It would be easy to forget, with current headlines, that politics is supposed to be about public service.
It's not a game of what-can-you-get-away-with; It's not one long Houdini trick; It's not the cynical surfing of 24 hour news cycles, getting your timing right and skin-of-your-teeth survival; It's not a test of your capacity to lie, cheat and con with impunity; It's not a test of brute dominance; It's not a game of evading accountability and clinging on to power at all costs; it's not the fine art of damage limitation.
The interests of our communities are not served by this spirit of fecklessness. It doesn't create the conditions for confidence and it doesn't create the conditions for trust.
Public service is about helping our communities, hearing our concerns, meeting our needs, helping us to thrive. All of us.
Public service should be held with integrity, honesty, decency, commitment and humility.
Public service in all its forms is a demanding, challenging and rewarding vocation that, when conducted in the true spirit of community, deserves our respect and appreciation.
Public service is a collective endeavour.
Anyone who holds office without honouring the spirit and responsibility of public service - as well as the rule of law - is undermining democracy:
They are eroding the trust that is crucial for maintaining democracy
This matters and has far reaching consequences.
We need news programmes and serious journalists to hold our politicians to account. The longer charlatans stay in office treating their office with high-handed recklessness and disregard, the more we all suffer.
Anyone who enables this is undermining democracy and the rule of law.
Channel 4 provides independent news, journalism and current affairs programmes that hold power to account.
Independent journalism is vital to a healthy democracy - it is public service.
Independent journalism isn't The Enemy - it is part of the collective enterprise of democracy.
It needs protecting
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