UKIP May Have Caused An Earthquake, But Political Class Leopard's Will Never Change Their Spots

Now all the celebrations have started to die down, it is time to reflect on how UKIP's triumph in the local and latterly European elections will affect our political culture going forward.

There is finally evidence that the political class is facing up to the fact, however reluctantly, that is rule is widely despised and major change is inevitable.

Perhaps the most insightful comment came, surprisingly, from the Liberal Democrats Lynn Featherstone, who rightly observed that the political classes seemed to have "lost their humanity" from the perspective of the average voter. Such an admission was quite a turn-up from Featherstone, who only a few months ago was castigating those of us who were, and are, against gay marriage as mere bigots. I look forward to her apology, but I won't hold my breath.

However, a better world than "humanity" to use would perhaps have been "humility". And therein lies the problem for the Political Class - it never had any humility in the first place. If we were talking about a group of people who had been in power and had just become corrupted over time, as all who spend too long in power tend to do, then the problem would be reasonably soluble: spend a period in the wilderness where they could lick their wounds and reconnect with the electorate.

Instead, the problems for the Political Class go much, much deeper. We are talking about a group of people so monstrously vain and arrogant that they went straight into politics as a career with no proper experience of life at all. Moreover, most of this repulsive group lack the skills to do much else with their stunted lives. For them to have a damascene conversion and realise the terrible error of their ways and resign from public life would be welcome but is hardly likely. No doubt they and the legacy parties they represent will strive to reconnect with the voters they have so completely alienated, but such reconnection is impossible because it implies there was ever a connection between this remote group and the rest of us in the first place.

Politics is perhaps the one career where to do a good job you should have done something else entirely different first, and for a considerable time. These people simply have no hinterland, no experience of life to draw, or a career to fall back upon after politics. For these reasons the Political Class leopard's will never really change their spots, and they will fight like tigers (or leopards) to retain the power of privilege of the only world most of them have ever known.

Unfortunately, we will continue to be lumbered with them for sometime yet as they enter their twilight years after so very long in the noon day sun.