It's been building for years, but this is the state of UK politics. We built it. This is where/when we pay for it!
I'm heavily involved in local politics and government. The truth is far more depressing than this. The state we are in, politically, in Britain is down to the fact that ordinary people are just too knackered, too busy, carry too heavy a load to hold any kind of civic role or position alongside everything else. People have mortgages and bills, jobs, kids and caring obligations; they don't have the energy for anything else.
So you end up with people who have fewer responsibilities. If someone is under the age of retirement, you generally discover why those people have fewer responsibilities. And it's usually not good.
In every political or civic body or organisation I come across, Pareto plays out. 20% of the people do 80% of the work. These people carry an entire regional branch, an entire council, an entire community group on their backs; after a while, it's shattering. As a rule, these people are never the ones that end up where we need them as a society: using their experience and knowledge to consider and make good law and policy. No, the accolades fall onto the twats, the self-promoters, the Machiavellis, the psychos, and they are the ones who end up on executive boards, and as councillors and MPs.
The pool from which politicians are drawn is inaccessible to most people. And it is inaccessible because most people just do not have the time or the energy to get to a point where they can jump into it. It's not even about money most of the time, it's about having a spare evening a week to spend on something that doesn't make you money, care for your family or provide a respite from your frantic life.
That's why British politics is a mess. We don't need people with passion; we need pragmatic, thoughtful people with a decent amount of life experience who are in the position where they can give up a few spare evenings a week to ask pertinent questions and stop utterly stupid decisions being made (and who will read fucking briefing papers beforehand, to boot).