Why do we bother having Elections in this country any more?
Consider the following:
Matthew Taylor, Head of the Number 10 Policy Unit under Blair, mate of Ed Vaizey’s, on for a job under Cameron;
Julian Le Grand, former Blair adviser on health policy, on for a job under Cameron;
Ken Anderson, another old Blair adviser on health, now based at UBS, on for a job under Cameron;
Geoff Mulgan, old Trotskyist ex-Director of Demos, Blair’s favourite think tank and itself a literal continuation of the dissolved Communist Party of Great Britain (even if it is now hosting Phillip Blond), on for a peerage and Ministerial office under Cameron;
And who knows how many more.
Welcome to the One-Party State of Britain.
As Peter Hitchens said a few months ago, if a major horserace or football match were fixed in the way that the political process now is, there would be riots in the streets.
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I thought you'd just agreed that having the same people in power isn't undemocratic?
ReplyDeleteI don't know where you've got that from.
ReplyDeleteYour post on Chavez.
ReplyDeletePeople in Venezuela are perfectly free to vote for someone else, and were perfectly free to vote No in the referendum, as they did last time.
ReplyDeleteHere, however, we just get this lot regardless.
If only there were a truly alternative party out there! Pity it disbanded.
ReplyDeleteIf you mean the BPA, it has merely changed to more effective, less administraively costly tactics. But we have never been so busy.
ReplyDeleteGiven the Tory tendency to recruit Blairites for the Cameron New Tory Project, the message being sent out is that nothing is to change except who is to get Ministerial salaries, free flats and free cars.
ReplyDeleteThat is why people should be voting to ensure a hung parliament. In Scotland, the obvious choice for the people is to vote for Scottish National Party. The more Scottish National MP’s there are the more chance of a consensus approach.
In Scotland, the SNP Government has the done a marvellous job during the two years it has been in office.
No point in voting Tory or Labour, a hung parliament is the best way forward in these difficult and trying times.
As the Tories have shown by their actions, they don’t really have any answers; they are just as headless as New Labour.
What is Tory policy? Who is writing it? Where is it? Where are the details?
The country is about to be plunged into an election and the main opposition party claim to fame is that ‘they are not Labour’.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
George, a hung Parliament may very well happen anyway. It is far more likely than an outright Tory victory, which is a very long psephological shot indeed.
ReplyDeleteIn that case, assuming that Cameron is the Leader of the largest party, he would give each of the Lib Dems the local communitarian and populist pet project that he or she wants, thus securing his majority in any tight spot.
Indeed, he would have to do that even if he had a (very small) majority, since that majority would be made up of his own enemies.
It's either one lot of Social Democrats or another.
ReplyDeletePlease do not insult the tradition of the Attlee Government and of Gaitskell on Europe, of those who blocked Scottish and Welsh devolution in the 1970s, of Jim Callaghan and Roy Mason on Northern Ireland, of the successful organisation through USDAW to save the special status of Sunday from Margaret Thatcher, and of so many other things besides, by comparing it to David Cameron.
ReplyDeleteBritain's social democratic tradition was monarchist, Eurosceptical (by no means everyone in the SDP agreed with Roy Jenkins, while many who did not stayed in the Labour Party until the Blair years), Unionist (George Cunningham joined the SDP), morally and socially conservative (see above on Europe), and patriotic in its foreign policy realism.
Cameron is probably a monarchist, but not for any good reason, and mostly because he has never thought about it. He is Michael Heseltine's Vicar on Earth. On the Union, he is somewhere between indifferent and, bizarrely for a posh Scot, English separatist. He hasn't a morally or socially conservative bone in his body. Nor has he either a patriotic or a realistic one.
In some traditional Labour areas, turnout last time was as low as one in three. Huge numbers of people lean, as it were, economically to the left and socially to the right. No one outside Annabel's leans, in those terms, economically to the right and socially to the left. But David Cameron does not know anyone outside Annabel's.
Consider that both Mulgan & Taylor were affiliated to the British American Project for a Future Generation - sadly not a project dedicated to the kinds of policies that most folk in the US and UK support...
ReplyDeleteGiven that most of these guys couldn't get themselves elected, is it not time to argue for the Lords to be subject to democratic participation? Either that or replace the Upper House with a bill of rights and written constitution.
A Bill of Rights and a written Constitution composed by whom? By them. No, thanks.
ReplyDeleteAnd a second chamber elected how? By closed party lists. No, thanks.
At least giving them peerages gives them any sort of accountablity. Without that they'd have none but just as much pwer.
ReplyDeleteVery true.
ReplyDelete