Power

Ultimately, all politics is about power.

We all know that power is important.  We all live with power relationships in our lives. At work, you know that if you’re the boss you have power over people who work for you. You also know that your customers have a different type of power and influence over you if you own the business and have to satisfy customers to make money.

You have power and influence over your kids, and you know that that reduces over time, sometimes nicely, but sometimes those power struggles are really challenging.

Power is important and is key to our social relationships.

Power misused can lead to dire consequences.

People with power do not always use it in the interests of everyone. In days when that some people had lots of food whilst others starved, that's bad enough. In days when it means destroying the planet forever, it's even more significant.

So we need to know where power rests. Who is using it and how we can influence it for the majority.

In Britain there is the pretence that power rests with politicians and that we can vote for those politicians as we live in a democracy. It's worth taking a quick look at how we got to this point before we assess whether this is actually still true.

I'll do that next week.