It's time for a little bit of selfie respect from politicians

On every street corner they are being coerced, forced and dragooned into performing 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.

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 cigarette 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.

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 – not between the candidates but between the public and our future MPs.

The fanfare and cheers that have welcomed the party leaders mirror scenes across the pond when thstar 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.

Though it seems, if we believe him, even Mr Cameron is bored of them. "It is an extraordinary phenomenon and it sometimes makes part of the process of politics quite difficult," he said.

"Everyone wants a selfie rather than to have a conversation, and sometimes that's a bit frustrating, particularly with your party activists. I want to know what they are finding on the doorsteps, but actually you are too busy having your picture taken."

This is incredibly rich given it came from the same man who ducked a debate with the Labour leader and thus forfeited the chance to debate 'the issues' in front of the country.

But this is the contrived era of politics where everything is calculated with the ultimate fear is deviating from 'today's message'. 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, 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.

"I never envisaged 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 hordes of us, it appears, are happy for it to remain that way.