Democracy is about 'Power' stupid.

Few if any books I’ve read in and around the subject of ‘Democracy’ come to the same conclusions we do which is that unless and until the ‘People’ have real effective 'Power' nothing is going to change.

Take Murray Bookchin for example. In the two books of his I’ve read recently - ‘The Next Revolution’ and  ‘The Ecology of Freedom’, totally some 638 pages between them, he covers his ideas for people’s assemblies in the first and traces the conflicts hierarchical structures bring to society in the second.

His idea for people’s assemblies at local level, at first appear to be a step in the right direction, but it soon becomes clear that they are nothing more than part appointed and part elected talking shops without any permanent power to change things.

Central governments are very good at hanging onto power and over the years have come up a number of ruses to convince the people that they are improving their local democracy from unitary councils, to regionalisation and devolution to name but three Westminster have supported.

However democracy whether national or local only lives up to its name if the people are recognised as sovereign and have the mechanisms to exert their power over their politicians.

Our six demands directly address the issue of who holds the power and one can come up with all the fancy ideas you like, to supposedly improve democracy, but unless the power is held directly by the people then the ideas are all simply window dressing.

Anarchy

Since being involved with THA my reading list has been many and varied in and around the broad topic of democracy and the latest book I've just finished was 'On Anarchism' by Noam Chomsky.

Anarchy is the state of a society being freely constituted without authorities or a governing body. It may also refer to a society or group of people that totally rejects a set hierarchy. The word anarchy was first used in 1539, meaning "an absence of government".

Interestingly Chomsky points out all anarchists are socialists but not all socialists are anarchists!

The trouble for anarchists is that no nation has ever, to the best of my knowledge, been run according to this principle except very briefly in Spain, but then only in some areas, before the communists established their hierarchical controls over them.

Smaller structures like kibbutzes, in Israel especially in the early days, would have passed the test as 'communes' but realistically a nation needs a government.

The BIG issue then is whether the people have any real power over their government and the reality is that over time most, if not all, governments increase their powers and become more isolated from the people they serve.

In Comsky's book I was struck by this passage:-

"New revolutions must dissolve the government altogether or bring it closer to its legitimate institutions...The uprising that ends by strangling or dethroning a sultan is as lawful an act as those by which he disposed, the day before, of the lives and goods of his subject. Force alone maintained him, force alone overthrows him."

It should go without saying, but let me emphasis, that THA is not for strangling anyone or a state of anarchy! What we strongly advocate is peaceful resistance, in line with the thoughts of Gene Sharp, to bring about the reforms to our governance we demand. However, what I do take from the quote above is that it is totally legitimate for a people to take back power from their governments especially when the governments power is being increased, centralised and ultimately abused.

This is the key to THA - to give power back to the people for only by having real power can the people make their politicians their servants and not their masters.

In Defence of the People.

The more I read and think about our Agenda, since our formation in 2012, I'm increasingly certain that the opinion and views of the 'people' is on balance every bit as good, if not better, than those of our politicians.

Yesterday I was was struck by this quote by Thomas Jefferson, USA's 3rd President, which was in Dr North's blog post on EU Referendum as well as on the new blog Turbulent Times. 

"I will add, that the man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them; inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer to truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods & errors. He who reads nothing will still learn the great facts, and the details are all false."

This quote has been taken from a letter he wrote complaining about the misinformation in newspapers which is similar to the aphorism attributed to Mark Twain some years later "If you don't read the newspaper you are uninformed, if you do read the newspaper you are misinformed".

The 'elites' of our world come up with every excuse imaginable as to why they are the fount of all wisdom and it is indeed very easy to portray the 'masses' as uneducated dullards but those that are are a very small minority.

The claim that the 'people' lack the education to make major decisions ignores the facts that politcs is about more than just the facts. As the Chartists pointed out people knew more about politics than they were given credit for and were often better equipped with what was happening on the ground than the elites living in their ivory towers.

Trusting the views of the majority should not be considered a risk and is in fact the absolute cornerstone of a real democracy. The advantage to the collective will of the people being properly heard is that it allows fresh air to penetrate into the stale air of the Westminster bubble.

Of course our Agenda's fundamental aim is to give the people real power over our politicians. 

"A Crisis of Trust".

With the passing of Stuart Wheeler yesterday I was reminded of The Bruges Group's 78 page publication he wrote back in 2010 called "A Crises of Trust" which highlighted the extent of the MPs 'Expenses Scandal' of which he was rightly extremely critical of MPs from all parties but was especially condemning of David Cameron and Michael Gove.

Just as a reminder this man holds the record for the largest donation to a political party when he donated £5 million to the Conservative Party in 2001. In 2009 he was expelled from the party after announcing he would be making a large donation to UKIP for the forthcoming European elections.He was you can gather a staunch Eurosceptic.

In the final paragraph of his booklet he wrote :-

"The case for having MPs at all is that they are there to test the executive. To do this, we need MPs who do not see being in parliament as a career, who do not see life in the Commons as merely an extension of life in civil service with added television appearances, and who see virtue in being independent of their parties, in being able to excercise their own judgement, and in not being beholden for their livelihoods to their party leaders. These are the MPs whom we can trust to give their first allegiance to their constituents. Please let us have more of them".

 More independently minded MPs is the primary aim of our third demand 'A Separation of Power' which calls for the executive(Government) to be separated from the legislature (Parliament).

A further check on our MPs would be covered in our second demand 'Real Local Democracy' as it would allow each constituency to hold their politicians to account by setting up recall procedures should they so desire and even set their individual levels of pay and expenses.

Only being able to hold our elected officials to account during periodic but infrequent elections is not 'Real' democracy.

Why all governments blunder.

Last week I commented on Dr North's blog EU Referendum, he is also the primary author of THA pamphlet, that " My default position is that all politicians, since the Thatcher era, are incompetent, duplicitous, celebrity orientated, overrated, in for the main chance, pigheaded ****s!"

My post generated 13 'likes', which is high, and a certain amount of critical comment mainly pointing out that Thatcher's government was far from perfect.

Initially I stood by my comment that Thatcher and her team were of a higher quality than today's offerings in parliament but did end up conceding that on handling this virus they would probably have fared no better.

I'm still of the opinion that as PM Mrs Thatcher was the person needed to arrest our country's economic decline but, on reflection, I have to agree that she and her minister's were still capable of getting things wrong.

I shouldn't have viewed  the past through rose coloured glasses especially being a ardent believer in the very enlightening book 'The Blunders of our Governments' by Crewe and King.

This book explains the reasons, both human and system failures, why governments, whether Labour or Conservative, blunder so spectacularly particularly on the big issues.

Here is my analysis of the book after I had read it some months ago now.

https://harrogateagenda.blogspot.com/2018/03/the-blunders-of-our-governments.html

There is only one remedy that I can see to this situation which is to make it possible for the collective will of the 'People' to be able to challenge their elected officials more readily who I believe would greatly benefit from recieving the fresh air of public opinion into the mix of their decision making.

Why should politicians or experts necessarily be right after all, as a Climate Change sceptic, I and many others believe Climate Change experts are promoting a complete myth for various political and financial ends.

Some still believe the answer to better governments is epistocray, to give the elite more power, which to me is the worst of all opinions as the 'elite ' have proved so often to be wrong.

For me the principles of sortition have far more chance to improve our governance and which ever way I look at this I now strongly believe that 'Real People Power' is the only way to proceed. Of course the 'People' will make mistakes but on balance I believe their mistakes will be no more frequent than those made by politicians and they will at least be their own mistakes from which they may well learn thus avoid making them again.

For far too long the 'People' have had to suffer the consequences of various governments blunders and THA's six demands seeks to address this problem making our politicians truly our servants instead of our masters.

The 'People' are NOT sovereign.

I have to confess I find youtube clips quite addictive and having searched for one end up watching others that are linked from the first.

It was in this way that I came across a clip on Jacob R-M who thinks himself a bit of a constitutional expert - well he is compared to the majority of cannon fodder who masquerade as MPs.

In it he made the point that it is the 'People' that are sovereign who lend that sovereignty to parliament expecting them to carry out their wishes. It is indeed true that at the time of a General  Election sovereignty is given back to the 'People' who vote in a government who then should represent them.

The trouble is that once elected our politicians return to the now sovereign parliament, taking control of the sovereignty that was briefly given back to us. Our MPs then become absorbed into the Westminster bubble and completely ignore us. Then just before the next election they promise us the earth, with of course our money, to try get themselves re-elected.

Alot of people have now become aware of this scam and simply don't bother to vote.

So let's be clear Parliamentary sovereignty is a principle of the UK constitution. It makes Parliament the supreme legal authority in the UK, which can create or end any law. Generally, the courts cannot overrule its legislation and no Parliament can pass laws that future Parliaments cannot change.

So Jacob R-M's assertion is misleading whether intentionally or not I can not say.

Our first and fourth and sixth demand  addresses this problem  The first recognises our inherent sovereignty which is confirmed in law by the sixth which gives us a written constitution and the fourth, most importantly, gives us the real power to hold the government to account between elections without which we have democracy in name only.

Real democracy must see the People recognised as sovereign and with the power to say NO when we wish to say so.

Covid -19 and our Six Demands.

Our six demands come as a complete package and all with the aim of reforming our system of governance and our democracy.

So what is the relevance of our demands with regards the current crisis surrounding Covid-19?

Demand One - Restores inherent 'Sovereignty to the People' which importantly turns our politicians into our servants instead of our masters. 

Demand Two -Seeks 'Real Local Democracy' which means less centralisation and returning real power to local authorities. In this crisis that would have seen EHOs, with local knowledge, tackling their own areas rather than relying on Whitehall.

Demand Three - Sees an 'Elected PM and a Separation of Powers' which would allow the cabinet to be made up people outside parliament thus allowing our government to break out of the Westminster bubble.

Demand Four - 'The People's Consent' would allow us a direct say in the governments actions if we so desired.

Demand Five - 'No Taxation or Spending without Consent' only allows the government to spend our money with our permission.

Demand Six - 'A Written Constitution' confirming all the above changes is essential and of course importantly setting out that it is the 'People' and not parliament that are the sovereign power in this country.

Quite simply the democracy we currently have in this country is not real democracy and it is only when our six demands are enacted will this be changed.