Democracy in the UK is at a low and needs saving.
It’s a difficult time politically in the UK. Democracy is at a low and set to get lower.
The Conservatives deserved to lose the last election; Labour didn’t have much support to win it. Labour won only 20% of voters and 34% of those who did vote. The turnout was worryingly low.
Now, let me say I support our ‘first past the post’ electoral system versus the vagaries of the poorly-named ‘proportional representation’. Explaining my reasons for this is a post for another day. But the fact is we now have a huge, less than nationally-representative Labour majority. This Government believes in the ‘competence’ of its bureaucracy, and will increase it as a result. This takes taxpayer money. To be clear, the Conservatives did this too, over a long period. 44.7% of GDP is now spent by government, which seems odd for Conservatives.
But the Conservatives believed in un-democracy too. In his substack today, Jacob Rees-Mogg wants Robert Jenrick to win the Conservative leadership over Kemi Badenoch – but just look at his own admissions of how far the principle of ‘arrogant self-appointed competence’ over ‘membership voice’ has gone, even at Conservative Central HQ. He says (and I’m not advocating for him or Robert Jenrick):
- CCHQ has plenty of good people in it, but is viewed in the constituencies as overbearing and domineering.
- Conservative members are not seen as public-minded individuals who want to serve
- Fodder for the party machine
- Many good candidates were also overlooked in favour of a chumocracy of the party hierarchy. Even distinguished and popular figures, such as Lord Frost, were hindered in their search for seats.
- Disdain for the abilities and competence of associations.
If even people like Jacob couldn’t stop the tide of anti-democracy in his own party, then there is a huge job to do to give the ordinary British person a sense of power back.
Labour at this stage will not believe in the ‘power of the people’ – it has the power for itself. It believes in ‘progressive democracy’ and bureaucracy which moves further powers away from Parliament and elected Ministers, and to unelected officials in Civil Service, local government, quangos. We have a dominance of those who support the EU idea of “competence” over those who support “parliamentary representation”. The Prime Minister is using the term ‘populism’ as a derogatory, morally absolute term to demonise and to cow ordinary voters and democratic desires. It’s deliberate, and planned to be irreversible as possible, hence the webs of interdependence being created.
Do we need public sevants? Yes of course. We need good ones. They now seem to come in perhaps three groups: 1. Some are fabulous servant-leaders; 2. Some take advantage and usurp their power in an arrogant spiral that reduces democratic accountability; 3. Some just go with the flow, doing an OK job on the face of it, but unaware of, or feeling helpless toward, the bigger picture, while meekly working for group 1 or 2 and taking the salary and pension.
The move away from Parliamentary democracy seems to be totalising – ever-creeping towards domination by the State over the individual. Isn’t that Marxism? And we know the results from that.
So the people must now challenge and ensure that our public servants are in group 1.
Don’t get me wrong. I know the downsides of ‘incompetent democracy’ too, but I’m not an arrogant totalitarian either.