A poll that has got lost in the noise of the past few days is critically telling. It revealed a massive divide between what MPs think their responsibility is and what those who elect them think it is. Voters, quite naturally, expect MPs to represent the interests of the constituency. MPs, on the contrary, think their job, once elected, is to represent just their own opinions.
I have long supported a General Power of Recall, with the bar set high enough to prevent vexatious use, triggered by a simple motion that 'The electors of Blankshire no longer have confidence that Max Musterman MP can represent their interests in Parliament'. The problem of long-sitting MPs appointed by Party central offices is the deep sense of entitlement and the high degree of pomposity, self-regard and self-love that it engenders. The only one of the demands of the 19th century Chartists not realised by the 21st is that of annual Parliaments - designed specifically to prevent the sort of rogue parliament we've seen for the past three years. Don't let the buggers get settled, the thinking went; their arses will get stuck to the green leather, and they'll forget they're just ordinary people.
Well, it's all now coming to a head. It's now People vs Parliament. Oh, we'll get Brexit, one way or another; if they scupper Boris, we've got Nigel waiting in the wings. They're fighting like cornered rats, but they can't win - we'll pitch them out of their cosy complacency, puncture their egos and throw them on the rubbish heap of history. The People will win.
And the longer they prolong the outcome, the deeper we will cut to root them out from every nook and cranny of public life. For too long have they lorded it over the people of Britain; their day has come. Bring it on!
Update
=====
Survation poll 14/8, polling 9th - 11th August
Preferred outcome of the Brexit process
Leave with or without a deal - 53%
Remain - 47%
Don't knows 9%
38 comments:
And this is why I will continue to support Nigel and the Brexit Party - regardless of any "promises" Boris makes.
We need a massive clear-out of the arrogant charlatans in the House of Commons prior to a Constitutional change and a fundamental reform of our governmental institutions - starting with abolition of the House of Frauds.
The Conservative Party will never do what's necessary.
The referendum results were:
Twenty-six percent of the people voted Leave, and none of the Leave campaigns proposed a no deal arrangement, quite the reverse.
Twenty-four percent voted Remain.
Fifty percent did not or could not vote at all.
That is nearly fifty million people who did not vote Leave.
So it would appear that Parliament, in so far as it claims to be defending the interests of ALL the people of this country, will have more support than opposition.
The polls conducted of late have asked leading questions and so are pretty meaningless.
@JPM: one could argue that "silence betokeneth consent," i.e. in this case, to abstain is to indicate that you are content with whichever result arises. So following that logic we can add the 27.8% of registered voters who did not vote to the 37.4% who did vote to leave the EU = 65.2%.
But the way you suggest putting the figures together is hardly a conventional way to approach voting - I guess it would invalidate a majority of Parliamentary divisions, for example.
P.S. Data source for the above: https://www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/results-and-turnout-eu-referendum
" That is nearly fifty million people who did not vote Leave."
It is also nearly fifty million people who did not vote remain.
If nearly fifty million people could not be bothered to get off their arse and vote it means they don't care.
If a small percentage of that fifty million people are not entitled to vote they don't count.
If another small percentage of that fifty million people could not vote because they weren't registered & etc., that is their own fault for not keeping their affairs in order.
Commandeering waifs and strays to your losing argument won't work.
While I agree wholeheartedly with the idea of a General Power of Recall, the MPs are only a part of the problem, perhaps a minor one (because they can in principle be voted out).
A larger and hidden part of the problem is the proportion of jobsworths and boss jobsworths in public life. I'm not just talking about those in the Civil Service, but all those who assume they have the authority to hector us.
Go to a doctor's surgery or a hospital or the public areas of a council, and chances are that there will be a proliferation of noticeboards, rarely tended, that exhort us to live according to medical advice, health and safety regulations, tell us that abuse of staff is not tolerated, and that you should turn your cell phone off (when there is no need). It is the jobsworths that believe in their authority to dictate by written instruction and consider that sufficient.
So a General Power of Recall is a step in the right direction but only a beginning.
I think that the Constitution will win, not bloggers here.
All it says is:
Parliament alone is the law.
It cannot be bound by its predecessor.
That means that it can change its mind on anything.
Raedwald is right. MPs are there to represent their constituents interests, according to their best information and judgement. They are not there to represent their voters opinions, as Kate Hoey, from the most solidly Remain voting constituency in the land demonstrates perfectly.
Ah I had missed the fact that you'd already bulked up the fifty million people who did not vote Leave by conflating it with the remain voters. No matter it won't change anything'
The main point in all this though, is that only a minority of the seventeen million who actually did vote Leave are fanatics like the few writing here too.
Most of them are normal, reasonable, pragmatic people.
Most of them are normal, reasonable, pragmatic people, 54% of whom want to see any measure used, including suspending Parliament, in order to deliver the referendum result
There. Fixed it for you.
"Fifty percent did not or could not vote at all."
What a devious little bit of twistery. You are a) including people who are not allowed to vote in the Remain column. Given they are not allowed to vote their views are irrelevant, as much as (say) all the residents of Japan or Paraguay are, all of whom are also excluded from UK votes. And b) assuming that all the people who are not allowed to vote in the referendum would have voted Remain if they were allowed to do so, for which you have no foundation.
If this is the best you can come up with you're really struggling now. I assume you applied the same logic to the recent Brecon by election and declared that the Lid Dem winner was utterly illegitimate because she only got a small percentage of all the people who lived in the constituency to vote for her? Even your hero Dominic Grieve got less than 50% of his listed electorate, and if you add in all the other residents in his constituency who can't vote there were probably 60% against him. So he should resign immediately right?
JPM @ 08:36
“Parliament alone is the law.
It cannot be bound by its predecessor.
That means that it can change its mind on anything.”
“Agreed”, which is why the pro-EU/remainer PM produced Withdrawal Treaty where, according to the AG, there was no lawful means of exit and hence would have bound future Parliaments, was not only unacceptable but illegal/unconstitutional.
Even the EU’s Lisbon Treaty contained a unilateral exit clause, Article 50.
“Raedwald is right. MPs are there to represent their constituents interests, according to their best information and judgement. They are not there to represent their voters opinions, as Kate Hoey, from the most solidly Remain voting constituency in the land demonstrates perfectly.”
More important are the policies campaigned for and the promises made to the electorate by the candidate MP during the election.
If, once they have been elected, they vote in Parliament in a completely different way to their election promises then this is outright fraud and under these circumstances an MP should resign and seek re-election.
This should automatically happen if an MP crosses the floor of the house.
Leave won 64:36 by constituency. Bcause Parliament gave the decision to the people but are not implementing the result it shows just how fraudulent is our current Parliament.
Raedwald, you left out the "don't knows" in a poll of leading questions, but no matter.
Plenty of Remain voters would also support no deal, anything, to get the whole cretinous business over the line and start fixing the damage, in fact, like millions of others who are sick of this idiocy.
Also because they think that irresponsible people, who will not listen to reason, will just have to learn the hard way that their reckless actions have consequences.
I've toyed with it myself.
That is the conclusion reached by logical, pragmatic people.
irresponsible people, who will not listen to reason,
I presume you list your own self under that heading then given your stance on Remain? Your 'panic' is showing. Your comments are being taken apart by simple exposure of their bias and outright lies (if only lies by omission) and you are beginning to get strident over the subject matter.
Time to give up whilst you're ahead - but, as far as I recall, you never have been.....
Anyway....
The threat of TBP isn't just the in/out Brexit factor - as said, this is now an inevitability - the real 'threat' is to those jobsworths whose impression that they have a tenured position once elected is immovable.
The 'threat' of job loss should be MASSIVE in positions where performance and results mean so much to, and directly affect, so many. I can't imagine or give an example of ANY private employ position where such disregard or poor performance would be tolerated for even a moment. Fiddle your expense (for example) and you're out - no questions asked etc. OK, some globalist/corporate examples of golden goodbyes for stupidity are rife but for the average worker????
It's this aspect of Parliament that our politicians will strive to protect and I can forecast them promising sweeping changes (let's call them 'election promises') to aasuage the publics concerns over the decline in standards in Parliament and, as with all election promises, they will be disregarded or delayed ad-infinitum if they were allowed to get away with it.
There is no other answer. The system, as it stands, MUST change and only TBP have the impetus or desire to see that change brought about.
Yes, standards should always be upheld, but I don't think that the high-level, sinecure jobs for privately-educated people from the same mould as Nigel Farage, in places such as the NHS and in finance will ever be properly policed, Dave.
They are the true Establishment, and large swathes of the population are being farmed, to keep them in their customary manner.
It's well time to crack down on the cash-in-hand, tax-dodging tradesmen though, and I think that that will always take priority.
As for me, I'm of independent though not lavish means, so none of that unduly bothers me.
If only Boris had the balls of Cromwell.
“It is high time for me to put an end to your sitting in this place,
which you have dishonored by your contempt of all virtue, and defiled by your practice of every vice.
Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government.
Ye are a pack of mercenary wretches, and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single virtue now remaining amongst you? Is there one vice you do not possess?
Ye have no more religion than my horse. Gold is your God. Which of you have not bartered your conscience for bribes? Is there a man amongst you that has the least care for the good of the Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes have you not defiled this sacred place, and turned the Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked practices?
Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance.
Your country therefore calls upon me to cleanse this Augean stable, by putting a final period to your iniquitous proceedings in this House; and which by God's help, and the strength he has given me, I am now come to do.
I command ye therefore, upon the peril of your lives, to depart immediately out of this place.
Go, get you out! Make haste! Ye venal slaves be gone! So! Take away that shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God, go! “.
Yes, Anon.
"Get off my fucking laptop!" Doesn't quite cut it, does it?
hmm,
If "Leave are fanatics like the few writing here" we're so unimportant opinionators on Raedwald. Alas, then why do you deem it important enough to spread your cultural Marxist delusional tripe on this site, shurely oh wise one 'tis a waste of your precious time and for a woman of such high self regard but in possession of haute opinion thinly veiled in such meagre talent?
Re: JPM
https://twitter.com/Change_Britain/status/1161628868341633024
Philip Hammond before the referendum in 2016: "For anyone who wants to ensure a clean break with the EU, the WTO model is the only honest model."
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.
He didn't say that he was one though, did he?
Haha!
Looks like you'll probably get it, so simmer down eh?
Its on the bloody video you arsehole.
@JPM
As Neil Young noted so well...
There ain't nothing like a friend.
Who can tell you, you're pissing in the wind...
What EXACTLY is your point, flogging multiple dead horses?
I'm not disputing for one moment that he said those words, Anon.
It's just that he did not expressly include himself as one of those who wanted that!
Do you not understand the simplest of language?
Apparently not!
We had a king once who said, I am sovereign, none may bind me.
Parliament is free to block brexit
It's then a coin toss as to whether we wait for a new parliament, or create a few vacancies with ropes and street lights.
"It's just that he did not expressly include himself as one of those who wanted that!"
Of course. What it means, is what leavers have known all along, that people who are flogging the "must have a deal" dead horse, are in fact doing everything they can to avoid a clean break with the EU, and are in fact trying to keep us enmeshed.
You don't have the moral clarity, nor the intellectual heft, to admit this.
Now piss off.
Nah, just the fanatics and the fixated amongst them believe that, a minority within a minority.
If you want to use European Union roads, airspace, ports, and to continue trade with those countries, then there will have to be agreements, and the EU, being the more powerful, will dictate terms.
The alternative would be a massive net curtain or privet hedge down the North Sea and English Channel, which your kind would no doubt obsessively twitch at the neighbours, Anon.
@JPM - have you seen the candidate list offered up by TBP? Have you seen the spread of experience and education it is made up from?
But the over riding advantage of TBP is that there are few, very few, career politicians amongst them and they might only need to be in office long enough to make the changes necessary to restore a democratic system that has a better moral structure than the existing version - God knows, it can't be difficult to be worse!
As for tax, UKIP used to have ideas on a flat-rate tax system that, by its very design, makes avoidance and evasion far, far more difficult and even, in many cases, not worth the effort.
Ofcourse, it's not just Parliament that causes problems - the insidious Common Purpose tribalists are potentially a more difficult 5th column for eradication so any changes to Parliament must also be reflected in the whole political structure across the country.
It's not going to be a quick or easy task but public opinion is certainly on the side of TBP and with their stated aims.
As ever, we need to be wary of the (still) determination of the inbred Globalists and Marxist/Socialist parasites to make trouble to aid and benefit their cause and I still have concerns for the slow(ish) - but increaing - decent towards conflict that collective circumstances point ever more towards.
JPM said: “That is nearly fifty million people who did not vote Leave“. How do you work that out?
According to the Electoral Commission the total size of the electorate at the time of the EU referendum in 2016 was 46,500,001.
www.electoralcommission.org.uk/who-we-are-and-what-we-do/elections-and-referendums/past-elections-and-referendums/eu-referendum/results-and-turnout-eu-referendum
Therefore the correct statistical breakdowns look like this:
Leave - 51.9% of those who voted or 37.4% of the total electorate
Remain - 48.1% of those who voted or 34.1% of the total electorate
As for the 27.8% of the electorate who chose not to vote, I do not think you can appropriate their votes for either side. Either they couldn’t make their minds up or they didn’t care. Either way they were content to leave the decision to others.
There are about sixty-seven million PEOPLE in the country - about another twenty million more when Al gives his amnesty to those illegally here, if you believe the paranoid claims.
That's how, SG.
Many MPs get that, even if some strange types don't.
87 million? Never heard it that high. 70 million easily: if the 2011 Census puts it at 63 million you know it as at least 70 (rounding up from +10%)
We know water usage and food consumption put it at about 75 million (accounting for waste, of which there is far too much, another topic for many posts on other days). Then, plus 'known' illegals who were estimated at average 450K (300-600K suspected) from 2001 figures you can add another million. Plus current 'normal' net immigartion is 250K adding a million more every 4 years I would say 80 million wasn't far off.
Anyway, ALL the current crop of politicians (and ALL those in the pipleine) can go. 10% could reapply on the basis that they may be quite good. The rest are charlatans with overblown egos that should be ignored completely. Librarians and hot-dog kiosk operators have more suitablility.
Anyway, I have had a Damascene conversion and think we should cherish cheerful: our troll, he makes an effort and is only sidely rude (i.e. very subtle and not direct slagging as most trolls seem to operate). The projection is wonderfully OTT and blatant so fits nicely into the tolerable.
I fear JPM enjoys winding you all up.
JPM, really?
There are no such things as EU roads, nor EU airspace, nor EU ports; ‘we’ cannot trade with the EU, it neither manufactures, grows or provides services. There are no EU countries, for now, just countries that are members of the union. The EU is but a top down bureaucratic rule making body, that insists that the EU knows best on how to spend European tax payers money, with no accountability.
You really have swallowed the propaganda, perhaps a change of moniker would suit you better, maybe O’Brien or the ‘tortured Winston Smith’. You’ve learned ‘to love the EU’ like a good prole.
You are most certainly not pragmatic or logical. You may be of independent means, but one doubts you’ve ever had an Independent thought.
OK, "the infrastructure of the member nations of the European Union".
Happy, David?
As for being pragmatic, I'm a solidly pro-European Union Remain voter.
However, I fully expect to leave, and I await the outcomes with amused curiosity.
You seem troubled by the prospect, for some reason, on the other hand.
Jean-Marc Puissesseau seems fairly relaxed at the prospects of no "deal" as well.
As for being pragmatic, I'm going to give that blind man a rabid pit bull as a guide dog.
Happy? Of course, I’m a believer in democracy, unlike you a Demophobe.
“The infrastructure of the member nations” exactly!
Not in the least bit troubled, if we leave that is. Remainer demophobes such as yourself cannot except that perhaps less educated, less sophisticated people can make a difficult decision, however much thought they have given to that decision - “they’re not worthy these rough working types, it shouldn’t be allowed”.
Keep swallowing the narrative JPM, but you’ll be the first to be discarded when you’re no longer useful.
I've been nominally retired for eight years!
JPM - I am well aware of the size of the UK population. However, in a democratic society with universal suffrage, the relevant baseline for drawing the sorts of statistical comparisons that you have attempted to make is the size of the electorate and not the overall population size.
They should be delegates not representatives. Indeed I often think we should have referenda more often as they do in Switzerland. True democracy no matter how flawed.
Post a Comment