Any Political Solution to the crisis we are in must develop and grow from our communities and grassroots; NOT from any existing Party that still wants to rule everyone Top-Down
One of the key problems with UK Politics today is that it operates as almost the mirror image of wider culture, where most people fall into the trap of believing that their own perspective is the right one. But that anyone with an alternative view of any kind – even in just the smallest of ways, is or will be fundamentally wrong about everything else, too.
Yes, you could easily argue that this is how tribes and groups work.
But politics or rather the UK political system is supposed to be about delivering public policy that is created and then implemented in the best interests of ALL British People.
The one thing that we can be sure of is that when it comes to the political classes who have been running Westminster and our local Councils for decades, there is very little about any of it – apart from the Election campaigns, that has anything to do with or what is best for us.
As I have been discussing in some of my recent blogs, time has now run out for the way that government and our economic system runs. Neoliberalism and everything such as MMT, FIAT money, and the increasingly illogically impractical schemes like Net Zero and everything that pushes people and businesses into being reliant on credit are no longer sustainable.
That is why everything is now in the process of crashing around the Labour Government’s head.
Yes, the politicians in power are incompetent.
No, the mess we are in didn’t begin the day after Labour were elected to power and Starmer arrived in No.10.
And No, not Labour, nor the Tories, the Liberal Democrats, Reform or any other group of politicians currently looking ahead to the next General Election are going to offer and deliver to us anything different. Certainly not in any way that the UK actually needs.
For a time, I was open to the idea that Reform could find itself pursuing a different way. One that would offer the cross-tribal consensus and answers that the UK now needs.
Instead, it has become clear that the mechanics of this 4th evolution of the anti-EU movement certainly hasn’t moved on in any kind of people-centric direction.
Instead, Reform is just reforming itself, but in ways that have a very familiar likeness to political parties that have been in power before, who have increasingly aligned themselves and been led by the machinations of the establishment instead.
The mess over Rupert Lowe and the inescapable optics suggesting that at every level of the Reform Party, the whole thing is all about Nigel Farage, really does speak volumes for itself.
That’s before taking the time to read the outpourings of words from former party activists and ‘officers’ who have recently walked away. Just like better known voices associated with Reform such as those of Howard Cox and Ben Habib.
If any of the names instantly trigger feelings that suggest you have taken a side as you read – no matter the reason, it is exactly that kind of emotion that is our collective problem.
Disagreement over the smallest of things shuts so many of us down to the reality that we all have views about different things that we might never agree on. But when it comes down to all the things that are actually important, there is an awful lot of commonalities between all of us to be found.
Difficult to hear though it might be, it is the division that is deliberately sown between us over issues that we do have in common – by them being presented in ways that make them appear and trigger us as if they are something else – that really plays into the hands of the incompetent political classes that we regrettably have.
As things stand, and without a lot of us choosing to approach our relationship with politics very differently, the same people dividing us and guiding us to hate people we should not have any hate for, are set to keep guiding the ship that we are all beginning to sink on. And they will happily continue to do so, until the whole thing actually goes down.
Westminster is just the tip of the ruling iceberg that we can actually see.
Behind central government sits all the things like power, influence and the wealth accumulation that money controls and which is carefully kept outside of open view.
Because the truth is that the only people who benefit from us continuing to elect politicians who are under the spell of the establishment are those politicians and all those who are benefiting from the continuation of the establishment itself.
Whilst there is very good reason to believe that the wheels could fall off this broken bus at any moment in time, for those who have been aware and watching the direction of travel of the UK (and for that matter the whole of the Western world) for a considerable period of time, both the Global Financial Crisis and then the responses to the Covid Pandemic could, and arguably should, have already been the catalysts that introduced a genuinely new way of doing governance to the UK.
That these two massive events didn’t doesn’t indicate that change cannot or will not come.
The fact that we have been led to believe that what the politicians have done in response is in any way normal just tells us even more about how deeply embedded those who genuinely believe or work with this Top-Down, them vs us culture really are, right across the establishment.
We can see just how far they are prepared to take things in their attempts to stop the whole thing from crashing down, even now. Indeed, they are growing so desperate to maintain The System, they are even attacking the people who their ‘tribe’ have always typically helped.
Whilst the talk of absolutes will certainly sound like a contradiction to the words used as I began writing this Blog above, the one dividing line that we really do have no choice but to observe and then decide upon, is which side we sit between the establishment and all it stands for, and on the other side, the people and what putting people, our communities and the environment surrounding the places where we live and work, first.
Whilst even the Tories are successfully making themselves sound very plausible, just 8 months on from losing power, in the context of everything that the Labour Government is doing wrong, none of these political parties – and that almost certainly now includes Reform, show any sign of genuinely offering an alternative to establishment-directed public policy today.
However, it isn’t today and what is now past that we need to worry about. The most important thing is the future, and specifically what happens when we reach the next General Election and what must be ‘our time’.
The UK and we as its people cannot afford another General Election result that delivers power to any group – whether elected directly, or assembled as a result of some kind of post-election ‘deal’, that then goes on to do whatever the hell it likes.
No political party out there today, currently canvassing for votes in this years Local Elections is offering to do anything in any different kind of way.
We know this, because the way that they are running their election campaigns right now; how they are communicating and most importantly, how they are engaging with real people outside the bubbles of their own members and activists, is exactly the same as it has always been before.
To put it bluntly, we can no longer afford to take the risk that comes with accepting a choice of political candidates in any election, that not us, but the political parties themselves actually choose.
Change will not come in the way that we now so desperately need it, if we keep on doing politics at every level in the UK in exactly the same way!
It is our communities and the people who are around us every day who should be selecting the people who will represent us at all levels of government.
Not people we don’t know beyond the pictures, websites, social media and TV screens.
We need public representatives to represent us who have genuine skin in our game. People who are answerable only to us and who are committed to delivering locality-centric democracy, that is the only way that democracy can genuinely thrive, survive and most importantly, work.
Whilst government and the public sector really do now need to undergo massive change, the reality is that our communities could be working together to select and elect non-party candidates in all elections, right now.
We certainly don’t need any kind of change to the electoral system that just favours the election of more incompetent candidates. Ambitious and self-serving politicians whose actions will be made even worse by the guaranteed requirement for compromise on public policy that schemes like Proportional Representation as a replacement for First Past the Post would bring.
Power MUST come back to the people. Not through carefully crafted labels like ‘devolution’ and ‘devolved power’ that is nothing more than Regional Centralisation sold to us with a very misleading name.
The power – OUR POWER is already ours and that power can be made to work for us right now. IF we choose to use it. Look beyond the manufactured differences. And focus on working together, on the important things that we all have in common, and to deliver a new world and way of being that is happy, healthy, safe, secure and governs life with fairness, balance and justice for us all.
Anyone can begin this process of change and the appointment of new candidates to become the public representatives and politicians who will create and deliver our new future, right now. And we need them to, IF we are going to experience beneficial change.
That change will only be certain if we all change the way that we think. What we can be sure of, however, is that a good future for us all doesn’t and will not start where anything ‘new’ for the politicians and voices that we already recognise as public figures begins.
The ‘Great Reset’ is just 1 of at least 3 resets underway. We should all consider what the desperate attempts to reset the world actually mean
Everyone knows we are in a mess. We just can’t agree why
We are awakening to the reality that a conspiracy theory is no longer a theory and is certainly no longer a conspiracy, once everyone can see that whatever it is, is actually true.
There is much to ponder over the question of the ‘Great Reset’. In terms of who or what is resetting anything; why they are trying to reset it and what it will mean if any of them actually turn out to be successful.
As many of us are likely to realise painfully, very soon, the intended forms of ‘reset’ or ‘resets’ that are underway – and there are arguably at least 3, are relying on a lot more chance than they are anything that resembles any modicum of control.
Collectively, we may soon begin to realise that these planned ‘resets’ were just the manifestations of different forlorn hopes of what was once the very same new world order, now falling to bits as it loses control.
‘They’ know the game is up. That’s why ‘they’ are trying to ‘reset’
‘It was good whilst it lasted’ should be very much at the forefront of the minds of everyone with power, stood in front of their mirror, who is desperately trying to carve out a new future led by themselves today. Rather than whatever the sense of entitlement to continuing power and the accompanying delusions of grandeur that they are actually holding now.
You will not need me to explain how today’s media and the narratives that they so religiously convey would never share how vulnerable the establishment is now feeling. Nor any of the truths and therefore unspoken secrets that would actually explain to everyone how everything within the system does indeed work.
On this basis, you may also therefore be able to understand and appreciate that the last thing that anyone with power and influence wants the general public to know, is just how fragile everything currently is. How close things have been to collapse for a number of years, and how the almost constant flow of policy decisions and steps being taken that we are experiencing are actually a clear sign that the establishment is now in a very serious mess.
In real terms for us, the existing world order will continue to exist until the precise moment that it cannot convince the majority of us that it is there, still functioning and in control of everything, anymore.
Those who we are about to look at in more detail have known or been aware that ‘the game is up’ for a long while. Yet they are now in the process of attempting to create and implement a new world or new world order systems, that they then intend to lead and control.
World governance looks like a massive race against time. However, the reality is that they are all racing against events, forces, factors or whatever you feel comfortable calling factors, that are way outside of their control.
Reset 1: The reset that won’t reset the world as we know and generally accept it in the way they want
First in the list of the three resets, is what many will have heard and what those labelled as ‘conspiracy theorists’ celebrate as ‘The Great Reset’.
The Great Reset is being pursued, pushed, demanded and implemented by those involved with and aligned with the WEF (World Economic Forum).
In terms of the government and establishment figures who are ‘in on it’, the WEF ‘plan’ and what we now know as The Great Reset has, for a long time, been the only real ‘reset’ game in town.
There is so much that I could write about the realities of what ‘the few’ who sit beyond Western democracies and effectively ‘pull the strings’ of many different governments have done, that it would probably take many different books to get even remotely close to the detail.
The WEF are the group that we usually hear most about early each year, when the great and the good fall over themselves to head to Davos for a big meeting. Where it seems like an endless number of private jets, flown by everyone who is preaching at us to go green and look exactly the same get lined up.
These are the people who are responsible for the way that public policy has actually been formed and implemented for over 50 years, as part of a strategy or plan that has always been about a them and us approach to world governance.
These are the governing elites who use and manipulate existing ‘democratic’ systems to make what they are doing look legitimate.
They use a top-down hierarchical approach, that we believe to be all that it says, because elected representatives are technically still in charge.
Those who really understood neoliberalism and what the adoption of a FIAT money system, alongside the deregulation and manipulation of laws and rules to favour big business and profiteering that is under their control, also knew from the start that the life of the system it was driving was finite and that the wealth divide that it would necessarily create would eventually become too wide for even the uneducated not to see for all that it was.
Tools such as the EU (which has never been in anyway democratic but has been able to hide behind nationally elected governments so that it can perpetuate the lie that it has) have deliberately chipped away at the mechanisms, infrastructure and governance of sovereign nations. So that borders and basically anything that can give identity to people, groups and communities – i.e. the tools which are necessary for independence – have not only been removed, but then destroyed, so that there is little or no way back for any kind of revival of sovereign states, once they have been absorbed by whatever was supposed to come next.
What they didn’t bank on, was that the financial and monetary system would unravel in the way and with the speed that it has – helped in no small part by the responses of inept politicians to Covid and the War in Ukraine – and that events have now reached a point where the whole bus is about to go over the cliff, without the necessary tools of unquestioned societal control being anywhere near in place.
The front and belief that these people have not only had, but exerted through the governments that they have basically controlled for many years has been breathtaking.
In the majority of respects, all that they have been doing has been almost perfectly hidden in plain sight. Not least of all because control of the narratives and the media that share them with us has meant that the harm they have inflicted upon our own people as a consequence of their actions has been hidden. Whilst the impact of their behaviour on entire nations and peoples beyond their direct and desired sphere of influence has never been openly acknowledged or exposed to the people unwittingly under their control.
Here in the UK, people cannot earn enough to actually live on what the establishment dictates to be the Minimum Wage and the growing infliction of poverty amongst our own people, so that this grand strategy can be pursued, is troubling enough.
However, in many different countries abroad, the way that they and their kind have used money, markets, commodities and even wars to achieve these nefarious ends have not gone unnoticed.
With some of the more recent steps, that have simply taken things too far, there is a growing group of countries that have been considered to be outside the exclusive club that has been the West, that now see and have been actively working towards the implementation of their alternative choice of reset.
Reset 2: BRICS and a very unhappy world beyond ‘The West’
If you already think that what you are reading here is the stuff of conspiracies, it is more than likely that you also accept and take at face value, everything that the media tells us about events and what is happening in countries and across the world beyond what we know as the West.
The western narratives certainly don’t entertain or make suggestion at any level that our governments and the big businesses that are based across the west and which are traded here, have been exploiting every resource that they could capture control of. Simply by manipulating foreign governments, replacing them or invading sovereign states and taking over so that they can do pretty much the same thing.
Where the Western ‘few’ have done this already and taken all that they could through other ‘acceptable’ means, they have then artificially lowered, raised and even held prices of commodities, precious metals and currencies within the markets that they control, so that anything that these vested interests that are based in the west have needed to pay for has always been available to them for less.
This in itself is in no small contributing part to why the west is hated as much as it is.
The reality that we all face is that no matter how little we have been aware of what the establishment and those who control it have been doing ourselves, the people from these other countries who have suffered and gone without so that the few from the west can profit from them, don’t see any of us as being different from those who are actually responsible.
One of the most horrid parts of the whole sordid affair that the majority of populations right across the world do share in common, is that the only way that the western few have been able to do all that they have done, is by having created and implemented a financial, monetary and economic system that has effectively provided them with money that isn’t real and therefore money that they wouldn’t otherwise have had.
They have then used this money to buy up land, resources, infrastructure and even businesses that it would have been impossible for them to have done so otherwise.
Growing numbers of these countries from outside of the west have been progressively working together.
In recent years they have created another international group or body that you may have heard of which is called BRICS.
Two years on, I understand that the currency now has a name and is called The Unit; that it has already been tested in electronic or digital form, and that whilst Asian Countries in particular have been using the price suppression that our governments have stupidly played along with to hoover up and transport massive quantities of precious metals to the Far East, the BRICS Nations are also working towards the launch of a grain (and commodities) trading exchange.
Those who have been watching the evolution of BRICS will attest to the reality that very little of this was even on the cards during the last Trump Administration.
The ‘final straws’ have appeared and in turn broken the camel’s back, in the form of US Foreign Policy during the Biden Term. Which not unlike the actions of the Labour government in the UK today aren’t just an isolated one-off whose actions can be corrected once they are gone.
The policies that these governments have enacted are in fact the end of a very long downward chain of decisions that have been made to benefit and most recently save the skins of a few vested interests. Rather than being about anything to do with what is in the best interests of the people that they actually represent.
Any or all of the systems that BRICS are known to be building or working on have the potential to create financial and market chaos across the whole of the West and not just the USA, potentially within days if not hours of them being launched.
However, as plausible and as well thought out as these plans might be with the aim of effectively switching market and financial power to the East from the West, they do rely on what may prove to be the naïve idea that everyone in the West will simply accept the change and willingly step aside.
The real risk of a financial, market and economic collapse in the West, that is precipitated by BRICS systems or similar, is what western governments decide they (and therefore what we) should do in response, as the first thing that BRICS would almost certainly do is expose the systems that we have as not being in anyway real.
That means that we will have a critical emergency when it comes to the need for real leadership to step in and do whatever we will then need to do.
Reset 3: Trump is too Trumpian, too Late and too much of the same
Barely two months into the second Trump Administration and the flurry of headlines that policies such as DOGE have created, the noise and many distractions being caused are taking much of our attention away from the events that are unfolding around the world.
There is very little discussion or thought regarding what the result or outcome of Trumps ‘strategy’ will be. Not only in the long term. But critically within perhaps just the weeks and months that lie immediately ahead.
Many cannot see and fewer can accept that recent US Democrat Administrations under Clinton, Obama and Biden were all very much geared towards pushing a system that Trump appears to be destroying, overtly for all the ‘bad reasons’ that can be seen such as open immigration and woke policy.
Unfortunately, all those things that people didn’t like about the Biden Administration and those that contributed before, as well as all the recent governments in the UK, were just side effects or symptoms of everything bad in the centre. A direction of travel that has long since required growing chaos in all directions, so that the policies can be delivered which were their priority or genuine choice all along.
Politicians who are owned by self-interest and greed are all doing whatever it is that they believe necessary to keep the ‘Moneyocracy’ afloat.
It just looks different across different countries. Because the systems in each country are still different enough for a different approach to be required, IF they are to succeed in making the ultimate end game work.
In real terms, this means that the core direction is simply being rewrapped and represented differently wherever it is possible to do so, so that enough people will hopefully accept this ‘new’ way of doing things, until the real truth of even that is then exposed.
Regrettably for us in the UK, we are much further down the road than even the US.
Whereas Trump is doing plenty that gives the impression that it his reset is not only different, but that it will work and it will be beneficial, the situation here is that we are knocking on the door of the Inn that we have been desperately looking for, just as the sign goes up outside to say no vacancies and the landlord is calling ‘Time!’
Money has no real value, yet we have made it worth everything, whilst everything with real value has been made worthless by money
If you’ve read this far and the story that is unfolding is making any level of sense, you will also have some idea of the mess that we are in.
Not because all of these things are happening – because they certainly are. But because the next thing that comes to mind when you can see and accept the problem is that as things stand, there also doesn’t appear or feel like there’s any way out.
In my recent eBook Your Beliefs Today Create Everyone’s Experiences Tomorrow we journeyed through the opportunity to consider the different perspectives that everyone has; those perspectives that groups of people share; how shared perspectives are then perceived differently, and then what this all adds up to, or rather could add up to in the bigger scheme of things.
What is now beginning to become ever more apparent to anyone paying close attention to events that are happening around the world – and not just on our ‘accepted’ media channels, is that there are common themes amongst all the different experiences that we have.
These common themes demonstrate that everyone outside of the elite and ruling classes have many things in common that are being overlooked, missed and hidden by everything that the establishment has done and is still doing to create divides.
Money and the importance that it has as the tool that the establishment uses to manipulate, control and basically con the entire population is also the common factor with the elite groups or amongst the VVIPs whose fights are now breaking into the open as they take whatever steps they consider necessary on what they believe is their own respective pathways to control.
To summarise:
1. The WEF/UN/Known western establishment ‘Great Reset’ is falling apart because the elites involved have lost control of the FIAT driven monetary, economic and financial systems. Not least of all because they have either abused or failed to adhere to their own rules.
The UK could easily prove to be the first domino that falls because of the actions of the current Labour government that appear to have snapped into even closer alignment with the ‘plan’.
Whereas many other Western countries are openly resisting in what has manifested generally along more ‘right wing’ lines.
2. The BRICS ‘reset’ has been building, developing and evolving outside and beyond of our mainstream news view – even though you are likely to have heard BRICS mentioned at various times.
From the information available by doing web searches, watching and listing to podcasts that are available, it is becoming clear that whatever BRICS is going to do with a new currency, grain and commodities trading, and the precious metals that offer a very different and potentially anchored approach to whatever it will be that BRICS does, it could be launched and begin to create chaos across the Western world as we know it very soon.
3. The Trump ‘reset’ has been underway since the 20th of January 2025 when the returning President of the United States was sworn in and the new Administration got straight to work.
Trump’s reset is an attempt to shed or eject all of the bad and damaging policies and issues that were created overtly by the Biden Administration and to remove all the issues that people have not taken kindly to, such as woke ideology and everything that is currently being presented as being in a mess.
What is not so clear is that the plans being followed are also about retaining US hegemony and the status of the US Dollar as the ‘worlds reserve currency’, pretty much with the approach and thinking that bullying and bulldozing will overcome the resistance of a lot of very pissed off countries that will very quickly snap back into line.
Unfortunately, just with the example of the BRICS nations alone, we can already see that they see a pathway to their independence from the existing world order, and there is little to suggest that they will be happy to welcome it back – just because Trump is demanding otherwise.
***
It is reasonably safe to conclude that a system collapse precipitated by any or all of these 3 resets or indeed any other, will reach way beyond the scope of just the financial, economic and monetary systems themselves.
This is why our cultural focus upon money and the way that it has become the value mark for everything in life is not only dangerous. But has the potential to invite change and the chaos that goes with it on a level that has never been witnessed before.
If you were to have a conversation with a handful of different people and ask them for their view on the problems and what their solutions to those problems would be, it is unlikely that any of them would respond in a way that suggests that the existing monetary system and the way that we value money would be at its core. Even if they were to make suggestions that might at first glance appear to address the problems as they see them.
Even economists and highly regarded academics and researchers would fall into this category.
They share what we might call a situational bias that reaches across society and currently refuses to accept that the basis of what people are comfortable with (or benefit from) within the current system, would not or rather could not exist anymore.
It is important for those seeking solutions to understand that problems such as the exploding welfare bill, increasing poverty, the reliance upon debt and how it is considered ‘normal’, along with replacing jobs with new tech and AI are and would remain symptomatic of resets 1 and 3, with things likely to become worse much more quickly, if any collapse should be driven by a BRICS takeover.
Whilst any or all of the resets continue and appear to work, society as we know it will function less and less as we have known it – or at least not for the majority of the Western population whilst changes made under the resets favour some at much higher cost to many more.
Ultimately however, none of the resets can work permanently because of the disparity that they will cause. With even the BRICS reset working on the basis that it would switch one type of world dominance which is wholly unfair and unjust, for a completely different one which would only appear to be a switch of places for the specific VVIPs and elites who are involved ‘at the top’.
Moving away from chaos
Regrettably, it is very difficult and probably impossible to convince enough people that the way we are living, with the priorities that we have, is not only unsustainable and inflicting potentially great harm on everyone’s future. But that it is also only really benefiting the VVIPs and the elites, with the perceived material benefit to everyone else always proving to be transitory at best.
This means that things either have to crash, or other unforeseen events will need to take place that effectively result in the same thing and same experience for everyone, before enough of us will accept that the time has arrived for change and that change will not resemble anything like we have known before.
Until that point of acceptance, the elites and the VVIPs will retain control and continue to pursue every avenue possible to maintain and keep them in control.
Chaos will be the immediate result and the inevitable next step, with the alternative then being a power grab from opportunists who will prove to be even worse than the pathways of the 3 resets that we have now. OR the people and our communities can step up, take back power and determine the future for ourselves.
This is the only kind of ‘reset’ that we should ever allow or have.
As you read through the pages of this blog or read the eBooks that are available and recognise the story unfolding and the different parts that we can all see, you may be able to step back and observe the reality that those who ‘take from the state’ are the easiest for everyone else to blame.
No matter their background or reason for being dependent upon the State, Benefits Claimants have become scapegoats and little more than everyone else’s ‘guilty bastards.
Worst of all, they have now become a very easy target for those who are actually responsible for everything that is going wrong with the UK, to project their own guilt and fear upon.
For anyone receiving benefits when they could or would rather be ‘paying their own way’, being anywhere near the Benefits System, the many organisations that work within and around it, and being within the exploding sub-class of our society currently being gaslit by the financial benchmark of the National Minimum or Living Wage; life is a fearful, emotionally and practically challenging living hell.
Given the nature of the announcements due to be made as part of the Spring Statement this Wednesday and what we already know is on the way from the October ’24 Budget, I will expand here on 5 of the most important points of what being within or touched by the Benefits System means to many of those whose lives are touched by it:
1. It costs more to live than the Minimum or Living Wage allows
The elephant in the room that is the cost-of-living crisis, is this:
What we currently accept as being the National Minimum Wage or Living Wage, isn’t anywhere near enough for a single person without any parental, caring or partner responsibilities, to live independently without top-up benefits, help from charities (foodbanks), going into debt or raiding savings.
2. Working on the Minimum Wage means you still need help
People working in Minimum Wage jobs in the UK, cannot earn enough, working a 40-hour week, to pay their own way.
Those on Minimum Wage cannot live independently, without still having to jump through the hoops and requirements that come from being a benefit claimant; from ‘qualifying’ to get emergency food packages from Foodbanks; by going into debt using credit cards, loans or pay-day-credit type schemes; or by falling back on family or friends for handouts, just to make ends meet.
3. Being on benefits is no breeze: Welfare cuts are an act of increasing cruelty when many just want safe-to-climb ladder to escape
Being on benefits means being treated like you are someone else’s guilty bastard and like you are the one who is in the wrong.
The staff in jobcentres (understandably) often don’t really want to be there. They are regularly exposed to some of the UKs most unhappy people. When they themselves are at the cutting edge of a Benefits System that has ALREADY removed all sense of humanity from its heart and behaves like it already runs with the dehumanisation that we can expect from universal AI that is being introduced for all the wrong reasons.
People who are not working or who have personal issues that have made them dependent upon benefits often feel vulnerable.
They suffer from the lowered levels of confidence that any form of unexpected or inescapable vulnerability brings. Even before they contact Jobcentres, the Benefits Office or any other organisations that provides the different services and offerings that provide income and support that comes from the public purse.
Some active claimants do use anger and exhibit loud forms of frustration. But this is often a self-protection mechanism and way to try and secure what they need from the System.
Sadly, these few are the stereotype upon which much of the prejudiced behaviour towards those on Benefits that reaches far beyond DWP staff is formed.
The profit-led private contractors who provide ‘back to work’ or ‘welfare to work’ services and ‘support’ are no better.
The tick-box culture that is applied universally towards anyone whose existence touches the welfare purse is one where claimants are considered capable of working if they tried, and therefore there because they choose to be.
Once through the turnstile of the benefits door, benefits claimants are considered worthless.
Nobody operating or administering the benefits system from within is prepared to look at anyone asking for help as being anything other than the same.
The Benefits system is inherently cynical and labels everyone who doesn’t work as being in the benefits queue as a lifestyle choice.
Unless benefits claimants possess a CV or situation which would be strong enough to indicate that they wouldn’t even be there in the first place, the experience of being just within the benefits system itself quickly takes its toll. Once inside, it is a downwards spiral for many where there is no genuine escape, even if you find a way to leave.
Politicians may indeed be openly questioning the number of unemployed who there because of mental health issues.
But beyond the torture of what it takes for growing numbers to keep up with a financial and money-centric culture that demands everyone keep up, the constant hits that come from being in ‘the system’ and treated like you are sub human by those who do and can work, makes for a progressively difficult challenge, that in the situation we all face today, has come down to little more than lucky breaks for the many who do want to escape.
4. Very few want to be on benefits – Living independently on a basic wage is key
I mentioned the angry and the frustrated above.
These are the people that hide behind a mask and fight the contact that they have with the Benefits System, because it’s what they believe they have to do, to survive.
Yes, many receiving benefits suggest openly and behave with a sense of entitlement. But this is the situation that decades of poor politicians – and therefore that we all have created, because of the responsibility that we all have, for appointing the politicians who have created, developed and maintained the mess that the UK is now in.
The stories of people who cannot step out of the benefits trap, because they cannot afford to do so, are also true.
There is something perverse about a situation where claimants will not take the risk of taking jobs and opportunities because of how they will be treated by the benefits system and what support they will lose immediately if and when they take those steps to get out.
Unless they cannot work because of other commitments or they find themselves genuinely unable to do so, there are few Benefits Claimants who have entered or remain within the Benefits System by choice.
5. A Minimum Wage that is guaranteed to be a Living Wage would change everything
Another truth that we have turned a blind eye to, is that many people who cannot do so currently, would be very happy to be working in Minimum Wage jobs IF they actually paid what its costs to live independently.
Many people would choose to work in Minimum Wage jobs, in receipt of a wage that they could live independently on. Because their only working responsibility or responsibility to others would then be to do what they are asked for the time that they are at work.
Many of us would be very happy just to work a working week and at the same time earn enough so that all of the bills and the essentials that it takes to live an independent and self-sustaining life today are paid for. Just as long as we don’t then have to go looking for and making ourselves vulnerable to anyone or anything else, reaching out for help, just to make ends meet.
In the days ahead, the Spring Statement that will be made to the Westminster Parliament by the UK Chancellor is likely to usher in mayhem of a kind we have never seen. Cuts to the Civil Service and Welfare Payments sit alongside taxation policies announced in the October ’23 Budget that should be flying red flags for many more of us than those who are ready to see, warning us about the mess the UK – and the World – are now in.
All for the love of money
The financial, economic or monetary system we have was designed by people who understood the following:
The power of money isn’t in the value of money itself. The power of money lies in what people without money can be convinced to believe the value of having money will be.
In the period running up to the ending of the Gold Standard, the launch of FIAT, GDP and tools like the (EU) Common Market, failing politicians who were desperate for control, power and the money they needed to spend on getting (re)elected, were easy to convince that FIAT and the tools that MMT and Neoliberalism had value, for us all.
The creation of a money system that wasn’t backed by gold or linked to anything with tangible value opened a world of possibilities.
Because at the bottom line of the whole balance sheet, money was always going to be worth whatever the people controlling that money said it was.
Naturally, the politicians didn’t really think about who would actually be in control of the money, as the real political pay-off was the way that the creation of money by banks and finance houses kept the true workings of everything far away from public view.
Creating the myth of credibility within shared systems
Through the adoption and regard of GDP as an accepted international economic benchmarking system, any money or unit of currency created by a private bank or finance house and introduced to the economy as loans or finance can be counted over and over multiple times.
Every unit (Pound, Dollar, Euro etc) adds another multiple of its original created value as it passes through each transaction or link in a supply chain, with the monitoring and publication of GDP recording output and growth that was really never there.
Total GDP figures are themselves then used to devalue or rather hide the debt that politicians incur through public spending, which is published as a percentage of what is required to be permanently growing GDP.
Traditional public spending is itself ‘dead money’. Because public service supply chains are typically short and revolve around providing public servants income and earnings.
The attraction for politicians to let the MMT genie out of the bottle was that they would be able to use money that they could borrow, rather than what they would have to obtain through raising taxes, to gain and maintain their power by buying votes. All with policies that they would not be able to afford or win support for in any other way.
The deregulation that was necessary – presented to all of us as ‘free markets’ – was never about freedom of small business in the sense that many even today believe.
Free markets are about giving freedom to big corporations and financial titans to set their own rules and control everything to do with money.
The freedom they have gained through deregulation has then dictated what the money they created can then buy. So that they could do whatever they want, take whatever they want and control whatever they want.
They knew that in time, the bogus system they created would eventually allow them to take over anything and everything that offered independence to anyone or anything that could provide a morally legitimate alternative to what they dictate would be our culture and way of life.
The big downside for every part of government and the ambitious and inept political classes who have blundered along whilst this has all unfolded using their signatures, is that they themselves have been manipulated, controlled and duped by the same interests that we have been conditioned by all along.
Politicians now go cap in hand to borrow from money creators who are always willing to use more of the false money that has enriched them to buy up the bonds the Government Treasury ‘sells’ them so that they can then charge interest on the money they gave the Government that doesn’t exist, but that we see made ‘real’ by our puppet politicians in the form of Public Borrowing.
The Credit Trap (For people)
Growing this system and measuring ‘growth’ is dependent upon the amount of money outside of the public accounts:
That has been added to circulation (the total volume of money that is known to exist in bank accounts or as cash) that can be realised or moved around, and
The multiples that can be added by the movement of that money, each time that it changes hands in a way that can be recorded through GDP.
This means that credit or money creation has become more important than traditional forms of production – which have historically been the source of value creation; and that these forms of production needed to be absorbed by the new system, so that everything within every supply chain could be leveraged – no matter the real cost to us all – so that they could force the creation of more new money or credit in some way.
As you begin to understand how valuable consumerism and everything that feeds it, such as mass production, globalisation, rent, leasing, subscription and licensing has become, you can also see how what is arguably the biggest and perhaps the perfect crime enacted against humanity, has really played out.
Through the necessity dictated by its need for ‘growth’ and now survival, The System has relied upon developing new and ever more inventive ways to force the masses into borrowing and the use of credit.
Using politicians and the law, we have deliberately been led and in some cases pushed away from owning resources, earning enough or having any kind of financial independence (including the use of cash) of our own.
The Credit Trap (for governments)
The growing value of the public debt was never intended to be paid off using this system.
It couldn’t be, because all of the natural forms of production and infrastructure that the population, normal businesses and even government once owned have steadily been sold off, moved and even rented back to us.
All so that those who used fake money to trap us all, could use the material wealth that they had bought and accumulated with fake money, to force us to borrow even more of that non-existent fake money, so they could gain increasing control over everything and make even more.
Our currency has become worth less and less in proportion to the value of the money that the banks and finance houses have been creating, which itself has been increasing from the start.
Unfortunately, all this has meant that as the assets and genuine productive value of the UK economy have been increasingly stripped away.
Government at every level – like all of us, has been left with less and less in terms of options to find money or income in any alternative way – because there is basically less and less happening in terms of independent production that remains available to be taxed!
The basic equation that politicians and government can no longer accommodate is this:
Privately or corporately created money and its circulation through increasing growth MUST always eclipse public spending for The System to keep working.
That is why everything we know and understand about the role of money, our access to it and our use of it has moved towards credit and debt creation that allows the flow of created or printed money at a level previously never known, that has then been used to finance the takeover of everything that has followed.
This is why we are now in the mess that we are in.
The System was always destined to fail. The only question was when
Public spending could be argued as having been out of control from the very beginning of this ‘system’.
Even economists believe that The System is genuine, because for no better reason than the subjectivity within the realms of an intergenerational period of time, it can certainly be argued that it does.
However, the realities of a system with malfeasant legitimacy were hidden so well by what remained of the ‘traditional’ or ‘old’ system for the first two to three decades, that politicians really had a honeymoon period.
Once bedded in, and the turmoil that followed adoption of the new system and what it really meant in the 70’s was complete, Politicians believed they could increasingly do whatever they wanted and didn’t see any danger hidden in everything they were being advised and influenced to do.
In reality, it was only the level of our Politicians own stupidity that could prevent them from getting successive wins, within The System of the 80’s, 90’s and early 00’s as it then was.
The real turning point when everything should and could have gone a different way was the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) of 2007/08 (Which has quietly been renamed The Great Recession) – when the stupidity and recklessness of the bankers own making through the actions of their employees and systems should have brought the whole system down.
The System was saved because the entire establishment by then depended upon it to survive.
Everyone with responsibility for the way everything we should be able to rely upon working for us, was already in it up to their necks.
The volume of cash created to bail out the banks in response to the impact of the GFC removed any real question over whether the existing financial system has any moral backbone or grounding in reality or not.
The fact that public borrowing being used to refinance private banks was accepted as being ‘normal’ in the way that it was, does indeed tell anyone looking on objectively, all they need to know about where the real priorities within The System lay.
The Politicians, establishment and bankers we so emboldened by the idea that they had got away with that one, it really didn’t take much for those in power, but without the skills, experience or leadership skills they all should have, to abuse the situation even further to get themselves out of a blind panic the very moment that the Covid Pandemic arrived in early 2020 and people began to die.
The explosion in unnecessary public spending, in response to the Covid Pandemic and then everything to do with the War in Ukraine that has followed, have contributed exponentially to the situation we see today and are key contributors to the fiscal decisions that the UK Chancellor and the Labour Government behind Keir Starmer is taking now.
UK government no longer has the ability to pay for all the public services that we need. Because private money creation and the ‘growth’ in credit is no longer high enough to hide everything that government needs to do.
The historic or traditional forms of production that the UK once excelled in and led the world with no longer exist to create either the value and therefore the money flow (through taxes etc) in any other meaningful or visibly legitimate way.
Our Armageddon is already here, today
The reason that so much of this is breaking into the open now, isn’t a warning of what will come if we don’t change our politicians’ minds and get them to run government differently.
It’s all coming into the open now, because it’s already too late.
When we begin to appreciate just how deeply rooted this bogus financial system is and how it is affecting so many different areas of life, we can begin to see just how serious the collapse of The System will be.
It is already making many fearful for what not having a system that works this way at the centre of the lives will mean.
Not because there isn’t an alternative, but because of the fear of losing whatever we believe we have gained.
Those who are responsible for keeping this morally bankrupt excuse for an economic system going know this and feel this too.
They are desperate to rescue themselves, their positions, influence and wealth with a new system that will keep their interests in place.
Alongside, they also plan to create a new set of myths for those of us who can be useful, and disregard everyone else.
In order for them to survive, the elites must change everything we know that’s built around the lies that are either unfolding or can already be seen to no longer work and replace them with new lies and The Systems that appear to work until those inevitably break too – no matter the cost to all of us.
An 8 – Part Essay on the UK Political ‘System’ from September 2019
Please Note that Restoring Democracy was first published as 8 different blog posts on my blogsite in September 2019.
Part 1: The ‘Old’ Politics
Everyone quietly knows and has known for a long time, long before Brexit, that something is and has been wrong with British Politics.
Because of the relationship that we all have with Government and Politicians, we have simply accepted that this is just the way that things are.
Yet Brexit opened a doorway. Not just to removing the shackles of the EU and Leaving it behind, but to also shining a light on everything that is rotten with our Politics.
We now know and understand that this old politics has to go and be replaced with something NEW.
The old politics is synonymous with everything bad about self-interest.
Like a cuckoo invading the nest of another bird, the old politics has slowly and insidiously taken over every part of or democratic system.
Its effect has been amplified through the manipulation and exploitation of the Political Party system, furthering the interests of people and politicians who only ever see their interests as being combined together as one.
The old politics is what gave birth to the phrase ‘career politician’.
It has created a situation where Politics is not a calling or public responsibility. It is merely an opportunity for furthering the interests of the politicians. It is to them no more than an income, a step to advancement. What most people recognise as the basis of a job.
To be free of the problems that led to Brexit, restore our democracy and then move forward in a confident, beneficial and measured way, we must now end the grip of the old politics on all parts of Government and the Public Sector.
It’s time to manage Public Services and the things that we share in common in a much more community minded, forward looking, considerate, consequence based and emotionally intelligent way.
Part 2: We all have a part to play in change
One of the most challenging aspects of changing politics for good, is for each and every one of us to accept that change on this scale is about everyone being prepared and accepting of changing their own views inwardly and not just expecting everything outside of them to be the people or things that have to adjust.
The world we live in is a place where everything is relative and whilst we look at everything in terms of wealth and the power that people have, the values underpinning all of this are fundamentally the same for us all.
In this sense there is little difference between bankers exploiting the housing market, to a union rep calling a strike to push for unsustainable levels of pay.
It’s simply the toys that look and feel different, whilst innocent third parties are always going to get hurt along the way.
Put into context, there are few of us who cannot appreciate that there is value in thinking differently, whether it be over a few pounds a week, or over multi-million Pound empires that might be under our control.
But saying and doing things differently are themselves very different things.
And if we want to change the world around us for the better and gain benefits from a much fairer and balanced system in the longer term, we must accept that there will be sacrifices to make but sacrifices that are really just ideas and feelings about what could be, because the benefits for the future will quickly outweigh what feels like the immediate cost.
To be different and have different lives, we must all think differently about the things that we do.
Yes, we deserve to have Leaders who will show us the way not through words but by action, giving us an inspirational example that will illuminate our learning and light the path along the way.
But the change that we want will begin when we see that change as being the difference between now and where we want to be.
Part 3: Communities & Locality first
Localism became a fashionable term during the Coalition years under David Cameron. Yet the Localism that we thought it was and the localism that it actually was are two very different things.
Like many of the miss-sold and misrepresented ideas about what serves the public interest, such concepts are presented through sound bites that are cleverly constructed to give the impression that they will take giant leaps towards some form of natural justice. But they don’t.
For example, the creation of the Office of Police and Crime Commissioners and Metropolitan Mayoralties was offered to us as giving power back to local areas.
Yes, they give the appearance of bringing more money in to benefit ‘local’ areas. But this take on giving power back to the People is a dubious representation at best.
Worse still, instead of bringing power back to us, it has instead focused existing power away from Local Government and the decision makers who are closest to us, instead transferring it into the hands of one, rather than a number and range of different local Politicians.
Many People do not realise that there four different tiers of Government in this Country. (Five If you were to Count the European Parliament too)
From the lowest to the ‘top’, they are Parish & Town Councils, Borough & District Councils, County Councils (Unitary Authorities can include all of the responsibilities of the above) and Parliament or Central Government itself.
As in Westminster, party politics plays a significant role throughout these tiers of Government, and we have the very same problems with Politicians at a local level as we do in London.
Far too many local Politicians are motivated by self-interest, pursuing their own interests and furthering their own or particular causes.
In many ways, political injustice at local level can have an even more damaging impact upon our lives. Because the decisions taken by bodies such as Planning and Licensing Committees can and do make changes to the environment that we experience within our lives, every day.
When local decisions are not taken in our best interests – as is all too often the case – the cost for us all can be severely high.
Federalism and the model of devolved decision making that the EU promotes is even worse. It gives the lie to this injustice and abuse of democracy even further.
Together, the real workings and methodology of Central and EU government has implemented a set of rules that are so tight, that so-called decision making and democracy at local level is no more than a tick-box exercise for the local government officers and Politicians involved.
Removing the rot in Politics and getting good people into political roles where they will really fight our corner, would make an immediate difference to how decisions are made locally. It would make life much better for everyone involved.
The difference that could and should be made by good central Government – once we have removed the influence of the EU once and for all, will be to give our influence and responsibility back to us and put back as much decision making into the hands of local politicians and representatives who we have genuine access to and know.
There will always be policies and responsibilities that need to be accounted for at a higher and more appropriate level.
But that doesn’t mean Politicians at the ‘top’ should be the only ones with real or meaningful control.
The reality is that today, the buck stops in London and in Brussels for far too many decisions. Laws are simply interpreted at local level – a process that leads to much misunderstanding and frustration for local People and locally minded Politicians that really don’t have the responsibility and influence on issues that are most pertinent to them – no matter what they are being told.
Getting decision making back to local government and as close to the People as possible is an essential part of creating a genuine feeling of community, re-enfranchisement and that we can have real and meaningful influence on the world around us.
A Good Government could begin giving us genuine localism by:
Overseeing a clean, secure and permanent Exit from the EU.
Abolish the roles of so-called Metro-Mayors and transfer their powers back to more local control.
Abolish the roles of Police & Crime Commissioners, re-establishing the local Committee structure whilst taking measures to ensure that political influence is kept at the minimum and that Committee Members are drawn from outside privileged and insider networks.
Reverse all processes of centralisation within the Tiers of Government and/or restructure to ensure that decision making and influence is structured and administered in such a way that the emphasis is always upon the quality of service and experience of end-users – always ensuring that it is as accessible as possible, rather than simply being about money, the decision makers and the officers involved.
Return the final point of decision making to the level most near to Voters and only use frameworks as a guide unless there are very specific rules such as the minimum drinking age involved.
De-centralise powers that have been given to unelected and unaccountable bodies such as the Highways and Environment Agencies. Create more localised umbrella organisations where it is absolutely necessary to facilitate joined-up thinking, but above all ensure that no decision can be taken arbitrarily by any bureaucrat without local representation having genuine influence in the process and if necessary, having a veto over changes to or that will affect local infrastructure or property.
Part 4: Joined-up thinking, rather than focusing on issues on their own
Politics isn’t just broken. The whole Political System has lost its way, and most of the problem is because of the way that Politicians think about what they do.
Everything in Politics has become about the ‘quick win’.
That’s pulling the white rabbits out of the hat that have the desired effect of grabbing Voter’s attention drawing their focus away from what’s really going on whilst catalysing support.
The whole approach is very shallow. It is all about dealing with the effects of problems rather than dealing with the causes. Worse still, there is very little consideration for the impact of Public Policy beyond the scope of whatever the plan has been put in place to address.
The result is that problems affecting often many more parts of society than just the one that has been targeted by a policy change are created or made worse, whilst the solutions put in place don’t ever last in any meaningful or useful way.
Like putting a plaster on a leg break, Public Policy requires Politicians to do considerably more than they do.
Compromise is not something that should ever be necessary when Public Policy is being created for the right reasons and nobody is focusing on the wrong priorities such as if something doesn’t work out as it should, who then gets the blame.
Joined up thinking is now essential as a part of how every policy is reviewed or how every one is made. There must be consideration and action taken to address the root causes, the effects whilst they continue and then the consequences no matter how far reaching they might be, once any new policy has been implemented and the changes have been made.
Part 5: The new politician – qualified by experience, not experienced enough by qualification alone
We have a system in place where it is technically possible for anyone registered as a Voter and living in the UK can stand as a Candidate for Election to Parliament.
This would be restriction enough, if it were not for the way that the system works.
In reality, it is very near impossible for any person to get elected to Parliament without being a Member of a Political Party, being selected as a Candidate and then being nominated by that Party to represent them in an Election for a specific Seat.
Regrettably, with the way that Politics has been working in this Country, this reality has meant that the real choice of who will or will not represent us in Parliament as our MPs is the choice of the Party that wins the Seat. Because whilst the system works on the basis that we elect the individual representative or MP, it is a habit of ours to Vote for the Party instead.
If the existing Political Parties are serious about system reform, they must adopt a different approach to the way that they select their Candidates for Parliament, putting what’s best for us as the end aim and result.
This will involve prioritising Candidates who have the life experience and wherewithal that will benefit others, not just help the Party to secure Seats.
A Good system for the Political Parties to qualify Candidates might be:
A minimum age requirement that Candidates are 30 years of age or older.
That Candidates have at least 8 years professional experience that has included demonstrable supervisory and/or management experience as well as experience as an employee at junior/team level.
That Candidates have served a minimum of one full term as a Town or Parish Councillor.
That Candidates have served a minimum of one full term as a Borough/District and/or County level Councillor.
That Candidates have fought and won at least one election at local level.
That Candidates have held officer level responsibility within a community, social or student organisation
That Candidates can demonstrate a vocational calling to represent others selflessly and provide a voice for those who cannot or choose not to speak publicly on issues of public policy themselves.
Part 6: Ambition & Direction – not broken promises and being strung along
For decades, generations of Politicians have increasingly become aligned with motivations and priorities that should never be in the makeup of the people who are privileged to hold power in Public Office.
Encouraged by a Party-Political system that has focused more and more on taking only those steps necessary to secure and retain power, it was inevitable that the Candidates for Political Office that they have brought forward would look at their roles in the same way.
For too long, Politics has subsequently only been about doing what has been deemed necessary or politically expedient to get the result that suits the interests of the Politicians involved.
Politicians are always on message, do whatever is necessary to secure position and elevation and do not often take the risk of speaking out or against the system for fear that they will lose their roles after being singled out and ostracized for being wrong.
The most successful of this current Political Class are in most cases little more than ‘yes men’. And the problem with saying yes to all the right people to get ahead and get elevated is that sooner or later, you have to be able to say no – and especially when you get to the top job.
A career and circumstances like these do not encourage and develop skills of leadership.
There are no skills of decisiveness or understanding of the world outside of politics that politics impacts upon.
All that is wrong with the system has been illustrated by the disastrous Premiership of Theresa May.
When Politicians appointed to Lead us actually have no idea how or what it means to lead and only focus on keeping their power, it is inevitable that it will lead not only to disappointment. It is how significant problems for a Country are made.
We never needed this old politics. It doesn’t work for the many. It only works for the few. It is time for something new.
We now need a generation of forward-looking Politicians who are themselves led by Leaders who have ambition for all of us and our Country, not just themselves and what it takes for them alone to get on.
Part 7: Public Services should only have one master
Meddling with public services has become normal part of a politician’s life.
No matter whether its exerting direct deliberate influence or an indirect consequence of anything else that they have done, Public Services have become unsustainable – not just financially, but also in the way that they are run.
The key to solving the problems that the Public Sector faces is relatively simple. It’s already in the name.
Public Services are literally the provision of services to the Public. That should be the priority, the aim, the reason for doing and how any decisions affecting them should ultimately be informed.
The meddling and imposition of rules over employment, pensions and a variety of other targets which have redirected priorities in order to avoid what would otherwise be legally recognisable employee upset has switched the focus of what the NHS, Councils, Schools, Government Departments and what Quangos are there to do, and placed it instead upon avoiding any kind of problems with staff, who have also become too expensive with all the rights they now have for all of them to remain employed.
This itself is one of the key contributing reasons for the employment of commercial service providers and consultants to do jobs that public servants were previously employed to do. And what you rarely hear mentioned is that these private enterprises are often doing exactly the same job, paying their staff all that they are legally entitled to, whilst making a profit on top for the business owner, yet still cheaper than the not-for-profit public sector provider used to.
The problem with all of these different priorities and providing services using contractors is the master is never the Public itself. Yet they are the reason that all of these organisations exist and why the people doing the jobs are actually employed.
A Good Government MUST return the emphasis of public service to serving the public and take whatever steps necessary to ensure that We the Public are always the priority. Not staff. Not profit. In absolutely everything that they do.
Part 8: The Electoral System
As with most things political today, politicians and activists have the common habit of blaming everything they see as being wrong on something or some factor that is outside of them or outside of their control.
Boiled down to its basic components, this means that when something isn’t working – such as their own ability to get power by gaining or retaining enough Seats in Parliament or perhaps a local Council – they believe that the problem must be with someone or something else, and that the way to fix that problem will be to fix that ‘someone’ or that ‘something’, rather than to do anything else.
Right now, politics is broken.
In fact, politics has been broken for a long time.
Politics has been broken for a lot longer than the Brexit question has been around and Brexit is a symptom of the problem – not the cause.
Yet politicians who do not have power, or the working majorities that provide that power in Government and in our Councils, most often believe that the problem or the reason that politics is broken, is nothing to do with them.
Those politicians with power aren’t worried about gaining power. They only worry about keeping it. And that is why they are obsessive about sound bites and vote-winning policies that will keep them where they are. They aren’t worried about anything that has helped them to be in the position they are now such as the Electoral System.
But those politicians without power don’t believe that the Electoral System has served them and their ideas well.
They believe that it is the system itself that is at fault. Not the ideas that might actually be wrong.
Those politicians without power are the ones that advocate changing the Electoral System from First Past the Post (FPTP) to a form of Proportional Representation (PR) with the overt argument that it is much fairer and much more representative of Voters and their intentions – when it is actually nothing of the sort.
The reason that FPTP isn’t working in the way that those without power would like it to do so, is because the content within our political system – that’s the Politicians, the Parties and the ideas, policies and approach that they espouse – are actually undemocratic or unrepresentative of democracy.
In fact, FPTP is actually working very well. FPTP is working just as it should. Voters are simply giving their democratic support and mandate to the Parties and Policies which they believe in the most.
There just isn’t a majority in Parliament, because no Political Party is showing the leadership, reliability, reason, thought and trustworthiness to be trusted by the majority of Voters as any Party of Government surely should.
PR would actually make the problems that we are experiencing with politics in the UK significantly worse.
PR would consolidate the position of fringe ideas, idealistic philosophies and single-issue Political Parties and make compromise a permanent feature of Government.
Good Government can never compromise on key issues if it is to be responsible to all members of the Electorate as it always should.
Those Political Parties that are unhappy with their ‘showing’ or Electoral Results should be looking at themselves and the policies that they are offering; looking inside themselves instead of outwards and accepting that they and what they do are not representative of a majority democratic view.
That they are in effect, in it for themselves.
No Political Party can itself be perfect. But a Political Party can be professional and considerate of its obligations to others in all that it will do.
The acid test of a democracy is when a majority of people vote clearly for one Candidate or one-Party over-all others. Because it is then clear that what that Party or Candidate is offering at that specific time and in that Election Campaign, is representative of the real Democratic and therefore Political Tide.
We must retain FPTP in order to return democracy in this Country.
It is the Politicians and the Political Parties that must change.
Once Politicians are doing what they should be under FPTP, Majority Government will soon be restored.
We do not need the permanent state of flux that we would have if PR were to replace FPTP. Majority Government would only ever then be possible through Coalition – which would mean what we actually Vote for will be set aside in compromise so that power can be shared between different Parties that could otherwise never achieve a majority, whilst what we actually voted for will never be in mind.
Adam Tugwell 