Silent Majority Speaks

Rescuing Democracy in the United Kingdom from our current Elected Dictatorship

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

 

WWW silentmajorityspeaks.com

Blunkett's departure signals the end - the death knell for Blairism written by Max Hastings - Daily Mail, December 17, 2004

The bright lights of the Downing Street Christmas tree mock the house's tenant. Even amid the acolytes who still offer him smiles and deference, Tony Blair looks as lonely as an 18th-century monarch who hears the mob baying at the gates. He feels his neck prickle, where the guillotine blade might strike it.

In truth, he is not threatened by the mob, nor even by the British electorate. With the Conservative opposition drifting, unloved and seemingly impotent, some of us would still bet on a Labour majority exceeding 100 at next year's General Election. The threat to Tony Blair's extraordinary tenure of power comes from his own party, which has never loved him and is now weary of him.

The shaken tenant of Nu. 10 - Comment - Daily Mail, December 17, 2004 First the earthquake, now the reckoning. After the most seismic Cabinet resignation in years, the tectonic plates of Labour politics have shifted dangerously. Nothing is solid any longer, nothing secure. Mr Blair is left vulnerable, exposed and beset by weaknesses. Without question, he has suffered a huge blow with David Blunkett's departure. He used every ounce of his authority - even pre-empting the outcome of Sir Alan Budd's inquiry- to protect his beleaguered Home Secretary. And now amid damaging claims of a cover-up, he appears both ineffectual and foolish. But this goes far beyond loss of Prime Ministerial face. Blunkett was not only a genuine heavyweight in a Cabinet that apart from Gordon Brown is full of pygmies and placemen but a talismanic figure for New Labour. With his humble origins and inspirational ability to triumph over physical adversity Mr Blunkett (blind school, night school, technical college, Sheffield University) appeals to the party's heartlands in a way that Mr Blair (Fettes, Oxford, Islington restaurants and the Bar) never could. And that appeal was central to an election strategy based on law and order and under -pinned by the seven major Home Office Bills unveiled in the Queen's speech just a couple of weeks ago. Mr Blunkett may be accused of out-Torying the Tories, but unlike his liberal critics he understands how cruelly the lives of the poor are blighted by crime. His sincerity in wanting to change that is palpable. His passion and commitment would have been crucial in the election campaign. Who else is half as credible? And credibility is the issue. Yesterday, the Law Lords left Labour's anti-terrorist policy in tatters, by ruling that it breached the human rights of nine foreign suspects held without trial under emergency legislation rushed through after 9/11. This isn't the first time the European Convention on Human Rights (so crassly incorporated into law by New Labour) has produced such embarrassing results. The judiciary has repeatedly and outrageously used it to thwart Mr Blunkett's attempts to bring sanity to our asylum system. But this is even more serious. Yesterday's judgment raises the question of whether the Government controls Britain's security agenda - this when the nation faces an unprecedented terrorist threat. The new Home Secretary, Charles Clarke, is still keeping the suspects in jail. But it remains to be seen whether this pugnacious blusterer really has the stomach to take on judges and liberal opinion, as Mr Blunkett so famously did. And problems aren't confined to the Home Office. With Clarke's promotion, Ruth Kelly becomes Education Secretary, the fourth in four years. Perhaps that old Blairite mantra should be amended to 'Education Minister, Education Minister, Education Minister'. But the lack of continuity is no joke when so many pupils are fobbed off with second best and the OECD reveals that Britain is slipping down international league tables in maths, reading and science. All this could hardly have come at a worse time for Mr Blair. He is already widely disliked and distrusted in his own party because of Iraq, his record of spin and broken promises and his dictatorial ways (viz.: his shameful refusal to allow Labour MPs a free vote as a matter of conscience on the Mental Capacity Bill, which many fear will mean euthanasia by the back door). Now, with the loss of his most powerful ally his authority is further undermined. The Government is damaged. The election is just months away. And the only politician of real stature left in this administration is his brooding Chancellor, Gordon Brown.

A decade ago, Labour turned to him, not because they believed in his vision, but because they perceived in him their only chance of government. He rewarded them with two overwhelming election victories. As Prime Minister, he offered policies conservative enough to preserve the consent of the middle class, larded with sufficient New Age compassion to quiet socialist consciences.

He maintained an iron grip on his own ranks, stifling dissenters with the nuclear-deterrent: back me, or forego the sugared joys of office. For New Labour's faithful, the prizes have indeed been delightful. There have been ministerial salaries such as few incumbents could hope to match outside politics, red boxes and chauffeurs, an ever-growing tribe of civil servants; an ever-widening panoply of state patronage.

Above all, of course, there has been power, great dollops of delicious power. Leave aside for a moment the issue of whether Tony Blair has delivered to the British people. He has delivered magnificently to his own party, in a fashion unmatched by any other Labour leader in history.

Untarnished

So what has gone wrong? What causes the world today to perceive, with the fall of his friend and ally David Blunkett, the beginning of the end of the Blair era?

First, amid Tories' woes, many Labour MPs share an arrogance in office that makes their great leader seem disposable. Public trust in Blair has been permanently eroded by Iraq and all the other revelations of the chasm between his utterances and his actions. By contrast, Gordon Brown, the Robespierrian incorruptible, offers New Labour an exciting whiff of socialism, a promise of fiscal redistribution, a reputation untarnished by events.

Brown is the man who refuses to dress up in toff tailcoats for City banquets. His bleak austerity seems a standing reproach to the Blairs' greed for free palazzos in Italy and multi-million-pound house purchases. Labour stalwarts read opinion polls which promise that their next election victory is assured. Meanwhile, Blair's political loneliness grows by the day. Almost all his faithful acolytes of 1997, midwives of the Third Way, have gone from Whitehall.

Lord Irvine, the chloleric lawyer who patronised the young prime minister as 'the boy Blair' with the airy confidence of a mentor, has vanished into obscurity. Alastair Campbell, beside whom Beria (Stalin's most sinister of secret policemen) sometimes seemed a figure of fun, has departed to earn a living in cabaret. Anji Hunter, former Downing Street gatekeeper, has moved on, together with Peter Mandelson.

The Fellowship of the Ring, as a romantically-inclined Blairite once described it to me back in 1997, was broken asunder even before the fall of David Blunkett. But Blunkett himself was central to the credibility of the Blair Project, because he represented a vital link. The Prime Minister and those closest to him are inescapably middle-class. Blunkett was the warm, lovable, commonsensical grassroots Old Labour star, who had embraced the Third Way, and Tony with it.

Blunkett's presence at the Cabinet table was Blair's earnest of faith towards the working class. The Home Secretary possessed the brains John Prescott lacks. He showed the commitment to a disciplined society which Downing Street thinks essential to appeasing middle-class dismay about failures of policing and the justice system.

Factions

Now Blunkett is replaced by Charles Clarke, whose foremost purpose is to gain Tony Blair's job. Clarke is loyal to Blair only until there is enough blood on the water for it to seem safe for the new Home Secretary to close his jaws on the Prime Minister's leg. We are heading towards a struggle for power at which the British people will be mere spectators. It will be fought between rival factions of government, confident that the electorate has enough bread and circuses to preserve the passivity.

I have suggested before on this page that it is a mystery to many of us why Tony Blair is so eager to go on. Objective observers can perceive only failures ahead for his government. Having turned its face against radical reform of public services, these are unlikely to improve.

There are no plaudits to be won from British entanglement with Bush in Iraq. Blair will probably lose a 2006 referendum on the European Constitution. Taxation must rise to fund the Chancellor's reckless generosity with our money. The economy will, some time, turn downwards.

The Third Way was always a myth, sustained since 1997 only by sidestepping every hard choice, avoiding every real decision. The Government shows no appetite to confront the unions on the vital issue of pensions.

Educational standards are falling, in the eyes of everyone save the Prime Minister. Our Universities are starved of vital funding, while the madness of strangling excellence by imposing 'equal opportunity' upon admission to higher education grows apace. The failure effectively to control immigration presents a grave threat to the coherence of our society. Sooner or later, the British public will awake to some of these realities. Before it happens, one might suppose that Tony Blair would think it prudent to absent himself. During the year ahead, he still has an opportunity to quit office with some dignity.

He possesses scant chance of achieving an historic reputation as a statesman. He can still go with an extraordinary record as a politician, a master-conjuror. If he stays on in his lonely citadel, only sorrows lie ahead. Under the Cabinet table, ever more hands finger daggers, while ever fewer clasp that of the Prime Minister in honest fellowship.

Flunkeys

In 1641, a witness described wonderingly the spectacle of Parliament looking upon the fallen Earl of Strafford, mightiest minister of King Charles I until that afternoon that impeachment set him on a course for the scaffold: 'All gazing, no man capping to him, before whom that morning the greatest of England would have stood discovered'.

Today, Tony Blair's flunkeys still metaphorically doff their caps, but the shadows are closing in. The Prime Minister's authority and dignity are fast fading, along with his party's belief in his indispensability.

He lacked the power to save David Blunkett. He may soon lack the power to save himself.

 

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Please also read Simon Heffer and Melanie Phillips on Blunkett and Blair

 For the health of our democracy, we, the people of the United Kingdom, must find a way to force Mr Blair to resign

Mr Blair has lied and deceived us over Iraq. He must resign at once. Do you agree? Agree strongly Agree Disagree Disagree strongly Don't know Don't care Please click one of the links above to cast your vote Current results

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:

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:

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.

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