John Marek

The news that John Marek has joined the Tories comes as a bit of a shock. However to those of us who are cynical about politics, it could it shows that ambition to the political classes is more important than actual belief or integrity.

My own disillusion with mainstream politics began in the late 80.s, when I was a mature student at Aber. At the time I was a member of Plaid but I’m afraid my experience of Student Polices led me to somewhat drift away from the party.

What I saw was students of all the parties including Plaid putting their own party above that of the Union and this meant that everybody stood on party ticket and this was to result in the position that although a candidate from another party was clearly the best for the union, we were expected to campaign for our own candidate.

In my first year the best candidate was actually a member of the then SDP (not one of my favourite parties) and Plaid formed a pact with Labour partly I remember because a leading Plaid member fancied the Labour candidate.

One of the leading Plaid members was Alun Davis who I saw at the time was very ambitious and who whilst I sure was sincere in his belief was also a political animal and it was this that mostly drove him. Of course he is now a Labour member of the Welsh assembly.

People can change their views we are supposed to get more right wing as we get older (not in my case quite the reverse) but In both John Marek, Alun Davis and Mohammad Asghar their ambition or the actual chance to sit ( as what they see ) at the top table seems to be the main impetus.

We here a lot about the need for integrity in politics perhaps it should start with us all listing what we truly believe in and stand for.