We need some selfie respect

On every street corner they are being coerced, forced and dragooned into perform the new first duty of public life: posing for a selfie.

You could almost feel sorry for David Cameron.

He wants to speak about his long term economic plan. Ed Miliband wants to discuss his fairer deal.

And Nick Clegg just wants to find someone who will listen to him.

Instead, we who hold the votes these men so desperately crave, would rather make a mad dash for a blurry, awkward photo with Nigel Farage gurning between puffing a fag and supping a pint.

These scenes are a damning indictment of what the General Election campaign has become.

Passion, conviction and reverence are attributes for yesterday's politicians.

Policies are born and die within a 24-hour news cycle.

We have an elite who want to be in power – but they don't know why.

This has been an incredibly lacklustre election given how close it is. With just days to go it is clear all sides have run out of things to say.

One thing that has clearly been missing is confrontation. And I don't mean between the candidates. I mean between the public and our future MPs.

The fanfare and cheers that have welcomed the party leaders mirror scenes across the pond when the US Presidential motorcade sweeps into town to an adoring crowd of star spangled banner waving admirers.

Now our politicians' rictus grins are captured forever in a sea of tweets, Instagram filters and hashtags amid scenes of groupies pressed up against the political elite, arms outstretched, and false smiles.

I can remember my grandfather muttering words to the effect of 'I'd have a thing or two to tell this Prime Minster'. Now I fear he'd be like anyone else and snap a selfie of the pair of them on his Sony Xperia and upload it to his Facebook page. Impressive for an 81 year-old but not so great for democracy.

I want to see nurses berate David Cameron outside an hospital, I want students to chastise Nick Clegg, and for Ed Miliband to be throwing punches like John Prescott.

As harmless as they may seem, an election campaign obsessed with selfies and photo-ops lets politicians off the hook.

We don't want or need political groupies we want honest and rigorous debate.

David Cameron was rightly criticised when he and Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt posed for a selfie with Barack Obama at Nelson Mandela's memorial service.

It was an appalling lack of respect.

But what is even worse is the egomania behind it.

Politicians are not rock stars. They are not our masters. They have the privilege to serve us and our nation.

The selfie is a form of false worship and is the ultimate symbol of this narcissistic age.

It is no coincidence that as the selfie craze rises, the sincerity of our MPs decline.

Politicians hate awkward questions and inconvenient truths.

The selfie gives them a quick getaway.

They need to be reminded that style over substance is a superficial existence.

Becky Smith was criticised when she took a selfie with David Cameron in a Nando's in Bristol while out celebrating her friend Navdeep's birthday and then criticised his policies online the next day.

Later she said she did not need to justify her actions to others - brandishing the act a 'joke'.

She said: Some commenters have berated me for not expressing to Cameron my opposition to his policies. As I explained the next day, I am concerned by the discouraging message sent to students by the rise in tuition fees, and by the marketisation of education more widely. I am also alarmed by Cameron's indifference towards the appointment of women into senior political roles.

"Nevertheless, I would question whether these commenters would have done anything different from what I did in the three seconds that we were in contact. Also, as I have said, it was my friend's birthday. I wanted Navdeep to have a good time more than I wanted to shout my ideas at the back of David Cameron's head.

"As you can probably imagine, I never envisaged that the photo would garner this much attention. It always was, and still is, a joke with my friends. In fact, part of the reason that I took the photo in the first place was precisely because I am not Cameron's biggest fan – I knew my friends would find it hilarious.

"I was right; for us it was hysterical that the member of the group probably most openly hostile to coalition policies would be the one to ask him for a photo. If I'd have thought about it, I probably could have guessed that strangers on the internet wouldn't get the joke."

But really her case just reinforces the great political apathy there is out there.

Politicians have become a joke and great hoards of us, it appears, are happy for it to remain that way.