'Conservative support, at 45%, is at a 20-year high.' This would give the Conservative party 'a landslide victory as big as Labour's win in 1997, with some 400 seats.' Labour would be 'reduced to well under 200 MPs, with many ministers losing their seats.' 'Labour would lose previously safe seats such as Wakefield.', notes the Guardian. Within the UK federation the Scottish section of the UK Labour party can be expected to collapse.
What arguments and means can be used to contain the expectation of a general election and its expected results within 22 months - one session of Parliament and the impotent remnants of another? The voters of the United Kingdom are determined on regime change. But while the regime embodies objectives inimical to the voters, those objectives are highly desirable to governing elites.
In order of importance, these are: the installation of the Lisbon Constitution and consequent removal of member state vetoes on European federal decision taking. Electoral results in member states for nation-state democratic institutions will shrink in importance. Decision-taking on nation-state level will move to the European federal institutions while regional and more local matters will pass from nation-state central decision-taking to various elected and appointed institutions under subsidiarity (a 'pillar' of the European Union governing structures), as planned under the devolution introduced under New Labour to produce the 'Britain of the Nations and the Regions.' The cyclical rather than constant member state representation on EU governing bodies will further delimit nation-state importance and emphasise cross nation-state border Regions. With this, too, interest in national elections will decline. Smaller nation-states will find themselves weakened in their EU representation particularly - hence Ireland's resounding No to Lisbon; and nascent secessionist nation-states in federalised member states of the EU will face wholly different determinants of their leaving together with their resources, whether of their people, skills or natural resources. For many reasons, Lisbon is the New Labour Project's post democratic 'home safe'.
Once part of federal Europe there is good argument to match consultation of the people to constitutional practices, terms of office, and electoral forms to pan European best practice. Proportional representation in its least representative form is used already for EU elections in the UK and in its devolved regions for their assemblies. The first past the post Westminster system is becoming a stand-alone outside of local elections to power-deprived local authorities.
Globalisation and its challenges, it is argued, require longer term planning implementation and response than the parliamentary terms settled in the last 100 years. It is unwise, if not dangerous in certain fields such as defence and anti-terrorism, to respond with the short termism generated necessarily by a constitution developed organically to respond to circumstances so dramatically altered. After all, under the great threat from the Axis powers the parliamentary term was set at 10 years and are we not exposed to threat as bad or even worse nowadays? The constitutional role of precedent validates such a sensible adjustment.
So widespread is the economic suffering that has resulted from the unwise if not illegal activity of financial actors in global markets, exacerbated by the rise of the Chines and Indian economies, that it would be improper to abandon the prudent guidance of the economy until uncontrollable world turmoil has been ameliorated and abated at home, and settled abroad. The evident and well-founded distress of the people cannot be allowed to express itself in ignorant allocation of blame to the finest manager of the economy since records began. Temporary, 'mid term' unpopularity born of simplistic understandings must not be allowed to disturb the ship of state.
Dissent, monitored by state employees in contact with the public in every day, indeed all, activities will be assessed and dealt with where it is judged to have slipped over the borderline into disruption, and connivance in terrorism. Responsiveness to public demand is in any case better using focus groups and properly instituted consultation with stakeholders and clients.
Voting is a primitive, visceral, raspberry-blowing, undifferentiated exercise that belongs in a simpler, less-integrated, infinitely less dangerous world. It is time to trust our Leader and our government in their moral and technical reliability, for periods long enough for their modernising policies to bear fruit.
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12 comments:
I really do hope that new readers here will realise you are being frivolous!
Either that, or you really have flipped and it is time to repair permanently to the Italian hills.
Just taking a few of the post democratic arguments for a walk, Nomad. Lot of that kind of thinking being voiced. Repellent isn't it?
Nomad, The sad fact is that those who seem to have taken "Nineteen Eighty Four" as an instruction manual not a warning, will also be thinking thoughts like this, and they mean it. They have all the legislation in place. There is now no appeal to legality that can stop this sort of thing. To counter those who might think of resistance, the state has already disarmed us. Anyway, those who protest about the EU are terrorists, said some Italian with an EU job.
Protest as we might, we are in for a pretty rough time over the next 50 years.
The views in this post are widely subscribed by the policy-makers of the current regime. I could develop and refine and extend them (but Nomad might never come here again), and be well within the confines of 'necessary, sensible choices and action in the face of knee jerk voter reaction to current uncertainty and minor economic embarrassment'. (Gosh, even typing this stuff makes the fingers cringe).
Lisbon is going through. But with the Czech Republic, Poland (and now Austria as Iain Dale notes) less than certain, while Italy has a less than communitaire leader, the UK counts. The UK is reliable under Brown and he can expect considerable lee way in 'unusual' measures for the period of 'transition'. And discretion over the bust UK economy as well.
Yokel:
I know - and that is why you will also know that (if you have been reading here regularly) I advocate that those who can should get out with wealth and chattels while they are still able to do so. The future looks grim (and now Peter Hain has been given the push, definitely not orange!).
Despite what you and HG say, I think the Brits, if their backs are really up against the wall, will find many ways - from simple rioting, assassinations, sabotage and general mayhem to cyberwar - to confound these wretched politicians and their serfs. They will, after all, have nothing left to lose.
I am not sure how to take your bracket HG, but in one sense you are right in that present travel plans do not have the UK anywhere near the top of the pile. However, in the other sense, you will have to take your blog down to prevent me popping in from time to time and contributing my two-pennyworth!! I just wish you had a much wider audience (I recommend you to all and sundry, but do not know whether they follow up. You always raise interesting points and questions, but seem to have a very small number of respondees joining in the debate). I do think, however, that the generally apathetic public are at last beginning to wake up to what is going on; the (civilised bit of the) fight back has started.
PS: Off topic, but was I the only one to find HM kowtowing to an unreformed terrorist sickening? Perhaps Gordon Brown should employ NM's PR outfit..
Angels has a solid readership in Kyrgyzstan, Nomad.
Bishkek is us.
Unsurprisingly, as he seems to get everywhere, Mr HG enjoyed himself there and has offered to take me on any future visit. The anti-authoritarian attitudes of the people appeal, and the mountains look lovely.
HG: I am delighted to hear that! Those anti-authoritarian tendencies go back a long way; old habits die hard. Even during the Soviet era, most of the countries of the far east and south of the USSR happily thumbed their noses at the commissars in Moscow and generally did their own thing. A bit like Scotland and Ireland at the moment really! So, as I keep saying, there does remain some hope for the rest of the UK to throw off the shackles when the urge takes them.
Nicely done.
Your slide from almost-reasonable through outrageous to complete tinfoil hat raving loony, was so gentle that I did not at first notice what was going on.
Good writing, congratulations.
Now please tell us what we can do to influence things, because I fear our time is running out.
Sometimes Nomad I wonder if you are an adventurist.
21.13
'what we can do to influence things,..'
Keep well away from barricades. If there are barricades they will be sanctioned and placed for exemplary punishment.
Vote, wherever and whenever the chance occurs.
Join: churches, community groups, intellectual and cultural movements and organisations, longstanding civil rights defence groups like Inquest, charitable bodies that are necessarily concerned with such rights - the NSCCP, Mind, ...
Go to local authority meetings on mattters that interest you and be surprised how often the public are excluded by lack of information or specific ruling. Trade unions once had large conservative memberships, as did co-operatives, start rebuilding them. There is nothing exclusively Labour about co-ops and working conditions and wages. Down grade the importance of state schooling in your children's education - let them attend but expect nothing and never argue with a school or a health service provider. Our children should never be in the front line and the state education and health and welfare services are this regime's front line. If you possibly can, try to organise it so that one of the family is devoting most of their effort and responsibility to running the family. Have good computers, skills and permanent connection.
We all know how to do this, the pity is we had to, or have to now.
"Adventurist" - Moi??? Whatever can you mean? Would I even dream about fomenting a revolution when I have far better things to do with my time??
Regrettably your word appears in none of my dictionaries, but "adventurous" might well be a better description of me. I was age 18 when, after about 4 months of commuting, I decided that the 07.27 from Fubcork Junction to Waterloo and the 17.39 back again was not the life for me.
The world is a big place and one only comes this way but once, so I decided to get out and see as much of it as possible. Happily I have been able to accomplish much of that dream, and had some quite astonishing (and occasionally hair-raising) experiences along the way. There are still one or two spots left for investigation....
Perhaps I should change my name to Rolling Stone or Mosslessness?
The NSPCC? (I assume that's what you mean)
I think you will find it's just an arm of the State, fully bought and paid for, and is entirely comfortable with the whole panoply of social workers, family destruction, fingerprinting, DNA testing, and everything else bad.
You need a long spoon to sup with those people, I won't be going near them.
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