The office of prime minister in the United Kingdom has very large amounts of the executive power ceded in a democracy concentrated within it. In all the scary scenarios that have been sketched since the attack upon Iraq - the loss of power in the West as control of natural resources slips away, the loss of economic strength as work moves to the cheapest labour, the loss of financial dominance as the dollar slips and slides (not to mention the pound sterling) and unregulated and ungovernable financial activity webs the globe exporting poverty and the purchase of social peace in one place to other places, and inflation to the least defended, as the authoritarian model of the state tries to assert itself over small governance and the values of choice and freedom; as lies replace some political and moral belief in answerability to the electorate, we are bereft. But nothing is so scary as to have such a man as Gordon Brown as our champion.
Two armies in the field, under-resourced and undirected, the largest parked by our major ally, the other fighting with technology and equipment from decades ago. And not just the first line of our defence, our armed forces in such conditions, but our government in thrall to economic policies of decades ago, long disproved by economic incompetences and inefficiencies, and fiercely rejected by populations across Europe. The people incredulous of all and any word this government says, seizing every opportunity they have to express their contempt for a gang of self-serving tax spendthrifts who have battened on our country. We are poor and undefended, even by our constitution unless some courage is shown by the Head of State.
A general election is our democratic mode of discussing, choosing and putting in place the best people and options for our country's circumstances. Its wilful denial by a handful of liars and failures threatens to be an indictment of our entire system of governance.
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5 comments:
I would replace "indictment" in your final sentence with "end".
Tempers and patience are wearing thin and the revolution is just over the horizon. Recent by-election results indicate that it has already begun.
I think we are not a democracy, but a competing selection of complex oligarchies with a mechanism for periodic bloodless overthrow.
If your mechanism, which you say is not democracy, but if it is not then what is it?, is interrupted or fails, S, then Nomad's revolution is the alternative. Newmania wrote somewhere that votes are instead of bullets, which put it clearly.
The oligarchies make it not a pluralist democracy, I agree, but it is a form of democracy I think.
HG: ... as you know, we're a constitutional monarchy with certain civil liberties that were extended to the general populace over time, but which may be withdrawn piecemeal provided we are sufficiently apathetic.
Interesting that no party advocates compulsory voting, so instead the psephologists and spin-doctors concentrate on bargaining with the active voters - specifically the swing voters in the swing seats. And the Boundary Commission and the 1st past the post system greatly encourage this. If this were a coach trip, there would be long diversions and redirections to favour a minority of passengers who'd bribed the driver, and the rest would be turfed out at a service station.
Meanwhile, the office of Prime Minister is itself tending towards autocratic monarchy (the George III problem). "Na, na, we'll no' need the Catholics noo," said James I when he'd ridden down to London. The PM's power has increased, is increasing (or was until recently) and should be dimished.
The political disconnection is becoming dangerous.
Yes, but not Amen, S. This morning I bought a book full of photographs of Potsdam 1989/ 1990 from Melcher, in Brandenburger Strasse, Blumrich's Linienuntreue. It had to be full of photos because my German staggers rather than prances, and because the photographic record of the reality of an authoritarian socialist government and state, speaks.
I have been pouring over the details of the faces, the buildings in their wartime degredation, the streets broken and patched with tar, the clothes worn out, the Trabis.
And the Wall, the barbed wire, the poughed fields of fire below the watch towers, the lines and lines of paramilitary police. Yet in every church, at every concert, in every public building where any remotely legal meeting could take place everyone in Potsdam has turned up. 'What are you doing here?' 'I'm at a concert; praying, listening to a literary discourse...'
Then there are the pictures of thousands in front of the Brandenburger Tor, facing out the armoured cars. Then the photos of the bunkers, the secret prisons, the lightless cells with walls opened and horrified citizens staring at what had been their governance.
We have secret prisons, bunkers, militarised police, internment without trial, disappearances, localised snooping. And now we are getting the impoverishment and brutalisation of the population from ill conceived policies and goals, and political class self serving.
Here there is a renewed and lovely city with houses looking like Prague's old town, (or perhaps vice versa) but flat and with the river and its lakes, and its parks, and gardens.
Certainly it was wicked destruction by the RAF bombers at the end of the war with undefended skies; but it has taken only 15 years of a free society to remedy what half a century of socialist planning and authoritarian Party 'democracy' left in ruins.
So it may be that 'the political disconnection' that exists now in England can be remedied without violence or threat but just by the people's presence, en masse, refusing any more of Brown and his vile Party and its fake terrorism threat to obtain control of the people.
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