“The day war broke out, my wife said ter me, what good are yer?”
So began the famous monologue of Robb Wilton from 1940. I should like if I may tonight to update Mrs Wilton’s question as follows…but directed at the British governmental class since around 1945:
“What use ‘ave yer been, eh?”
I mean that question in the sense of both insight and foresight; and I would support its validity with the following facts:
1. Despite having the knowledge from 1949 onwards that Britain had experienced a massive baby bulge, neither Whitehall nor Westminster ever did a damned thing to address its ramifications in terms of pensions, healthcare or aged State retirement homes.
2. Despite the lead being offered by Jo Grimond and his Liberal Party in 1955, neither Labour nor the Conservatives grasped the negotiating power they had over France and Germany to join the Common Market, and reshape it for the better.
3. Despite being offered North Sea gas on a serendipitous plate, no Government after 1968 displayed any commercial nous whatsoever in terms of negotiation or investment on behalf of the British People.
4. Despite an Everest of evidence to show that the lack of means testing (Labour) explosion in health discoveries (Conservative) Trade Union job-loading (Labour) and shortcomings of private health insurance (Conservative) were strangling the NHS, no senior political figure or Whitehall mandarin did anything to enable the smooth transition from Bevan’s 1940’s austerity vision into contemporary reality.
5. Despite being offered, in 1997, the greatest mandate for root and branch Constitutional reform and economic reconstruction since 1832, New Labour under Tony Blair chose instead to be guided by Thatcherite bigotry, pc bollocks, management consultancy targets jargon, half-baked House of Lords fiddling, and the risible Special Relationship with Washington.
6. Despite the imbalance of the British economy towards a City out of control, and our regrettable loss of a skilled making things economy, no British Government since 1979 has made the slightest concerted effort to redress the bias and reconstruct a relevant manufacturing sector.
7. Despite, since May 2010, facing the greatest threat to personal liberty, freedom of speech and social justice since King John in 1215, the Left has blown every opportunity to dump its redundant Big State collectivism, and recognise what most human beings continue to want: self-determination alongside communal decency. Its failure to engage in united cultural opposition to neoliberalism – or even provide the political Opposition to Coalition sociopathy – will I am sure go down as one of the great crimes of British history.
8. Despite the obvious desire of all Europeans for local diversity and economic flexibility, the British political and administrative Establishment continues to cleave to the wreckage of an EU that has failed to deliver on any of its predicted benefits.
I’m left with the distinct feeling that I have contributed around 30% on average of my salary between 1969 and 2013 to the governance of the United Kingdom, and yet remain at a loss to calculate what if anything I have gained in so doing. I do not mean selfish personal gain, but rather what good having ‘government’ contributed to the social wellbeing of my country over that 44 year stretch.
No doubt this will come across as an unoriginal taxpayer’s moan about value for money. But it isn’t – not at all. My main concern here is to ask why it has cost all of us oodles of money to watch amateur idlers and embezzlers sell the assets we helped create to greedy bastards…almost none of whom are British, or pay tax into the Exchequer. They range from Australo-American pornographers, Wall Street banking firms, Brussels bureaucrats, autistic bankers and bent coppers to Russian blaggers, US health insurance gargoyles, Channel Island mediacrats, German car makers and Chinese nuclear reactor engineers.
All of them seem to be doing jolly well raping Britannia. And not one of them is being resisted by the legislators for whom we unwisely continue to vote. On the contrary: they are being welcomed with open arms. For is not Britain Open for Business?
Not only is nobody in government of any use – the Opposition is merely a bunch of collaborators: a pointless shower of actors in a farce that long ago ceased to be funny.
I am not a revolutionary. I am a reconstructionist. Nevertheless, I have come to accept that before there can be safe reconstruction, there has to be skilled but comprehensive demolition. I am not Right and I am not Left. I am a communitarian in favour of mutualist capitalism.
I see this as a relatively new (and almost wholly untried) idea whose time has come. I hope anyone coming here will be inspired by this, and help spread the word.
The Slog 