But we have a National Hope Deficit
A short note today, as it’s a busy week with speaking engagements – professional, personal, and political.
Today, I’m going to wax philosophical.
A lot of people I am meeting on the doorstep reflect the national mood. They genuinely don’t know who they’re going to vote for.
They don’t see their values reflected in either of the main parties. They don’t see either leader offering a vision of what a thriving Britain would or could look like. There is an awful lot of hopelessness.
And I can’t imagine a society that can function without hope.
A businessperson has to have hope that their business will succeed.
A student has to have hope that their studies will prove worth the cost in time and money.
A charity worker has to have hope that they can improve the situation of those they care about.
An aspiring MP has to have hope that their efforts will make lives better for their constituency and their country.
And a voter has to have hope that their vote will count, that it will have some influence, however small, on who gets to run their country (which under “first past the post” voting systems it too often doesn’t), and that the people who have that power use it wisely.
My sense of the mood of the country right now is that we have a National Hope Deficit.
It is up to our leaders to engender a sense of hope – the hope that we can persevere through our current challenges, the hope that we can have a fairer, more caring, more compassionate society, the hope that everybody can meet their basic needs for shelter, food, relationship and community, so that we can aspire to something beyond survival, so that we can raise our sights towards a sense of purpose, fulfilment, happiness.
The future CAN be better than the present. Together we CAN do this.
We just need to dare to hope.