Not once have I heard this debated in recent years. Yet the view of the electorate has never been so diverse. Politicians as a genre are drawn from those of a bossy disposition. They are a sort of grown up milk monitor, school prefect, traffic warden mentality. They love telling people what to do. They always know best, yet they have little experience of life, their constituents if not working in the public sector know more about almost everything than they do. But the political system has a non representative democracy, MPs see themselves as opinion formers, ironically most have never had an original idea in their lives. They are the plaything of group think & a party system which places those in power in a detachment now unprecedented in modern democratic history.
The electorate do not belong to political parties, paid up members of the two main political parties in Britain are too small as a percentage to be measured. That tiny number are again reduced to a micro number of committee members who select parliamentary representation, this number is further reduced to fewer than seven hundred of which again only 10% reach ministerial level. If one accepts politics tends to attract a frighteningly high number of sociopaths it is no wonder we are so badly misgoverned. Indeed under the current arrangement climbing the greasy pole give the sociopaths a distinct advantage. Successful politicians don’t have friends, friends are an encumbrance. Friends demand a standard of ethical behaviour & loyalty that would be a drawback to any serious politician. Even in my old field of investment banking, a cutthroat game if ever there was one there is a code of behaviour, not for any other reason than it is sound business practice. Unless you only want to do a one off clever deal trust is paramount. ‘My word is my bond’ was the motto of the Stock Market, not because they were saints but because if you broke your word you would go out if business.
Astonishingly it is now accepted in common law that a party political manifesto is not binding. Yet a manifesto is the contract offered by politicians to the electorate at a general election. Imagine any other field of endeavour where this would be accepted. Go into a car showroom, order a BMW 3 Series in white pay the price & await delivery. What though comes? A BMW 1 series in blue. You have recourse in law, you wouldn’t accept it ! But we run a constitutional monarchical parliamentary ‘democracy’ where the fundamental law of contract is abandoned.
Add if you will to this bizarre system of civil service administration now with its own political agenda. Something wholly apparent through the Brexit negotiations. The British people realised for the first time who really governs them, a whole generation have never watched Yes Minister.
The whole festering establishment believe they know best, the electorate are somehow bovine non entities & more government is in everyone’s interest. Yet the most successful period in modern British history was under the conservative government of Lord Salisbury, whose firm belief was the government’s role was primarily defence of the realm & to facilitate ‘the entrepreneurial genius of the British people’. Look at the astonishing success of Great Britain from 1880 to 1900. Neither the conservatives nor liberals regarded the micro management of the economy or the private lives of the Queen’s subjects as within their remit. One of my favourite quotes of Salisbury’s & there are many is ‘it is nobody’s business but his own if an Englishman wants to get roaring drunk’. Imagine the reaction today to that laissez faire attitude when the State believes it has the responsibility to tell us what to eat.
Today we have a government which believes it should hector the people on what they eat, drink, say & even think. Amazingly we have a modern generation which believes this is justified. Freedom of thought & expression is monitored by armies of lawyers, civil servants, public service broadcasters. Although 80% of the British economy is driven by small & medium sized businesses it is the State which decrees wages, hours of work, pensions, employment procedure, holiday entitlement & many other aspects of commerce of which the dictatorial establishment has no experience. Pitifully few politicians, bureaucrats or journalists have any experience of business at all. Yet they micro manage the whole country.
The recent Coronavirus has exposed this mindset to a degree we could not have believed even a year ago. Never in the history of Great Britain has every aspect of our lives been managed by the establishment. All for what is frankly no more than a periodical virus not even has bad as 1957 or 1968. The State wants to ‘shelter’ people whether they want to be sheltered or not. It would have been inconceivable only a few years ago to contemplate compulsory vaccinations of citizens in any free society, never mind Britain of all nations. The population go about their business with face nappies, condemned overwhelmingly by independent medical scientists as of no value at all. Yet the people seemed cowed, frightened, bewildered, apathetic.
The net zero green policy remains uncosted & undebated. The next post Coronavirus disaster awaiting us if the collapse of fiat currencies doesn’t intercept it.
The historical protection against these outrages was a free press & the House of Lords, the parliamentary amending chamber. Both are now an embarrassment so corrupt have they become, to the extent the white working class has no representation at all. Now even the middle class which work in the small business wealth creating sector feel politically homeless.
The United Kingdom is suffering the highest tax burden in 50 years (Tax Payer’s Alliance) but most seem not to care or have resigned themselves to it. Personally at 71 years old I have visited every continent on the planet, have a Yorkshire smallholding & am financially secure. But I seem to have had the best of it. The future looks bleak for the next generation over regulated, indebted, brow beaten by political correctness. Those with a cosy billet in the public sector are immune, but I suspect even their days are numbered.
© Godfrey Bloom 2020 – http://godfreybloom.uk/blogs/
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