I started work on this piece two days ago, but I am indebted to regular Slogger Edward for sending me a Youtube clip of former Commons Speaker and decent human being Lord Tonypandy* talking on the subject of British sovereignty in the context of Europe. If nothing else, it inspired me to get on with finishing it.

We have this idée fixe in our Western culture that legislation through election is an indivisibly and undoubtedly good thing. The fact that a great deal of evidence over the last 200 years flatly contradicts this notion has never stopped the demos tendency from pressing ahead with everything from elected Police Chiefs (what a success that’s been) to primaries for MEP Candidates.

Day in and out, the facts everywhere from Washington to Warsaw point clearly at one obvious conclusion: far from being a guard against corruption, totalitarianism and privilege, democracy allows all three not just to survive, but to thrive.

Traditionally, the main selling points of universal suffrage have been (1) it’s a flawed system, but far better than the others in terms of liberty; and (2) it reins in the development of oligarchic rule.

Well, here we are with the NSA in the USA, GCHQ in the UK, and the EC in the EU…all of them unaccountable bodies allowed to flourish under a system of 100% citizen voting rights. And there they are, all oligarchies operating above the law to dilute and one day (I suspect) destroy our liberties. This is before we get anywhere near to the CIA, MI6, or Interpol.

For Plato, the term demos was a a boo-term: unbridled democracy he defined as, effectively, ‘mob rule’. But even Plato – who believed that every electorate must be 100% informed – could never have envisaged today’s eternally spun internet, foreign-owned press and TV news media – or directly-marketed pinpointing of persuasion through content targeting and privacy invasion.

Let’s face it: twenty years ago, none of us did.

The Western ‘developed’ world’s electorates have become nothing more than a rationale used by élites to claim legal power. You can tell this by the slimey, insincere voter-compliments all Anglo-Saxon politicians on either side of the Pond resort to when trying to excuse their sleaze:

“I have supreme confidence in the wisdom of the electors to give me a fair hearing on this question, and although I stand accused of the bestial paedophile abuse of 3,402 piglets, I am sure that they will exonerate me….the voters, not the piglets. I am not guilty of blowing their house down, but er um…”

(You could do a lot worse than search the late George Carlin’s website on this subject)

When it comes to voting, most wishfully unthinking liberals ignore the following obvious truths:

1. After a half-century of dumbing-down, the average voter can barely remember the name of most senior politicians, and has no idea of any of their policies. As George Carlin was fond of remarking, “The frightening thing about that average is just how f**kin’ dumb the other 49% must be”.

2. After just one broadcast candidates’ debate during the 2010 UK Election, the terminally lightweight Nick Clegg turned up in the next day’s Polls as favourite to be Prime Minister. Clegg’s performance in achieving this accolade consisted of not falling over, not soiling himself, and not being the other two candidates.

3. On the basis of typical alcohol consumption among adults (18+) in the UK, some 11% of electors who voted in the 2010 Election after 5 pm were anything from fuzzy round the edges to pissed out of their minds at the time.

4. There is no way on God’s Earth that any commercial concern – be it bank, pharmco, pub, supermarket or farm – would call upon the expertise of the man sweeping up the tickets/dead animals/sawdust/broken bottles/cow dung when it came to elucidation of the correct business strategy. But every 4-5 years in Western democracies, we allow this exact practice to occur. Hardly surprising, therefore, that what The Sovereign Electorate says is then studiously ignored for the next 4-5 years by our legislators.

The wishfully unthinking liberal, in fact, regards having the vote as being a basic human right. This is really nothing more than the unconscious belief of many people on the Left that Homo sapiens is somehow unique. But the only unique things about the species identity we all share – and if there are any dolphins reading, I always knew you had it in you – are that we gain pleasure in killing for the sake of it, and we know we are mortal but spend 99.9% of our lives denying it. And you think this to be a sound basis for awarding us Universal rights?

What the Tonypandy clip I linked to at the start of this post shows pretty conclusively is that, freed from the tyranny of needing the votes of everyone from the naive mensa prodigy to the knuckle-dragging, Sun-reading X-Factor devotee, legislators display wisdom, calm judgement, good humour, and an ability to listen politely.

Believe me, this is not a plea for dictatorship – benign or otherwise. I merely ask that people open their minds to the way the world has changed since 1776, 1832, 1945, and 1979. My twofold questioning argument is this:

i. Surely a Second Chamber based on another criterion beyond mass voting must be a good Check & Balance against media-driven spin…most of which emerges from the unelected anyway?

ii. If people clearly and obviously display that they cannot tell (and do not care about) the difference between Thursday and chicken soup, WhyTF give them a say in how their country is run?

I remember going on a skiing holiday in 1986, and – over a long and boozy cheese-fondue chalet dinner – calmly laying these arguments before a friend who was the experienced Chairman of a plc company. He exploded. I mean, he lost it completely. In a diatribe lasting at least three minutes without drawing breath, the bloke called me a fascist, a Nazi, and a despicable control-freak, before adding predictably for good measure, “How could you even think such a thing, let alone say it?”

I am bound to observe, his response stuck me as that of a fascist, a Nazi, and a despicable control-freak.

The last thing I want is the encouragement of yet more self-appointed élites – most of whom are more effete than élite. But in the digital, instant-reaction, half-baked-thought Age, surely we need the guiding influence of those who have in their favour a track-record of success, sagesse, and humility to act as a counterbalance against the obviously unbalanced (and largely self-interested) twerps who – in their blissful ignorance, the British people choose to elect….based on the calculated lies of the unelected media.

* Lord Tonypandy was a closet homosexual blackmailed for many years by various unpleasant elements in society.