Political Economy

Seven score and eight years ago a man spoke to dedicate the cemetery on a battlefield which had seen over 46,000 casualties including nearly 8,000 killed.

He pointed out that the living could not dedicate that place since the dead had already consecrated the ground with their blood. The living, rather, had to dedicate themselves to the unfinished work for which the dead had died.

That work was to ensure “. . . that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

The man was Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America and the battlefield was that of Gettysburg, the key battle in a civil war that saw a total of over 210,000 killed in action so that his nation “. . . shall have a new birth of freedom”.

Lincoln was not the first person to enunciate such a  belief. In 1830 the Senator Daniel Webster in a speech described the federal government of the USA as “made for the people, made by the people, and answerable to the people,”

So freedom is protected by the correct form of government and Lincoln tells us how to distinguish such a government from others. Do we, the People of England, have such protection for our Freedom? The answer is not difficult to deduce.

Government of the People

Government “Of the People” is government “Made by the People”. It is government hewn from the people and it has in all times and in all places been a government that People have had to fight for.  In January 2007 a poll for Newsnight showed that 61% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England. In April 2010 an ICM poll showed that 68% of the People of England wanted a devolved Parliament for England.

Do we, the country where parliaments were invented. have a Parliament for England? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such a Parliament? No! Do we have “Government of the People of England”? No!

Government by the People

“Government by the People” is the people governing themselves via the election of a representative that will do what the people want. Do we have such representatives? No! Why not? There are many reasons. The first and most important reason is that Edmund Burke, MP for Bristol, said in 1774 in a speech to the electors that he could vote in the House as he chose and not as they wanted, a vote mark-you that had been given him by those electors. Burke was hardly an objective observer in this and as a piece of self-serving claptrap this one has been religiously parroted by MPs ever since. Burke did not believe in democracy and is claimed as a founder of modern Conservatism.

Secondly few MPs actually have the integrity to vote according to their own opinions. Instead they hand their vote over to their party in return for a continuing flow of cash, perquisites and honours! Thirdly most MPs are not voted into office by a majority of those who vote. To get 40% of the vote is considered good and this of course usually represents less than 30% of the electorate.

Do we, in England, have MPs who represent their voters? No! Have the political elite in England said we will get such MPs? No! De we have “Government by the People of England”? No!

Government for the People

And so we come to the final act. I have already shown that in England we do not have “Government of the People”. I have shown that in England we do not have “Government by the People”. Do we have “Government of the People, by the People” in England? No!

So, do we have “Government for the People of England”?

In 1975 when the referendum on remaining in the Common Market was held I listened carefully, as did many, to the views expressed. We were told we needed to remain in the Market because of  trade despite the fact that we had a trade deficit with them of £2bn. Well now the Market is a Union and we have a trade deficit with the rest of the Union of £36bn. This deficit is equivalent to exporting some 1,000,000 jobs to Europe.

In the 13 years of Labour government from 1997 some 1.67 million jobs were created in the UK but 1.6 million of those jobs went to people with no prior connection to the UK. It appears therefore that the UK government has provided 2.6 million jobs to the world. The jobs that remain are increasingly part-time, minimum wage and unskilled. Recent data has shown the trend has continued and will continue, particularly since the coalition government has set no restrictions on the so-called Mode 4 immigration. This is where a company from another country is allowed to set up in the UK and bring in all its labour from its own country. These workers will be paid minimum wages plus a tax free living allowance. The Tory party will of course be the grateful recipients of political donations from these “UK” companies. UK workers will receive only the dole that has been much reduced by the Tories.

Will MPs work to protect and grow the number of meaningful jobs open to us? No! Will the political elite in Westminster allow us in England to get the jobs we need to lead satisfying and creative lives? No! Is this “Government for the People”? No!

A broken Democracy

In England we do not have “Government of the People”. We do not have “Government by the People”.  We do not have “Government for the People”. We live in a broken democracy where our freedom is compromised and not, as the Prime Minister would have us believe, a broken society where our property is compromised. Indeed the Prime Minister is currently driving this broken democracy deeper and further than anyone before.

Is it possible to fix the problem, to regain our freedom by instituting “Government of the People, by the People, for the People”? The answer is yes, but only if the a range of policies like the following are adopted. It cannot be fixed by adopting one or two of these policies, such as creating an elected upper chamber or adopting a parliament for England. It cannot be fixed by adopting policies but implementing them in such a way that they will not work. For example Cameron’s promise to make it possible for voters to recall their MP is going to be implemented by creating a committee of MPs to decide if one of them should be “thrown to the wolves”! Such a committee will only be used to punish an MP who has annoyed the party leaders!

So here is the list:

Government of the People

• A devolved Parliament for England with a government and First Minister.
• A smaller House of Commons and elected Upper Chamber to take on the role of a federal Parliament responsible for reserved matters.

Government by the People

• Power for the voters to recall a sitting MP for re-election
• Devolving additional responsibilities to the County level and its elected Mayor.
• Increased use of the referendum so that voters can decide what is done.
• Reform of the voting system to ensure that 50% is required for election

Government for the People

• A referendum on leaving the EU
• An end to mass immigration
• An immigration system that ensures that jobs are not taken from the People of England and that immigration is run effectively.
• Protection for companies from takeover and closure by foreign companies

A Party that Will

There is one political party that does have all of these policies, and more. It is the only party that has as one of its objectives the institution of “Government of the People, by the People, for the People.” That party is the English Democrats.

The Price of Freedom

Now here is the rub. It is your freedom and your government that I have been talking about. The good news is that you can do something about it. The price is your time and your interest. If you are concerned that your freedom is compromised then join the English Democrats, donate to their funds and get active in any way you can. There are a wide range of opportunities such as forming a county or constituency branch, or joining one if it already exists, leafleting, letter writing, standing in elections, writing articles or blogs, helping to run facebook, twitter and web sites. The list is almost endless.

Its Your Freedom. You Do Something About It.

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Michael Gove has decided that that there will be a new qualification. The English Bac, awarded to students with good passes in English, maths, science, a language, and history or geography.

Why this choice of subjects? Where is the Latin or Ancient Greek I hear you asking? After all there has been a lot of support for these subjects as the true core of a real education!

What will the history be about? Will it bang the drum for England and its achievements? Or perhaps ancient history, the study of ancient Greece and Rome, is a safer bet?

And why are there only five subjects in it? Why cannot RE  be included, or psychology or sociology or technology or art or music?

I tried to get my head around the Scottish system to see what they did but its jargon, innumerable levels and differences in terminolgy totally defeated me. Proof I supose of the superiority of the Scottish system.

There is the Middle Years programme (ages 11 – 16) of the International Baccalaureate which is an easily understood programme that aims to develop students academically, socially and emotionally and practically. Surely that could improve English education? Most probably it would, but it would also cost money to implement. Why did Gove not choose the Middle Years IB?

So have you spotted the real reason for Gove’s English Bac yet? It certainly has no academic or pedagogical foundation. It will not distinguish good teaching or good schools from bad. It is quite simply a measure that guarantees to show, at no cost, two things:

1. That private schools are better than state schools!
2. That Gove’s programmes of education have given rise to a huge improvement in standards in English state schools by the time of the next election!

Of course in reality it will show neither of these two things.  So how does it work?

Some years ago the Labour government made modern languages no longer compulsory. As a result in many state schools students have voted with their feet and the proportion of students taking a modern foreign language has dropped significantly. State schools will therefore automatically have poor English Bac results. Of course those students choosing their GCSE options to start this September for examination in May/June 2013 will find that languages are again, for large number of more able students, back on the subject list. So in 2013 results will be better.

Will Mr Gove be starting his measurements in 2013? Not at all. He has already started by publishing English Bac results for 2010! This is a full three years before the new system can possibly start to give results. As one would expect these 2013 figures will show two things:

1. That private schools still have much better results at the English Bac and are still “somehow better”
2. That state school results in 2013 will be much better than in 2010, the last year Labour had an influence on schools, so showing that conservative policies are much more successful than those of Labour!

Will either of these two assertions be true? No!

Private schools will, by and large, be selecting their students from amongst the brightest 16% in the nation. That is to say from those with a CAT score of 110 or better. The local comprehensive will have the whole range of student ability from a CAT score of between 70 and 130. If they are lucky the brightest students, those with a score of 110 or more, will make up 10% of their intake (the rest of the bright students will be in private schools) compared to the 100% for the private school. The private school result should therefore be 10 times better, shouldn’t it? The fact that they are never any where near that good attests to the good quality of much of state education.

Denbigh High School in Luton is led by one of the regions most outstanding head teachers, Dame Yasmin Bevan DBE Hon DEd BSc (Econ) BA MA. Are Denbigh’s English Bac results for 2010 better than poor? Probably not. Will they be better in 2013? Certainly they will. Will that have anything to do with Gove’s policies? Of course not! It will happen simply because more Denbigh students will be taking a modern foreign language.

Will the coalition government claim the improvement is because of Gove’s policies? Almost certainly!

What will it actually prove? You decide!

My Last question to you is this. Do we not deserve better government than this shoddy mixture of trickery and deceit?

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Imagine that you are getting to the end of a not very good meal at your local restaurant. The dessert menu has arrived and you see that only ice cream is still available. Worse still there are only three flavours, vanilla, chocolate and strawberry. You have tried all of them before and found some fault with each. However you are still hungry so you decide to choose, somewhat peversily,  your least favourite flavour, strawberry, in the hope that this time it might be more appealing.

As your ice cream arrives you notice that another table of three is getting quite different flavours, passion fruit and mango, mint chocolate chip and rum and raisin. You complain to the waiter who tells you that he has decided to offer only the three largest sellers as this makes his job easier. To get the others you have to know to ask.

You would quite rightly be upset and probably make a complaint. But this sort of thing is happening all the time at election hustings up and down the country. Only the three largest parties are allowed on the panel and the smaller parties have to make do with submitting their responses in written form for later publication in the hope that some voters may read them.

The silly thing is that with the planned televised debates you are going to hear what these three main parties think. Even worse is the fact that these are the parties who have run parliament for decades and are the primary architects of the mess we are in.  Limiting the panel in this way ensures that the innovative solutions that the smaller parties are espousing may not see the light of day. It is also constraining the democratic process in a way that will increase the likelihood of an adverse outcome for the country.

People are likely to vote for what they hear, or not vote at all. Worse still if there is a hung parliament it will consist of the three larger parties fighting it out to get their old fashioned and out of date ideas accepted. Any negotiation is likely to be along the lines of “You accept this stale policy of ours and we will accept one of your stale policies”. Melding one stale idea with another has little chance of creating one new idea. Or to put it another way. If you have one thousand monkeys typing stale ideas out for a million years the chance they will create one new idea is small.

It will be as though you complained to the waiter and all he could offer as compensation was Neapolitan ice cream with layers of  vanilla-chocolate-strawberry. The fact that you like not one of the flavours makes no difference.

Now you might remark that as the English Democrats Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for Stevenage that I would say all of that wouldn’t I? But the fact remains that the English Democrats party does have an important contribution to make.  First we are an English nationalist party in the same way that the SNP are a Scottish nationalist party or Plaid Cymru are a Welsh nationalist party. We will put England first just as the SNP puts Scotland first and Plaid puts Wales first. The English Democrats are the only party that is committed to putting England first. English voters might welcome such voting option as election day approaches and the demands for yet more money by the SNP and Plaid become yet more strident.

Secondly we are the only party with a well thought through but radical alternative to the current constitutional settlement. Our plans have matured over the last eight years and are not a knee-jerk reaction to current problems. So have the rest of the policies in our Manifesto

Thirdly we are not that small anyway. In the 2009 European elections over 280,000 people in England voted for the English Democrats – compare this to around 321,000 for the SNP and 127,000 for Plaid. We will soon be the largest nationalist party in the UK. We plan to field over 100 candidates in the Parliamentary election, much more than the SNP or Plaid. The Alliance for Democracy, of which the English Democrats are a founding member, plans to field 300 or more candidates.

We are in a critical election period. A recent survey said that 38% of the population wanted a hung parliament. It is quite possible that as the election date gets closer this proportion will increase. But do voters know what they wish for? A hung parliament of the three main parties plus the nationalist parties of Scotland and Wales will lead to an unprincipled grab for yet more English taxpayers money for the already over-paid Scots and Welsh.  The three main parties will eagerly connive in this, driven as they are by ego and bombast rather than a true love of country. They have already shown themselves  happy to sell the English down the road in order to get an opportunity to implement their already degraded ideas. They will not stop at this. For the English it will be a bit like a vanilla-chocolate-strawberry Neapolitan ice cream with an added extra – a layer of strong mustard!

The results of this will not be pretty. A severe reaction by the English leading to civil unrest, riots and mayhem by a nation that has already signalled that it has had enough is an almost certain outcome of this scenario.

And all for the want of not allowing the voter to see the full range of ideas and parties open to them. How sad can you get?

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