The refusal to debate and the decline of democracy

Things are not going well for democracy in the United Kingdom.

The main political parties are hardly entering into the main issues of the local elections or European elections - with the possible exception of UKIP and to be fair the Lib Dems.

UKIP have tapped into a seem of popular dissatisfaction with what I would call our ruling class ( which I'd define by their common background and career, rather than the political flag ).

Politics has become Marketing for cynics.

Hence the answer to the rise of UKIP has been to attempt to smear and play the man, not debate the issue.

We have the Racism card being played, not only by the Left who have long used it to try to censor debate, but now by the desperate Conservative party. The main stream media has swung behind the campaign against the plebs, but occasionally you see articles where occasional commentators point out that the consensus in politics - which runs against majority opinion on many issues, is a problem.

We are trying to have an election. People, many ordinary people, are standing for office.

Tempers are getting frayed -self appointed activists groups are organising "counter" demonstrations to scare people away from debate with their smears. The media is playing into this theme.

In the end things will calm down after Thursday, but we should not kid ourselves that democracy is drinking in the last chance salon in the UK.

We need proper debates, calm heads, some mutual respect.

Democracy only works in the end if 49.9% of the people are willing to be ruled by 50.1%'s wishes. ( See this article by Sean Thomas in the Telegraph - which runs through these issues ).

Since all of the three legacy parties have an almost unified position on many of the key topics, which is often against the majorities wishes, we can't be far from democracy breaking down.

That is something we should all pause and think about after Thursday.

It looks like the combined unified action all all the establishment may yet save David Cameron the passing embarrassment at the count on Sunday night, but nobody should fool themselves that we can carry on like this.

Democracy could fall

There are two key events in the UK at the moment.

The limit on the funding of social democracy by debt ( lets not kid ourselves by blaming banks & Capitalism - though the BBC is doing its best, especially on Radio 4 - the problem, as the Chinese have correctly pointed out, is our social settlement. Its unaffordable and the alternative is unpalatable ( not because its heartless or even less effective, but because of vested interests in the state provision of public services ).

I've said on twitter that debt is the crystal meth of democracy, and so it is turning out. It is perhaps no coincidence that the greatest crisis is in Greece, the home of democracy.

And yet in other areas democracy fails. The European Union and similar international bodies / treaties that constrain the government of the UK are spectacularly unpopular. And yet on Monday we will see the sight of all three main party political leaders denying the majorities wishes. Again democracy fails.

And now with semi-authoritarian regimes like China as competition, its no longer clear that democracy will win out.

We need to take a long hard look about how democracy functions, and how our politics functions. If measures aren't taken soon then democracy will no longer be guaranteed in this country.

Brown is to arrogant to engage in debate

If Gordon Brown needs your opinion, then he'll give it to you.

Of all the modern politicians he is the one least likely to engage in intelligent debate where ideas are developed, justified and defended by facts and ideas.

Brown just makes assertions.

Like:

"It is right that"
"It is wrong that"
and today "It is incredibly unfair"

What none of these statements never have following them is an attempt to justify those assertions. ( See his assertions on his crimanl underfunding of our armed services here - notice all the dirty little tricks he uses - especially that New Labour classic the over defined rebuffed accusation - did you spot it ? Yes the "urgent operational requirements" is it. He's hoping the public think that's the same thing as the military requesting more helicopters or replacements for old and worn out kit. )

Just whilst we're here lets reflect on what this tells us about Brown and Labour. They prefer deceit to the truth. They prefer crushing debate to justifying their actions. Labour is instinctively anti-democratic, authoritarian and bullying in nature. No wonder Gordon Brown managed to bully his way into becoming their unelected leader and the UK's unelected PM.

There are two reasons for this:

1) Often Brown just can't justify himself - like when he tells one of his infamous lies.
2) He knows that for the majority of the population they aren't listening to the argument, just the tone. Due to the left wing compliant MSM in the UK he can get away with just making pompous assertions, and be sure he'll never be challenged.

Its the second reason where the real damage to our country is inflicted, and this can only happen because the same brave reporters who will hound a Conservative spokesperson on the same point for ten minutes - just swallow Brown's assertions whole.

They are failing the population, and they are making our politics dysfunctional.

Brown needs to be held to account - and the MSM just don't seem intrested.

RP: Politeia: Financial Journalists in Crisis: Did We Fail?

Politeia: Financial Journalists in Crisis: Did We Fail?

This is an interesting point ( go check the post ). I've seen indications that some people knew we were in toruble a long time before they reported it.

If the 4th estate doesn't work ( or gets fixed by the likes of New Labour ) then democracy lacks the oxygen of information and chokes.

Instead of pushing the capitalism failed meme perhaps we should pay more attention to why the dogs didn't bark ?

Update: See this from Ambrose Evans-Pritchard on Japan's coming financial apocalypse ( and remember this is the model Labour are following ).

He quotes Carl Weinberg from High Frequency Economics as saying "It is criminally negligent that rating agencies are not blowing the whistle on this."

So the credit agencies not functioning again - there's a pattern developing here ...., though journalists are perhaps doing better.

Remeber this is the path Labour are driving us down and why we must defeat them and sort the arguments about Europe out latter.

Just answer the bloody question !

Like almost everyone else, or at least those who aren't life long Labour supporters who are in some sort of catatonic denial of the facts, I've had enough of the refusal to answer questions from crown ministers who put loyalty to party far ahead of their duty to the country they are supposed to serve.

Labour have a whole set of standard ways of avoiding answering questions. Radio and TV interviews with Labour ministers are now nothing of the sort. They area series of questions followed by what Jeff Randal describes today as "replies" rather than answers.

And don't even start me on Brown at PMQs....

I certainly seem to remember it was never this bad in the past. There were certainly occasions, such as Michael Howard's stone walling of Jeremy Paxman in the Major government years. But I'm sure it was never this bad.

Its a serious issue as our democracy just can't function without conscious debate aimed at the electorate. If marketing, spin focus groups and mood music combined with the narrative succeed then we have ll become enslaved.

I'd like to propose an ongoing blog titled "Just answer the bloody question" devoted to the failure of our politicians ( of whatever party ) to do just that.

The way I see it working is a number of co-authors for the blog with most articles cross posted from the bloggers normal blogs. The blog would work as a campaign for say 6 months or so, much as the 4 David Davis 4 Freedom worked. I'm open to ideas or other suggestions.

I just think its a bloody outrage that in this time of extreme financial peril we're not getting proper information and answers from Crown Ministers.

Anyone interested then let me know in comments or via email.

The dangers of Californication

With apologies to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers let me explain.

The great state of California is stuffed, doomed, financially dead though it doesn't know it yet.

Why ?

Because of just the sort of reforms that are being banded in our media like this was a super sized student Union general meeting. ( You may never have been to one - in which case your quite normal, where I went to Uni they always struggled to get even a small proportion of the student population. The aim of the right of centre students was essentially to frustrate the adolescent and middle class guilt ridden ramblings of the left who were busy planning their careers in politics. )

California has recall ballots for its governor ( that's how old Arnie got it ).

They have primaries for their candidates ( which means, oddly enough, only the extremists get elected ).

They have referendums on everything and anything.

This makes California impossible to financially govern. They are in real trouble. ( The Economist spells it all out in far greater detail here ).

Now those student politicians whose meeting you never went to are government ministers and journalists. They suddenly see a way out of having to take the blame for destroy the country's finances, flipping houses and being rather too "tax efficient" for the red blooded socialists they claim to be. It time to play the game of voting systems and "constitutional reform" - by which they mean lets change the rules so we don't loose.

But these changes will have deep and profound an unintended impacts. ( Indeed they want the tactical impact of stopping the next Conservative government from being able to govern ).

What we have now is everyone with a scheme that they never normally could have dreamed of getting support for trying to take advantage of the temporary unbalanced nature of our politics to pull a quick one whilst people are distracted and desperate.

And perhaps of equal danger are the trolls of the hard left with their ideology of hate and eternal planning to take advantage of any moment of public unrest to drive us into the socialist purgatory that they so wish to eternally punish the middle classes in.

Just like in their days of student politics Fib Dems, Fabians, and Labour careerists call for new voting systems and changes in the name of the people ( who never turn up or understand ), but with their calculated wish to change the system so it can only ever deliver answers they like as their true aim.

These are dangerous times.

PS This doesn't mean that no reform is the right way to go. Only that the anger over expenses is being as shameless abused as was the allowance and expenses system.

I'm generally in favour of David Cameron's suggested reforms, except perhaps fixed term parliaments - which I think fail to take into account the need for a government to sometimes go to the country. My earlier suggestions of fixed financial licenses for governments would be far better.

Further: See Fraser Nelson's take on what is awaiting the next government to see how relevant this all is here...

The Sarah Palin gap

This week's Economist has what promised to be an incite full article (not sure if subscription needed for link) on the absence of an equivalent charter to Sarah Palin in British politics, at least not since Mrs T.

The article is perhaps a little too pleased with itself as it spends most of its timing equating chavs with rednecks. However it makes a number of points that I agree with and have made in this blog and else where. Namely:

• Politics has become professionalised and this has denied the average person representation of people who are like them and hold their values. ( Oh yes the likes of Harriet Harperson and Theresa May go on about needing more Women etc - but they mean more women like them. Not the common people who they claim to lead. One of the most telling criticisms of the "A List" fiasco for the Conservative party was how diversity didn't seem to mean everyone should come from Kennsington and Chelsea. )
  
• The political system has become a conspiracy to deny the majority of people their say.
• The whole system chases the diminishing pool of floating voters. With those in 'safe' seats ignored. ( Labour has just found out the cost of that - the Conservatives came close in the Bromley byelection. )

This is a wider argument than just the observation that in the UK we have no equivalent to Sarah Palin. It suggest, with our falling voter turnout, and concentration on the feckless floating voters ( about 40k out of 60 million I think ), that we don't have a functioning democracy or at the least one that ignores the largest parts of the population and frankly isn't intrested in them.

Of course there used to be politicians who connected directly with their voters like Dennis Skinner and Norman Tebbit, but its getting harder for their likes to work their way through the party establoishments, serving their time a 'researchers', spAds, and think tank members before that all important moment when a safe seat becomes available and you have made all the right contacts to get yourself in. Just a shame these people have nearly nothing in common with the people the euligise and say they represent.

Norman Tebbit made a telling point in an interview for Tory Radio a year or more ago. He pointed out that a large amount of the population is now not voting at all, and there is an alternative startegy. Instead of chasing the feckless and clueless floating voters, you could go out and find you supporters who no longer turn out.

It look like its working for Sarah ....


Update: This extract from the article makes many of the key points:

That lack is in part a reflection of the boringly professionalised career that politics has become. There is still a small gang of old-school industrial Labour MPs, who huddle in solidarity in the House of Commons; but there used to be many more who had personal experience of the social problems they opined on. Politics is now a game played by slick graduates, who work in think-tanks or back rooms before climbing the pole to their own seats, and are unlikely to drop their aitches. The party machines weed out authentic mavericks much more mercilessly than America’s presidential system. This is as true of the Tories as it is of Labour, which is why neither side makes a fuss about it.

The rape of the British State by Gordon Brown

We are told you always have the right to say no and that no means no.

Well not to Gordon Brown. He promised not to betray Britain to the EU Constitution without the peoples consent in his election manifesto. But then he hit on the rouse of claiming the same measures, using different words didn't amount to the same thing.

Its like saying rape isn't rape because you use a different word but carry out the same act.

The British state has had its sovereignty violated, its democracy defiled, by the man who claimed he had a moral compass and wanted straight politics. ( And then went on in PMQs as he so often does to spread further lies about the political manifesto of an opponent - not the first time he's done that either.)

Democracy cannot function when politicians lie like Gordon Brown does from his position as the unelected leader of the country.

As the state cannot reject the cancerous activities of the current quisling Labour government then the state itself will lose its legitimacy - just as it is handing its powers over to a foreign and alien power in Brussels.

Often the word shameless is used to describe New Labour and Gordon Brown - but some how its doesn't seem enough, they are traitors.

Assertion is now used in the place of debate

It has been a key feature of the New Labour project how language has been used.

Most of us read Orwell's 1984 as school and a shiver went down our spines. Today's Labour party politicians were taking notes.

Almost all of Gordon Brown's pronouncements drip in assertions and misdirections. When answering a question on subject A - he won't miss the opportunity to repeat the lie B that he's been trying to get across. Sound bites and narrative are used to short circuit the critical faculties in the voters brains.

So we have James Purnell popping up ( not airbrushed in this time ) to tell use that New Labour is not damaged by the Hain scandal. When we know this is not true.

Gordon Brown keeps using the phrase "It is right that ....insert you New Labour decision here ...". He is not reasoning his case - but asserting it. He tells you how to think about it before you get to know what it is. He has no intention of explaining himself or attempting to justify his position.

The cost of all this is the death of debate and the short circuiting of democracy. Why ? Because democracy relies on informed debate and at least a minimum knowledge of what is going on int he country. The new politics is based on not telling anyone.

The Lib Dems have got into this also with their anti-democratic decision to screw their voters by not supporting a referendum on the EU treaty. Their strategy consists of the following:

1) The bare faced lie - its not the constitution (followed by a load of guff about Maastricht etc)
2) The Ming gambit of suggesting that what is really needed is a referendum on another subject that they know only UKIP and maybe the English Democrats would put to the vote.

As a country we have been taken to war on a lie - yet our supposed independent MPs who answer to their constituents, did not force the prime minister to resign - as they put party, and perhaps their jobs, first.

In short democracy is dying in the UK and England. It is being strangled with the skills of PR, marketing, spin, careerism and a fundamental lack of morality of our elected representatives.

You have to admit those who refuse to vote these days have a point.

What if we voted electronically ?

Well some people are - see komadori’s green corner today.

Can't say I'd like it myself ...

Quite a few people who I've canvassed have already posted their votes. I suspect postal voting reinforces tribalism (especially if the head of the family is over your shoulder - or Leeds lLabour party offer to post your ballot for you, and stops people changing their mind - as it looks like might be happening in Scotland just now).

That's got to be bad for democracy.