Drainage

Douglas Murray, a shining beacon of reason in an inky morass of fudge and obfuscation has written that if Brexit is not enacted he may never vote again. He finishes his article with the worrying paragraph: “I’m sure lots of people will say ‘Isn’t that a bit over the top?’ And who knows, perhaps my attitude will change at some crisis point down the road. But the purpose of my saying this is not really to say what I am thinking, but only really to say this: if I am thinking this, what are millions of other people in our country thinking? And what is not imaginable after disenfranchisement on such a scale?“

He is right. Many others have already expressed the same sentiment, but where does that get us? Parades and petitions have had no effect on numerous issues over the years and unless we ape the actions of les gilets jaunes in France experience has shown our so-called leaders to be impervious to the wishes of ordinary people. Besides, riots in the UK are always accompanied by looting and vandalism which has nothing to do with the cause; the usual suspects are always looking for an excuse to get some kicks and free gear.

Our Members of Parliament mock us when they invoke the spirit of democracy and insist that we have the best of all worlds – direct election of representatives who, from their more informed, more morally balanced motives do what is best for us, or rather what they think is best for us. Not for us the tedium of direct democracy; not for us the picking through tortuous legal proceedings to find a form of words that lets everybody come out as winners. No, the business of running a country is far too important to be left to a plebiscite.

But it’s telling isn’t it, that unable to find a solution to the European problem, this enclave of the mightiest and wisest in the land turned to we, the people, to tell them what we wanted. Of course, they had already decided, as we are seeing and they were merely seeking our endorsement so that, in the future, when they sign away our young people’s lives, literally their lives, as conscripts in the EU army for what unknown future wars, they could turn to us and say “But this is what you voted for”.

But it isn’t is it? And things are not always as they seem, for who makes up this cohort of the great and the good?  Are they really the best and the brightest we could find? No, our parliament comprises far too many chancers, thieves, sexual deviants, gangsters, fraudsters and cheats of every persuasion and little evidence of practical intelligence beyond that needed to run any half-successful scam. These are not informed visionaries, but more often examples of those who actively seek power over others - failed lawyers, failed businessmen, failed academics and fanatical ideologues.  If they are truly representative, it speaks very ill of the rest of us.

Labour’s red princes, institutional nepotism, the spads (special advisors - and on what authority do they advise?), student politician, the PPE graduates and so on. We have a system in which people learn, long before they have learned about life, how to be politicians. Party placemen are manoeuvred into safe seats and loyalties are bought and sold, precious little of that loyalty to those who voted. Whatever happened to the gifted amateur, the successful outsider who genuinely wants to give something back?

Already, under our current electoral regime, MPs who do try and represent their constituents quickly learn that those loyalties will stand them in no stead in the party system. But what of Douglas Murray’s depressing prognosis? If we don’t vote then we allow even more patronage, nepotism and greed to rule over us. We would enter a true serfdom, for if the system we voted for doesn’t serve us, the system we don’t vote for will be under no obligation to pay any heed at all to our concerns.

But they are forgetting one thing – if you wish to lord it over your underlings you only have two options left – you already blew the ‘representative democracy’ charade – and these are force or favour. You either institute martial law, for which you need a loyal army (good luck with that, now we have ex-soldiers sleeping on the streets) or you need to buy off your dullards with drugs, sex and stultifyingly tawdry entertainment. Well done on Jungle, Strictly and Real Housewives, by the way, but it’s not enough.

Say what you will about Donald Trump, but he was elected for the same reasons we voted for Brexit and his rumbustious slogan “Drain the swamp!” could not be more apposite. We are at ground zero and now need to adopt a scorched earth policy toward our broken politics. Our government is not fit to govern. Our representatives are not fit to represent us. Ignoring them, letting them carry on as they are, sends no message at all. If we want to be heard we need to shout louder, if we want to be seen we need to act more decisively. And if we want change we have to be that change. Drain that swamp.