Tuesday 2 November 2010

Misunderstanding politics

When I was growing up, the general understanding appeared to be (certainly as I picked it up) that politicians ran the country. It was their job. They had to organise the big stuff and handle relations with other countries. I don't doubt that games were played, but not really out in the open. Today of course, politics is about politicians and running the country takes such a poor second place that (as we saw spectacularly under Blair) they make an absolute hash of it and not least that they are delighted to have someone else do it for them (the EU).

Even journals that believe themselves serious talk about politics solely in relation to personalities, personal point scoring and 'how things look'. It is all so much gloss that it seems they have all taken their lead from Hello!. Of course the popular opinion is that people are disengaged from politics because the politicians don't make it 'relevant'. Well, Labour increased taxes massively to pay for their bloated bureaucratic state, which I think is relevant to most people. No, the bit people don't care for is how politicians go about their business, which naturally is all politicians can think about. Also, whilst the last Conservative administration got us back to prosperity (and Brown kept the dream alive by incessant borrowing) people, as is the tradition, ignored politics as everything seemed to be working OK.

Now, once a lack of care from government has resulted in banks stuffing up and needing giant dollops of cash from their friends in Westminster, the attention of the people has refocused. But on what? Blair only ever wanted power and money, he didn't give a stuff for the business of government and nor did any of his cronies. They all lived in a bubble in which real jobs and real people didn't figure. The Conservatives, accepting Blair's view of them as nasty, decided they needed to change in order to be 'electable', by which they mean, be able to kid the people to vote for them. It is amazing that, after the most disastrous government in living memory, the new Conservatives couldn't even gain a majority of the vote (accepting the numerous corruptions introduced by Labour creating a client class etc). And why not? Because Cameron looked and sounded like Blair, and Clegg looked and sounded like both of them. What choice did we have, but to try to pick the least stupid.

Why, if there is a groundswell against this cosy Westminster bubble politics, didn't some other party come to prominence? For the simple reason that politics is now pretty well stitched up by the gang we have and that is also why they are melding into a single ideology. If I decide I want to be an MP and stand as a Conservative, basically the Party has to approve of me. And generally that means I support what they support and will do what I am told. Clearly this undermines democracy, but it is great for Party machines and that is the point. Your MP doesn't trot off to Parliament to represent you. He/she is a number, an element of a voting bloc. It has led to the near impossibility of a debate in that great debating house at Westminster, as all MP's must support their Party and the Opposition must disagree with the ruling Party as a matter of principle (and the good of the country can go hang).

There is a chance that this system would fall apart under its own inertia, except for the fact that most of the governing of Britain falls to the EU, an institution most of our politicians don't even pretend to understand. It has become vogue to talk of an 'heir to Blair' as if this terrible human being had started something. In fact Blair, as a corrupting influence, as a liar was preceded by Heath, who can really be seen as his mentor. This egotistical and useless Prime Minister signed away the sovereignty of this nation, an act of immense hubris bearing in mind he did not have the power to do this. Parliament runs the country for and at the express behest of the people. This temporary power is one way; we control them. But in modern times it has come to seem to politicians that they own the country and the people are there merely to support it. This of course is the Continental pattern, the Code Napoleon where everything is illegal unless the State deems it legal. Here of course, we used to have the very free system, one that works for the people, where everything is legal unless, by general consent it is made illegal.

So it is clear, not only must the power of the Party system in the UK be broken up but that we need to get away from the dangerous and enslaving regime of the EU. The structures, both, are not undemocratic they are anti-democratic. They cannot survive where the people have a say, evidenced by the need to keep repeating referendums until the people get the answer 'right'. The time for navel gazing is over.


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