This is just the latest in a series of establishment campaigns to undermine democracy in favour of direct technocratic rule by an establishment elite - and few scribblers can be more elite than the Honourable David Runciman, Eton and Trinity, heir to a Viscountcy.
I really won't waste either your time or mine demolishing his feeble arguments one by one. It's thin, pissy, jejune stuff and you can do so yourselves.
The differences between congruent, stable nations with stark electoral processes such as the UK and weak, unstable, fractured or dangerous nations with electoral systems designed to impede, dilute, mediate or limit the effect of democracy such as Italy and Germany have evolved in reaction to specific conditions prevalent in each nation. For all the admitted 'unfairness' of FPTP for UK Parliamentary elections, it works here.
Runciman completely neglects to mention the surpranational body that does very well with hardly any democracy at all - the EU. And it's probably just as well that the treasonous authors of the FCO EU strategy document (FCO 30/1048) from 1971 are all dead - though that would not prevent future governments, like that of Charles II on Restoration, from digging them up and re-purposing their remains.
Well, I hate to puncture the little bladders of these self-obsessed elitists, but they're wrong. Deeply, utterly, absolutely and irrevocably wrong. They're themselves only only here and free to express their deviant views because the British people fought for democratic freedom over centuries of struggle - and two aspects of that freedom, universal suffrage and the secret ballot, are not and will never be up for trade or replacement.
The votes of the British people may appear an inconvenient impediment to these technocratic elitists, but we're not giving them up.
24 comments:
The entire process of getting this country into the EEC by lying about the intentions and then morphing it into the EU with no mandate from the people has been an exercise in treason.
And yet many of these traitors have been given honours and remain in power.
Oh for an Elizabeth I.
H G Wells was a great believer in rule by expert technocrats. So is the Chinese Politburo.
It doesn't work, because like everyone else the experts see only a part of the scene. And they tend to regard all non-experts as tools or servants to be used. It will be interesting to see how long the Chinese put up with it.
However, it would be good to see a few more MPs with a little understanding of science, technology or at least arithmetic.
Don Cox
To me, the major flaw in all political systems is stability.
If one enables a group/party/dictator/king/emperor to become comfortable and established, especially if it manages to organise a well oiled back office, it accrues power over people.
As we have heard since we were children:
All power corrupts...
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
The vote to leave the EU was the most destabilising act that I have seen in this corrupt homeland of ours, and as such the most welcome.
We need to keep up this pressure and keep them very nervous.
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When we were first at school, the teacher would quite quickly call for a volunteer amongst the students...
... Someone to be a milk/chalk/register monitor or something. The first kid with their hand up is the born authoritarian, and I have often wondered whether a merciful act for society as a whole, might be to shoot a few dead. It would certainly keep them at bay. (A bit like that global warming video a few years back.)
Authoritarians are the most expensive and least efficient rulers and managers, which is where someone like Putin, wins. So obsessed is he with his own insecurities that he can never be wrong, so everyone else is always wrong and he sacks or shoots them. He fails to build a stable civil service, he keeps changing his mind, and it leaves people free as long as they keep their heads down.
So we all play the democracy game in different ways, but hopefully the upshot is that we never allow a technocracy to fully take over...
The UN's Agenda 21 is that technocracy, and as long as there is a working, destabilising democracy controlling it, we might get away with it. The most dangerous days were during the last twenty odd years when (let's call them) blairites tried to create a joined up world, made of joined up government...
Had we succumbed to a president H Clinton, we would all become communitarian slaves, and that is still the aim of the EU/UN and their power blocs, like the world bank, big pharma, wto. Fortunately for us, people are unpredictable. TTPI and so on are very dangerous and we have President Trump to thank for their failure.
/* end rant
/*err
TTIP
duh
*/
Ah.. universal suffrage democracy; the worst way to govern a population, after all the others. vis, May at No. 10, Trump in the Whitehouse, Merkel in Berlin, Macron (who?) in the Elysee, do I need to go on?
The simple reason is that a population will vote for whoever, lying or otherwise, promises a 'better life', however one defines that.
Our western societies are dying, just look at the demographics and the national debts rising that cannot be repaid by falling populations. There may be a better way, I hope we can find it before its too late.
"For all the admitted 'unfairness' of FPTP for UK Parliamentary elections, it works here."
I beg to differ: what can you mean in this case by "works here" Raedwald? Seems to me that our version of FPTP has been developed over many years in order to maintain the Lab/Con status quo by which they take it in turns to pretend to govern effectively.
The system militates severely against would-be new entrants: in 2015 UKIP gained 12.6% of the vote - for one seat. Last year in Germany the AfD got exactly the same vote percentage, and has 90 or so seats in the Bundestag.
In 2001 Blair's lot received 40% of the vote on a low just-sub-60% turnout: he won his second term thanks to almost exactly a quarter of the electorate...
I could go on. Our voting system is vile, and leaves a great many of us feeling disenfranchised.
DeeDee99 said @ 07:46
'The entire process of getting this country into the EEC by lying about the intentions and then morphing it into the EU with no mandate from the people has been an exercise in treason.'
Thomas Jefferson said 'information is the currency of democracy so in that respect we were pretty broke when the electorate voted Yes in '75.
What would have happened if folk knew the true intention of this Common Market thingy? A big fat NO at the ballot box. We'd have saved billions and I suggest with our influence in the world would be one of trading without Globalism along the lines of friendship and mutual respect: the nation never threatened; peoples never looked upon as traded commodities by churning populations ad infinitum and, a lot less fucking wars.
One of the reasons I hate about politicians is they always try to fix things that aren't broke.
Steve
Tony
And yet UKIP achieved so much, and AFD so little.
The success of Labour and The Conservatives primarily comes from their willingness and ability to change,
The grand coalitions of mainland Europe allow the same incumbent parties to stagnate and acts as a far higher barrier to policy change than our winner takes all system.
If DC didnt promise and deliver an in/out vote, he would have lost support to UKIP, and lost government
Repeated under a PR system, the lost support goes to UKIP, who either prop up DC, in return for no in/out vote, or let in Ed.
that the treasonous authors of the FCO EU strategy document (FCO 30/1048) from 1971 are all dead
Those people you are calling 'treasonous' almost certainly lived through, and maybe even fought in (no idea who exactly wrote it), WW2 and would have been acutely aware of where the 'Volkswille' tends to lead .Which is why the German, and I suspect the Italian too, systems of government were designed to never let it happen again.
So maybe hold off condemning those authors until we have all walked a mile in their BGS or down the path in felt 'slippers' to the KZ?
Right or wrong those authors formed their beliefs in the hope you and I would never have to experience what they did. One quick glance at Junckers' wiki would have served Davis and his ilk well.
What TrT said
Foreign politicians can't believe how brutal our system is - the old PM turfed out of No.10 and the new one in within 24 hours.
The US comes closest with a Nov election for a Jan inaugeration. Elsewhere transition can be a year. And yes, German and Italian systems are designed never to achieve a position where another 'enabling law' can be passed - but in the UK we do it differently.
More of your sanctimonious shite Ketch.
If scum like the EU elite want to ensure no more war they are doing it by establishing a tyranny where there are no choices. They give the orders you jump. Maybe that sits well with a creature like you. I prefer war and lots of it. Better all die and all be ruined than the eternal rule of techno-tyranny trash like your EU pals.
But nobody much gives a rat's arse what you and the Remain gang want Jack. Every day your scummy comrades work their tricks and agitprop is another day decent folk get more resolved to see you all finished for good.
But nobody much gives a rat's arse what you and the Remain gang want Jack.
Apparently you and the rest of your BrexSShiteur Neo-Nazi 'decent volk' do....haven't you got some war graves to piss on rather than exposing yourself online ,threatening all with your own version of Kristalnacht?
jack ketch said @ 16:58
'Apparently you and the rest of your BrexSShiteur Neo-Nazi 'decent volk' do....haven't you got some war graves to piss on rather than exposing yourself online, threatening all with your own version of Kristalnacht?'
You've got a real problem in your head space Mr Ketch. Let me tell you something: most of the world is not in the EU (195-28 = 167). These other places, the 167 countries who are not in the EU, are filled with people who think it's normal for a country to run it's own affairs. The EU is abnormal, it's mission is to dissolve all the nation-states in Europe - and that's just for starters (UN Agenda 30).
According to your logic they're all potential Nazis, are they? Every fucker's a Nazi who doesn't agree with Mr Ketch. Is that it? You're a wanker mate. Get some help.
Steve
More on it in the Sunday Express:
Secret document kept truth about EU from the British for 30 years
https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/882881/Brexit-EU-secret-document-truth-British-public
Steve
The EU are destabilising Ireland for all they are worth - however two can play at that game. The UK are now supporting and encouraging Erdogan's Turkey as it seems Turkey is about to become a real player in the Middle East and is set to become a thorn in the side of the EU bigtime - the TAI TFX programme is just a part of this. Expect more of the same in the future.
Raedwald & TrT, I appreciate your reasoning, but you do not address the problem of disenfranchisement: are we supposed to continue voting Labour or Tory simply because we know other Parties will always be excluded through the structure of our electoral system? Must we resign ourselves to voting for the least-bad option? That seems to me a cynical, corrupt, anti-democratic process. I haven't voted Tory for between two and three decades, for various reasons including their shambolic incompetence; wild horses wouldn't make me vote Labour, especially now the Marx Bros are in control; at least twice I could not bring myself to vote for any of the candidates on offer in a GE.
So "The success of Labour and The Conservatives primarily comes from their willingness and ability to change" - ? Another way of expressing that is to point out that they appear willing to do and say absolutely anything to get elected - cf Boy Wonder Blair,vacuous spiv D.Cameron... My Tory MP is Dr Sarah Wollaston, archtypal health fascist, last-minute Remainer, cowardly avoider of commitment re such personal freedom issues as fox hunting: honesty should compel her to join the LibDems.
In short, the entrenched Lab/Con duopoly makes me want to puke. If I were Italian I could vote Lega, if German I could vote AfD, if Austrian I could vote FPÖ - in each case with confidence that my vote might count and be reflected in the makeup of the government.
As things are in UK, I'm buggered. It stinks.
I hope the EU continue to destabilise the Irish Republic because the PEOPLE of Ireland will shortly come to realise that to stop all these moronic shennanigans they would be better off joining the UK in leaving the EU - border problems solved in a stroke.
It's only the Irish GOVERNMENT that want to remain (imho).
In fact, the whole of the EU only want to 'remain' because of their Governments - the people think differently and have never been given the opportunity to decide.
If the Ketschitteur was honest even he'd agree.
That's OK. That's fine by me. If Guardianista Professor Runciman would like to see an end to democracy, then let it be today. Goodbye Labour, you are all on the dole as of 17:00 today. Your opposition is no longer required.
Happy now Professor?
One of the things I do to make sense of the world is to use (very) old fashioned terminology. So Kim Jong-un is King Kim III, the third of his dynasty. The PotUS is an elected king - an echo from the Anglo-Saxon Witan where the next king could be elected from the royal family rather than having direct succession (shades of the Bush family). And Salome was a celeb - a sub-royal celeb.
It just illustrates forcibly that there is nothing new under the sun - at least in the way we organise ourselves. In fact, looked at in reverse, modern political language is used by the elite to hide from us what they are doing.
There are plenty of examples in history of kings pledging allegiance to a more powerful king or emperor, without being militarily conquered. That's what has happened with the EU. It has conquered by treaty, rather than militarily, but it is no less an empire for all that. And we are one of the subject nations, like we were under the Roman Empire.
Gullible people like Jack Ketch and other pleb Remains are just being used by the elite, the EU empire establishment, who encourage them to think of themselves as clever precisely as they are being duped. It's all about power; and who has it. As ever. And the powerful need their followers. Just be clear who you follow, though.
@Tony Harrison Can't find anyone to vote for?
Why not have a look at 'For Britain' and tell us what you think?
Definitely not like the three main parties. Articulate about some of the big issues, right about state and elite disdain for our political culture, sounds like it represents the common sense of ordinary people and very sharp on the importance of upholding the law and so defying the claims and criminality of new special interests
Dean Ditchbank
Dean Ditchbank: FB's manifesto sounds fine, but surely this Party is unlikely to get anywhere? The inherent barriers to new Parties under our electoral system stopped UKIP from getting anywhere, although as you suggest Farage/UKIP did compel acceptance of a referendum in the teeth of opposition from the established Parties. For years, the political establishment and the news media declined to give Farage a platform...
Such hostility and exclusion would be hugely increased in the case of "For Britain" despite the widespread appeal - albeit whispered not shouted - of an anti-Islam agenda. Note that the Wikipedia entry for FB describes them as "far right" - par for the course I fear. And it's not just the Guardian-reading cohort who describe even UKIP and the AfD as "far right".
Vote for whoever you wish
Is changing to win necessarily a bad thing?
I despise Cameron, but he gave me an in out vote, so, is it not cutting off nose to spite face to keep him out of office?
If you were German, you could vote AFD, but German politics is far less adaptive than ours, and delivers a far more solid 2 party state, virtually a 1 party state.
delivers a far more solid 2 party state, virtually a 1 party state
Well spotted.
TrT: I have always been able to vote for whoever I like, though my vote in a (mostly) solid Tory seat is meaningless. "Changing to win" is most definitely a bad thing if it entails competing in voter bribery with the Socialists, dumping the core values of one's Party, and morphing into an anaemic, emasculated, cynically pragmatic social-democrat outfit. If I were German and had voted AfD then I could count on those 90+ AfD representatives in the Bundestag to speak out for my views; the very high degree of consensus in Germany, together with a general wish (Don't mention the War...) not to rock the boat, is what makes German politics (I have visited that country many times and have family connections) seem at times like a "one party state" - but that latter is called into question when such as the AfD is villified, especially by the streetfighting Left, and when Germany struggled recently to find enough common ground for a coalition.
A similar electoral system (which I do not necessarily recommend) in England would almost certainly not work in the same way, since the English do not behave exactly like Germans.
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