John Ward December 30, 2017 OFFICIAL: UK leaders detest the democratic ideal

Nick Clegg, Theresa May, Jeremy Corbyn and why none of them want a level political playing field

me1511172 A close friend sent me a petition to sign, objecting to Nick Clegg bagging a K, while Nigel Farage got nothing. On principle, I don’t sign petitions: they are an invention of those who like to give us the idea they’re listening, when of of course in reality they don’t GAF.

My own best outcome of The Cleggong Show would be for Napper Nick to become the first man in history offered a knighthood, only have it taken away via a message from the Queen saying “Only kidding hahahahahaha!” Unfortunately, Buck Palace has confirmed the bauble.

As for Farage, he deserves something better than ennoblement when his fellow Nobles would include Baroness Nettlethong-Fruntbotham and Lord Mangledbum of Boy. I don’t care for him that much, but he has made a greater impact on 21st century UK politics than all the other nonentities put together. Radical giants should receive a worthy one-off honour, not membership on a cynical honours list. I’d make him honorary Speaker for Life, and send Nick Clegg down the mines: salt, gold or coal, I really don’t care.

If you would argue with my use of “cynical” there, consider Theresa Mayormaynot’s behaviour in this context: she’s blatantly shored up her balsa-wood podium as Conservative leader by giving knighthoods to half of all the top wallies on the 1922 committee. This from a woman who got the top job without being elected by anyone….not even a bunch of bubble-dwelling, boorish Tory MPs.

But hark…..do I perchance hear the massed ranks of the North London Nazarene’s disciples declaring in unison, “We are all individuals, and together our democratic herd will ensure that, once Jesus Corbyn is elected Prime Minister, all this bad shit will come to an end forever and ever Amen”?

The “evidence” underlying this idiotic conclusion is that the new JC is a born democrat who will protect our liberties, return equality to the legal system and ensure that every wrong is righted by universal popular democracy.

Sadly, nothing could be further from the Truth. I posted earlier this year on the Great Leader’s antipathy to a PR voting system that would help reform our ‘democracy’, but also mainly do harm to, um, the Labour Party. Three months on, the Telegraph caught up with The Slog and ran a specific analysis of how and why jeremymandering beyond that inflates his Party’s position at Westminster.

New analysis shows that 27 million voters are being under-represented by their MPs, because they live in constituencies where the MP has a higher than average number of constituents, making it harder for each voter to get their voice heard. Constituency boundaries are more out of date than at any time since the Second World War, but Labour is opposing changes that would equalise constituencies in a slimmed-down Parliament of 600 MPs, 50 fewer than at present.

The majority of the larger constituencies are in Conservative voting areas, which has led to claims that the system is biased against the Tories. But the full picture is this: were we to reform boundaries and introduce PR, the main losers in terms of seats would be 1. Labour 2. Conservative 3. The SNP: the main gainers would be UKIP for sure – and possibly the LibDems, assuming they can come up with something beyond clowns and EU subjugation as leaders and policies.

This is the botton line: the Honours system should be scrapped, and the House of Lords dramatically reconfigured….preferably somewhere that isn’t Westminster – hopefully with a sizeable element of members not answerable for their position to political influence, money, or braindead Party members.

Corbyn and his fellow hard-left travellers are no more likely to be democratic, libertarian or committed to what’s best for the greatest number than Tories or Liberal Democrats. None of this tryptich of fixated neoliberals, communists and EUnatics is representative of what Britons either want or need; none of them are open-minded, and none of them have creative solutions: they have only their mendacious depravity to offer us.

As I keep on wriing, the problem is cultural and constitutional, not political.

10Comments

Add yours

1

Tom on January 1, 2018 at 2:53 pm

They’re going to cling on to absolute power by any means they can, whether it’s by a bent electoral system, their cronies in the media and intelligence agencies, or with Brexit.
They won’t be stopped by democracy (as it doesn’t meaningfully exist) so only when people get so hacked off they resort to strikes and civil disobedience will anything change. I suspect that time might not be far off.

LikeLiked by 1 person
2

chrisb on December 31, 2017 at 11:58 am

Who knows what Corbyn is thinking? He clearly hasn’t realised that staying in the EU is incompatible with socialism. At best he will get away with higher taxation and higher spending – let’s call it ‘New New Labour’. If the UK crawls back and asks to stay in the EU, it is unlikely to be on the same terms as before. That would probably mean reducing the government’s borrowing requirement. So Corbyn would just be stuck with higher taxation.

LikeLike
3

wiggia on December 31, 2017 at 10:08 am

“Quite frankly we are grossly over-governed already.”
Never a truer word spoken, the layers and numbers keep growing , more committees in parliament means more dosh for those on them and there are now more committees than at any other time, the Lords could not hold all those entitled to attend if they all turned up at the same time.
We have extra layers of local government , we have Mayors and their offices springing up everywhere and we have PCCs and their entourage doing who knows what at the taxpayers expense.
Talk of slimming down government has been going on endlessly for decades but is just that talk, a sop to those who ask questions and all this whilst the EU governs ever more of our daily lives, another layer of bureaucrats underpinned by a token voted for base of MEPs, with luck the latter may eventually be removed, but the rest of of it like Topsy just keeps on growing.

LikeLiked by 1 person
4

kfc1404 on December 30, 2017 at 7:32 pm

And news just in:
Kim Jong-Un promises a new clear future for North Korea.
Oops, spelt nuclear wrong…

LikeLiked by 1 person
5

broderickcrawford on December 30, 2017 at 6:59 pm

Murder Heads Up …..ALLEGEDLY.

LikeLike
6

Rosstradamus on December 30, 2017 at 3:46 pm

@Peter C Agreed! What hope for an agreed Brexit with 27 parties in the ring, each with Brown Envelope requirements? Maybot seems to have taken wee-hours homely advice from a banker and loaded the Parliamentary Gongthrong with presents …….. in exchange for shtumnity and blind obedience. Nigel may not have peaked yet. The hills are alive with the sound of discontent, but the whole apparatus of State, supposedly countering terrorism, is actually aimed at you and me, they have virtually admitted that they cannot watch 30,000 “knowns” in UK, let alone the ISIS homecomers. State goes for “Easy Bust Principles” and that means all of us Sloggers, families, contact lists…… we live in a Democratic Fantasy, the midnight knock on the door does not happen here …. ?

LikeLiked by 1 person
7

Lupulco on December 30, 2017 at 3:09 pm

Some good ideas there, here is one or two of my own.
a] Scrap the constituencies boundaries and replace with the current EU/MEP constituencies. letting the parties fight [select candidates] and allow us to vote from a selection of names.
b] Once elected [fixed term of 6 years] I/3rd come up for election every 2 years. This changes a proportion of the MP’s every two years. MP’s keep other MP’s in check and we may get some sane government.
c] Trump had one very, very good idea, but everyone ignored him [as usual] for very one new act of legislation enacted we scrap to acts. Thus reducing the laws, and making those laws better thought out.
d] leave the House of lords as it is. 1/3 hereditary and the rest appointed [for life] But; The House of Lords total numbers not to exceed the numbers within the House of commons [600 is a nice round number and about 8 times the current number of MEP’s] it would be interesting to see how they cull the number of Lords and/or MP’s.

The Hereditary Lords simply put their names on a list and had a kind of lottery to decide who would remain. a bit like life really.

LikeLike
8

broderickcrawford on December 30, 2017 at 2:17 pm

I agree entirely.

( Sorry…had to say something to vent my Irritable Verbal Diaorrhea syndrome).

LikeLike
9

Peter C on December 30, 2017 at 10:03 am

“some of their policies” should have been; ‘some of their policies that the majority of people don’t want, don’t care about and would never vote for’

LikeLike
10

Peter C on December 30, 2017 at 10:00 am

While I can think of nothing else on which I would agree with Corbyn, I personally consider PR even less democratic than our current faux democracy. While PR may help water down extreme policies from a majority party in power it often means that minor, sometimes very minor, parties get to see some of their policies enacted. The only good thing I would credit PR with is that when it is properly established so that at least five parties are required to pass anything almost nothing does. Why, you probably won’t ask. Quite frankly we are grossly over-governed already. There is almost no need for any new legislation, what we have today is little more than tinkering around with the same old failed policies in the van hope they may actually work, even when that ‘work’ is basically window dressing to distract common folk.

PR can never work, just as our Representative Parliamentary Democracy can never work properly because the Representative in both titles does not refer to you, me and the rest of the electorate. As you mentioned, it isn’t us they listen to and while that continues no system is fit for purpose.

LikeLiked by 1 person