The linked long term phenomena of falling electoral turnout and a decreasing percentage of those who do vote, voting for the two main parties, leaves politicians in power with the active support of an increasingly small minority of the population. To date this has not seriously impacted on consent – the Majority are apathetic, and devoid both of interesting sources of useful political information, and of social cohesion. Membership of organisations of horizontal solidarity is also in long term decline.
I would love to see an attempt at long term quantification of the difference between the parties in terms of the manifesto policies they offer. I have no doubt that there will be a very sharp reduction in difference, or rather policy convergence between the parties. If you look at 1911 – social insurance, pensions, power of the hereditary aristocracy, 1945 – nationalisation of major industries, initiation of the NHS and full welfare state, and 1983 – privatisation, nuclear weapons – there were very real and sharp political differences that offered voters a distinct ideological choice. The country – and your own future – could be recognisably different dependent on for whom you voted.
The last two times our government changed parties, the new party came in to pledge to continue the fiscal measures already projected by the treasury under its predecessors. Anyone who believes the Treasury would be fundamentally different under Balls or Osborne is delusional, and responding to tribalism not real difference. Who introduced tuition fees? New Labour. Who accelerated the “marketization” of the NHS? New Labour. Who vastly expanded PFI? New Labour. Who bailed out the banks? New Labour.
In effect, the parties offer exactly the same neo-con policies. NATO, Trident, Occupation of Afghanistan, Privatisation, Tuition Fees – the only apparent alternative at the last election came from the Lib Dems, and the electorate grasped at it in larger numbers than a third party had ever received before, something we have quickly forgotten. The reason that we have forgotten it is that Clegg, who was never any kind of Liberal, dumped the entire radical heritage of his party as soon as he came to power.
There is a much wider point to what happened to the Lib Dems. Two other changes – the introduction of PR for the European Parliament, and the large increase in expenses for MP’s staff – had made a radical change to that party. Lib Dem conferences were suddenly places of power dressing, not woolly jumpers. A great many young professional politicos – MPs research assistants, and staffers from Brussels – were all over the place. Bright, presentable, highly paid, most of them had no connection with liberalism, had never read John Stuart Mill or Hazlitt, had no idea who Lloyd George was and cared less. They had latched on to a rung of paid political work, had become part of the political class – that was the entire purpose of their activity. The woolly jumpered chap who had campaigned about paving stones in Salisbury and passionately wanted to abolish Trident and adopt green energy became sidelined, an amusing anachronism, the subject of the jokes of the sophisticates.
Of course, their focus groups showed that the people want policies which the ever shrinking ownership of the mass media promotes, because they are the only policies they have ever heard of. But the people no longer trust the ownership of the media, and the expenses scandal caused a much-needed scepticism of the appalling political class. People are desperate for leaders who look honest and say something different.
So do not despise UKIP supporters. They are not vicious racists. They are in fact brighter than those stupid enough to continue voting for the three neo-con parties, despite having their lives crippled for the next three decades to pay unconceivable sums to the bankers. The UKIP voters at least wish to punish the political class and wish to hear of some different policies.
The problem is that the only alternative of which the mainstream media is prepared to inform them is Mr Farage and his simple anti-foreigner maxims. Many of the bankers are keen to leave the EU, as Nigel Lawson told us. So if people want an alternative, that is the one they will be offered. Only in Scotland have people been offered a more radical alternative – and while I do not wish to exaggerate the economic radicalism of the SNP, they are markedly to the left of Westminster on issues like tuition fees, healthcare and PFI.
The great question of the day is, how to put before the population, in a way that they will notice, a radical alternative other than simple right wing populism. I have a strong belief that there remains a real desire in society for a more social policy, for a major and real check on the huge divergence between rich and poor, for good public services, for a pacific foreign policy, and for leaders not just in it for the money or to promote wealthy interests. But how do you get that message to people?
UPDATE
From comments made, there must be an ambiguity about this article which I don’t see myself. I made this clarification in a comment and I add it here for certainty:
Of course UKIP are not a real alternative. I said “do not despise UKIP supporters”, not “do not despise UKIP”. UKIP are a false “alternative” dangled by the mainstream media and the bankers. But the support for them is evidence that the public do very much want some alternative. I shall append this to the article as it must be more ambiguous than I thought.
The Greens’ problems are their policies: pro-EU, pro mass-immigration, believe wind can power a major industrial economy ( they don’t really believe it, they just don’t want the industrial economy) totally in thrall to man-made global warming theory above much needed conservation measures. Like Jimmy said, watermelons.
Forget who said it … Disraeli? (Know someone on here will put me right). ” People vote according to their heads, their hearts and their pocket books”. (Or words to that effect).
The order depends on the person. Voting apathy causes me to assume that of those who vote now most vote against … not for … and of those who vote for the largest number prioritise their pocket books – what’s in it for me? Few really examine, listen and rationalise, I don’t think … Thatcher (curse her cotton socks) understood this: a charismatic conviction politician who gave many ordinary people the belief that they’d be better off voting for her and her party.
No matter the opinion of it, in voters’ eyes she gave her party an image.
Our present parties – with the unfortunate exception of UKIP – are perceived to have none.
I know it goes against the grain to say it but any party of the left would have to learn how to ‘look’ populist.
No doubts Britain’s main political policies will nicely converge with that of theBilderbergers.
We are the masses, for our part we have got our heads down and are working, we want to work build and create and hope well for our fellows.
‘Nurture that’!
Craig, when you ask for change, have we not had vast change in our lifetimes? It seems to me that the people who change things are usually in the business of transferring their own bottoms to the seats of priveledge in place of those who were previously there in the name of change. But as soon as they are in power they show themselves to be more ruthless, selfish, and uncaring than the previous incumbents.
What is missing is the pre=Thatcherite concept of doing things because of their own merits, rather than because they increased the money/power/advantages of those in power. That is now completely absent in government. If someone wanted to make the world a better place, they would first have to remove the Zionist lobby from Parliament. This would allow decisions in the world to be made on the basis of international law instead of vested interests. You would easily put Assad in jail without igniting another civil war and displacing millions of people.
The single most pressing need for reform is to remove the Zionist lobby from parliament. If world events were proceeding by international law then the lesser evils of stupidification of the education system, privatisation of the NHS and corporatisation of business by pricing smaller organisations out of compliance with the law, would all become more glaringly obvious.
The presence of horrific war is being used to block discussion about more general moral issues, and the sole instigators of war in the last two decades has been the Zionist lobby. One bad tooth needs pulling out of parliament so that the rest of the teeth can continue to function normally. ‘Fuck off down to the dungeon, Guano. No Truth welcome here!’
Former chairman of the Green Party, Jonathon Porritt, is an Old Etonian.
“So do not despise UKIP supporters. They are not vicious racists.”
I’m pretty sure at least some of them are…
Got kids, Giles? They’ll thank you for your views on the climate. And you summarise the Green manifesto succinctly, except that even the Greens realise that wind power can’t power a major industrial economy. They’re not that keen on major industrial economies for that very reason…I predict that those policies will cease to be a problem in the not-too-distant future. I may not be around to see their full justification – fortunately, because I guarantee the world will continue sleepwalking towards its own demise. And if the Greens’ policies are unpopular now, at least they’ll have tried. Unlike any of the alternatives.
One of the consistent predictions of those who (what a bizarre connection to make) noticed that rising CO2 levels matched rising global temperatures, in accordance with some absolutely basic physics, has been, (since even before they started irritating “Lord” Lawson, the well-known climatologist/savant and his oil industry friends), that more extreme weather events would be expected.
Like the biggest tornado ever to hit America, f’rinstance.
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=50147187n
That’s if you can wait for Wells Fargo to tell you how safe your money is…
Porritt’s not standing for parliament..
Summerhead: “I wonder how many UKIP voters Craig has actually met. I know lots and can assure you they are all 100% small minded racists.”
For the uninitiated, in order to make sense of this claim, bear in mind that to the modern left, racist doesn’t mean what it used to mean. It has now been made to mean someone opposed to mass-immigration. Only by understanding this will Summerhead’s claim make any sense.
Rather than continually pissing on the Green Party Giles, despite the article being about UKIP mainly, touted by them as the only alternative, maybe you would like to substantiate your disaffection with their policies, rather than those personalities who have hijacked it for their own middle class agenda.
The MFFS speaks of ‘decentralising power’ but the Green Party itself has been highly centralised by the continuous Green 2000 pressure, a factional group who wanted to mainstream the Green Party in the late 1980’s.
Just as other parties, their policy base is determined by those few who go to Conference or can be bothered to direct the politi, some 9% max. of their respective membership, not a democratic relationship.
Change will come, it is determined by the amount of flailing the public can take, how much more austerity can be construed before there is an eruption.
And they are worried, why else would Radiop Norfolk, in the safest county in Norfolk, invite the assistant chief constable to talk about arming Norfolk police? Off course if jolly calm Norfolk accepts guns for their officers, who could possibly deny arming the police in far more violent counties places.
The established parties are worried that their postal vote ruse will soon fail to work as others adopt it with vigour, they are also worried if people vote for UKIP.
The vast majority, as Craig well said, can’t be bothered, whatever happens.
Should we involve them? by using the vast costs of elections to the public coffers for a better cause and just add all the NI numbers into a hat, then pull a representative/councillor/ chief constable/ whatever.
Those who don’t want to be in the hat, have to opt out. Those pulled and not available for work, get put back into the hat and another one is drawn who is eager to earn 66K /per annum to work for the Constituency.
One of the worst features of elections is that those who are upright and Independent, rejected at many elections in the past, totally loose their will to live, get demoralised and stop trying, because they are the only ones who keep the current system from going stale and cold.
I regard this system as a perpetuation of an establishment that is determined to manipulate the electorate for their aims only and at any price, democracy does not come into it.
Please Santa, can I have some demarchy for Christmas.
Komodo, as there has been no global warming for 17 years, while release of CO2 has increased drastically, and the computer models have been shown to be deeply flawed, the watermelons changed tack and called it clmate change. Now snow and cold winters were blamed on man, when previously the watermelons said our children would never see a snowflake. Left increasingly desperate as their racket was exposed, they now blame every natural disaster on man-made climate change, earthquakes, tidal waves, the lot.
I work in conservation, Komodo, trying to ensure that the likes of the brown hairstreak and the nightingale are still around for my children to enjoy as I have done. We know why these species are struggling – we know next to nothing about why the climate changes, as it always has done and will continue to do.
I certainly wouldn’t fill their heads with propaganda like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVGGgncVq-4&feature=youtube_gdata_player
And by living at sea-level I’m putting my money where my mouth is. Why haven’t Craig and Nevermind fled for the hills?
Giles
I do live on a hill.
… Reminds me of a Beatle’s song…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDtK7xUIDxk
I generally agree with Craig and the many articulate and well informed regulars, but sometimes, and this is one of those occasions, I think that people are too busy being PC to actually get the point.
I expect to take some flak for saying this but we do have a real problem with immigration. Unless we are prepared to talk rationally about some of these issues, voters will continue to gravitate towards the parties of bigotry.
For too long we have been moving toward the US model where we neglect the education and training of our own citizens, instead we poach already trained personnel from poorer countries. While it is often said that these immigrants add to our economy, I wonder if that is really true once you allow for the fact that someone else, and potentially their families as well, end up on the dole as a result. Also consider the plight of the nations that we poach those people from.
Mention must also be made of the tendency of the business classes to evade the law of supply and demand by importing cheap, even illegal labour from elsewhere. It might make their business more profitable but it adds to the population without creating any more jobs. Surely it is not too difficult to understand the resentment of those from the lower socio-economic strata who see mass immigration as a ploy by the rich to keep their wages down. Racism doesn’t have to come into it, although sadly it often does.
We must have an end to the neo-liberal wet-dream, where waves of cheap labour slosh around the globe undercutting each others wages, until we have all competed ourselves into the gutter. While we are about it, we need a return to trade tariffs, at least for non-EU countries. It is obviously impossible for British workers to compete with workers whose wages would not even cover the rent on social housing (not to mention competing with child labour, or prisoner labour) What are we supposed to do, move into a tent and forage through bins for food?
Let the vilification begin, see if I care.
” as there has been no global warming for 17 years,”
Don’t wish to derail the thread, but this is hard to ignore.
Is it your contention that longer winters and the fact that ice is extant, therefore warming of the atmosphere is not a factor in the anomalous weather patterns around the globe?
There is only one outcome at the next general election. Everyone who does not vote will elect the party of Government.
Those who try their hardest will be frustrated with dilution of votes, i.e. paper candidates that also stand under an Independent banner, as happened at the last county election in Wymondham Norfolk were the dirty tricks brigade under Cllr. Joe Mooney was in full swing.
The moment a relevant council makes postal voting forms available, they are downloaded and printed by standing councillors of the main parties, every old and infirm voters is targeted and visited, with offers of help and safeguarding and delivery of this form.
Their own party supporters get their postal voting forms sent by the council directly the moment the election is called. By the time the nomination have to be in most people will already have their forms and the moment the candidates are confirmed they vote, campaigning does not come into it, for them its a forgone conclusion without even listening to what any of the candidates, including their own, has to say.
A farce!
Next year we will see Euro and District elections thrown in on the same day, always confusing for voters. Will there be any Independents risking 5000,- at the Euro’s? I seriously doubt it, unless they have already started some time ago, they should not waste their money.
It is to be seen whether we see many Independents standing in the District election, I don’t hold my breath.
MarkU
Immigration is purely political. It builds an economic and a driveable highway from ourselves to Turkey and beyond to Syria, Iran, Iraq, Afghanistan etc enclosing these countries into the political economic bosom of the West. Cutting these countries off from shite like Assad backed by Russia.
I did not originally approve of this project when it started in Poland in the ’80s, but having seen its benefits in my own personal life by enabling me to travel overland through these countries in absolute safety, I am now 100% in favour.
What does it matter to me if I can’t find work here because of immigration if I can find work and a new life abroad outside the crazy Euro-Christian zone? You know you have entered civilisation when you hit Turkey and the toilets provide facilities for cleaning yourself and it steadily gets better as you move Eastwards. If it had not been for Western/Zionist interference in the Muslim countries imposing dictators and fomenting violence, Muslim countries would now be way in advance in terms of civilisation and safety compared to here.
“What are we supposed to do, move into a tent and forage through bins for food?”
What are the people who live in tents and forage through bins for food now going to do when somebody else got to the bins first.
Had it good all these years then when the going gets tough you think you can just move in and help yourself to the bin foragers food, leave them to starve.
Typical.
Mark U, why, in a globalised trading world, with almost no borders for those who want to make money, work and/or develop products wherever they want to, should there not be immigration patterns that follow the work?
Further, your assumptions that there are willing and able workers here, wanting to do the jobs currently done by people from the US, Australia and the EU countries, not to talk of workers from the ex commonwealth and other colonial hangups, is groundless.
Some 1/5th of our fresh food supplies comes from the Fenland’s. The farmers in this vast area have more than once gone on record saying that they can’t get British youngsters to come and do the jobs, that they are dependent on immigrant labour. A farmer whop has a three day window to get his asparagus on to your table will not question the labour arriving at 5.30am in his field, he pays for the work to get done and its hard honest work.
To make out that we have not got the same chances to work these jobs is BS.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/cambridgeshire/hi/people_and_places/newsid_8530000/8530168.stm
Three cheers to immigrants and to the 4-6 billion taxes they are paying, we can’t say that of Mr. Usmanov can we? why else would he go for a football club.
“Some 1/5th of our fresh food supplies comes from the Fenland’s. The farmers in this vast area have more than once gone on record saying that they can’t get British youngsters to come and do the jobs, that they are dependent on immigrant labour.”
That isn’t a new problem, it’s been like that for centuries. Britain had an itinerant work force willing to travel to where the work was when they were needed.
But they made their way of life illegal.
Obviously the author is not aware of the education budget cuts that are being proposed. The trouble with the model is that “austerity” ie less government expenditure, is an effort to balance the books so that the rich and the corporations can get tax cuts/pay less taxes, whilst the poor pay their own way with more taxes, and upon fleecing the poor to bare bones, then the policy dictates to take away the services that the poor depend on to balance the books. This is called “small government”, “responsible citizenship”, etc.
The above has nothing to do with immigration but everything to do with the political direction that many are blissfully ignorant of, and fixated on; its the immigrants wot done it.
Consider how much cheaper it is to keep the surplus labour in their stables, and affects thereof on the wages, than letting these unemployed getting jobs and earning a living?
Therefore the arse about tit logic applied somehow in the grips of fits of emotions cannot see the wood for the trees and on goes the diatribe: its the immigrants wot done it.
The depressed labour market has an unintended consequence of depressed demand, because the masses have little or no disposable income. Therefore the businesses intent on survival seek to reduce their operating costs through deployment of even cheaper labour.
However the arse about tit logic that expects profit hungry businesses to become charitable and philanthropist organisation, deduces: its the immigrants wot done it.
Never mind the rich whose machinations and intrigue has brought about the destitution of the “lower socio-economic strata” but really: its the immigrants wot done it.
All that arse bout tit thinking results in totally disappearing up the said arse, and coming out with the manifesto of let us understand that globally: its the immigrants wot done it.
Oh well now that we know: its the immigrants wot done it, let us fuck them up even more with trade tariffs, and stopping them coming to our shores to trade with us and shit.
Well how’s about let us nuke the foreign bastards and solve all the planets problem in one go?
The pathetic lines of “thought”, that regurgitates the mims set in place by the same policy makers whom have contrived the current situation, that is disseminated through their various “news” organs are verily taken to be the lines of “thought” that the author has arrived at all by himself, and indeed a “reasonable, cogent, informed” stance that needs no further explanations, and anyone who disagrees with it are the very epitome of poppy pants to the man of them.
Missing from the “debate” are the following facts:
What the fuck has the City of London any business in investing abroad, and earning a tidy living from being the international rentiers?
Where are the legislation to compel the said culprits to invest in the plant, education, and training of the workforce and capital structures with in UK? Can there be any hope of any such a legislation ever getting passed?
Why in hades the huge amounts of investments abroad are then protected by the huge expenditure in the armed forces to ensure that the international borrowers do not think of taking the money and doing a runner? If the city is so intent on investing abroad then it should also set up its own security measures to compel the defaulters to pay up and not ask the nation and tax payers as a whole to become the guardians of the said bunch of international rentiers.
Further, fact that the various third world countries have been getting targeted and attacked (aggressively asset stripped), and other countries have been the subjects of covert attempts in the overthrow of their governments with a view to installing a more “City friendly” bunch of operatives, also does not come into the equation either. Really there are far too many facts that are missing and to mention these would need a huge space.
What levels of ignorance can ignore such a plain facts set out in the missing facts sections, and still carry on maintaining: “ its the immigrants wot done it”?
UKIP are a real alternative given how bad the current lot are. Sure, their policies are a bit vague and problematic, but they are not so much worse than what we have today that they cant be considered an alternative. Even if they made a huge mess, as they might, would it be a worse mess than we’re in now? Not much, no.
They might not let Johnny Foreigner come to live here, but the current lot are dropping bombs on Johnny Foreigner to stop him living at all.
I am just amazed by how naive, ignorant, and day-dreaming posters are when it comes to solving or at least mitigating the problems of current Western governance.
Its system of government only expanded voting rights to avoid being overthrown, and while the electorates grew, including minorities and women, they created a professional class to carry out its day-to-day details.
Now the voters have become useless in who are governs are, and what they see fit to do.
Unless people are willing to get rid of them, we are just stuck with them
It’s like the so-called democratic changes never really occurred.
What fascinating comments. Thanks MarkU, and everyone else. Horseman Joe, to take it one step further, have you thought what they might do to the ‘Johnny Foreigners’ living here now?
Does the proposal of boot camps – in England – give you any pause for thought? Or the anti-Muslim/immigrant rhetoric we’ve seen displayed by UKIP supporters previous threads?
What is the proposed massive hike in ‘defence spending’ for?
Otherwise, I don’t despise anyone, including UKIP supporters. It worries me, however, when people who (understandably, I think) claim to be pro UKIP because they are against being in the EU, and are fed up with things generally, are prepared to ignore the vicious undercurrents of violence, hate, money and power behind the party make-up itself.
I am now, out of interest, going to look for reasons to stay in the EU – beyond the Human Rights Act which in itself has so far prevented the UK from going down these routes:
# Restrictions on prisoners’ correspondence and visits by their lawyers (Golder, 1975);
# Routine strip-searching of visitors to a prison (Wainwright, 2006);
# Allowing the Home Secretary rather than a court to fix the length of sentences (Easterbrook, 2003);
# Admitting testimony obtained under coercion as evidence (Saunders, 1996);
# Keeping a suspect incommunicado in oppressive conditions without access to a solicitor (Magee, 2000);
# Extradition of a suspect to the United States to face a capital charge (Soering, 1989);
# Granting the police blanket immunity from prosecution (Osman, 1998);
# Shooting of Provisional Irish Republican Army suspects in Gibraltar without any attempt to arrest them (McCann, 1995);
# Killing of a prisoner by another mentally ill detainee with whom he was sharing a cell (Edwards, 2002);
# Investigation of an unlawful killing by police officers conducted by the police officers who participated in the killing (McShane, 2002);
Nevermind,
As someone who used to pick berries and occasionally tatties when much younger I can tell you one reason why farmers lost access to local labour. Quite simply many were unemployed (or employed but on some benefits) and/or students in the days when you could sign on over the summer. Flying Dole Office squads then started turning up in fields for spot checks – at that time not for immigrants but someone earning enough for a few drinks that evening to top up their dole money. Rasp pickers had it worst as their hands would be stained and scratched. If that was spotted by the dole office gestapo when you had to physically sign the form in front of them once a fortnight then you got pulled in for questioning. The farmers did not pay anywhere near enough to make it worthwhile signing off at the time. They frightened away the local pickers on Thatcher’s instructions during the course of the 1980s.
“Berry Pickers Fund the IRA”
I’d almost forgotten that but it just came back to me. It was a headline (from the Sunday Post I think) to help justify the crack-down. It seems they were worried that unemployed Catholics of Irish descent were sending their ill begotten berry money to the IRA. They were actually spending it in the local pubs of course.
Glenn; Is that you behind those Foster Grants?
Anyhoo…cheers to Glenn. I hope you are rebounding from your loss.
And into the 80s local school holidays were arranged to fit in with the farmers.
Michael Gove has something to say about that
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/shortcuts/2013/apr/21/michael-gove-shorter-school-holidays
Michael Gove wants to shorten school holidays, saying they were designed back when the UK still had an agricultural economy, and cites the “tattie holiday” as an example. The extra-long October halfterm in parts of Scotland got its name because it was “the period when kids would go to the fields to pick potatoes”, he explains. Such holidays, he insists, represent “a world that no longer exists”. Yet schoolchildren were still pulling up potatoes in the “tattie holiday” in the mid-1980s, when the process was mechanised. And many remember it fondly.
===== Rest at link ====
Kids from about 6 years up used to work at the berries (and enjoy it with older relatives) and from 11 up at the tatties (if you were a big 11). Farmers would get locked up for that these days. Ah, listening to test matches on a transistor radio in the late 70s at the berries. Life was good.