Losing Faith

Charlotte Leslie, the aspiring Conservative MP for Bristol North West has recently moved from her previous blog on the Guardian’s Comment is free website and now has a new blog at the Daily Mail.

In her third post entitled ‘A mace-wielding stand for democracy?’ she alludes to the increasingly undemocratic system in Britain over which, domestically at least, our Labour Government presides, and how she has had direct experience of the electorate losing faith with the political system.

In her article Charlotte decides to pick up on the quangocracy that our largely useless, Labour-led Westminster administration has helped create, saying:

Under New Labour, the ‘machine’ of politics has ballooned, and it has meant that it has become more and more difficult for the public to influence what goes on in politics.

While it is true that the Labour Government have dramatically increased spending and employment in public services and state institutions, and handed over political power to unaccountable quangos, this current state of affairs cannot be entirely attributed to the Labour party. British political history did not begin in 1997.

For example, it was under the Conservative party that local government was reorganised and ‘reformed’ in 1973 and vast powers were taken away from democratically elected councillors and given to an immense array of unelected and often unaccountable chief executives and town hall bureaucrats.

It was also under the Conservatives that this country was taken into the European Economic Community, which later developed into the European Union – an organisation that has become one of the greatest threats to liberty and democracy facing Britain since the Second World War.

What’s more, previous Conservative Governments, including those of Margaret Thatcher and John Major did very little to decrease the size of the civil service or the state, and more often than not allowed it to continue expanding.

Still, despite not choosing to acknowledge these points in her article, Charlotte moves on to make an observation of interest, commenting that:

Labour have built a quangocracy of unelected bodies which rule our communities and make decisions for us, and in silent and stealthy ways, parliamentary procedure has been tweaked and changed to dis-empower the democratic parliament and empower the Government.

Now, exchange the word ‘Labour’ for ‘the EU and previous Labour and Conservative administrations’ and you have a far more accurate description of what has really been taking place in Britain and Europe over the past three decades.

So, when Charlotte ends her article by remarking that the only way politicians can begin to restore the faith lost in our political system is by being prepared to speak out and act, then I suggest that now is as good a time as any for the Conservative party to do just that.

David Cameron really needs to stop fiddling around at the edges of the debate and instead speak out strongly against the malign influence the European Union’s undemocratic institutions have over our system of government and the British people. He and the likes of Charlotte Leslie need to acknowledge these facts and promise that if they formed a government they would restore local accountability, sovereignty and parliamentary democracy – not just abolish a few quangos and hope that is enough.

There are literally millions of people out there yearning for the Conservatives to make such a bold statement of intent – but despite that, (and you may call me a cynic) I somehow don’t see them being made any time soon.

Ivory Towers

Writing in the Daily Mail today, Quentin Letts (the paper’s Parliamentary Sketchwriter) discusses yesterday’s weekly episode of PMQs – this time between Harriet Harman and William Hague – and the forthcoming special Speaker’s Conference.

The Speaker’s Conference has been called by the House of Commons Speaker, Michael Martin, to address the growing problem of political disillusionment and distrust of most politicians in Britain, as well as declining electoral turnouts.

On a somewhat similar note, Quentin Letts, observing Prime Minister’s Questions from the gallery in Parliament, wrote that:

Looking down at the poor saps in the Commons yesterday, it was hard to be sure why anyone normal would want to be a Member of Parliament.

He then ponders for just a moment why a supposedly intelligent woman (yes, he is referring to Harriet Harman – who would have thought it?) would submit themself to the braying ordeal of Prime Minister’s Questions, before asking:

Is it worth all the effort? And are ministers truly powerful?

An interesting pair of questions – but does Mr Letts take them any further or even begin to hint at why Ministers in Britain have indeed lost many of their powers? Of course not. The EU elephant in the room goes unmentioned once again, and the Mail’s Parliamentary Sketchwriter blabs on undeterred.

Furthermore, one suspects that Quentin Letts cannot even grasp the reasons why a new breed of men and women are attempting to enter high office. In short it probably has something to do with the fact that MPs are, for the most part, short of ideas and lazy. As such, Ministerial hopefuls yearn for the luxuries of the government gravy train – high salaries, big expenses and huge pensions, plus an almost total absence of responsibility.

That is why people such as Harriet Harman submit themselves to Prime Minister’s Questions; it is not for the power but for the perks and the privileges of office – real or perceived. And it is probably also why that with each passing day ‘normal’ citizens in this country become even more fed up with a political system that they can do very little about.

Democratic Issues

On Friday the BBC published an article outlining some of the comments made by various MPs from the three main parties on the arrest of Damian Green over supposed leaks from the Home Office.

Now, what I have found particularly interesting about the whole Damian Green saga (which I think has been completely blown out of all proportion by our typically hopeless media) is the outcry from the likes of Nick Clegg and an assortment of Liberal Democrat, Labour Party MPs.

Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg told the BBC in an interview that he was deeply shocked by the arrest of Mr Green and claimed the event was a ‘mayday warning’ for democracy in Britain, saying:

This is something you might expect from a tin-pot dictatorship, not in a modern democracy.

The fact is though, like so many of our MPs that aimlessly waft around in Parliament, Nick Clegg only becomes interested in ‘democracy’ when the safety of the increasingly irrelevant Westminster bubble is punctured.

What do the likes of Nick Clegg really know of democracy? Where were he and others when our powers of self-government and democracy were being given away to the EU? Oh yes, that’s right, they were there in Parliament voting to give it away.

Bearing the above in mind, the speed with which our MPs of all parties have rallied to one another’s side and in the process ignored the real issue of our increasingly non-existent democracy betrays the truth that in fact MPs from all parties often have more in common with each other than they do the voting electorate.

Morning In America

It is a new dawn, is it not? Or at least so said Tony Blair on the 2nd of May 1997 as the sun rose on a Labour party that swept to an historic landslide victory against the Conservatives who had been in office for almost two decades.

During those early months Labour and Blair rode on the crest of a wave of optimism and goodwill from many cheering crowds of Union Jack waving British people. However, this initial euphoria was short-lived and the rest is history.

In ten years Blair presided over two unnecessary and futile wars in the Middle East, escalating (though often ignored) economic problems, the steady decline in our power of self-government and a rapid rise in political correctness among many, many other unpleasant facets stemming from his Labour administration.

And so now to America where Democrat, Barack Obama has convincingly won the US 2008 Presidential Race against John McCain – all to cheering crowds of star-spangled waving US citizens, much glee in the liberal-left media and on the promise of ‘change’, ‘hope’ and ‘optimism’. Does that sound familiar to you?

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