In today’s Britain, there’s a disturbing trend of unpopular policies being foisted upon the public. It’s as if the elite is turning a blind eye to public opinion, says Allister Heath in the Telegraph. It’s time for politicians to start listening to the voters before things get out of hand. Here’s an excerpt:
Britain’s deranged war on cars, our looming ban on gas boilers, the de-banking scandal, the failure to prosecute crime, the attempted cancellation of women, the sabotage of the Brexit agenda, the scale of migration: welcome to anti-democratic Britain, where the beleaguered majority is increasingly subject to the whims of an entitled, activist elite that often seems to despise the people over which it exercises so much power.
All the policies listed above share a devastating commonality: they are deeply unpopular, and would be crushed in a referendum after a fair campaign, were the politicians courageous enough to grant the public a say (in the case of Brexit, they did, of course, and continue to this day to resist implementing the revolutionary change implied by the vote).
In a truly majoritarian society, one where the demos actually exercised kratos, no form of crime would be tolerated, and certainly not burglaries or muggings. Nobody would dare to indoctrinate school children with extreme trans ideology, and the green agenda would be centred around urgent technological innovation rather than seeking to prevent working people from flying to holidays in the sun.
Yet we live in a very different political reality, one in which public opinion is flagrantly disregarded whenever it doesn’t align with the views of the ruling class. Westminster has become cartelised: the large parties are committed to an unrealistic dash to Net Zero, refuse to discuss the gargantuan cost involved, and omit to mention that Britain’s carbon emissions are about 3% of China’s. On the great subjects of our time – family policy, the size of the state, the NHS and even planning rules – there is little difference between Tory, Labour and Lib Dem MPs, disenfranchising millions.
The intellectual conformity is stultifying, and has been reinforced by the emergence of an all-powerful Blob, the nexus of mandarins, policy advisers, quangocrats and other government agents, a class of “public servants” who don’t really like the public and are increasingly convinced that they have a constitutional duty to constrain and contain elected politicians. They are experts at delay, prevarication and lawfare, and are cheered on by the Left-wing activists who have taken over the legal profession, our cultural institutions, academia, charities and even many big companies.
Thus even in the rare instances when the Tories attempt to think the unthinkable and respond to public opinion, as with the Channel crossings, the system does its best to block any change, empowered by quasi-constitutional legislation such as the Equality Act, the Climate Change Act and our membership of the ECHR.
The upshot is an extraordinary disempowerment of the electorate: is it any wonder that some voters fear we risk becoming a democracy in name only? Take the absurd war on cars: a tiny minority of activists, council planners, devolved administrations and ministers are seeking to discourage the mode of transport that the vast majority of the population relies on. Or consider immigration, which is a lot higher than the public would like: all potential solutions to reduce numbers while preserving the economy are lambasted as gimmicks, meaningless or self-evidently stupid. The Tories have promised to cut numbers in every single one of their manifestos since at least the 1990s, and yet aren’t even pretending to try any longer. How does this not disastrously undermine trust in politicians?
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Once voted-in, an MP has no obligation to do anything for their constituents. It may make them unpopular but that’s the result of no job description saying otherwise and it takes another election or scandal to remove them if you’re lucky. Damage done by then. Party whips don’t count as they manipulate their colleagues for the benefit of the Party.
There is obviously a moral obligation but that clearly isn’t a factor for many of those who end up in Parliament.
The system of MPs is designed not to represent constituents but to pacify them by giving them the illusion of representation.
I’ve never been asked whether I wanted net zero, or covid policies or “protection from online harm”, I.e.censoship, or pretty much any of the other policies that are bundled together into a party manifesto and are basically identical to 95% of the manifesto of the only other party with a real chance of getting into power.
I am reminded from time to time though that I am lucky to live in a democracy and that the route to expressing my wishes is through the ballot box.
It’s a sick joke really.
What the Prime Minister thinks MP’s should do:
https://www.gbnews.com/politics/rishi-sunak-nadine-dorries-mp-job-peerage-boris-johnson
What the House of Commons says MP’s actually do (in response to a question about an MP not being representative):
Its crazy talk I know, but I’ve considered making the manifesto a contract between the people and the party of power. It might produce the dullest and unambitious manifestos ever seen, but it might also get government focussing on the essentials, security, energy, etc without getting mired in stuff we shouldn’t go near. Then after 2 years, we have a referendum on their progress and call a GE, if they haven’t achieved. I’m tired of pledges made before lunch that are forgotten by supper.
Almost chimes with my own thoughts. I believe a manifesto IS a contract between the people and the party in power (being ‘in power’, by the way, betrays what is wrong, as opposed to ‘in office’). Ergo, when a governing party wishes to stray outside its manifesto (which could genuinely happen in changed circumstances), the EXTRA clause to be added to the ‘contract’ is that this should automatically trigger a referendum.
Also making politicians responsible for the disasters they inflict upon us.
Allister Heath is bang on. At some point the population must arise and we must reclaim our country. If we can do this then we can look at locking away our oppressors for good and putting Britain first once more. Of course a few thousand immigrants will need shipping out and public services will need to be disembowelled and rebuilt and that’s just the start.
Can we do it?
There’s an old saying: “If you can imagine it, it’s possible” (this applies to bad things as well as good)
Unfortunately the UK are not revolutionaries, I think the damage and the horrors inflicted and taken up by the population during Covid demonstrate that, after all this is a country of people who willingly abandoned their Parents, and abused their children in order to protect themselves from a cold.
I think for me the way ahead is, and I suspect it will be the very Lockdown sceptics again who lead this is mass civil disobedience and resistance, this to include refusal to accept the ULEZ charges, ignoring the fines they cannot imprison everyone. Incidentally do readers realise Heathrow Airport now will come under ULEZ so another charge to add to your family holiday, that is quite a bung for Khan to spaff on more campaigns to correct non approved Khan behaviour. It means forming Parent committees to take on indoctrination at schools, even forming home teaching classes, after all many of us born before this new “Cultural Revolution”, are probably better learned and equipped to teach than the indoctrinators in schools. It means continuing to use Gas boilers, driving cars using petrol/diesel and refusing to pay fines for doing so. It means using cash, and stop using places that take only credit cards, it means stopping purchasing products and services from companies that deny the existence of the biological female. In other words ignoring and refusing to support and pay for those “authorities” who behave as Feudal Lords. Finally voting for any other Party than the current in Pariament, the Uni Parties of Conservative.Labour/Lib dems and the Greens, all who are married to the same set of opressive life destroying ideologies. If that means not voting at all then do so.
If there is sufficent refusal to accept these unjust and destructive laws then these elite who are a menace to the well being of the majority in the country will lose their authority.
Absolutely first class post.
The problem may be that those of a centre right political outlook are not prepared to engage in political activism unlike the the liberal left who are well organised, enthusiastic and successful activists. There are centre Right challenger parties out there waiting for us but the response from those on the centre right is mostly to decry them as having no chance of getting seats or argue these challenger parties need to amalgamate as one to be effective before support is given to them. Yes they do need to amalgamate but that may be best achieved by joining the centre right challenger party of choice and working from within as activists to make this a reality.
Its almost as if politicians were following an agenda isn’t it. Wanting to force a rebellion, and then crack down on it hard to bring about their order out of chaos.. I’m merely thinking out loud of course..
What with? The armed forces have focussed what little hardware they have in Ukraine, and the police are having their nails done that day.
True enough but if still hazard a guess that they’ve got access to more hardware than I, or anyone I know, can play of hands on
You’re right, I’m just articulating my contempt.
I guess it’s a numbers game. Sufficient hordes rising up should be able to overcome. How much provocation will it take before sufficient hordes are mobilised though? Most people will just take the easy option IMO
And the Armed forces swear their loyalty to the wokest of them all, Jug Ears
There’s another article in the Telegraph talking about the terrorist threat of ‘radicalised’ teenagers. Naturally it focuses on the mythical ‘far right’ downloading bomb-making recipes from the dark web while ignoring the more obvious left wing indoctrination that is obvious around us now with BLM and JSO.
I also question today how on earth the PM’s house is unguarded to be attacked by left wing extremists. Four people shouldn’t have got as far as the front gate without being taken out by a military sniper or torn to shreds by pitbulls. I don’t have to like a politician to believe his home is sacrosanct. It’s a worrying trend of the modern nihilist left that they believe their cause is so important that it allows them to ignore all society’s acceptable behaviour and do exactly as they please. They effectively want to save civilisation by destroying it. They’re the same sort of nihilist terrorists that sprang up in Russia in the 1800s.
It clearly happened because the state wanted it to happen, and globalist-appointed corrupt foreign midget PM Sunak had to go along with it.
“There’s another article in the Telegraph talking about the terrorist threat of ‘radicalised’ teenagers.”
By far the biggest act of terrorism I’ve seen in my 58 years in England has been what was done to us by the covidians, with HM Government and the whole of the UK establishment leading the way.
Agreed. I’ve been calling Johnson and Hancock ‘terrorists’ for a long time. Terrorism is the creation of terror, not necessarily by violence. The politicians and the state scientists committed act after act of terrorism during the scamdemic. Hancock said ‘don’t kill gran’ to frightened children, the unutterable scumbag and if that isn’t terrorism, nothing is!
Ask an emergency patient in an ambulance that’s being rushed to hospital that gets held up by Just Stop Oil if he’s terrified. Ask a museum curator who loves the works of art he looks after if he’s terrified when a radicalised posh 20-year-old student throws tomato soup over a painting from the 1700s that helped Western art develop until art was destroyed by postmodernism in the 20th century.
We’re living in an era where terrorism is sanctioned by the state and by ‘charities’ and lobbyists. A pox on their houses!
Terrorism and treason
We must add the WEF, UN and EU to the list of terrorist organisations.
Its how Mao supported the Cultural Revolution, through children and young people who are fearless, full of energy, ignorant and whose minds were indoctrinated by their teachers, this was how the Red Army came to fruition and look how that turned out, Couldn’t happen here? It already is, Children are being indoctrinated in schools , they are told their is no gender, they are killing the planet well their parents are, their Parents are unimportant they are holding back their childs right to take medical products, to change gender, to be se—lly free, they are seeing that through their Parents generation that they cannot ever hope to buy a home, escape the debt brought on them by their Parents generation. Our children and young people are being brainwashed by the “elite” and raised in the cult of dystopia and despair. This will be used by the elite to turn them against their Parents and to become the unknowing and unwitting slaves of the “elite” we pay for.
Its the play book of Chairman Mao
“Is Britain on the Verge of a Popular Uprising?” I hope so, count me in. And you forgot to mention the war in Ukraine. Not our fight.
No need for a popular uprising. Vote for parties like Reclaim or independents. I think the Dutch and Italian electorates have shown the way.
I think that’s the nearest we’ll get to a popular uprising. Most people will still vote as they usually do, I suspect. AFAICS newspapers are still pushing the left/right narrative as if it is a division still exists
Our salvation will not arrive via the ballot box.
In the UK people will protest vote for Labour and others with do ‘better the Devil you know’ and vote Tory to try to keep out Labour, because they won’t acknowledge that the ‘Devil you know’ is still the Devil.
The only ballot box solution is a ‘none of the above’ option.
Reclaim, Reform, etc. need to unify under a single umbrella with a simplified manifesto, the topics Alastair has identified. Then you have a route to a real opposition and revolution.
Would not joining those parties and actively work from within to make that a reality be the best way forward?
….and become members and activists too! These parties, unlike the uni party and leftist movements have no billionaires, charities and foundations backing them!!!
We”ve been in WW3 for the last 3 years but sadly only about 20% of us critical thinkers realise that fact. The other 80% are quite happy polishing their shiny new 4×4’s bought on tick while they dream of their next foreign holiday.
If only there was an army we could join to fight the bastards.
Teslas.
Is Britain on the Verge of a Popular Uprising?
No.
Betteridge’s Law clearly applies here! Apart from (possibly) immigration, I expect most people would be profoundly unconcerned about (or entirely unaware of) these issues.
I do wonder if, just like the US dollar, the foundations of democracy are creaking and crumbling. Just like many on here I want there to be change but popular uprisings have rarely succeeded throughout history. I do fear what comes next will leave us wishing for the past.
Just read that back through and it seems a bit gloomy but I’ll post it anyway in the hope that someone can come up with a viable alternative to true democracy. I can’t.
The popular uprising was the Brexit vote. I reckon the real figures for English voters – not voters in England, a very different thing – in the absence of the intelligence-services-arranged murder of globalist puppet Jo Cox would have been around 65:35.
And it hasn’t worked, has it?
It’s the globalist agenda.
Our system of ‘democracy’ is no such thing, carefully engineered to give the impression of choice without providing it.
Direct democracy is the way: boycott woke businesses; shop locally; shun the Unaparty: non compliance; infiltrate and direct your local school governors against the sexualision of children; 10 mates to fill their cars at card only petrol stations and ‘only’ have cash after you’ve filled up.
The possibilities are endless.
A good article in the present climate I suppose..but still just a bit of fluff to appease the nay sayers..the Telegraph has been, and is one of the worst offenders.…try finding a non-partisan Ukraine article….try putting anything sensible on an Ukraine article??
Plus the ‘biggi’ ..how about talking about the ‘elephant in the room?’ let’s have a full and frank article about that! Let’s look at the quacksine in all its glory?
No? I rest my case….
I’m cautious about an ‘uprising’, as these things tend not to end well.
Two quotes (the second likely inspired by the first):
‘Every civilization carries the seeds of its own destruction, and the same cycle shows in them all. The Republic is born, flourishes, decays into plutocracy, and is captured by the shoemaker whom the mercenaries and millionaires make into a king. The people invent their oppressors, and the oppressors serve the function for which they are invented.’
Mark Twain in Eruption, by Mark Twain
‘If history teaches us anything, it is simply this: every revolution carries within it the seeds of its own destruction. And empires that rise will one day fall.” – Princess Irulan
Dune, by Frank Herbert
We’re living through just such a time now. I’m with Ayn Rand on this one: we’re going to have to let this societal virus rip, while protecting all the history, philosophy, books and works of art we can until the next renaissance. The only question is where we go to ride out the storm.
Until we have some elected representatives, like Harriet Hageman, The congress woman for Wyoming, who are prepared to speak out and call out, there is little hope for any radical change in the UK;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2ma2HuIuKc
Absolutely, especially when compared with the thicko who ‘represents’ East Devon as our MP. Zero experience of real work (unless being a SPAD and a journalist count as work), less than zero scientific knowledge, only concerned with covering himself in self administered praise and scuttling off to the next door constituency at the next election as he thinks that’ll give him a better chance to continue sucking on the taxpayers’ tit.
I would say yes of a sort and it will be of a variegated form in the early stages. You will have hundreds of thousands of people who will lose their domicile because of rising interest rates and the impoosibility of paying for mortgages. At the same time you will see a frantic rush to increase rents thereby compounding the homelessness problem.People can be driven to torpor or apathy but the feeling of uprootedness is something that still has potency as a kick up the arse and this force is uprooting everything and this will be its undoing in my opinion.
Yes we should have a discussion about our democracy. We should have Magna Carta 2.0 and teach these entitled politicians what a privilege it is to represent their constituents in parliament – a parliament of the people, for the people.
“I will not comply” is gathering momentum
If it happens, it won’t be planned. When history is rewritten, of course, it describes cause and effect in logical sequence. But that is never true, because a planned uprising is already doomed to failure – TPTB spot and squash the planners before they become the perpetrators. So a real uprising is a spontaneous combustion of latent fury and energy, unpredictable in its timing, location or cause. That is why in the past it has been dubbed The Terror.
Yes, I can see each one of things happen right in front of me. My town (like every other one in the UK) has Africans appear out of thin air as if they were beamed here by Scotty of Star Trek. Immigration policy is simply a free for all and we are now the most densely populated country in Europe. —-Oops I must be a racist now for pointing out this simple truth. ——–Here in Scotland the braindead SNP are thinking of forcing you to rip out your fantastic gas central heating and install a heat pump before they will allow you to sell your house. The best government is the one that governs the least. We now have governments that govern the most, who will preach about a “climate emergency” but would struggle to explain anything about the climate to a five year old. —-Grant Schapps was asked if heat pumps were any good about 3 weeks ago and his reply was “I DON’T KNOW”——This would be funny if it wasn’t so pathetic. We don’t have democratic governments anymore. We have Rulers. Why don’t we just get an Emperor and be done with this pesky democracy for good?
Well, the Roman Empire is alive and well, unless the laurels on the WHO, UN etc. are just a co-incidence. We’ll soon be digital slaves, if we’re not already – except for the Emperor.
Unaccountability and dictatorial policies of public bodies, which increasingly and with apparent impunity seem to forget they are there to serve citizens considerately, is making people genuinely furious. If this is a calculated attempt at creating chaos from which to bring a new (world) order, then an equally cynical assumption would be that a militia of mercenaries is being imported in small boats via the English Channel and housed (in barracks sometimes) to be armed by the Government in order to crush any uprising. Of course, nothing like that could ever happen here; just speculating.
It would appear to be hubris on the part of whoever is calling the shots. This coup du monde we’ve been victims of for the last three years (or 50, by some accounts!) seems to be at the hands of people who don’t really understand participatory democracies and think they can just send off some directives to their underlings to effect change. We should be very reassured by this – look at the downfall of Ardern, Trudeau, Biden, Johnson etc. These are corporate people trying to run the world like a company. Doesn’t work, even with all the technocracy money can inflict.
Granted, the aforementioned underlings may just have been used to get over the initial messy part of establishing totalitarianism, but I believe that the programme is genuinely running into problems everywhere, despite all of Yuval Noah Harari’s PowerPoint presentations.
Can’t quite bring myself to believe that the aim is societal breakdown – that’s VERY hard to micromanage, so I am left with a sense of optimism about the unrest. Like so much else done by stupid tyrants, it’ll probably all backfire.
The Genesis of this has to be when Parliament turned on those who elected them and did their best to scupper Brexit. Or maybe the expenses scandal? Regardless, I think that people are now starting to realise that our “representative” democracy no longer represents those who elect and pay for government.
And boy are we paying.
I’m an old school conservative. We’ve done pretty well, is my line – if things don’t work as well as they should, let’s see how we can make them work better. The Left – nothing is working, everything is broken, tear it all down. When once asks what will replace the current state of affairs, they haven’t a clue.
So I voted Conservative in the hope of
And the disaster that they inflicted on us with Covid finally destroyed any faith I had in government. Why for example is Hancock not behind bars?
Back in the 60s, the Anatchists would proclaim
“Don’t vote, it only encourages them”
How right they were.
We all agree, but what is going to make it happen? The only political party that addresses ALL the issues is Reform UK, and it is not being covered in the media. I would think if we all joined up overnight we would see change.