Rescuing
Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected
Dictatorship
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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
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Playing
on the public's fears
Comment
- Daily Mail, 25/11/2004
Some
things should always be above the grubby manouvres of party
politics. On issues of war and peace, life and death, terrorism
and security, we expect our elected representatives to set
aside petty advantage and stand up for what they believe
to be in the national interest.
That
is why the Tories honourably - though mistakenly in our
view - supported the unpopular invasion of Iraq. That is
why there was such unity in the Commons on the Irish question
throughout the years of IRA bloodshed. Integrity in times
of crisis has long been part of our democratic tradition.
But
now politics has sunk to this. From Leader of the Commons,
Peter Hain - the one time agitprop activist - comes the
discreditable claim that in the face of an unprecedented
terrorist threat Britain is safer with new Labour than it
would be with other parties.
These
weren't off-the-cuff remarks. Mr Hain intended every word.
Instead of withdrawing when he had the chance, he repeated
the lie that only Labour can be trusted to protect the nation.
And he isn't acting alone. Shamefully, the whole Government
is playing politics with our national security.
Take
the Queen's Speech, which bulged with measures to combat
terrorism and crime, but can hardly be described as serious
legislative programme. Most of the proposed Bills - some
raising disturbing questions about civil rights - have no
chance of getting through before a May election. Identity
cards will not become compulsory until 2012.
But
then, the aim isn't to make new laws. This is a coldly cynical
ploy to replicate the election tactics of George Bush by
playing on public fears while pretending the nation is being
kept safe.
New
Labour's hypocrisy in adopting this strategy is simply breathtaking
For while nobody doubts that all Western nations are at
risk from terrorism, it is Mr Blair himself, with his misguided
Messianic zeal to remake the world, who has made Britain
a more dangerous place.
In
Iraq, a war launched on false pretences has been followed
by a botched occupation, leaving the country prey to insurgents
and the Middle East united in seething hatred for Britain
and America.
Safety?
Terrorism has been handed new opportunities in Iraq, while
the world's only superpower - despite Britain's supposed
influence - ignores the real crisis between the Israelis
and Palestinians.
And
as fears grow in Iraq that the Black Watch may be sucked
into another offensive alongside U.S. troops, prospects
for a successful exit strategy seem more remote than ever.
Meanwhile,
Mr Blair has seriously compromised our intelligence services.
He issued dodgy dossiers on Iraq. He exaggerated intelligence
information to mislead MPs, allowed his propagandist Alastair
Campbell to preside over intelligence meetings and persuaded
the then Head of the Joint Intelligence Committee, John
Scarlett, to collaborate in making the bogus case for war.
In
America, CIA chief George Tenet had to resign over the Iraq
debacle. In Britain? John Scarlett is promoted to head MI6,
leaving our most crucial anti-terrorist agency in the hands
of a man best known not for iron-clad impartiality, but
for his willingness to do Blair's bidding.
To
make security matters worse, New Labour has lost control
over our borders. Nobody has a clue how many illegal immigrants
work in our black economy. And that says nothing of the
quarter of a million failed asylum seekers living here.
BRITAIN
TODAY IS WIDE-OPEN TO ATTACK. HOW SICK THAT THE POLITICIANS
WHO MADE OUR PLIGHT WORSE SHOULD EXPLOIT PUBLIC FEARS FOR
THEIR OWN SELFISH AND DISHONEST ENDS.
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It's
grotesque for ministers to make us more vulnerable to terrorists
and then boast we are safer in their hands
by
Max Hastings - Daily Mail, November 25, 2004
The
conversion of Peter Hain from student protester into a New Labour
commissar makes Paul of Tarsus's transformation into a Christian
saint seem amateur stuff. While still in short trousers, Mr Hain
cornered a market in righteousness. In his youth, this was directed
against the shameful sinners then running Britain. No demo or
protest of the Sixties was complete with Hain.
He
seemed effortlessly to sustain a state of permanent rage against
our rulers. Almost single-handed, he invented rent-a-mob. Yet
almost 40 years on, the cause of righteousness has triumphed.
Mr Hain is himself among the rulers. The monumental moral conceit
which once he bore onto the streets, he now parades in Parliament
and a thousand broadcast studios - from the opposite side of the
barricades.
It
is those foolish enough to dissent from the Government's directives
and five-year plans who suffer his spleen now. As Leader of the
House of Commons, Hain told listeners to BBC Radio 4's PM programme
that this country will be safer in his party's hands than those
of the Tories.
Threat
Following
the Queen's Speech, he said: "The risk would be lower under
Labour, because we are bringing in the measures to deal with the
terrorist threat." In a moment, we will address these measures.
First,
however, let us consider the threat. None of us doubts that international
terrorists, some of them already in this country, want to do us
harm, and are striving to find means to do so. Before we are much
older, it is highly possible that some ghastly atrocity will take
place in Britain.
An
outrage is more probable here than in, say, France or Germany,
Belgium or Holland. Why? Because the British Government, of which
Peter Hain is a prominent member, chose to ally itself with George
Bush. Every serious strategic analyst agrees that our participation
in the Iraq invasion has made this country vastly more likely
to be attacked by terrorists than it was before that event.
I
am not here concerned with whether we should, or should not, have
joined the Americans in Iraq. It merely seems grotesque that a
Government which has cheerfully accepted the risk of putting the
Houses of Parliament and City of London right up there with the
White House and Wall Street as terrorist targets of choice should
now boast - for, indeed, Hain was boasting yesterday - that it
is making Britain a safer place.
This
is akin to a man who has gone hunting and wounded a tiger returning
to camp and telling everybody not to worry about a thing, because
he plans to start building a fence next morning.
And
what about that 'fence', announced in the Queen's Speech? I am
among those who see nothing inherently wrong with identity cards,
Our lives are detailed on so many computers already that I cannot
believe civil liberties are much threatened by registering them
on one more. There are far too many people in Britain today whose
existences are unrecorded. This cannot be in the interests of
public safety.
Yet
establishing who's who seems meaningless, unless the Government
also addresses one of its most disastrous failures, border controls.
Under New Labour, scrutiny of those who enter and leave Britain
has collapsed. In consequence, some international terrorists and
a great many illegal immigrants have simply walked in. The Government
seems not to care. Whenever protests have been made, ministers
mutter that they cannot breach EU law or the European Convention
on Human Rights. The immigration service is undermanned, underfunded
and demoralised.
One
evening last summer, our car was among an entire ferry-load of
vehicles from France which drove through Portsmouth docks, past
immigration checkpoints that were simply closed. Osama Bin Laden
himself could have sailed in for a holiday without a soul in Whitehall
knowing that he had left his villa in Pakistan.
How
can this Government talk about making Britain a safer place unless
it gets serious about policing our frontiers. There was nothing
whatever in the Queen's Speech about this issue, presumably because
Tony does not want to embarrass dear old Peter Mandelson in Brussels.
Inept
The
first essential for making us feel secure is that we should have
confidence in the people running the security. But how can we
believe anything said about terrorist threats, from those who
sent us to war in pursuit of phantom Weapons of Mass Destruction?
How do we accept anything said about risk
by the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) when it is now controlled
by Alastair Campbell's 'mate', JOHN SCARLETT, the man who cooked
up the notorious WMD dossiers with Tony and the rest of their
pals in Downing Street.
In a rational world, or even in an American one
(the CIA's director had to resign over WMD), Scarlett would today
be SIS's man in Outer Mongolia. Instead, in New Labour's 'safer
Britain', Blair has made him our intelligence supremo.
Everything about the proposed new anti-terrorist
laws hinges on the confidence issue. There is the rational case
for allowing evidence gathered by wire-taps to be admissible in
court, for trying suspected terrorists without juries and such-like
- if we trust the people who will make the decisions about who
is tapped and who is tried.
Yet everything about David Blunkett's reign at
the Home Office suggests a minister desperate to appease public
opinion, yet shockingly inept. People want policies that work.
Instead, all around us in Blair's Britain, we see bungling and
waste. There is a chasm between Government's intentions and their
implementation.
I
can imagine Mr Blunkett committing storm-troopers to seize illegal
fox-hunters, because New Labour is obsessed with their persecution.
I cannot imagine him creating effective defences against terrorism.
Alan Milburn, Mr Blair's new master strategist, said on Tuesday
that the Government will 'make Britain more secure, by lifting
people's fears'.
Fear
Yet
Ministers are themselves creating a climate of fear, to justify
their own policies. It is not that international terrorism is
not real. It is merely that a humbler man than Tony Blair might
acknowledge his own contribution to its procreation.
The
parallels with George Bush are real, and disturbing. Bush's promotion
of a climate of fear among his own electorate contributed mightily
to his re-election. Such a man, and such policies, need enemies.
The great edifice of 'Homeland Security' created since 9/11 has
done much less to protect Americans than would enlightened political
policies towards the Muslim world.
But
that is not Bush's way. Now we see that it is not Tony Blair's
or Peter Hain's either. Mr Hain proclaimed that he and his colleagues
will make us less afraid. Yet they themselves, by their own actions,
are feeding fear. To this day, the Blair government remains a
prisoner of a uniquely reckless American administration.
It
will be an appropriate climax to Peter Hain's political career
if we end up demonstrating in the streets against misrule of which
he is the least convincing advocate.
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.
