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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How 'Tory
Tony' finally let the mask slip ....
By
Stephen Glover, Daily Mail - November 23, 2004
One
of the attractions of New Labour was that it did not appear to
be driven by class hatred. Old Labour seemed to be obsessed with
class. It's wilder members advocated the abolition of the monarchy
and the House of Lords and preached the merits of punitive taxation.
Tony
Blair, the privately educated, middle-class lawyer, sang an excitingly
different tune. He convinced many middle-class people that he
was one of them. He seemed a closet Tory in more civilised clothes
who could be trusted not to attack the bourgeois order. He promised
no increases in income tax. Again and again he has borrowed Tory
policies, as though to underline his credentials as a politician
of the centre who leans to the Right as much as he does to the
Left.
But
while this supposedly undercover Tory has been striving to appeal
to Middle Britain, the party he leads has often been driven by
class politics, which old |\Labour threatened but did not really
deliver. The most recent example is the anti-hunting Bill, passed
last week, which was never explicable merely on the grounds of
animal welfare.
Now
a junior minister has let the cat out of the bag. Peter Bradley,
the Parliamentary Private Secretary to Alun Michael, the rural
affairs minister, has told the truth: "We ought at last to
own up to it," he says. "The struggle over the (anti-hunting)
Bill was not just about animal welfare and personal freedom. It
was class war." In an interview with the Sunday Telegraph,
Mr Bradley goes on to argue that the issue over hunting is 'ultimately
about who governs Britain'.
So
there we have it. Mr Bradley has confirmed what many of us had
suspected but could not prove. In voting to abolish hunting, New
Labour was largely motivated by old-fashioned class hatred. It
would not accept that many people who hunt are not toffs in the
remotest sense of the word. For the denizens of New Labour those
who ride to hounds are by definition privileged.
On
the surface Tony Blair has risen above the old class politics.
Occasionally he sounds radical, as when he inveighed against 'the
forces of conservatism', but his political success has depended
on persuading the relatively prosperous middle-classes and those
who aspire to prosperity that he is essentially on their side.
He is so keen to consolidate his own private wealth that he has
almost given capitalism a bad name.
Yet
even while Mr Blair strikes his inclusive attitude New Labour
has displayed its class animus in ways that give the lie to the
idea that he is really a Tory by other means. Its jihad against
hunting is only one example. The abolition of the right of hereditary
peers to sit in the House of Lords was also driven by a visceral
class hatred. If New Labour had come up with a satisfactory alternative
one may have respected its desire to reform an anachronistic institution.
But its wanton destruction of the old system without any plan
to replace it with a better one was a self-revealing act of vandalism.
For
all its class rhetoric, old Labour did not destroy the House of
Lords or ban fox hunting. Nor did it seek to interfere in the
selection processes of our best universities. New Labour, by contrast,
has set targets and even recently appointed a special regulator,
whose business it is to try to bully Oxford or Cambridge and other
leading universities into accepting clever students whom the state
system has failed at the expense of better performing pupils who
have had the misfortune to be privately educated.
Last
week's attack on Prince Charles by Charles Clarke, Education Secretary,
was another revelation. The Prince may have expressed himself
badly when he argued in a private memo that people should know
their limitations, though the activities of the Prince's Trust,
which last year helped nearly 40,000 young people, suggests he
is doing more than most - including Mr Clarke - to help the underprivileged
better themselves. In accusing him of being 'very old-fashioned
and out of time', and by adopting such intemperate language, Mr
Clarke showed his true feeling about the monarchy. So did Peter
Hain, the Leader of the Commons, when he admitted on the Today
Programme the following day that he was not a monarchist.
Mr
Clarke and Mr Hain are former Left-wing agitators who once openly
opposed the Establishment. Twenty years ago, both men would have
freely spoken out against the monarchy, the House of Lords, fox-hunting,
private schools and any example of middle-class privilege you
care to name.
Like
many of their colleagues in Cabinet, they accepted the New Labour
blueprint forced on the party by Mr Blair in order to make it
re-electable. Perhaps they genuinely went along with the idea
that the market was a more efficient means of producing wealth
than state enterprises favoured by old Labour. But they have not
jettisoned their former far-Left views about class and privilege,
which go well beyond anything old Labour ever advocated.
How
does Tony Blair fit into all this? Despite his youthful flirtation
with the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, he was never part of
the far Left in the same way as Mr Clarke and Mr Hain, not to
mention other, supposedly reformed, members of the Cabinet, such
as Jack Straw, or political friends and associates like Peter
Mandelson.
Mr
Blair may not himself be driven by class politics. He evidently
does not care about fox-hunting one way or the other and would
have been personally happy with a compromise by which hunting
could have continued under licence. There is no reason to believe
that his desire to reform the House of Lords reflected any personal
prejudice against hereditary peers, or that he, as someone who
was privately educated, has it in for public schools.
But
whatever his own views on these matters, he knows that he presides
over a government and a party in which there are many supposedly
reformed Marxists, Trotskyists and other class warriors who, for
all their apparent acceptance of free market economics, are gripped
by a very old-fashioned class agenda.
As
Tony Blair grows weaker, buffeted by the consequences of his rash
adventure in Iraq, so he finds himself having to cede more and
more to the class warriors in his midst. I don't suppose he minds
too much. All that matters to him is the maintenance of power,
and if compromises are necessary, so be it. But a prime minister
who permits legislation against fox-hunting that is driven by
class hatred can no longer present himself as a kind of Tory in
disguise.
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.
