Writer Neil McLeod explains why he believes democracy is not really in action in the UK
THE elevation to the Westminster throne of Theresa May is the latest, most stark, clichéd chapter yet in the ongoing, unsubtle political saga that highlights how the elite in our society are happy to play games with people’s lives. It's a flawed democracy that would make mediaeval netherworlds seem progressive by comparison.
As a result of the vote to leave the EU, a vote that was sold to its devotees as all about democracy over bureaucracy and 'taking back control', we will have a country being led by a woman who was on the losing side in that campaign, who wasn’t even elected by her own party membership and will take the government further to the right without any democratic mandate to do so.
I’m not convinced this was the kind of taking control and good old fashioned British democracy in action that the disenfranchised English working class in Sunderland and Scarborough had in mind when voting for Brexit.
I’m not convinced this was the kind of taking control and good old fashioned British democracy in action that the disenfranchised English working class in Sunderland and Scarborough had in mind when voting for Brexit.
If we look at this from a Scottish perspective, the democratic shortfall is even more apparent. We face the prospect of being removed from a European Union that we voted to remain in by a prime minister that one person in the country, the sole Tory MP David Mundell, voted for, while every other MP and the majority of the electorate look on powerless.
We have as much control over our own future as a hostage chained to a radiator in a dingy basement and thrown occasional scraps – just enough to keep us functioning.
Off shuffles David Cameron, humming a jaunty tune like a postman finishing his shift; a postman who has just opened all the birthday cards to pocket the money enclosed and dumped the rest of the mail in the woods for someone else to clean up later.
As Cameron’s theme fades out, May comes into the foreground to the tune of the Imperial Death March. At least that’s the haunting strains I hear whenever she appears. Like May, Darth Vader also has an appetite for air strikes on smaller nations, although as Andrea Leadsom might point out, he is at least a parent so has more invested in the future.
The EU referendum was the straw that broke the back of this fragile façade of democracy. It wasn’t a referendum for control of anything except the Tory party itself. Cameron put it in his manifesto to secure him a majority backing of his own party and, emboldened by the success of his scaremongering in the Scottish referendum, thought he’d manage that again with little bother and rid himself of the bleating of the Euro sceptics for the rest of his parliamentary term.
We have as much control over our own future as a hostage chained to a radiator in a dingy basement and thrown occasional scraps – just enough to keep us functioning.
He gambled everything on it and lost. He lost his party, but, moreover, his carelessness plunged the UK into its worst crisis in decades: economic turmoil, the genie of xenophobia and racism out of the bottle and the union he thought he’d saved seemingly on a life support.
Cameron crept into government in 2010 promising to eradicate the deficit in a single parliamentary term. He committed "to ensuring our whole country shares in rising prosperity". Instead, he presided over the longest fall in wages, continued rise in inequality and the most protracted economic stagnation for generations – a failure judged by his own criteria, but perversely given a standing ovation as he left his last prime minister’s question time, which is a bit like the fire brigade giving acclaim to an arsonist as he leaves a burning building.
The Labour party is failing to make any successful gain from a crisis designed byTories because it is too distracted by the civil war launched by its own elite to maintain control.
The Balirite class of political elite don’t want to see democracy in action any more than the Tories do. They feel compelled to provide soundbites about engaging the masses but are appalled when masses of people join their party and vote in someone that doesn’t play the Westminster game, and therefore devote their energy to attempting to stab in the back at every available opportunity.
David Cameron being given a standing ovation as he left his last prime minister’s question time was a bit like the fire brigade giving acclaim to an arsonist as he leaves a burning building.
Tony Blair himself most bluntly exposes this outlook, referring to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership as a "dangerous experiment", which pretty much sums up Labour: a socialist leader is a dangerous experiment, but unleashing a war that destabilises an entire region and kills hundreds of thousands is just an unfortunate by-product of workable and realistic government.
This is why you didn’t find Cameron attacking Blair or apologising on behalf of the UK Government after the Chilcot Report into the Iraq war was finally published. They belong to the same political class and, never mind party loyalties, the loyalty of that class is paramount.
It’s the cosy, caustic co-operation between big business, media conglomerates and the MPs who carry out this bidding that really powers the country. May’s elevation to power wasn’t merely the culmination of bungled back-stabbing and inadequacy from the other candidates.
It will probably have been basically orchestrated by Tory grandees and blessed from on high by Rupert Murdoch and Co. No wonder John Stafford of the Campaign for Conservative Democracy called it "the biggest stitch up since the Bayeux Tapestry".
We now live in a country where the divide between those at the top and those at the bottom is so extreme that the sanction for failing to attend a Jobseeker's appointment is proportionally greater than it is for tax evasion or starting an illegal war.
An illustration of who calls the shots is provided by looking at the final figures the Electoral Commission released for donations and loans to the different camps in the EU referendum. The votes very closely followed the money: Remain obtained 46 per cent of the money given and lent to the two sides (£20.4m) and 48 per cent of the vote; Leave won 54 per cent of the money and 52 per cent of the vote.
The largest single donor was billionaire stockbroker Peter Hargreaves who gave £3.2m to Leave.Eu and said he thought that the insecurity would be great for speculation and accumulation of wealth, that "insecurity is fantastic".
It is fantastic when you’ve got billions to enter a high class casino with for an evening’s entertainment with thousands of pounds as spare change, but not so much when all you’ve got left to gamble is £2 on a scratchcard at your local Costcutter.
Labour’s private donors leaving due to Corbyn is one of the reasons for the party's crisis. Politicians insist that there’s no relationship between donations and appointments to the House of Lords, but a study at Oxford University found that the probability of this being true is "approximately equivalent to entering the national lottery and winning the jackpot five times in a row".
For a supposedly classless society this all looks more like a warped mirror image of peasantry and aristocracy.
The UK is edging closer and closer to a plutocracy than a democracy. We now live in a country where the divide between those at the top and those at the bottom is so extreme that the sanction for failing to attend a Jobseeker's appointment, or be deemed fit for work, is proportionally greater than it is for tax evasion or starting an illegal war.
For a supposedly classless society this all looks more like a warped mirror image of peasantry and aristocracy.
If so, surely it can’t be long until the peasants revolt.
Picture courtesy of Number 10
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