They just don’t get it

The anti-democrats

The reaction within the establishment to David Cameron’s speech pledging an in-out referendum on the EU, if he manages to remain Prime Minister after the next general election, shows how detached and contemptuous its members are.

First up we had Ed Miliband, puffing his chest out like a gooney bird in the House of Commons, declaring ‘his’ party would not allow the people to choose the way this country is governed.

It seems the socialist dogma of common ownership is limited to taking money from those who have it, to lavish in return for votes on those who want it, but don’t go out and earn it.  For Comrade Ed and his fellow travellers when it comes to common ownership of this country, only the self selecting elitists who have served their time in party youth organisations, think tanks and policy units, get to decide.

Then we had Nick Clegg chipping in with the same utterly discredited arguments he used in favour of the lunacy of the UK ditching sterling and adopting the Euro, namely that this issue will cause uncertainty for business and the economy and jobs and investment will be at risk.

Then with every man and his dog across the continent chipping in their tuppence worth, the august pages of the Barclay Brother Beano provided a platform for Fraser Nelson to opine that while David Cameron puts his faith in the people, Ed Miliband clings rigidly to belief in the state.  Fraser Nelson’s take on this issue reveals his paternalist Tory streak:

All of a sudden, “this Cameron” finds himself armed with a very powerful question to ask his opponents at election time: “We trust the people. Why don’t you?”

Trust the people? Trust them to do what? Why, to do what Cameron wants them to do of course!  It speaks volumes of the establishment that this issue is presented in terms of ‘trust’.

Democratically-minded people would not be talking about trusting the people any more than they would be declaring they would not be holding a referendum.  True democrats would be talking about letting the people decide and seeking the people’s consent. They would be talking about representing the wishes of the people.  But that doesn’t occur to the likes of Cameron, Clegg, Miliband or hacks like Nelson. These are people who belive they have a divine right to impose their wishes and dictate what will be to everyone else, and those who are their cheerleaders.  When it comes to democracy they just don’t get it.

That is why we need to be sceptical and suspicious of the motives of all members of this insular, self serving crowd.  They are not trying to serve interests, only their own.

Miliband illustrates why politics is broken

Readers may be shocked that Ed Miliband of all people is getting any credit from this blog, but he performed a valuable public service yesterday at Prime Minister’s Questions – albeit unwittingly.

In his desperate desire to give the impression of being a strong leader – stop sniggering at the back – and take advantage of supposed Tory in-fighting over renegotiation of powers from the EU, Miliband accused David Cameron of ‘losing control of his party’. That little soundbite said it all.

There, in his own words, Miliband demonstrated he knows nothing about leadership. Among a number of important qualities, good leaders share one in particular, the ability to listen to and take on board the views of people who disagree with them in order to clarify or modify their thinking. Miliband’s perspective on leadership however reflects his dogmatic socialist worldview that leadership is about dictating to people, keeping them under control and only listening to oneself.

But what else can one expect from a man whose life has been one long training programme to become an MP; to the extent that he has never done a proper job in his life yet is worth several million pounds and claims to speak for the less well off in society? In what possible way can he relate to the everyday struggles of we ordinary people outside the establishment?

Setting that aside, Miliband unwittingly showed complete contempt for Labour Party members by trying to portray himself, in contrast to Cameron, as in control of his party and its MPs. The party is owned by its members, not Ed Miliband. Such arrogance is nauseating, yet uniform among the establishment claque of which Miliband is a youth product turned full member.

What all this underlines is that the party political process, which is riven with personality politics, does not and cannot serve the interests of ordinary people. It is said if politics could change anything they would ban it – that is only true of party politics where mindsets such as Miliband’s and Cameron’s are all pervasive.

Politics is far broader than the narrow interests of political parties, stuffed with control freaks who devote their lives to lining their pockets and accumulating positions of power as far removed from accountability as possible, while telling other people what’s best for them. Grassroots politics and campaigning, without stifling structures and dictatorial leaders, has and still can get things changed. That is why the politicians and establishment fear that approach.

We are in a much changed world and living in challenging times. Now, more than ever, grassroots campaigns rather than party politics are the route to achieving ends. Thanks to Miliband more people may wake up to this and see that loose groups with substantial autonomy, that offer a vision for people to support if they wish and gives them space to campaign in their own way, is far more powerful than trying to herd people within a party and forcing them to swallow whole that which an autocrat decrees to be the way things must be.

People want proper listening and receptive leaders. They don’t want to be controlled Miliband fashion.

Germans united in regret (and self interest) over Britain’s EU stance

Different day, same inane rubbish in the media where they repeat the same establishment arguments already made ad-infinitum.  This time it’s the turn of the BBC’s Mark Urban to offer a variation on the ‘Germans are displeased with us‘ theme.

There is no real dissent across the German political spectrum on the issues of integrating the European Union (EU) more closely, apart from on the extreme right.

gushes Urban.  Well Mr Urban, with the exception of UKIP, there’s no real dissent across the British political spectrum on the issue either – Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, Plaid and the SNP all crave more ‘Europe’.

From Ralph Brinkhaus, a local member of the German parliament, the Bundestag, to Christine Lemster, a chemistry student at Hamburg University, we heard a similar refrain – the UK and Germany ought to be natural allies, and it is too bad that they cannot unite around EU issues.

Stop, Mr Urban, you’re breaking my heart.  Of course we can be natural allies and we can unite around issues with Germany.  But where is the explanation about why we need to hand over control of our country in order to do so?

We are natural allies with the United States and unite with them around issues, but no one is suggesting we need to have political union with them to achieve it.  So why do we need political union in Europe?  As ever the europhile and EU grant-grabbing BBC demonstrate the closed thinking that colours their reporting of the issue.

The second issue on which there appears to be wide agreement is that Germany opposes the type of renegotiation of membership terms or competencies that UK Prime Minister David Cameron has talked about.

Well, heaven forbid this country should have the temerity to do something that doesn’t suit the agenda of the political class in Germany, or France, or Spain, or Italy.  How damned unreasonable of us.  We should be bloody well ashamed of ourselves for such harbouring such disgracefully selfish thoughts.

The last topic where the Germans offer Tory Eurosceptics cold comfort is on their idea that Britain, even if it actually left the EU, could negotiate the same type of free trade arrangement with it that Norway or Switzerland have.

We went to the Sennheiser audio plant near Hanover; where something like 10% of their worldwide sales are made in the UK, to canvass their view on this:

“I know how complicated it is to negotiate”, said board member Volker Bertels, referring to Switzerland’s long discussions over the terms of access to the European market, adding that in the case of the UK, “we all need to be careful about putting up additional obstacles”.

Once again the media paints this issue as being about one section of one political party.  They are actually doing contortions now to avoid any recognition that it is voters who have pushed this debate to the forefront through opinion polls and their possible voting intentions.  So it’s hard to get an agreement in a short time.  Switzerland got plenty of bi-lateral agreements because they have what others want and are interested in buying what others have to sell.  Provided the trade rules were in place to allow the free flow of goods and services then the market will do the rest.

So many words written by Mark Urban.  Yet none of them are devoted to any examination of the UK’s interests.  Instead he uses his platform to effectively shill for the Germans.  Such is the mindset of the establishment’s state broadcaster.  Is there anyone in the British establishment who gives a damn about this country’s interests rather than agonise about how inconvenient our potential actions might be for other countries?  There’s a word for these people.  Quislings.

David Cameron’s Impotent Number 10

Over at the paywalled Sunday Times there is a story that anyone who has worked within representative politics will recognise, as subscribers are told that David Cameron often learns of his policies from reading the papers and listening to the radio:

‘David Cameron’s former policy chief has revealed his “horror” at the powerlessness of Downing Street to control government decisions, admitting the prime minister often finds out about policies from the radio or newspapers — and in many cases opposes them.

‘Steve Hilton, who remains one of Cameron’s close confidants, said: “Very often you’ll wake up in the morning and hear on the radio or the news or see something in the newspapers about something the government is doing. And you think, well, hang on a second — it’s not just that we didn’t know it was happening, but we don’t even agree with it!  The government can be doing things … and we don’t agree with it? How can that be?”

‘He described how No 10 is frequently left out of the loop as important policy changes are pushed through by ‘paper-shuffling’ mandarins.”‘

This is what happens when civil servants in government departments and the various tiers of local authorities take their orders and direction not from elected politicians in Westminster or City and Town Halls, but from the various organs of our supreme government in Brussels, the EU.

This is the state of ‘democracy’ in 21st Century Britain.  The likes of Cameron cannot have complaint about this state of affairs, it is what they support and want to maintain.  So any bleating from them should be treated with the contempt it deserves.  But the British people do have cause for complaint.

What is being done by the civil service, following the instructions of a foreign entity that is answerable to one one, has not been elected and cannot be removed by this country’s voters, operating outside of democratic accountability can justly be described as a coup d’etat – albeit one the idiot politicians have facilitated by signing over huge swathes of power without understanding what that entails and without asking the permission of the people they are supposed to serve.  The Irish get it.

This is why the UK needs to become independent again by leaving the EU.

Useful idiots Big business mandarins like Richard Branson couldn’t care less about democratic legitimacy and accountability matters such as these, and certainly don’t want ordinary people to understand the consequences of EU membership for this country.  They prefer to retail scare stories about a departure from the EU threatening our economy and jobs, while deliberately ignoring the fact being part of the single market does not require this country to outsource political control by being a member of the EU.

It is not xenophobic or acting like a Little Englander to want the UK to leave the EU, rather it is an expression of the desire for democracy – people power – that the political class cannot stand and is trying to erode.  We are Better Off Out of the EU.

Telegraph’s hack pack continues ramping up the pro-EU narrative

If anyone was in any doubt that the Barclay Brothers’ Telegraph is planting its flag firmly on europhile ‘in’ campaign ground, then their Head of Business, Damian Reece, has provided clear evidence of it in that comic, declaring in a piece titled ‘We may soon need Europe more than Europe needs us’ that:

For as long as I have been in work I’ve been writing about Europe’s single currency in one way or another, from the Exchange Rate Mechanism to a eurozone break-up.

We could try to negotiate our own bilateral trade agreements but given our market of 60m people we’re unlikely to win such attractive terms as a market such as the EU’s 500m.

All that time I’ve maintained a stubborn opposition to Britain’s membership. But now an equally difficult choice is looming, which centres on what sort of Europeans do we want to be or, perhaps more realistically, what sort of Europeans can we be?

Having spent years currying favour with its readers with various criticisms of the EU, now that push is coming to shove the Telegraph’s hack pack is declaring itself for the UK to stay firmly inside the EU pumping out evidence-free strawman articles and commentary, while downplaying or completely ignoring every negative aspect of membership.  For example, in light of a raft of opinion polls how could Reece have possibly concluded that:

There is a consensus here that the UK must retain its membership of the single market but that we should remain outside the single currency.

Where there is evidence that Reece’s assertions simply don’t stand up to scrutiny, he simply dismisses it, as he does in this little section:

But as the brakes come off world trade, the biggest beneficiaries will be members of the biggest trading blocs. Those outside these groups risk missing out on the biggest benefits of multilateralism and trying to join after the event risks less favourable terms. We could try to negotiate our own bilateral agreements but given our market of 60m people we’re unlikely to win such attractive terms as a market such as the EU’s 500m. It’s true the likes of Switzerland do it but I don’t believe we should be aspiring to be Switzerland — no offence to the Swiss.

So his argument is undermined by evidence that the Swiss, a much smaller entity than the UK, successfully negotiate bi-lateral agreements. So to deal with that inconvenient fact he puts up another strawman that we shouldn’t be aspiring to be like the Swiss.  Eh?  That’s the only way he can make his argument stand up?  Such deep thinking.

The even more inconvenient fact Reece dodges is that Switzerland – with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein – make up the EFTA group of countries. and they do have real influence along with all-important independence.  The EFTA countries are highly competitive, open economies representing a sizeable market with strong per capita purchasing power.  There is always an option for Britain to join that bloc, if only as a temporary step, and that bloc could easily cooperate to secure attractive world trade terms.  Indeed, EFTA could easily transform itself into something different and even more beneficial.  But of course when europhilia is coursing through one’s veins, one is blinded to any alternative to remaining in the EU’s unnecessary and anti-democratic political union.

It seems the only europhile argument is that we should sacrifice this country’s ability to govern itself in return for the illusion of ‘influence’ and access to a market that is in any case open to other countries outside the EU.  And Reece is buying in to it along with the mythical renegotiation meme pushed by the Tories and their little helpers that still leaves the EU in control of the UK.

As faith in the political class is at an all time low and still falling, thankfully so is faith in the fourth estate as the disdain and mistrust extends out to encompass the whole establishment – a point Lord Justice Leveson would do well to grasp.  That much is clear from reading the almost 900 comments the overwhelmingly majority of which ridicule, challenge and deconstruct Reece’s supposed new-found europhilia.

But the important fact to take from all this is the establishment is setting itself against the wishes of the people, therefore serving interests other than ours.

It will necessitate an organic, grassroots campaign of a type not adopted here before, reaching out directly to the electorate to explain why leaving the EU will be beneficial for this country.  It’s the only way a positive message can be presented that by-passes the lies and distortions of the political class and their poodles in the mainstream media.  Battle needs to be joined for the future of the United Kingdom.

Establishment arrogance redux

It never gets old, but by God it’s bloody boring. Once again the establishment is indulging itself with a substantial dose of hubris, with Bruce Anderson leading the charge.

His op-ed in the Tory Wet propaganda sheet Barclay Brother Beano says it all, ‘Until David Cameron learns to explain himself, voters will not trust him – Many natural Tories are losing faith in a party that appears to ignore their opinions’.

Apparently the focus is on those people Anderson and CCO label as ‘potential’ Tory voters. By that logic however those people are also potentially voters for every other candidate and party, but that kind of common sense eludes them.

But the real issue here concerns the assessment of Anderson and his puppet masters in Cameron’s office; it’s not that Cameron is wrong, oh no, it’s just people don’t understand what he’s getting at because we’re presumably too thick.

It’s obviously a simple communication problem and nothing to do with the fact many of us don’t agree with Cameron’s viewpoint and direction. After all, how could anyone possibly disagree with the supremely educated, all-knowing and all-wise Cameron? Ungrateful rabble of serfs. By now we should all get that the benevolent political class know what’s best for us. No need to think, just get on with life, work your fingers to the bone, hand over your money for them to spend as they see fit and do what they tell us. It’s all so easy really.

Which is why Anderson writes complete and utter bullshit, such as this:

To think about David Cameron’s premiership is to ponder on paradox. Although he is the dominant figure in British politics, he has only shallow roots in public affection; sometimes, it seems, in his own party’s loyalty. Although he will always rise to a big occasion with a big speech, most voters have only a vague idea as to who he is or what he stands for. Politics, abhorring a vacuum, often fills it with a four-letter word – in this case, Eton. That is the one fact which everyone knows about the Prime Minister: where he went to school. It is not a helpful fact.

Cameron can deliver a big speech, you know… You just don’t know enough about him… Therefore your criticism and dislike of him is just all so jolly unfair… blah blah blah. The problem for Bullshit Brucie’s ludicrous little strawman is that we do know what Cameron is for. We see his direction very clearly. We see our interests are plainly not his interests. We can see power seeking for its own sake for what it is. We get it when we demand to make our own decisions and he refuses because it doesn’t fit with his wishes. It’s just we happen to know best what is good for us and what we want.

To suggest anything other is exhibit unbelievable self delusion and an incredible kind of arrogance – two qualities that exist with staggering abundance among members of the establishment. It all makes for thousands of column inches of wind, noise and bluster. Increasingly is it that which is being ignored. Far from not knowing or understanding, it is because more and more people know and understand far better than ever before that the bubbleista find they are communicating with themselves.

They are now totally irrelevant. Soon they will be wholly illegitimate too. Then things will start to get interesting.

Arse kissing establishment BBC scum

Strongly worded title perhaps. But after the previous post from the early hours of this morning that’s the cleaned up version of the description of the hypocritical parasites known as the BBC. Moments ago on the BBC Radio 4 Today programme John Humphrys interviewed Margaret Hodge, champagne socialist chairman of the Public Accounts Select Committee.

Yet again Hodge took the platform afforded to her to describe companies who legally structure their headquarters and finances to pay tax overseas instead of here in the UK as ‘immoral’.  She proudly informed Humphrys that she no longer shops at Amazon or drinks at Starbucks as a result.  This despite the revelation that the family business Hodge herself owns shares in – and allegedly uses tax minimising measures to hold others in trust and in children’s names – pays just 0.01pc tax on £2.1bn of business generated in the UK.

But that of course is ok for a taxpayer soaking, troughing hypocrite like Hodge, who last year allegedly earned from her £1.8million worth of shares a dividend from Stemcor of more than £56,000 – much greater than the gross pay of the vast majority of the population.

Despite this knowledge, John Humphrys either took the decision not to challenge this hypocrisy, followed an editorial decision not to bring it up or timidly accepted a demand from Hodge not to bring it up (we will never know because any FOI request to discover the truth will be met with the standard refusal because the information is supposedly held for the purposes of ‘journalism, art or literature,’).

This is the contemptible establishment at work.  Whipping up discord, hysteria and resentment among sections of society over perfectly legal behaviour, but in cowardly fashion carefully evading scrutiny of their own alleged behaviour by simply omitting any mention of it.  Yes, scum.

An alarm call for democracy? Oh please…

There is a collapse of trust in those in charge, and especially in our politicians, which should thoroughly alarm all who care about democracy.

So says Max Hastings, writing in the Daily Mail in response to George Galloway’s by-election win in Bradford West.

As is so often the case, Hastings manages to miss the point in stunning fashion.  It isn’t an alarm call to those who care about democracy, it is the result of the absence of democracy.

Restricted to going through the motions of a democratic process – which is essentially meaningless because we do not live in a democracy, the people have no control over their ‘elected representatives’ and in any case the real governing is performed by a self selecting elite that is neither elected by nor accountable to the populace – the people have done the one thing they could in the circumstances and elected the candidate who had the appearance of being anti establishment.

Never mind that Galloway is one of the more base examples of the vile, self serving and opportunist pondlife that slithers its way around the streets of Westminster.  Just the notion of being outside the establishment, combined with playing racial identity politics, was enough to see votes flood his way and send him back to suck some more at the public teat.

While Hastings prattles on in his uniquely arrogant and condescending manner, about government failing to address ‘passionate public sentiment’ about things such as human rights legislation, unrestricted immigration, perverted justice system, overbearing Health and Safety and youth unemployment, you will find not one reference about the EU’s role and power in these areas – or that this country’s MPs have emasculated themselves and refuse to take back power from the Brussels bureaucracy.

You will also find not one reference to the fact this country’s businesses and people pay more than enough tax to provide for good essential services along with a sound safety net for those vulnerable people in our society who cannot fend for themselves independently, and those who fall into hardship.  The real problem is skewed spending priorities and wasteful use of our money on discretionary programmes or ideological whims.

When these foundational issues such as these are absent from a supposedly comprehensive assessment of what voters were doing in Bradford West on Thursday, why should we pay any attention to what this pompous fool has to say about democracy?

Hastings is no different to the grubbing climbers he is writing about.  He is every bit as much part of the claque inside the bubble that insulates itself from the reality of the world outside Westminster, yet which deigns to lecture us about our condition, our thoughts and our wishes.

Broadcaster political bias – not just a BBC phenomenon

Regular readers will be familiar with the often noted examples of BBC bias when it comes to political coverage and promoting activism.

But a piece in the Irish Independent today shows the problem of state broadcaster employees exhibiting political bias is not confined to the BBC.

It seems monitoring of Ireland’s RTE news and current affairs coverage by Fianna Fail has thrown up some interesting statistics showing a similar phenomenon on the other side of the Irish Sea, particularly with the flagship Prime Time programme.  Fianna Fail have submitted a dossier to RTE outlining their accusation of bias by the broadcaster:

The submission, which contained statistical evidence, states: “Prime Time appears to have taken a radically different approach to covering opposition voice. Before the election, share of voice was clearly biased in favour of the opposition. Since the election, that bias has been dramatically reversed.”

It goes on to say that despite identical Dail representation, Labour enjoyed 21.6 per cent share of voice before the election (when in opposition), compared to Fianna Fail’s 10.1 per cent after the election (having lost the election and become the main opposition). Fianna Fail is now getting more than 100 per cent less access to Prime Time than the Labour Party in the same position.  It certainly suggests a very uneven approach to coverage that amounts to bias by omission.

Of course it won’t come as a shock that the more avowedly socialist a political party is, the more favoured it is by media corps stuffed to the gills with ‘progressive’ hacks keen to push their ideology on the public.  But in Ireland this bunfight is somewhat interesting as the political spectrum ranges from broadly socialist to extreme socialist with nothing approaching a small ‘c’ conservative alternative.  Perhaps ideological purity is the name of the game?

Journalism – the new exclusion zone

The Leveson Inquiry has long since ceased to be something worth watching carefully.  The self righteous bleating of celebrities, whose currency is column inches and photo coverage, about the behaviour of the media; and the weasel words and distortions of the media editors and hacks themselves, is simply too gut churning to put up with.

However, the odd snippet of news worthy material does emerge now and again and one such item has been picked up by the Guardian and covered by FleetStreetBlues and the Press Gazette.  It concerns the evidence yesterday of the editor of the Daily Mail, Paul Dacre.

The inquiry was always likely to give an opportunity for the government seize upon the British capacity for unthinking, emotionalised outrage.  What was it Macaulay said?  ‘We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British public in one of its periodical fits of morality’.  Leveson is the outcome of one of those spectacles.  Well now we see the consequences, an agenda to impose regulation on the media in a way that would suit the media’s own interests.  But it was always likely to provide the mainstream media with an opporunity to shore up its position and make journalism a closed shop – an exclusion zone.  Dacre’s suggestions are merely the articulation of this self interest.  This sycophantic cloak wrapped around vested interest needs to be seen for what it is.

Editors such as Dacre not only allowed, but encouraged their journalists to behave in an appalling manner to generate column hectares of tittle tattle.  They have all but eliminated investigative, public interest journalism.  That has been sacrificed at the altar of immediacy and servicing the 24 hour news cycle with showbusiness gossip and shallow circus politics that intentionally keeps people in ignorance of matters of governance and state control.  It’s a cosy arrangement that suits the newspapers and the people they should be looking to hold to account.

These days, Dacre and his ilk simply preside over teams dedicated to churnalism – lifting copy from the wires of a small number of press agencies with largely anonymous and unaccountable staff, who provide the MSM with copy to cut and paste wholesale into print or digitial form as a ‘news’ – with no effort devoted to fact checking, looking into the sources and their motivations (which are primarily pubic relations companies working for clients), or providing essential context that shows the story in its true light.

Now, having helped dumb down the nation by flooding it with sub-literate huff and puff, Dacre is turning his eye to shutting the door on anyone who might upset the cosy arrangements that are in place.  Self preservation is the key, keeping out the upstart citizen bloggers and young turks who would upset the apple cart of cosy co-existence with the nation’s political and corporate ‘elite’.  That is the agenda. All that is required is for editors to enforce ethical behaviour among their journalists.  But of course, no crisis must be allowed to pass without taking the opportunity to secure some kind of benefit for the tribe, so the excessive ‘solution’ to a very simple problem just so happens to suit the interests of the fourth estate.

Dacre is proposing to make official what was only custom; putting a protective shield around those who are ‘on message’ through a system of approval and certification, ensuring only the hand-picked and vetted can ever identify themselves as a journalist and – more crucially – access the mainstream channels to sell their stories.  It is the last charge of the dead tree press.

In the United States, where regulation is a dirty word for many, there is less deference to the establishment and (rightly) less trust of official and semi-official sources.  Citizen journalists are much more widely read and rewarded.  It inspires more people to put quality news and analysis into the public domain, which in turn attracts more readers.  However, in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in Europe, people have become too reliant on the establishment and a kind of fear holds them back from questioning and challenging in the manner many Americans do.  There is a deference to ‘prestige’ that makes people shun the unofficial and unsanctioned.

For reasons passing understanding, too many people in this country have accepted the establishment’s mantra that as it is ‘official’ and has ‘authority’, it alone can and should be trusted.  That is why our citizen journalism is so far behind that in the US and why the media of which Paul Dacre is a part is so craven.  The establishment has thus been afforded the space to build a security wall around itself to keep ordinary people at bay and Dacre is helping to man that wall in return for some titbits from the table that can be used to entertain the readership – and now working actively to ensure the journalist ‘guards’ he employs can be relied upon to do the same.

This will either further entrench the rancid ineffectiveness of the media, or finally wake more people from their slumber and encourage them to look away from the establishment and its lackeys and seek the information the MSM chooses to ignore or omit from its narrative.  One can only hope it is the latter, but that hope is very small indeed.

Corruption of democracy in Britain

The issue of Whitehall’s establishment of State parties is the battleground over which we must fight to regain democracy in Britain. If the Mandarins win this one, we’re irrevocably lost.

This is the conclusion in the latest excellent piece of must-read blogging by Raedwald.