Jayne Dowle: Why I listen when politicians speak their minds

ARE you outraged? Shocked to your very core? Will you turn off the television if a politician is being interviewed in case you find yourself offended? No, me neither. In fact I'll be listening extra-hard in case I miss anything. The recent spate of political gaffes has done nothing to put me off politics. Indeed, it has made it a lot more interesting.

So what if you got the urge to throw things at Lord Young, the Government's enterprise advisor, when he told you that despite recession, spending cuts and unemployment, "you've never had it so good".

At least it made you stop and think. Do you agree or disagree? It depends on your personal circumstances. We only have to look at the bankers, cushioned from the severest blows, to recognise that. And come on, what did you expect from an old Tory warhorse like him?

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People complain that politics has become boring, bland and dominated by consensual "coalition" thinking. Wasn't Lord Young appointed to shake things up a bit and challenge a few assumptions? He's resigned, but although I disagree violently with his views, I hope he's not gone for good. Bring it on, I say, get him on Newsnight, and make sure he's got a feisty opponent to pull his argument

to pieces.

And I know I would only have to walk down the road to find someone to concur with incoming Conservative peer Howard Flight, who is in hot water after his comments about proposed changes to child benefit. The man or woman in the street might not use the same crude terminology, that those on benefits will be encourage to "breed" in their council houses, while right-thinking middle-class folk trying to bring up their own families will suffer, but the sentiment will be the same.

The backlash, led by MPs from other parties, struck me as particularly hypocritical. Flight has been lambasted as "shameful", "offensive" and "shockingly out of touch with ordinary people". Well, if that's what Opposition MPs really believe that's what their constituents think, it shows it is them, not Flight, who are "shockingly out of touch with ordinary people". They should try listening, and I mean really listening, not just nodding their heads and smiling into the middle distance. And as offensively-worded as his comments might have been, at least they hit the nail right on the head. Compare to Ed Miliband's meandering speech about the "squeezed middle classes". Maybe we're all desperate for a bit of straight-talking, because now Tessa Jowell has had a go at Miliband, calling his address "cumbersome and inexplicit". At least you knew, without a doubt, exactly who and what Flight was talking about.

So far, David Cameron has been lenient with his loose cannons. You might wonder when and where he is going to draw the line. But it doesn't take a political genius to work out that this is for two main reasons; he is

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loath to upset the Tory party faithful, many of whom would stand by everything Young and Flight have said, and he is rather prone to political gaffes himself.

Look no further than his feeble "joke" about the diminutive Commons Speaker John Bercow and the Seven Dwarves. Campaigners have justifiably had a go at him about that, accusing of him of being less than sensitive to those who are of less than average height. You can see their point. But then again, I guess you don't go into politics unless you have the skin of a rhinoceros. And you don't end up Speaker of the House unless you can take it on the chin, whatever height that chin might happen to be.

Come on, let's get a bit of perspective. Cameron might have opened his mouth before engaging his brain, but other politicians can't start scoring points without recalling that at the Scottish Labour conference Harriet Harman branded the Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander a "ginger rodent".

Rodent support groups and a posse of red-headed Scotsmen forced her to apologise, in person, on the telephone to Alexander. I'd liked to have to heard that particular conversation, especially as Harman is a former Equalities Minister.

If she was still in the Cabinet, I'm

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sure that all these recent gaffes would have forced her into passing

emergency legislation banning the use of offensive language against rodents, red-heads, small people and families of limited means with more than five children.

I'm not known for my tact myself, so I have some sympathy for those who put their foot in so publicly. And also, I find it a bit of a relief that for the first time in what feels like years, politicians are actually speaking their minds.

For too long, the political bear-pit was a sanitised New Labour zone,

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with anyone who spoke out of turn jumped on and squished into

oblivion. It might not always be what we want to hear, but at least we are witnessing un-spun opinion,

passionate views and individual voices. And of course, we are being reminded that politicians are only human after all. That, surely, is the one thing we all do want to hear.