Knackered, again. Still actually.
Went to Milton Keynes yesterday, (the whole place feels like an out of town retail park!) for some IT training. The training was ok and my mate from head office drove us down so the journey was a laugh too. Still, my day started at 6:30am and I didn't get home until 8:30pm so as I say, I'm knackered.
Anyway, I know this is a bit late but my reaction to the whole Tory-tax-cut-leak thing just won't go away so here it is. The media seemed to have smelled blood and so crowded in to feed on what they presented as an embarrassingly public self-contradiction for Cameron's New Tories.
I didn't buy this however, in fact I think it was quite the opposite., ie. a cleverly calculated, intentional move. There are several ways in which the leak actually benefits the New Tories and I'm going to consider, oh I don't know, let's see, yep, three of them.
First, the fact that the new Tories appear to have slipped up by allowing the report to be released 'accidentally' a day early may at first seem to suggest incompetence and therefore be a negative thing.
Actually though I think it counters one of the heaviest stigmas the New Tories carry, namely the image of being untrustworthy bastards.
The mild negligence demonstrated here brings with it the impression that these guys aren't actually capable of conning people, ie. they have to be more trustworthy because if they're not they're guaranteed to be found out.
A little tenuous? Perhaps, but I wouldn't underestimate the determine of the New Tories to smooth the edges off their old, spiky image.
Secondly the very nature of the leak allows the New Tories to deliver two mutually exclusive messages simultaneously. On one hand the very mention of the tax cuts suggested are vital reassurance for the New Tories' oldschool, grass roots fascists.
At the same time however, it allows the New Tory leadership to publicly reject the proposals thereby wining them points with the essential centrist Tories and wavering fence sitters.
Talk about doublespeak!
The third, and by far the most significant way in which the leak benefits the New Tories is that it makes them look like a reasonable centrist party.
By unofficially introducing some oldschool right wing economics as a point of reference they make their policies seem less right wing by contrast.
The centre ground is the holy land of British politics, for reasons we’ll get to in a moment, so if you’re, by definition, a right wing party how do you get yourself there without losing your existing support?
Easy, fuck moving yourself, just redefine the centre ground so it’s under your feet!
Gives a new meaning to the idea of ‘taking the centre’ doesn’t it?
Now I’ve said of conspiracy theories in the past that I don’t generally buy into them as they tend to give people in authority too much credit and perpetuate the myth that guys in suits have some kind of mystical superiority.
I don’t feel this particular rule of thumb applies here however, because for as frustratingly cack as elected representatives are by definition, the one thing they can do is play the fucking game, (ie. play us.)
So now why is it that the centre is so important? Well, shocking as may be, we do not live in a democracy, at least not a democracy as we traditionally understand it.
Well, during the last general election I saw an interview with a senior guy from MORI, the polling company. He described how, in reality, there’s actually a select group of between 100,000 - 200,000 people who have decided every election there’s ever been.
It seems there are three basic groups of voters:
those who don’t vote, (both the apathetic and the disillusioned,)
those who always vote the same way, (the oldschool diehards you see at the party conferences,)
those who vote for their own practical interests rather than principals,
This last group are the select few whom every political party we have would happily turn itself inside out to win favour with.
The majority of this select group live in, I believe, very similar socioeconomic circumstances, ie. the middle class.
That’s why ‘green taxes’ are being used as a selling point. These taxes, for all the good they may or may not do the environment, are far more punitive to the poor, (of whom there are far more,) as the represent a much greater percentage of their income.
Despite harming more people than they benefit however, green taxes appear to be the underpinning of the New Tories’ tax plans.
Does any of this seem familiar? Does the fact that I’ve been calling the Conservatives New Tories all the way through this give you a clue as to where I’m going with this?
The current shift, the softening of the New Tories is a 100% mirror image of the journey the Labour Party underwent to gain power and all the issues outlined above applied just as readily there too.
And so to the point.
What this post describes is the one of the most fundamental flaws in our political system.
Let’s forget for a moment that it’s still an elitist system of all the power being concentrate dint he hands of a few, just like the feudal and religious systems we are so quick to mock.
Let’s instead focus on what’s supposed to happen and compare it the scene outlined above.
Political parties are groups of like minded people. If you agree with their views you vote for them, if you don’t, you don’t.
This selection process then yields a parliament that is representative of the nations beliefs and runs our country accordingly.
If anyone out there believes this is what happens then I would LOVE to hear from you. Explain it to me guys because I really cannot see it.
What I see are groups of professional politicians, people who’ve never done anything else, people whose business is that of political power.
These people spend their time trying to sell their party as being whatever product they think a tiny minority of people might want to buy.
That minority, as it turns out, are likely to be driven by the pursuit of material wealth and subsequently heavily influenced by big business.
This in turn means that our ‘great leaders’ are in fact dancing to the tune of those few companies that own most of everything, albeit by proxy via the voter.
What results is a lack of any long term cohesion and so an inability to tackle problems larger than a certain scale.
Some things require long term consistent investments of time, effort and money, public services for example. Clearly, if the system is as suggested here, it simply cannot meet these needs of the nation.
Now, in just a couple of weeks the nation will be enjoying one of our favourite national holidays, namely the celebration of a horrifically savage public execution. (1)
We burned the man to death because he tried to blow the Houses of Parliament and all the motherfuckers therein into the stratosphere. In retrospect that may have been a little ungrateful.
footnote
(1) I’m not a grumpy old man, honest! I love bonfire night, always have done, I just thin it’s worth baring in mind what it’s all about.
