We must kick out unelected power by making political Parties independent
Sometimes, the blindingly obvious bears repetition. At other times, the less obvious slowly becomes more obvious to a broader swathe of citizens. My opening assertion covers both at once: this Government, and the last Government, have had two priorities that stand head, shoulders and several miles further above any other consideration: money and power.
It’s why Labour showered the workshy with money, allowed immigration to continue unchecked, and expanded the public sector: that was nothing less than an attempt to breed its own support.
And it’s why the Conservatives wanted Murdoch to smash the BBC, why they don’t move a muscle without the Banks OK’ing the move – and why (it now emerges) they want to loosen the Rural Planning rules: because this is what their mates want. And without their mates, they’d be broke.
As a constitutional historian by original discipline, I am well aware that our rag-tag, half-written effort doesn’t include these words anywhere, but it’s about time it did: ‘Government of the People, by the People, for the People’. Personally, I don’t believe in universal democracy any more for the UK, because the evidence is overwhelming that a sizeable minority are too dumbed-down, lazy and jerked by the knee to understand what’s going on. I think those who contribute nothing, have nothing measured to say, break the law, avoid taxes, behave in an anti-social manner, and demonstrate at a very low common denominator that they are incompetent, shouldn’t get the vote. But I do believe that for the People who behave, contribute and set a good cultural example, then the only game in town is Government of the People, by the People, for the People.
It all depends on your definition of The People. I would remove the looter’s right to vote, and I would remove the benefit cheat’s right too. However, I would also remove from the electoral register the corrupt businessman, the irresponsible banker, the bent copper, the foul-mouthed footballer, and any media person setting a bad example to the young. Yes, I know it all sounds impractical and draconian, but even with errors here and there, it would be a vast improvement on what we have now. At the last General Election, for instance, it is a statistical near certainty that between the hours of 5 and 7pm, 1 in 7 voters were under the influence of drink or drugs. Frankly, only this can explain the re-election of Ed Balls.
That, however, only covers ‘by the People’. We now turn to ‘of the People’. I do not regard ‘professional politicians’ as having anything to do with the People: for me, they represent a tax on the People. It would be a very easy matter indeed to rule that a maximum 25% of any Party’s candidates should have been involved in Party affairs prior to being selected. It would be equally easy to rule that a minimum 20% of candidates should also have been in commercial employment on the same basis. (Commercial can cover a multitude of sins, but would limit, for example, the number of social workers). Personally, I would restrict the selection of lawyers to -200%, but that would be unfair. So a token 5% of them would be allowed under the net. I’m not joking: the huge imbalance of lawyers in Parliament explains better than any other factor why the first recourse of most politicians is to a legal instrument when tackling any problem.
But by far the most important part of the equation in my view is ‘for the People’. Because here, the really big things start to unravel in our system. We’re back to the money and power thing.
The idiotic Tory decision to relax planning rules in the South East – when vast swathes of the Midlands and North represent industrial wastelands – may not be correlated with the fact that millions of Pounds were given to the Conservative Party by a developers’ club. But it smacks of being so – every bit as much as Labour’s employment policies are not unrelated to the vast sums it receives each year from the TUC.
Developers don’t want to build in, say, Walsall, because Walsall is rather a long commute from London. But if we are going to reconstruct the British economy to being one where manufacturing takes on far more importance – and the wealth is more evenly distributed around our country – then that’s where houses should go….not far behind new factories and/or small business units.
Let’s face it, the Camerlot Coalition is in a degree of ordure at the moment on six issues: membership of the EU, the BskyB takeover, the NHS reforms, banking reform (or lack of it), welfare rationalisation, and educational revolution. Only the last two, I would submit, are being undertaken with every Briton’s future in mind. And surprise surprise – two of the few Conservatives I would trust to put country first (Michael Gove and Iain Duncan-Smith) are in charge of them.
The first four represent an illogical mess because of the interest groups who have tried to influence the legislation – by fair means or foul. The CBI, the IoD and the City are overwhelmingly pro the European Union. So despite the fact that 53% of us would like to secede, and the EU is about to fall apart with disastrous consequences, we are still in it. The BSkyB takeover ploughed remorselesly forward despite overwhelming evidence of widespread Newscorp criminality. It did so because of the media power, blackmailing tendencies, and massive financial support of that company and its owner, Rupert Murdoch. The NHS proposals offered by Andrew Lansley were a dog’s dinner in terms of the service’s real needs because Andrew Lansley had been heavily lobbied by pharmcos, GP associations, and private medical insurance companies. And the UK’s banks remain hopelessly fragile – yet heavily bonused and free from urgent reform – because their influence and money runs through the senior Tory ranks like a major stem of DNA. Cameron has close family links to the City. Oliver Letwin’s employer is a merchant bank. Hague has worked in a senior business capacity with most majors. And Osborne’s family tree looks like a Who’s Who of the average Guildhall Speech audience.
Do not imagine for a second that I am biased in this regard. Fully 30% of Labour MPs owe their allegiance to the Unite Union – by far the most militant of those left with any power to wreck. Harriet Harman’s low-cost mortgage is entirely dependent on Unite: were she to change mortgage supplier, her debt outgoings would rise fivefold.
As for the dummy Harman works from behind, it is painfully obvious that Ed Miliband won the leadership because Trade Unions swung the mandated vote behind him. Four days after his election in September last year, Labour received donations totalling £1M from TUC affiliated Unions. In the first three months of his leadership, £2,231,7412, or 88% of all funds donated to the Party, came from trade unions. And if you suspect these figures come from the Dacre Mail, think again: they’re from The Guardian.
We will never, ever get Government for the People until this whole rotten bourse in weak human flesh has been blown up. That much is staring us in the face. So why doesn’t it happen?
The Political Class need not come badly out of such a radical solution – as it well knows. Legislation to stop all private Party contributions – and make this entirely a matter for the State – would be unpopular with business, taxpayer pressure groups, and the media: but the advantages of it for the Common Good are obvious. It would mean, at a stroke, that political Parties would be freed from any financial dependence on sectional, minority interests.
Well, it doesn’t happen (I suspect) because real power no longer resides within the Political Class. That’s been true in the US for decades – but it’s probably been true here too…since soon after the election of banker-friendly Bambi Blair in 1997.
Odd as this may seem to some Sloggers, the one thing David Cameron has said that means I will never vote for a Conservative Party he leads related to his views on the ‘leg up’. The Prime Minister said he was all for influence giving one’s children a leg up. Well I’m not: I’m for meritocracy. And while we will never change clubbable human nature, we can at least keep its pernicious outcomes to a minimum. For the UK’s leading politician to endorse it represented, to me, a disgraceful acceptance of the Rotten Borough principle.
Across the world, it seems, power is being transferred not just from East to West, but from small to big, from individual to multinational, and from Government to banker. Whether this continues depends on how the banking fraternity comes out of Crash 2. But given the amount of power-transference already achieved by the fat, unaccountable 7%, the chances are there will be more protestations of the sky being about to fall in, and when that fails, rumblings about moving elsewhere as the final blackmail threat.
As the SM&C Committee is demonstrating at the moment (and no member more so than Louise Mensch) politicians are much braver when the Bull has been softened up by the picadors. Unless we massively limit the creeping power of the unelected in Britain, we will never elect a Government ready to take them on.
The Slog 