When Lenin asked ‘What is to be done?’ he wasn’t expecting an answer from the Brownite faction of the Labour party. Looking about, what they have in mind seems to be:
to divide the Treasury into two.
A Ministry of the Economy and a Ministry of Finance.
A Ministry of the Economy, for those who still believe in indicative planning, that deluded conceit of Mitterand’s France, will further their chance of interfering with markets whose essential mechanisms are outside of their control, thus wrecking potential growth.
A Ministry of Finance will be essentially a tax-gatherer, for fiscal authority will be transferred to an arms' length, 'independent' appointed body, sucessfully removing discussion of tax increases, spending reductions etc. from political scrutiny.
Such independent economic institutions, like the independent Bank of England, will enjoy a permanence of policy and decision-taking that is not crudely interrupted by the intrusion of general elections and their loss.
Thus disembowelled, the Treasury will have few salient powers, and over-arching control for everything devolved, as with all other ministries, will have been transferred to the office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, which title will take on a meaning it has not borne for well over a hundred years.
A Ministry of Justice, accountable at first to the Commons, but doubtless to have an independent and appointed body set up should the legislature show signs of recovery from its apparently permanent, supine position towards the executive, will end the Lord Chancellorship.
The abolition of the Privy Council will deprive the head of state of formal consultation processes outside of advice from the governing administration.
The current inter-relationship between funded think tanks (whether under beneficial taxation regimes or otherwise) providing policy advice, and government expenditures being placed with think tank funders and their nominees will continue to marginalise and extrude the Home Civil Service from its place.
The solution to the inconvenience of answering to the electorate lies in the policy of regionalism. If the structure of regional assemblies is activated for selection of assembly members by voting under proportional representation throughout the UK, and timed to coincide with a general election, then the step to electing the Westminster parliament by proportional representation will have been be made. The United Kingdom is being stripped of its constitutional safeguards and, where it suits, being made to conform to European Union norms, requirements and practices.
The gaping hole where, in Europe, there are written constitutions, penal, and civil codes, all embodying citizens’ rights and duties, defended by constitutional courts and judiciaries spear-headed by investigative magistracies with peremptory powers that would make emperors think twice, is ignored.
We do not want to be as continental Europe is; we have inherited and chosen other paths to a civilised society, in part because it has been our happiness to have never suffered statist regimes, outside of all- out war, and only then when we were wholly united in a common purpose - to defeat authoritarian statism.
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2 comments:
Thats is such a dpressing post HG and I agree . Its so clever of you to tie all these threads together. Really mavellous .
( God I feel shallow by comparison)
BUT do you therfore want us out of Europe. I do.
n, it's a bit dull trudging through bits and bobs on institutional change, pedestrian really.
The architects of the new British state are moving right along.
Of course we should come out; we wouldn't accept a European set of institutions but to stay in we have to dismantle our own.
I haven't given 'effects of all this' examples but think of Raedwald's friend trying to take a picture of her daughter setting out on her gap year. Only point at some of this and conspiracy theories accusations start flying.
Still, I'm going to write it down as it goes along. Today it's the devolution bit (there's a fine article in the Economist.)
Then I'm going to talk about something else. Both the tortoises are up and about. And two of the side panels from an altar in S. Marco have been found, which I'm hoping the buyer is going to present to the city...see, optimistic..
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