Sunday 1 April 2012

Record Low...

Mike Smithson at Political Betting has an interesting post on the latest polling figures of the 3 leaders of the main parties (my emphasis):
Combined view of the three leaders moves to record low.
After I’d Tweeted the latest YouGov leadership numbers I was asked whether the overall aggregate negative of 121% was a record. I stand to be corrected but I cannot find a period in modern UK political history when all three leaders have registered such poor numbers at the same time.
Generally when one or two are down then the other is up. What we are seeing is quite exceptional
This view is echoed by the Spectator:
Everyone's a loser
Have the opinion polls ever looked more discouraging, overall, for the Tories during this government? Not that I can remember, although I'm happy to be corrected...But Ed Miliband, for all his bravado in the Observer today, shouldn't get too excited just yet...the public appear similarly mistrustful of both the Tories and Labour at the moment...
One final point: the proportion of people telling YouGov that they will vote ‘Other’ at the next election is at its highest level (17 per cent) for all of this Parliament. 
Individual polls always have to be treated as just that, but it does add to a trend that the gap between the governed and governing is ever widening. One major, albeit largely unacknowledged, reason is we are outsource more and more of our sovereignty away to an unelected bureaucratic body, our own MP's are left with an ever diminishing pool of power as highlighted by Dr Richard North:
Having offshored most of Britain's governmental powers, some to Brussels and others to amorphous, anonymous groups such as the Bank of International Settlements, there is so little left of public policy-making in the UK that the elites are driven ever-more to micro-managing an increasingly limited spectrum.

So emerged the "schools 'n' hospitals" meme, as the only two issues of any substance over which British politicians still had any influence – issues which have dominated successive elections. And so it is that today The Boy returns to the Failygraph to write about – you guessed it - schools 'n' hospitals.
I link to it in the side bar, but it's worth reproducing the words of the infamous document 1971 FCO 30/1048 (my emphasis):
...the transfer of major executive responsibilities to the bureaucratic Commission in Brussels will exacerbate popular feeling of alienation from government. To counter this feeling, strengthened local and regional democratic processes within the member states and effective Community regional economic and social policies will be essential.
Parliamentary sovereignty will be affected as we have seen. But the need for Parliament to play an increasing (if perhaps more specialised) role may develop. Firstly, although a European Parliament might in the longest term become an effective, directly elected democratic check upon the bureaucracy, this will not be for a long time, and certainly not in the decade to come.
In the interval, to minimise the loss of democratic control it will be important that the British Parliamentarians should play an effective role both through the British membership in the European Parliament and through the processes of the British Parliament itself.
The document suggested that problems of "public anxieties" masquerading as concern for "loss of sovereignty" would only become fully evident at the end of the [20th] Century. This situation has now come to pass and despite the reluctance of the MSM to acknowledge where the power has gone as the big three UK Parties operate as a closed shop. In the real world "public anxieties" are at an all time high as predicted.

It can't (and won't) continue like this

7 comments:

  1. TbF, do you remember the reports, in the late 80s and 90s, that we shouldn't concern ourselves too much about the democratic deficit of the EU because the inclusion of the Eastern European countries (who had lived for 50+ years under communism) would bring a block of votes into the EU that would challenge the extant socialist agenda? I may have some details wrong, but that's the core of what I remember being told. And yet, nothing has changed; the socialist dictatorship that is the EU just rolls on regardless. I actually believed the stories then, I don't now.
    Oh, and 'public anxieties' are not a problem for the public; they are a problem for those who don't want the public to be involved in their nefarious deeds.

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  2. Yes, and helps explain why so many voted for Galloway (scumbag though he is) last Thursday.

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  3. Great post TBF, surely [maybe], or is it too much to hope that British public are at last waking up to this great governmental charade.
    The last two weeks [in the Westminster circus] have bordered on a 'theatre of the macabre', old Fred Karno would have been envious.
    'Orf with their heads'- the lot of them [would they be missed?] then for the mandarins.

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  4. The UK is ripe for a new party like the Tea Party in the States. Maz Hastings had a great piece recently on how faith in politicians has almost completely disappeared.

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  5. @JiC I do remember that yes, John Major tried to argue that enlargement with more QMV "[made] it easier for Britain, in alliance with other countries, to block federalist measures". He was wrong on that as well as Maastricht

    @Curmedgeon Sadly yes you're right

    @Anon thanks, I think the British public have woken up to the fact democracy is broken, I'm not sure yet whether they've made the next leap forward in what to about it.

    @Farmland Investing, thanks for your comment - Max Hastings is far too late to the party (as it were) to take him seriously. He still doesn't fully acknowledge the EU element.

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  6. Interesting. I've been reading a few of the UK blogs, and it appears you have a kind of "underground Tea Party movement". It does not seem to have entered the mainstream of your body politic though. Still, when a major writer like Mr. Hastings (whose book on D-Day set the standard IMHO), its not a bad thing.

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  7. We'll need to get this campaign going soon - vote for anyone but the Big 3.

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