A Double Blessing

Exactly how many people pay the voluntary political levy through their trade unions (merely a collection mechanism)? By contrast, exactly how many people have contributed to the recent change in the Tories' financial situation by buying thousand pound dinner tickets and such like? This enormous difference is the point.

In fact, Labour's trade union links and the hereditary peerage, both now under mortal threat, embody this country's double blessing: both very highly organised labour and a very highly developed aristocratic social conscience. Of course, this combination (unique in the world, at least in terms of degree), means that Britain is bourgeois-triumphalist neoconservatism's worst nightmare. Hence the determination, both to replace the former with state funding of political parties (and thus with state vetting of candidates through some ghastly glorified committee), and to replace the latter with a second chamber of persons "elected" from party lists for prolonged and non-renewable terms of office.