The Economics of Happiness

That the poor are always with us is long acknowledged, and studied in the economics of relative poverty. The Nu-Speak of the economics of happiness merely allows yet more poseurs of the Labour party to clamber aboard the gravy train of nomenklatura profit while pretending to social concern and moral commitment in the Fabian style.

In truth there is a measure that would provide the greatest happiness of the greatest number in the socio-economic reality of England : an immediate and binding vote on the single issue of withdrawal from the European Union.

Referendums enjoy ambivalent status in our Constitution, even the savaged remnant that is left after the last 10 years, and it might well be safer to have a general election in which leaving the European Union immediately was a manifesto policy.

But if happiness is a serious criterion for policy pursuit, then more English people would be made instantly and considerably happier by casting their vote to leave, to leave now, and to restore English rule within England's borders than anything else in the world.

Not Just Doing Their Jobs

High-ranking civil servants are more than tools for carrying out the will of their political masters. The very continuity of their service to changing Executives has caused these outstandingly clever men and women, with their experience, education, and honed skills, to be pushed aside in favour of political appointees with narrower learning and inferior training, by the current Executive in its almost paranoid suspicion of the Home Civil Service having its own agenda, separate from that of the New Order.

Senior civil servants act under at least two kinds of constraints from which the New Order is wholly free: the constitutional and legal structures of the United Kingdom, which the Labour Executive sees as an obstruction to their purposes and to be peremptorily removed from their path whenever encountered, rather than the product of centuries of controlling and blocking despotic tendencies in the use of power; and an awareness of their service to the state itself, i.e. us, in a pluralist democracy, and our political and cultural longterm objectives and achievements, rather than to temporary holders of elected office.

Unsurprisingly it is the lawyers and the very senior civil servants who have broken ranks first. Elizabeth Wilmshurst's resignation from the Foreign Office and her distinguished career there, on 18 March 2003 ended ...' I cannot in conscience go along with [this] advice - within the Office or to the public or Parliament...' and '... am therefore discussing ...whether I may take approved early retirement. In case that is not possible this letter should be taken as constituting notice of my resignation ...I joined the Office in 1974. It has been a privilege to work here. I leave with very great sadness.'

What of the lawyers who are Parliamentary Counsel? One has remarked, [The]'analytical function of the drafter is vital. The capacity to stand back and to question is one of the greatest qualities needed in legislative drafting. But it is not enough simply to destroy ideas. The capacity to contribute fresh and constructive ideas is also important. Of course the basic policy is for others - ultimately for ministers. But it is a definite part of the drafter's job to point out any traps inherent in the policy, and where possible to offer solutions. It is sometimes surprising how much the drafter contributes in this way to the formulation of policy.'

How are they reacting to drafting the measures that abolish our civil liberties? What do they do when the policy they are helping to formulate puts people in prison without any of the legal or constitutional former safeguards that are being legislated away? Does the belief that '..members of Parliament want to avoid any possible injustice. For instance, if a Bill infringes people's liberties safeguards will be needed.', hold now ?

In the higher echelons of the Foreign, Diplomatic, and Home Civil Service people have resigned, been sacked, spoken out to newspapers in frank language. “Stalinist ruthlessness”, "Brown, like Blair, requires not just loyalty but total obedience ".

If, as all the evidence shows, the objective and determination of the Labour Executive is to retain power permanently, these people are as much in the way as the electorate and the judiciary. Cleansing a professional and highly competent administrative class requires time, so that at entry level there can be vetting on conformity (usually accompanied by a fall in achievement quality of entrants), at intermediate level a promotions policy that favours the acquiescent and disappoints innovative and independent thinkers, and at senior level the favouring of early retirements, and/or forced resignations.

Ten years. Nearly there.

The First Parliamentary Reform is an English Parliament

Parliamentary reform requires a parliament for England. The effrontery of the England of the Regions propaganda compounds the failure of the Union of the United Kingdom within the collapse of democratic representation and its expression in the Westminster Parliament.

Scotland, Wales, and northern Ireland answer to their local electorates on all and any matters of immediate significance to those voters - health, education, housing, infrastructures and, in Scotland's case, some weighting of tax burdens and the facility to initiate legislation.

England is to be governed by an Executive whose leader is unelected in England (and unelected in his own Party), and whose Party has been defeated in Scotland yet uses Westminster MPs from Scotland to maintain control in England.

This Westminster Executive disposes of all the powers of the Crown, which are used without reference to the Westminster Parliament in the case of England, but are ceded to the Scottish Parliament in the case of Scotland and, to a lesser extent, some of which are ceded to the Welsh and northern Irish Assemblies in matters concerning those countries.

The powers of the whips at Westminster are a function of this Executive power (the whips do not derive their control from charm or even force of character), and from the powers of prime ministerial patronage. Any Westminster MP sitting for a Scottish, Welsh or Irish seat can hope for advancement only from the Westminster Executive, so they do precisely what they are told, although what they're ordered to do will apply only to England for anything affecting normal everyday life. They do not represent English voters, nor do they care what they want.

Until this Parliamentary reform is carried out, all other discussion is a waste of time.

The relevance of Trollope

Since the Brownite attempt to oust the Prime Minister last year, which led to that extraordinary ‘farewell to the Party’ speech by Blair at the last full Labour conference, the government of the UK has become the material of novels.

Facing the electorate is the nightmare experience for any sitting MP; so much so that the rules governing the holding of an office of profit under the Crown were altered to preserve those accepting ministerial appointment from having to refight their seat. For most MPs an election is the bottom line to be evaded at all and any cost, but few considerations of the political settlement after the last war, that watershed of modern UK politics, take this into account.

The steady growth of party grip on elected members also has been a feature of the advance of the Labour party and the decline of the Liberals for even longer.

Unlike the Conservatives and the Liberals, Labour requires its candidates to be members of an affiliated organisation - principally a trade union or the co-operative movement, plus some others, or to have the specific nulla osta of the NEC where such formalized allegiance is lacking. Effectively Labour MPs are mandated in a way that those of other parties are not. This federation of mandated interests that demands, and controls party discipline within Labour and its constituent organisations and funders, does not co-exist easily with our single-member, geographically located, first past the post election system where once elected, an MP at least notionally answers to, and represents, the interests of all within his constituency, supporters, electors, or simply constituents.

Labour has much more in common with the notion of representation used in continental systems of party lists and proportional representation, even while it is forced to conform to UK practice. The conflict between the party structure and its discipline, and continuation in the enjoyment of a seat is particularly sharp for Labour MPs.

If the electorate are seen as spoilers of MPs’ enjoyment of seats, and consultation of the electorate the thing to be avoided at all costs, then the threat of the sitting prime minister’s power of dissolution could take us back to before Labour-style party- controlled politics, - to Trollopeland.

Blair, consummate politician and empathizer that he is, has got this in one; Brown, crude Party controller, and unaware of non-rule bound nuance, freak that he is, has not.

Since the last Labour party conference Blair has been Prime Minister without the encumbrance of the Labour party, except for a Parliamentary Labour Party desperate not to be exposed to an unnecessary general election, particularly one where any number could well lose their seats. All Blair has to threaten is to call one if he is not allowed to run his full term; Brown's levels of voter-put-off , despite his control of the Party delivering the leadership to him, may well provide Labour MPs with the determination to support Blair in his anachronistic adventure.

A careful reading of Blair’s speeches and interview words, coupled with an attempt to grapple with the ill drafted and ambiguous Labour Party Rule Book, the placing of the UK constitution above that Rule Book in importance and relevance to a correct interpretation of what can be done, and bearing in mind that the Labour party is a superseded organisation in everyone’s view but their own, leads to the same conclusion.

Guido thinks Blair might not be going either. If he is going, he has outstanding power to negotiate his departure on his own, and any, terms.