eurealist.co.uk

Roy Hattersley
Monday November 8, 2004
The Guardian

The result was, I admit, a terrible shock. Until I woke early on the morning after polling day, I took it for granted that I was on the winning side. We had triumphed in the arguments and our leaders were far more attractive and articulate than their opponents.
Is it not strange that Sir Roy has the audacity to make this claim, how on earth can he even suggest that the No side had triumphed, or is being beaten by the largest ever recoded margin a triumph?

Yet the people of the north-east of England voted, by a margin of more than 3-1, against the creation of a devolved assembly. Decisions that affect their housing, health and happiness will remain in the hands of anonymous civil servants and junior ministers. The land that Hotspur hoped to rule remains the fiefdom of White Hall and Westminster.
Yes Sir Roy you lost the argument, you did not convince the people that what you are now claiming was worth the vote for your proposition. Why are you now making the people accept what they have clearly voted against? In case you forget, it was a regional assembly, the people have made it clear that they do not want one.

The conventional response to democratic defeat is an acknowledgement that the people have spoken. So vanquished politicians must adjust their policies accordingly. Clearly, at least for the time being, the idea of a north-east assembly is dead. But if devolution was right and necessary on Thursday morning, it was still right and necessary on Friday afternoon. And I cannot pretend otherwise. What is more, I do not believe that the north-east is opposed to regional assemblies. It did not vote against devolution. It expressed its distaste for politics and politicians.

The conventional response of a democrat, would of course be to accept the voice of the people as the final word on the subject, the only question is, do you or do you not accept the freely given democratic vote of the people, a simple question?

The word here is “If”, as in “If” it was right on Thursday Morning, It was quite obviously not right on Thursday morning, the only problem you have, is that you were so wrapped up in you own ideas of what should be done, that you let yourself be mislead by your own propaganda, and therefore did not understand this until you woke up on Friday, please don’t blame the people for your own misunderstanding.

But you do believe the North East is opposed to regional assemblies! you said so in the previous paragraph. (Yet the people of the north-east of England voted, by a margin of more than 3-1, against the creation of a devolved assembly)

No the people of the North East were not asked to vote on their distaste for politics, they were only asked to vote on the governments plans for an EU based elected assembly. You cannot now try to change the question, it is to late for that Sir Roy! However, if you wish to know the thoughts of the people on present day politicians, then please feel free to organise another referendum on that point. I am quite sure that many people will be able to tell you, that the problem with present day politicians is they do not ask the people about very serious changes they are undertaking, and then when forced to, they try to ignore the answer they are given, by putting up a serious of spurious arguments against the answer the people have given. Just as you are doing here, so in fact it is people like you who are causing the problems with our democracy.

When I spoke in Durham during late October - intending to sell books rather than devolved government - my audience insisted on telling me that regional assemblies would be nothing more than wind and waste. The charitable minority feared pointless speeches and unnecessary spending. The cynical majority asserted, without doubt or apology, that the new tier of government would become a vehicle for institutionalised corruption. They anticipated inflated expenses, worthless foreign trips, lost-earnings allowances for meetings that never took place and salaries far higher than the recipients could hope to earn in any other job. I hardly dared admit that some of my best friends are politicians.
The trade has always been held in contempt. Even when giants dominated the parliamentary landscape, they were satirised for their pomposity, presumption and pretensions. Often the cartoons - anti-semitic in the case of Benjamin Disraeli and with suggestions of insanity during William Gladstone’s final years in government - were far more cruel than anything we see today. But never before has there been a near universal presumption that most politicians are on the take. It is not true, but there are great dangers in the growing belief that it is. Voters are beginning to look for something better than democracy.

So you are obviously known by the friends you choose! If you do not like the heat get out of the kitchen. No Sir Roy just plain old DEMOCRACY will do us just fine! Please do feel free to let us all know when you agree to stand up for it, by accepting with grace the defeat of you preferred outcome to the NE Referendum.

The insistence that the overwhelming majority of politicians are honest is always met with examples of the one or two who are not. The rival assertions are not incompatible. The stories of used £5 notes in brown paper envelopes cannot be denied. But a couple of pathetic junior ministers willing to degrade themselves for a few hundred pounds do not constitute an orgy of corruption. Nor do expense allowances that are generous to a fault amount to proof positive that every backbench MP would, given the chance, rob the poor box in the local parish church.
Responsibility for that widespread libel must be shared between the newspapers that exploit and exaggerate every increase in mileage rates, and the MPs who - because of hubris not greed - insist on retaining the ultimate responsibility for their own remuneration. But that is the small change of the disenchantment.

Sir Roy to help you with this, when you have a political system where the overwhelming majority of your friends are intent on ignoring the people then you are bound to get resentment. Please do not blame the people for your own failings, I am sure that we would all like to decide how much we are going to get in our wage packet each month.

The public has lost faith in politicians because too many politicians have lost faith in politics. The one consolation to be found in the result of the other election that took place last week was the way in which American voters responded to the candidate with clear convictions. Senator Kerry was certainly a war hero. President Bush dodged the draft. But the draft dodger had a clear vision of the sort of society he wanted to create. His trumpet sounded a clear note.

The only thing you should take from the vote is that the people made the choice of the government they wanted, so not matter what your personal feeling are they made the right choice The people have spoken and that is final is there something you do not understand about democratic choice?

Not for him the middle way or the “triangulation” of policies between conflicting views of right and wrong. I loathe what Bush stands for. But I have no doubt that he stands for something. I felt the same about Margaret Thatcher. If more politicians expressed clear ideological commitments, there would be far less talk about “only in it for what they can get”. Yet ideology is going out of fashion. Politicians promise to “do what works”. When their policies fail, as many policies must, they are not protected by the armour of conviction.
It is convictions that keep politicians honest, and belief is the best excuse for all their other many failings. Almost every politician I met during 33 years in the House of Commons was a true believer in something. But during those three decades, the notion developed that the possession of strong ideological views was probably reprehensible and certainly an electoral liability. Who can blame voters for concluding that if politicians are not inspired by principle, they must be motivated by greed.

Yes we would all like it if a politician actually meant what they said, we would be able to trust their word then. No, Sir Roy, what used to keep politicians honest, or fairly honest, was the sovereignty of the people who elected them, the politicians knew that it was to the people they owed their position, but your friends have been steadily removing that Sovereignty from the people, and now we have a situation that no matter who we vote for, we end up with very similar policies.

Europe’s Moral Minority

Europe’s reaction to the events in the US is largely governed by its flabbergasted “media monopoly” which is, incidentally, a million miles from taking on board the lessons that could spare it the same fate as its American cousin.

Gazing ruefully at weblogs and talk radio sites, poor old John Kerry can only dream of the cosy relationship enjoyed by the European left’s media and political elite. However, even this comfortable symbiosis could be headed for a messy divorce.

Unlike the US, Europe is unlikely to upset the entire bien pensant CAP-funded apple cart with one big vote. We have our rednecks too and no-one is likely to invite them to spoil the party.

But voter by voter, state by state it is happening. Britain, for example, is going through a period of palpable resentment in the street. Voters are disillusioned not only with the government but with all the main parties. They too are fighting for the middle ground and have left a lot of disaffected people on the fringes.

Tory leader Michael Howard has become the most vocal champion of the anti-Bush anti-Iraq war whingers from the two main parties. His continuing opportunistic grumbling about the Iraq war has left him perched to the left of Senator Kerry, who in his concession speech urged Americans to support their new president to win the war in Iraq. Howard is now boasting of how he has yet to congratulate President Bush on his re-election. Washington already has a low opinion of Britain’s Tories. Howard seems determined to waste what little goodwill remains between the west’s two leading conservative parties.

Britain is becoming like France, with large centrist party in power (either will do) and an opposition establishment that broadly agrees with the government, only offering cosmetic alternatives. Real change is not on the menu for voters.

This is true even on the European level. Forget even the chummy backroom deals between the Socialist bloc and the Christian democrats that lead to the appointment of mediocre timeservers instead of decent statesmen. The European Union itself is the most absurdly dated monolithic bureaucratic folly since the Soviet Union. Despite the unconvincing efforts of the EU’s right-liberals, the union continues to embody the principles of international socialism, driven by a utopian bureaucratic elite which rams through a staggering amount of laws aimed at re-engineering society according to its morality.

A morality built on doubtful Historicism and bogus inevitability. Its courts, which are about to be handed a blank cheque in the form of the European constitution, rule on the principle of the political motive of ‘an ever closer union’ thus denying proper justice.

Political power is shared and divided according to good behaviour among the various states, the big policy decisions bartered and traded behind closed doors (like your fishing industry for our budget deficit) and the best jobs divided up among the believers.

As for democracy, or the lack of it, well some will admit that it can be a troublesome detail but generally the trick is to plough forward with the agenda, sign the deals and put it to the plebs when its too late, or never at all. If it’s a petulant small country that votes the wrong way then make them re-vote until they get it right.

And as for National democracy? Well, it doesn’t matter most of the time because the vast majority of our laws are now made in Brussels - and don’t forget that they have a morally superior vision of the future over there!

This vision is shared by nearly every mainstream broadcaster and newspaper of record – not to mention the main political parties - right across Europe. Unfortunately, Europe has yet to produce a George Bush capable of shaking its elite out of its tree.

But don’t give up hope too quickly. Ideas and political events can have a momentum of their own. Relentless Bush bashing turned out to backfire in the US and the wrong campaign message for the media turned out to be the right message for the voters.

In Europe, relentless left wing pontificating could backfire in the same way. Europeans may suddenly want a government that acts in their interest and that is in some way representative. No doubt the BBC, Guardian, Le Monde and their colleagues will warn us of the dangerous “religious right rednecks” in our midst.

But the ‘morally-correct Europeans’ may not be in such a strong position after all.

The consultation document “A Modern Regional Policy for the UK” issued by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister makes it clear that the policy is EU inspired. This is designed to balkanise the UK into regions dependent upon the largesse of the EU and thus expedite the break-up of the nation state which is the aim of the EU. Even Michael Heseltine a noted europhile has said that the regional policy is unacceptable. I did not see any reference to the EU dimension in your sycophantic ‘analysis’
….
And while we are on the subject of regional government how about an English one?? You know, so that when laws and bills are passed that only affect England (University top up fees, foundation hospitals, fox hunting etc ad nauseum!) only MP’s elected in England are allowed to vote on them. At present this government uses its Scottish and Welsh MP’s to railroad through bills that only affect England. Now that would be a real Regional Assembly I would vote for, but we’ll never get it, because they need English taxes too much for the good of the whole Union! So much regional freedom
….
The point missing from the above is that assemblies are a foisted layer of extra government with powers stolen from local councils. The East of England assembly is one of the worst examples of this, it has just agreed to hundreds of thousands of houses to be built across Essex and the East and yet all Borough Councils and County councils are against this. The only reason the EERA agreed the extra houses is because they know if they dont kow-tow to national governments desires they will be abolished. The Regional Assemblies, as they stand, are nothing to do with democracy, they are everything to do with national government imposing its will on local decision making and riding rough-shod over publicly elected bodies. It is a shame the BBC are trying to put some sheen of democracy on these local Junta’s of of local lackey’s. The only real way of Joe Public to get a voice on these organisations is to become a journey man councillor with a mainstream party and hope you eventually get enough councillors to nominate you. Is it worth it? You bet the expense accounts are huge, with lots of extra junkets and ‘research’ trips far and wide e.g. going to see how the Australian regional parliaments work! The sooner we get rid of this gravy train the better, it makes the EU look like a model of economic frugality
…
I would like to know why the BBC, a publicly funded body, is plugging the cause of regional asseblies, particularly as people have voted a resounding NO.

It is against the BBC’s charter to pursue a party political agenda.

This calls into question the validity of the licence fee