Tag Archives: sanna marin

Mark Valladares

Welcome to my day: 29 August 2022 – aren’t politicians people too?

By Mark Valladares | Mon 29th August 2022 - 7:54 am

As my colleague noted yesterday, Sanna Marin, the Prime Minister of Finland, has been in the news for having the audacity to be (relatively) young, and dance at parties. Alcohol may even have been partaken of!

And I find myself wondering, since when did we start insisting that rather dull people represent us and why? Whilst expecting relatively high moral and ethical standards does seem reasonable, politicians are human and should be able to express themselves and, heaven forbid, let their hair down from time to time.

I thought that Tim Farron who, despite his frankly bizarre fondness for Blackburn Rovers, is as real a person as you could hope to find, put it well when asked for comment by the Guardian;

Social media is a mixed bag. I think it does change things but we have to accept our politicians are human beings – we should expect high standards in terms of integrity, but that doesn’t preclude you from having a couple of beers with your mates and dancing like nobody’s watching. I‘m an Olympic-standard dad dancer and I’m glad there are no pictures of me.

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