Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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Come
back Gilligan, all is forgiven. Penny Young, Diss, Norfolk,
to The Guardian, February 24, 2005
Spin,
not face-to-face confrontations with the voters, is the
Government's chosen method of communication. Ordinary
people are dangerous. Ordinary people might ask a question
which throws a politician 'off message'; the Cabinet member
might reveal himself or herself to be a human being like
us, and not a programmed android. Worse still, he or she
might tell the truth. Ann Leslie - Daily
Mail, September 16, 2004
Power
cut, please
Labour's
pollsters have Tony Blair running scared, because they have
informed him that if turnout at the next election is below
50%, the result will be a hung parliament. This would be
good news for those of us who, viewing the damage inflicted
by recent governments, would like nothing better than a
Parliament powerless to do anything. Letter from Ron
Phillips, London W14 - Daily Mail, February 17, 2005
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Tony
Blair's pledge cards made no mention of pensioners. Perhaps
they're the jokers. Letter to the Daily Mail from Brian
Green, Daventry, Northants - February 22, 2005
The
Guardian's Polly Toynbee says 'a profoundly nasty streak'
among voters worried about poverty, crime and immigration
might cause them to vote against the Government. Isn't
it time we replaced the present electorate with one more
to Polly's liking? Ephraim Hardcastle, Daily Mail,
February 24, 2005
Back
to the future
'Forward
not Back' is quite wrong: we must go back - back to clean
hospitals with more medical staff and fewer managers;
back to education with proven standards.
Back
to police on the street and solving crime; back to increased
employment in industry, back to ministers who stand up
for this country and back to democratic government. Then,
perhaps, we can move forward. Letter from S, M. Butler,
Shoreham-by-Sea, Sussex - Daily Mail, March 23, 2005
Virtues
of a secret ballot
Sir
- Concerning postal votes (report Mar 23) what is the
first principle of a democratic political vote? Answer:
THE SECRET BALLOT.
It
is obvious that a postal ballot is only as secret as the
moral strength of the voter. With the infinite propaganda
powers of today's electronic media, it is frighteningly
easy for devious politicians to promote politically correct
or "cool" or, most wickedly, "honest and
transparent" voting patterns, where someone failing
to vote "with his/her group" must "have
something to hide".
Postal
voting should, at best, be allowable only to persons who
are required to be stationed away from their constituency
on government business. A few temporary disfranchisements
may result, but nothing is perfect.
Letter from J. B. Lewis, Bognor Regis, West Sussex - The
Daily Telegraph, March 25, 2005
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph,
from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19,
2005
Blair
cannot ignore our outrage over Iraq
Tony
Blair's speech after the election appeared contrite. His
admission that he had lacked experience was impressive.
But it turned my blood cold when our Prime Minister said
that in the case of Iraq, it was time to 'move on'.
Can
any phrae so callously and insidiously wipe the slate
clean? 'Moving on' is now part of the lexicon of British
life and I think it's dangerous.
Blair's
contrite speech reminded us that if you want to stand
up against the status quo in this country, you won'tk
be merely disagreed with - a welcome and natural part
of democratic life - you'll be made to fell you're speaking
from some weird place called 'The Past', not the right-on
Labour concoction known as 'The Future'. You haven't 'mlved
on'.
How
can any society that seeks to challenge its Prime Minister
on the legality of a war that killed thousands, sit there
while its leader sweeps it aside, telling it, in that
grubby little phrase, to 'move on'. A large secgion of
British society has embraced the vaacuity oif the words
'moving on' without examining the destructive power of
the message.
Our
lives, in private and public, are littered with examples
of people casually rationalising a my8riad selfish and
destructive actions with the nauseating observation: "Yeah,
it was wrong, but it's time to move on ... "
'Moving
on' is a linguistic short-cut to a guilt-free zone. Guilt
is regarded like cellulite or yellowing teeth, inherently
bad and in need of banishment.
But
guilt has a vital function because it reminds us all that
our actions may be wrong. How does Labour plan to enforce
anti-social behaviour laws and discipline in schools if
the prevailing message is 'I don't want to look at my
guilt. Let's move on'.
This
Government's obsession with ditching the past and pursuing
the future is creating a sordid ideology of relative moralities.
So let's all stop using the horrible little phrase 'moving
on'. Our actions, good and bad, aren't erased by it. In
domestic trivialities, it's cheap. In war, it's obscene.
Fiona
MacDonald Turner - Warninglid, W. Sussex - Daily Mail,
May 11, 2005
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THE
PHONEY ELECTION
Lies.
Fraud. Staged walkabouts. Voters cynically targeted by Big Brother
technology. This is an utterly dishonest election and our democracy
is paying a terrible price, writes Peter Oborne, in his Saturday
Essay, Daily Mail, April 23, 2005
Television
viewers watching Tony Blair on the campaign trail in the little
Northamptonshire town of Rushden might have assumed he was mingling
with ordinary voters. The cameras followed the Prime Minister
as he made a speech from the stump, then lingered behind to shake
hands and chat with local people.
It
was the day last week when the Labour manifesto was launched,
and Tony Blair was at his most charming and accomplished as he
basked in his warm reception. The little scene looked like democracy
in action. It sounded like democracy in action. It even smelt
like democracy in action. But in truth it was nothing of the sort.
The whole event was a fraud. Not a single ordinary voter was present
in the Nothamptonshjire leisure centre where Tony Blair spoke.
Amazingly,
the even had even been kept a closely guarded secret from the
public. The friendly crown shown on TV screens had been secretly
alerted just hours before by Labour Party bosses and given details
of the event, as I discovered after penetrating the gathering
while making a programme for Channel 4's Dispatches.
The
point is that every person there I spoke to was a Labour Party
member - there is no doubt that these 'ordinary' voters were hand
picked. Party officials tried to stop me getting in. Had any other
members of the public got to hear that Tony Blair was in town
and tried to meet him, then they also would have been banned.
Mr Blair had made sure he was among friends, so there were no
worries about a hostile reaction, or even an awkward question.
The media presence was strictly controlled.
This
kind of fabricated, artificial public hustings has been repeated
hundreds of times up and down Britain during the past few weeks.
The appearance of traditional British democracy may have been
preserved in this General Election campaign. But the substance
has been dumped. The result is that this election has its own
special and horrible significance. It is the election in which
Britain has moved stealthily across to a new system of government,
which the political scientist and former Fabian Society Chairman
Professor Colin Crouch has brilliantly christened Post-Democracy.
At
first sight, Post-Democracy looks quite like the real thing. Parties
go on producing manifestos, even though they have become almost
meaningless. Britain still has the ballot box, even though, thanks
to postal voting, it has been tampered with and debauched to such
an extant that it has lost its integrity.
We
still have public meetings, where politicians of all parties can
talk to voters. But these have become bogus devices, no longer
used for genuine debate, but the cynical production of a soundbite
that can be screened on local or national TV later that day.
Two
thousand years ago, the Emperor Augustus seized power in Rome.
He was careful to maintain the appearance of the old democratic
virtues of the Roman Republic, and made a show of treating the
Republican Senate with respect. But the truth was that Rome ad
moved from democracy to tyranny, and everybody knew it, even though
you signed your death warrant if you said as much in public. A
similar kind of change has stealthily taken place in Britain over
the past decade. The ancient institutions of British democracy
have been captured by a new professional political elite, which
no longer seeks to communicate with the voters as equals.
Instead,
it sets out to dupe, deceive and manipulate us from behind the
scenes. The terrifying thing is that many ordinary voters do not
even understand this is happening. This new political class prefers
not to deal directly with voters through the long-established
techniques of democracy like public meetings, or even door-to=-door
canvassing.
Instead,m
it uses incredibly sophisticated computer technology to find out
information about the tiny number of key voters who will decide
this election, the targets them ruthlessly. This is deeply sinister.
Political parties can now use a mass of information about ordinary
citizens, which most of us wrongly assume is private: our credit
card details, or shopping habits, what magazines we read, what
restaurants we eat at, how much we are in debt.
The
process this date using complex American computer software. They
are then able to predict with astonishing accuracy what our political
affiliations are likely to be. In last year's U.S. Presidential
election, it was discovered that any voter who drove a Volvo was
almost certain to be a Democrat, while someone who owned both
a dog and gun was virtually certain to vote Republican.
In
modern Britain, the three parties have learnt how to make the
same observations about us. For instance, someone who has lived
in the same house for more than ten years and has very low personal
indebtedness is extremely likely to vote Tory. By contrast, heavily
indebted people who have recently moved house are likely to fall
into the category of swing voter.
Thanks
to this amazing technology, political bosses can now survey British
constituencies on a house -by-house basis, working out where the
Tory, Labour and swing voters live, and how likely they are to
vote. These voters will then be target. Both the Conservatives
and Labour have massive telephone call centres. The Tory HQ in
in Coleshill in the Midland,s while Labour's nerve centre is at
Gateshead in the North East.
These
are manned by paid operatives, whose job is to ring key voters.
By the time the call is made, the parties already know far more
about them than they can possibly imagine. So voters are likely
to be most impressed at the way the caller understands their deepest
hopes and fears. What they do not know is that they are just dues
in a clever marketing exercise.
Not
long after the call, he or she will receive party literature,
which at once will seem strangely sympathetic. The voter is not
to know that it has been specially prepared for voters like him
or her. The truth is that British voters can now be targeted with
the precision of a cruise missile turning left at a street corner
in central Baghdad during the Gulf War. The 2005 General Election
is being fought using precision marketing techniques stolen from
the world of big business.
Some
will defend practices like these, saying it is no more than professionalism.
In a way that is true. But there is a terrible price to pay for
this kind of professionalism in a democracy - which explains why
this election is quite unlike any that has gone before.
It
has become a clinical affair, devoid of commitment. Look around
you where you live. Even in a marginal constituency, you will
see very few election posters out on the street compared to previous
elections. Ordinary people have not been engaged and fewer and
fewer are participants in what just two decades ago was a powerful
and robust democracy. Instead, these people are regarded cynically
by politicians as objects for duping and manipulation.
It
is this that explains the sheer yawning boredom and grotesque
lack of passion in this election., The political parties no longer
take their ideas and beliefs from the aspirations of their mass
membership, which has largely disappeared. Instead, they set their
policies only after testing them remorselessly on target voters
in the key swing seats. And because the parties test their policies
on the same sets of voters, the policies end up being virtually
identical.
Take
immigration, the subject on which Tony Blair hypocritically accused
the Conservative Party of running a 'nasty' campaign. In fact,
the moment Tories launched the campaign on immigration, Labour
responded by making sure its own policies were just as tough.
By
contrast, on taxation the Conservative party has timidly rowed
in behind the Labour Party. Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin has
refused to challenge the Government's lavish spending commitment,
with the result that Tory proposals to cut tax are all but meaningless,
worth a pathetic £4billion in an economy valued at over
one trillion pounds.
On
law and order, all three parties are fighting a bidding war to
look 'tough' and put more policemen on the streets. For the Liberal
Democrats in particular, this move to 'tough liberalism' is a
betrayal of their values. Even the language used by the two parties
is the same. When Tory leader Michael Howard went campaigning
in the marginal seat of Winchester I took with me the pledge cards
of the three main parties. After Howard had left, I tested them
on local people, asking them to match the pledges to the party
leaders.
They
hadn't a clue, and no wonder. All the party pledges have been
focus-grouped to death, meaning that they are artfully constructed
to be utterly inoffensive to anyone.
The
Tories are bad enough, but the Labour Party's pledges were worst
of all. It's vapid promises include 'your children with the best
start', 'you child achieving more' and 'your family better off'.
No one could disagree with these worth sentiments. Labour's Tory
and Liberal Democrat opponents would be hardly likely to argue
for policies like 'your family worse off'. Labour's pledges were
utterly meaningless.
This
pitiful General Election is turning into a matter for national
shame. The main parties all agree about the substantive issues,
but pretend they do not by manufacturing artificial differences.
Very often they resort to lies and deceit in order to distinguish
themselves from rivals.
There
are far too many examples to mention, for all parties, but Health
Secretary John Reid has been especially shameless, repeatedly
making the completely untrue claim that the Tories plan to charge
for operations on the NHS. He has also made false claims about
the Liberal Democrat policies on drugs.
General
Elections do not need to be driven by this kind of hypocrisy,
calculation and deceit. They ought to be occasions when the British
nation debates the great issues confronting us in the future.
Democracy means more than just casting a vote in a ballot box
once every four or five years. It means being told the truth about
our fears and aspirations for the future.
Some
day, some time, a British politician may re-emerge with the courage
to stand up and say what he or she really believes, without testing
those beliefs first with the marketing consultants and the focus
groups. A politician of utter conviction who believes that principles
and ideas really matter, and that it is wrong to manufacture and
market them like soap powder or fizzy drinks.
In
the meantime, the British people will have to put up with the
most dishonest and cynically conducted election in British history.
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Tactical
Voting
As
UKIP member for several years, I believe the greatest
threat facing the British is the potential loss of our
independence to govern ourselves. Once Brussels gains
complete control, everything else we are voting for in
the coming election is academic. The real decisions will
be made in Brussels by people we can't vote out.
Much
as I support UKIP's aims, I now believe the single most
important goal for British voters is to remove Blair and
his rotten Government before they complete the process
of removing our sovereignty. Only a vote for Michael Howard
will do this - Letter to the Daily Mail from Tony Beverley,
London SW10 - April 7, 2005
Perhaps
Ann Widdecombe was right about Michael Howard, but it
should have been KNIGHT with a K, and he could have saved
us from the monsters Blair and Campbell - Letter to
the Dail Mayil from Les Fletcher, Rhos-on-Sea, Colwyn
Bay, Wales - February 18, 2005
After
a clear vote against them, we still got eight non-elected
Regional Assemblies. When we vote against the EU Constitution,
we'll get them anyway. Letter from P.Cove, Aylesbury,
BUCKS.- Daily Mail, January 31, 2005
THE
TIMES slavish support for the Government worries some
members of the paper's staff, not to mention any perspicacious
readers who are left. Political editor Philip Webster
was questioned about this when he addressed colleagues
as part of an in-house 'masterclass' exercise. Small wonder.
One of his Blair-worshipping subordinates wrote a news
story yesterday poo-pooing the row over Labours anti-semitic
poster mocking Michael Howard, saying it was merely £5million
worth of 'free publicity' for the party. Ephraim Hardcastle
- Daily Mail, Febrauary 2, 2005
Hold
the front page
Further
to BBC bias (Mail), very often on BBC Breakfast and Breakfast
With Frost, coverage of the morning papers is censored.
If the front page of the Daily Mail is critical of Tony
Blair and his Soviet-style Government, it is not shown,
although the front pages of all the other newspapers are
shown. A supposedly independent broadcasting body is acting
as censor for this Government - an absolute disgrace.
Letter from Peter Fish, Chippenham, Wilts. .- Daily Mail,
February 17, 2005
SIR
- Why on earth are people still insisting on voting for
the Labour Party this May 2005. It has lied and cheated
the public again and again during the Iraq war, immigration,
violent crime and hospital waiting list figures. It has
introduced stealth taxes and even been caught rigging
the postal voting system. To the Editor, Daily Telegraph,
from Philip Priestley, High Wycombe, Bucks. April 19,
2005
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The
REAL NASTY PARTY- How
Labour is the true home of spite, bigotry and contempt for the
public
For
the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom,
must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign
Such
defiance of the democratic process and the will of the majority
of we people of the UK, must be exposed by voters as a matter
or urgency, and not just in the two by-elections we have had this
July and the European elections in June 2004. But how can this
be done?
The
most effective way of getting our deceitful PM to resign would
be to mobilise the army of Labour MPs currently in the House of
Commons and get them to demand it, the loss of their seat to be
a penalty if they did not. All voters in Labour-held constituencies
need to write a letter along these lines to their local Labour
MPs:
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Dear
Despite
his absolute and unequivocal assurances over the past year
of the serious risk to our security of Saddam Hussein's
'weapons of mass destruction', Prime Minister Blair
has admitted, that the threat was non-existent. For that
critical error of judgement and for his gross incompetence
in handling this very important issue, I ask you to take
immediate steps to ensure that Tony Blair does the honourable
thing and resign without delay..
I
would therefore be much obliged if you would propose and
help mobilise a Parliamentary vote of 'No Confidence' in
Mr Blair which, despite Labour's huge majority, would leave
the PM with no option but to resign.
If
I get no reply to this letter, I shall assume you will continue
to support Mr Blair as our Prime Minister. In such circumstances
I shall not vote for you in the forthcoming General Election.
Signed:
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Simple,
non-violent, protest letters along these lines on a variety of
issues could be the basis for re-vitalising our democracy and
increasing voters' interest and participation in politics. Download
a printable copy of the above letter here.
There
is another way for the voice of the silent majority to be heard,
a voice that made sure broken promises would not only be revealed,
but punished in subsequent elections.
In
the year available before the General Election expected in 2005,
many topics are available as ammunition, each one asking questions.
A weapon for our purpose will be the results of Opinion Polls
in individual constituencies using ICM, NOP, Gallop, Mori
or YouGov.
Questions
suggested for this purpose are listed here.
CAST
YOUR VOTE ON A VARIETY OF OTHER IMPORTANT ISSUES HERE.
Current
and prospective Parliamentary candidates of all Parties running
for election could share a platform at public forums in every
constituency. They would be presented with the results of
polls on this issue expressed by the majority of voters in that
constituency.
The candidates could be asked if their own views and that of their
Party manifesto corresponded with the polls, and if not, how they
intended to represent the will of the majority of local voters.
Local and National Press, Radio and TV coverage would be arranged
and the results published on this web site.
Here
is another powerful strategy for using your vote effectively in
the forthcoming General Election. Send your sitting and prospective
MPs a letter defining your requirements if they want your vote.
This example deals with the proposed
EU Constitutional Treaty.
Your
letters would end: "If you do not answer
this letter, I shall take it that you intend to follow the Government
line. I shall act accordingly in the forthcoming General Election.
Or
why not create a questionnaire that you send to all the candidates
in your constituency, getting them to give yes/no answers to questions
of your choice, and ending it with the same paragraph(above).
Download
a printable example of the questionnaire.
It
is high time for the people of this United Kingdom to stop allowing
themselves to be manipulated by politicians. We need our representatives
in Parliament to genuinely reflect the view of the majority in
their own constituency, even if this means going against their
personal and/or their party's policy. While they may argue their
case, hoping to change the minds of the majority in their constituency,
they should ultimately be obliged to reflect the majority view
of those who elect them.
It
will be argued by politicians of all parties that most voters
don't have the knowledge necessary to express an opinion on important
subjects at issue, and that our vote is a form of delegated democracy.
We should argue that it is their duty to ensure that we voters
do have ready access to such information as is necessary to form
an intelligent opinion. That, after all, is one main purpose of
Opposition Parties in our Parliamentary Democracy.
Most
important of all, such proceedings would rekindle in voters their
latent interest and obligation to cast their vote, knowing that
the candidate of their choice would be more likely to act in accordance
with their wishes. A much higher turnout in elections would be
the result.
Contact
your local Party Chairman. Gain his support for setting up public
forums in your constituency on these, as well as any other relevant
topics, well before the next General Election expected in 2005.
You should then, depending on the integrity of the candidate of
your choice, feel fairly certain that your view on any subject
being debated in Parliament will more accurately be reflected
by your representative in that assembly.
