#and the game goes until two people are duelling each other which usually ends out of like boredom cuz the games would go rlly long since

[imspardagus]

Last Supper – the Death Throes of a Dying Democracy

You can learn all you need to know about the state of democracy in a nation by the people who are claiming its support. It’s so obvious even a child can see it, as my son demonstrated around the age of eleven.

 “Dad, have you noticed that all the countries run by dictators call themselves “Democratic”?”

 Not all, but point taken. It is not just patriotism that is the last refuge of scoundrels. They – the sleazy people who own and run our gutter press, the carpetbaggers who sell their miserable souls for a rotten political preferment or a “consultancy”, the snide and repellent racists who make a fat living out of whipping up fear of foreigners and people with different coloured skins, the so-called journalists who put their ability to spin words at the disposal of the indecently rich and oppressively powerful - claim a second home paid for by us: democracy.

 Never has the Atlantic Ocean seemed so dangerously narrow as now, with Donald Trump, aka Baron Bombast, an unwholesome, ageing spoilt child, notionally at the helm. He asserts his prerogative with a regal entitlement not seen since the overthrow of the Divine Right of Kings in 17th Century Britain, claiming it as the outcome of a great democratic victory. It is not, of course. The only parts of the process that he won were those that skewered and skewed the democratic process: the primaries and the electoral colleges (which he himself derided until they gave him the result he wanted). When it came to the votes of the people, he lost to his rival by a significant margin: 2.8 million votes, the greatest margin of popular defeat in American history.

 Trump has an answer to that popular defeat. It is the same answer he has anytime an inconvenient fact emerges. He rejects it. The apparent majority was due to “voter fraud”. Because we know that only Democrats commit voter fraud. Trump’s core voters are too muscle-bound in the head to do anything so intellectually demanding as rig a vote. And the Russians are our fwends.

 But he still claims to have the mandate of the people, which he pretends puts him above the law (just a load of biased judges) and entitles him to spout and sign whatever racist and bellicose crap that forms in what he is pleased to call his mind. Off he goes with a Trumpety-trump, Trump, Trump, Trump. Humpty-Trumpty in whose head his words mean just what he wants them to mean. “Failing media selling fake news. Sad.”

 We here in the UK can’t afford to be too sniffy about all this, of course. True, in the UK, since 1945, there has only been one instance of the Queen awarding the right to rule to a party that had not won the majority of the votes cast in a general election (and only one of a minority party being handed the right to rule by an even smaller minority party in a stitch up of the electorate). But it doesn’t end there. In fact it has hardly started. We actually do have media whose purpose is to sell fake news: The Sun, The Mail and The Express. But it’s the party system first and foremost that corrupts our democracy. That and its enforcers, the Whips.

 Parties? They’re the bedrock of democracy, aren’t they? Let’s see. They effectively marginalise any candidate who does not throw his or her lot in with them. They do this by rendering the process of getting elected so expensive that no ordinary person can compete, using party machinery in such a way that, if translated into a commercial setting, their conduct would be classified as abuse of a dominant position.

 To fund this, they take money off people – and corporations and organisations (which, let us not forget, have no right to vote) - and these backers naturally expect favours in return: titles, special consideration, private access to Ministers: all anti-democratic activities.

 They select and groom the candidates we are offered. They dictate the manifestos. They dictate the publicity and can afford to out-shout any ordinary citizen. They claim the right to prime broadcasting time while arranging things so that their political advertising is not subject to regulation or sanction for misrepresentation. And they side-line issues that local electorates may think merit consideration, puffing up into “national” issues things that they think they can manipulate to their advantage.

 And on polling day we have no alternative to choosing one of them other than not voting. There is no facility for us to reject all the candidates and demand a fresh panel to choose from. It’s all or nothing in our democracy, a prix-fixe menu with no substitutions.  

 When we do get to vote, most of our votes count for nothing as the candidate with a simple majority takes the prize, even though the votes he or she did not secure may outnumber those he did by a substantial margin.

 It’s called “first past the post”, pandering to our cultural addiction to “winners and losers” and it would not actually matter if the individual who succeeded did so on his or her personal merit as a potential representative of the constituency. But as recent events have shown those of us who hadn’t already worked it out, from the moment a politician is elected their allegiance is owed first and foremost to their party.

 No wonder that people are disinclined to vote. It is not just laziness or indifference – though there may be some of that. It is the natural response to an effective disenfranchisement, a refusal to be complicit in a fraudulent process. But it means they - the Parties - win, every time.

 If this is corruption, which objectively it has a clear claim to be, it is so deeply enshrined within the system that few can see it as such. We have reached a position where, at a local level, constituents’ interests are deemed to be served by what the Party is undertaking nationally and where the national interest is what the Party chooses to treat as the national interest, which usually coincides with what the Party wants to do.

 So democracy off to a bad start, then. But when we get this set of drones into Parliament things get worse.

 The phrase “elected government” has become such a commonplace that we tend to forget that it is a lie. No government is elected in the UK. The House of Commons is elected. The Scottish Parliament is elected. The Welsh and Northern Irish Assemblies are elected. But governments are appointed. The UK Government is formed by a person chosen by the Queen. Her choice is made on the pragmatic basis that this individual will be able to command a majority in Parliament so as to impose his or her party’s policies.

 Now hold on. Isn’t it fundamental to the British Constitution that Parliament is supreme? Isn’t that the point of those elections: the cornerstone of our claim to being a democracy? So what is all this about the executive – for that is what her Majesty’s government is (the constitutional equivalent of the European Commission, if you want the right analogy) being able to command a majority within Parliament?

 Party again. Party and the Whips. Once elected to the House of Commons, the vast majority of MPs on all sides consider themselves the foot soldiers of their party. It is a war fought out in a tiny chamber. The lines are drawn even in the seating plan of the House: Government ranks and Opposition ranks. The two armies face each other across a gap constructed so that the two front benches (where the generals sit) are more than two sword’s length apart (the distance is said to have been set to prevent duelling). You may not like your own side but side with the enemy? Never.

 No wonder then that MPs quickly forget that they are there as representatives of those that elected them.

 This gang mentality is usually self-reinforcing. It plays on human tribal behaviour: the need to belong being defined by those that don’t. But should any MP have to be persuaded where his or her loyalties lie, as in any gang there are the enforcers. In Parliaments they are pleasantly known as “The Whips” – originally, the whippers in. As the Parliament website blithely puts it:

 “Whips are MPs or Members of the House of Lords appointed by each party in Parliament to help organise their party's contribution to parliamentary business. One of their responsibilities is making sure the maximum number of their party members vote, and vote the way their party wants.”

 And with this, the game is all but up for democracy. Strapped to a bed and sedated, only to be roused once every so many years when the time has come for the parties to flatter themselves that they have the support of the poor misinformed and manipulated public – us – and thus the absolute right to rule over us.

 It would be a nice conceit to believe that it wasn’t supposed to be like this. But it was. The system was not designed for the likes of us, the plebs. Heavens, the idea that the great unwashed of British society should be allowed to determine the laws that governed them – or to be free to choose their representatives was beyond laughable when Parliament was in its formative stages. No, the task of governing fell naturally to those who, through breeding and wealth, had demonstrated themselves to be leaders of men. Elections were simply a device for deciding which of them would have his hand on the reins. Elections were on the whole less bloody, and cheaper, than open warfare and anyway the nobility had more in common with each other than they did with the common people.

 Just as kings had, for centuries, believed in the divine right to rule, so, to all intents, did the parliamentarians that unseated them. Loyalty, a princely habit, was woven into the fabric of the king’s stolen robes. So, naturally, when our politicians put on those robes, loyalty to party came before all else.

 And when enfranchisement spread down through the ranks of society and new parties, claiming to represent the working class emerged, it did not take long for their representatives to imbibe the draught of privilege and to learn the sophistry that serving the party means serving the people.

 Too cynical? Only a tad.

 Step up Jeremy Corbyn. Now Jeremy is an honourable man (so are they all honourable men, but Jeremy especially so). And Jeremy says that the EU referendum amounted to the expression of the democratic will of the people. And Jeremy believes in democracy, doesn’t he. He is an honourable man. After all, he has taken on the leadership of his party not because he wanted it but simply because his members insisted. Dragged to the chair by an overwhelming majority adoring fans when he wanted nothing more than to be at home making jam.

 Jeremy knows all about the need to put conscience before party. Before he ascended unto the leadership of the Labour Party he had, after all, rebelled against their whip on over 400 occasions. He is an honourable man.

 So, faced with the greatest constitutional issue of the past 40 years – whether to support Theresa May’s surprising determination to trigger an irrevocable process of departure from the European Union (surprising because on all previous occasions when there has been a political hand grenade in the room Terry has decidedly not been there) what does the honourable Jeremy do? he imposes a three-line whip, requiring his party, the official opposition party, to troop into the same lobby as the Tories. Between them, Jerry and Terry make their MPs – our MPs – vote for Brexit.

 What? I hear you cry. Some mistake surely.

 It cannot of course be that Jeremy allowed his personal long-standing Bennite nationalist dislike of the EU to come before his duty to his country.  No that would have been dishonourable and Jeremy is an honourable man. No, apparently it is that when 37% of the electorate, fed lies, decided on exit, that was game set and match for democracy. Any attempt to question what the vote meant and how it was obtained or whether anyone might now be having second thoughts must be anti-democratic and unpatriotic. 15 million people found their concerns counted for nothing – a dread that dare not speak its name. Oh yes, the Lib Dems were prepared to speak out. And the SNP. But even though the majority of Labour voters had voted not to leave the EU, and even though the judgment of the vast majority of their MPs was against leaving the EU, those self-same MPs (with a mere handful of honourable exceptions) turned off their consciences, turned off their free will, turned off their duty to serve the national interest and, in the avowed belief that they were actually doing the right thing, put their vote at Jeremy’s disposal. And Jeremy handed them on a plate to Theresa.

 Suggestions that there should be a second referendum were contemptuously rejected. 17 million out of 65 million people had spoken and that was the incontestable will of the people. To seek confirmation would be undemocratic. Of course it would. That’s why we have only ever had one general election. Once a minority of the people have spoken about which party they want to fuck the country up, there’s no going back on it. We’re stuck with that decision forever. Just like when we voted in 1975 to join the EEC, that was a choice never to be challenged. Oh, wait…

 Nicky Morgan found her own honourable course by abstaining. A total failure to carry out your duties as an MP is clearly better than exercising the trust placed in you by your constituents. George Osborne took a leaf out of his economic success and was notably absent.

 As Jesus didn’t say at the Last Supper when the bill came, “The fight starts here.” No that was what the honourable Jerry came out with after he had ensured that the Bill to allow Terry to press the button on the UK’s devastation had passed unamended through the Commons.

 He was right. The fight to ensure the same opened up in the Lords and again he imposed a three-line whip to suppress any opposition.

 I have remarked before that an ignorant or misinformed democracy is indistinguishable from mob rule. The European Referendum was that thought blazed across the skies. Everyone in the Leave camp knew they were lying. Not just bending the truth, lying. Lying as Trump lied, to get their corrupt way. Democracy meant – and means – nothing to them. They hold the people they patronise and dupe in utter contempt: peasants. But the peasants bought it and now so have we.

 How far a cry is this Jerry and Terry show from Edmund Burke’s strictures on the duty of an MP:

 Certainly, gentlemen, it ought to be the happiness and glory of a representative to live in the strictest union, the closest correspondence, and the most unreserved communication with his constituents. Their wishes ought to have great weight with him; their opinion, high respect; their business, unremitted attention. It is his duty to sacrifice his repose, his pleasures, his satisfactions, to theirs; and above all, ever, and in all cases, to prefer their interest to his own. But his unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure; no, nor from the law and the constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

 How far is it from Churchill’s:

 The first duty of a member of Parliament is to do what he thinks in his faithful and disinterested judgement is right and necessary for the honour and safety of Great Britain. His second duty is to his constituents, of whom he is the representative but not the delegate. Burke's famous declaration on this subject is well known. It is only in the third place that his duty to party organization or programme takes rank. All these three loyalties should be observed, but there in no doubt of the order in which they stand under any healthy manifestation of democracy.

  Between them, Jeremy Corbyn and Theresa May, supported by a self-excusing rabble of MPs and privileged peers, and a coterie of rogues and xenophobes in pursuit of the interests of a handful of self-serving plutocrats, have administered the last rites to democracy in the UK. And many of the people they are duty bound to serve will go without supper because of them.