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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Ignoring The Elephant

Something which never ceases to fascinate me is the way in which entire debates on UK politics can be held without so much as a mention or in-depth look at the incredible influence that the European Union has on a particular issue.

A few weeks ago I attended a debate on Devolution at the University of Bath. To my amazement the EU was actually mentioned relatively quickly, but then unsurprisingly was rapidly ignored and framed in such a way that it appeared to be an external irrelevance to the issue of devolution of powers – rather than as it actually is a fundamentally important element.

Now, interestingly enough we had someone on the panel from an organisation called Unlock Democracy – what appears to be a seemingly unremarkable group claiming to be interested in increasing democracy in Britain. Their representative was a member of its Bath branch called Tim Williamson.

Unlock Democracy evolved from Charter 88 and is an organisation which has its distant roots in the Communist party of Great Britain, so you can already guess what such an organisation’s views may be. However, I suppose its history is in some respects by-the-by – what is more important is the type of organisation that Unlock Democracy has now become.

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The Continuation Of Failure

The conference season in this country was, as fully expected, entirely predictable. Politicians from all parties rose to the stage in turn to feign concern and tell of the need for ‘hope’, ‘optimism’ and of course that old favourite, ‘change’.

Yet, despite an entire lack of real substance emanating from any of the party conference halls, the career-minded journalists and media groupies still blindly held court at the politician’s feet, seemingly hanging on every word that was uttered as if it were something of great importance.

Sadly, and as has become abundantly clear within these past few years, we in Britain no longer live in a democracy, but have in fact entered a post-democratic era where the façade of elections and freedom remains cunningly intact but their true attainability has long since been stripped away.

The Conservative conference in Birmingham this week confirmed yet again that we no longer have an effective opposition in this country, with David Cameron pledging to persist with the majority of Labour’s failing policies with only a few minor alterations.

And even if the Conservative party was actually attempting to be radically different to the current Labour administration (which the party leadership have no intention of doing, nor the liberal media any intention of allowing) and then also managed to win the next election (which is not actually as likely as is currently made out), then they would still only be in office, not in power.

For we in this country do not, for the most part, run our own affairs or elect those that actually govern us. Over decades our power of self rule has been frittered away by politicians from all parties who have cared more about themselves than the future of the British citizenry.

Our lives are now ever increasingly governed by corrupt, undemocratic European institutions and an unaccountable and stifling domestic bureaucracy - and, for the moment at least, there is very little we can do to extract ourselves from this mess.