared O'Mara and were you shocked that a drug addict could become an MP in the UK? Were you surprised how long it took the authorities to finally put him behind bars where he belongs? Or are you simply rolling your eyes and saying, "come on, most politicians are so corrupt and are in it for personal gain, so this is hardly surprising, is it? O'Mara was just dumb enough to get caught." What else could be done to prevent something like that from happening again or is all this inevitable given the corrupt nature of politics? So, please do let me know what you think by leaving a comment below and many thanks for reading.