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| NOPE, Tom Edwards, 2010 |
There is now a new government in Westminster, not that I can tell. I still find myself thinking Blair is Prime Minister and Bush is President. The climactic shift that these brief windows of participatory indirect democracy (elections) are supposed to produce never arise. Round we go, like a zoetrope: Labour in power, Conservatives in power; Democrats in power, Republicans in power. The illusion of movement. It's hypnotic.
I hate to be the cynic, but I guarantee the 'new politics' will come to remind you of the old politics. How many months was it before fresh-faced Tony was caught accepting money from F1 autocrat Bernie Ecclestone? I was ten at the time and I can remember hearing how the Labour landslide was the rebuke of Tory sleaze. Remember the icons of the mid nineties meeting Blair at No. 10? How many of them were in sight of Downing Street ten years later? Politicians have been heralding change more times than the boy who cried wolf, and yet even I was swept along by Obamamania.
Excellent speech, my friend... gift of the silver tongue. They say it's the mark of a good officer... and of a liar!Fool me twice, won't get fooled again. Can we even call politics 'politics'? When I say I'm interested in politics, I have to point out I don't mean the panto antics of parliament. I'm interested in political philosophies, ideas and actions. These are the things that drive history. None of the parties dominant in Westminster really have any driving philosophy other than the current neoliberal agenda. These new government proposals are as revolutionary as the Great Deckchair Rearrangement of the Titanic. Even the parliamentary reforms of the nineteenth century that Clegg references and adulates were ripples compared to the waves on the continent.
-Revolver Ocelot, Metal Gear Solid 2
In the case of a proposed elected second house replacing the House of Lords; this may sound great, but as I argued in politics class five years ago: it would ultimately remove what has lately become the one rationalist non-populist barrier against reactionary legislation and the other illiberal actions of the increasingly powerful executive. By making them fight for election it would just create a second chamber of lying liars chasing your vote every couple of years when they bother to consult us. I'm a proponent of proportional representation (PR) and even if it was proportionally elected, I'd still oppose it. Checks and balances against the ruling executive are not maintained by creating a second chamber in the slightly altered image of the first.
Yet despite the above disdain, I still vote. Like the eight-hour day, universal suffrage should not be pissed on. If I felt I had to abstain, I would still cast a spoiled ballot rather than not exercise that right at all. A vote for Eurasia is a vote for Oceania, but hey there's a third less-objectionable way in Eastasia! And if the voters are confused by PR ballot papers, well it's the citizen's duty to be an informed citizen - and by that I don't mean be able to name the Shadow fucking Cabinet. However, I remain convinced that indirect democracy is dysfunctional on the multimillion scale and certainly so with an electorate of a quarter of a billion in the European Parliament elections. I've concluded that the democratic deficit of that Byzantine bureaucracy cannot be overcome with elections, if at all. US politics has surely proven that and China doesn't even bother. The idea of a united European counterbalance to the former still appeals to me, but like everything else it seems Europe only united for financial reasons (dejà vú). I suppose it's either money or the bomb that will bring us together.
I just know the new government will be free of sleaze and corruption. No need for my subscription to Private Eye, then. Scandal in 3, 2, 1....
Election debates between mainstream parties are increasingly about managerial competence rather than any clash of vision and fundamental difference in economic direction[668]
-Political Compass
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