It can be safely said that the campaign we launched the month before the 2024 General Election (www.notinmyname.uk) had no impact on its outcome. It can likewise however be safely said that the outcome of the said election, and its aftermath, has served to support and underscore every argument the campaign made.
The worst aspects of the election results are:
- An electorally conservative country is now being exclusively run by a wokio-socialist government – viz more voted Tory and Reform than Labour.
- 20% of the electorate has given the Labour Party (totalling c.360,000 members) total control of the country (totalling c.70,000,000 souls). Indeed, if you subtract protest voters, one would imagine the number of Labour enthusiasts drops closer to 10%.
- The Reform Party received c.4,000,000 votes and gained five seats in Parliament. The Lib-Dem party received c.3,500,000 votes and gained 72 seats.
- Labour has jettisoned many of its election pledges within weeks of taking office, while imposing unmentioned measures. Labour has tried to justify some of this electoral deception by the supposed ‘discovery’ of fiscal information that was, in truth, either readily available before the election, or is a question of viewpoint.
- Labour has generously rewarded its supporters and donors with jobs, benefits and pay rises (all at the expense of the electorate).
And so on (and on – the traditional party-political sins set out in our 18 Arguments – see www.notinmyname.uk – being duly perpetuated, despite the old dog donning a new collar).
It is also noteworthy that, though ignorant of the Not in My Name campaign, more voters chose to follow its direction than opted to vote for any party, viz 40% of voters chose to say Not in my Name. (Q. What’s the difference between being run over by a blue Allegro or a red Allegro? 40% of the electorate seems to know the answer!)
So here we find ourselves, once again misgoverned by a bunch of vain inadequates, who – akin to feudal lords, plantation owners or colonial governors – at present have control over us, but no moral, ethical or logical authority to rule.
And know that proportional representation is not the answer – such methods merely create a new set of electoral injustices and, worse yet, graft the party-political cancer into the governmental system, thereby dooming the state to failure.
So, what next? Well, for our part, absent the debate we wanted to create regarding the unfitness of the present system (which is to say, the nakedness of the Emperor that nobody wants to notice), we will unilaterally finalise the Better Political System and U.K. Blueprint that are alluded to in www.notinmyname.uk, and put the said schematics up on the NMN website in the next year or so – and certainly a full year prior to any potential election date – so that this time the campaign has time to gain traction.
To conclude (for now):
- The age of party-politicians has gone; the age of independent – if affiliated – representatives beckons.
- The age of political parties has passed; the age of political matrices awaits.
- Watch this space!
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86% of those who took part voted for left wing parties. 14% voted Reform. Anyone who is still voting Tory is either not a conservative or hopelessly deluded.
Then there is the Harrogate Agenda, and whatever else. In 2022 the government’s behavioural scientists discovered that the people were more pliable than they expected – like sheep. I fear that campaigns like this are not only a waste of time but give a false impression that something can be done. It says, ‘Don’t vote!’ but many did not vote. Are things better as a result? If we want better government we will need a better populace.
Anyone who supports the idea of “Not in my name” basically supports the idea of. smaller state.
Some of them know it, and some of them just haven’t realised it yet.
The latter have yet to discover that you can’t rely on getting wise, intelligent, selfless leaders. You might miraculously get one from time to time, for a bit. But as a general rule you will get self-serving midwit grifters. So the only solution is to shrink the state and have absolute minimal need for political leaders.
Indeed. Sadly none of the mainstream parties are standing on that platform – turkeys not voting for Christmas.
This solution started out with Maggie Thatcher. And after 45 years of shrinking the state in a row, it’s widely acknowledged that all the remaining public and privatized services have become both massively worse and massively more expensive and Deadweight Ed and Chaos Keir are in the process of selling our bodies and souls to an international cartel of “green technology” billionaires and pharma companies, we being the last commodity the state controls which hasn’t been privatized yet.
Shrinking the state has proven to be a massive, f***ing disaster and more of it won’t help, in the same way more COVID boosters won’t suddenly lead to Zero COVID wonderland.
Shrinking the state is not just about privatisation, which has been only a partial success, but about reducing the involvement of the state in our lives. We have too many laws and regulations. I think the state should get out of healthcare and education.
Shrinking the state is not just about privatisation, which has been only a partial success, but about reducing the involvement of the state in our lives. We have too many laws and regulations. I think the state should get out of healthcare and education.
When it’s not about privatisation, why aren’t you calling for anything specific except more privatisation? A lesson which should have been learnt from COVID is that so-called private entities are much freer wrt to discriminating against customers they don’t like for any reaons than the state.
Privatizing the NHS in its present state will lead to the exact NHS we have, just free from any requirements of fair and equal treatement outside of discrimination because of protected characteristics named in the Equality Act. In extremely simplified form, this will mean no more hip replacement or cataract surgery for smokers because “it’s not cost effective” as they’re going to die too early to profit from it, anyway. And this will extend to all so-called “elective procedures” of today: The same kind of would-politicans while then be able to use them absolutely freely to further whatever political goals they happen to have.
Banks are supposedly private. Yet. people get debanked for undesirable political opinions and their only redress is — public oversight which still sort-of works in this sector. When it comes to ‘funky injections’, the regulator has been completely privatized, ie, its bills are paid by the pharmaceutical industry and hence, the presently most profitbable product will invariably become the safest, effectivest and most required one.
One can argue that the NHS is broken by design and should be replaced with a different kind of healthcare system. But be that as it may, the present mess needs to be fixed first. Simply throwing it over a fence so that Virgin, Black Rock, Pfizer, Astra-Zeneca and all the other usual suspects can pick up whatever parts of it they like is not going to improve things.
There’s nothing stopping the state providing health insurance cover for uninsured/uninsurable people.
Discrimination is a tricky one – in theory the market should provide alternatives if there is demand, but if barriers to entry are high and a cartel of providers all behave in the same way for various reasons then it doesn’t work so well. Arguably a lot of the behaviour of private providers is a result of political/regulatory pressure.
The market should provide alternatives because it’s assumed that people operating companies have to care about their customers in order to make money. However, a large company which is profitable can always afford to piss off some minority of its customers. Economies of scale favour oligopolies and people working for a company that’s part of an oligopoly have no particular reason to care for the demands of individual customers as something like “annual revenue is £500 less than what it could have been” simply won’t figure on the balance sheet.
Case in point: I need a new harddisk because one of the two I have is dying. I ordered one from a company named Box (box.co.uk) a fortnight ago which advertises “Free next day delivery” on its website. Reportedly, the item got passed to DHL and then returned for a reason I don’t know. Nobody bothered to tell me about this, because “Why bother?” — this is a £55 transaction really nobody cares about.
The present state is that the company took my money but the people working for it won’t ship the item. I can probably get my money back but – in addition to the waste of time – that’s not going to help me. Granted, I can probably buy the item elsewhere but only as sort-of an act of mercy, ie, due to good luck, manageing to find some people who are willing to ship it, maybe because a throw of the dice went in my favour. That’s an absolutely typical “market performance” I’ve already plentifully encountered elsewhere.
The myth that private companies care for their customers because “competition” forces them to is simply wrong. And hence, the myth that anything can be improved by making it private is, too.
I certainly agree that privatisation doesn’t inevitably lead to better service, but I think its hard for the state to perform BETTER than a private firm because the incentives are trickier to put in place.
This gets me back to the German proverb Der Fisch stinkt vom Kopfe her — The fish stinks from the head. Incentives are really a matter of organization culture and work ethic and that’s ultimatively a matter of what leadership demands and is willing to impose onto itself. The people who were legally partying in Downing Street while the rest of the country was under lockdown attract followers like themselves. Every borough council probably had its own lockdown parties.
People don’t magically become shit just because they’re working for the state and they don’t magically turn into high performers seeking to fullfill their duties to the utmost just because they’re paid by some internet merchant company. It’s by-and-large the same kind of people who are working for public and for private organizations and this mens that, by-and-large, their performance will be identical.
To continue the story from above for illustration: It seems that the company supposed to ship the disk handed it over to DHL. DHL apparently never even made an attempt to deliver but just returned it to the sender. Maybe an error on their part, I don’t know. I’ve had an extensive live chat with some of the customer support guys in the vain attempt to get a disk delivered to me. But I could as well have been talking to a wall. Status of the item was “returning”, script for returning said “apologize to customer and promise refund once the item has returned”. Hence, that was all of the reply I could get from this guy, no matter how often I told him that I didn’t ask for this item to be returned and didn’t want a refund but a disk I had paid for. When I started to become insistent, I got an additional reply “No, we can’t ship out returned items again. We apologize … bla bla bla … wait for your refund”.
It’s hard to imagine that even the most aloof civil servant could have been more intransigent and less interested in whether his employer will end up making a profit or a loss here.
I agree that individuals and their approach to work are very important and make a big difference and that there is a mixture everywhere. But I am sure financial and other incentives (threat of losing your job) do also make a difference. Another issue is staff retention. A friend of mine is a young, very bright and hard working civil servant – exactly the kind of person the civil service should be trying to retain. But he is most likely going to work in the private sector because the money is much better and he has much better leverage there – he wants more flexible working arrangements but there is no flexibility on offer, despite his high value to the department he works for.
Many in the establishment probably regard Parties of that kind as a virus. From their position, they welcome the first past the post system, which offers quite high immunity from infection. Even if you look at the devolved countries (Scotland and Wales) which have partially proportionate systems, it won’t be easy to move away from FPTP.
The idea that MPs should be people from their constituencies elected because of themselves and not because they were running on some party ticked is IMHO principally sound.
Indeed. My MP says he will represent ALL of his constituents but how can he – he was elected on a party platform and will be whipped to vote with his party? He doesn’t represent me.
Apropos your comment a bunch of vain inadequates, who – at present have control over us, but no moral, ethical or logical authority to rule https://www.hughwillbourn.com/post/54-madness-and-the-evaporation-of-authority
However. 13 million people voted leftist (Labour communists and Lib Dum Marxists) and only 10 million voted right ish – Tory and Reform.
Britain could be argued to be a failing, left wing nation. We are done for if those figures keep happening.
The Tories are not right wing – just less left wing than the other Uniparty parties.
We need more direct democracy like Switzerland. We should decide on major issues by referendum.
And, a proportional voting system that had transferable votes in the second round. I suspect that would push voters to really be careful about who they wanted to take power. I suspect that if voters had had that choice at the last GE, there may have been a different outcome.
Has ‘notinmyname’ looked at all possible political systems and worked out which system will work best, both from a representative and pragmatic angle?
I would like to see it.
Is there a merit to start a political party with it’s only remit to change the electoral system to the new system and once that has been achieved to bow out and call new elections based on the new system?
If we want the current political class to change the system it won’t happen. It is not in their interest.