Hazel Blears and the political pygmies fighting for Gordon Brown's job | News & Politics | News & Comment

FIRST POSTED MAY 5, 2009

damage that may have been inflicted on her career but inadvertently she has put her beak on most of the ills that afflict not just the Government, but the entire political class.

New media: the 24-hour news cycle, and the real-time dissection of the minutiae of politicians internecine conflicts have done for whatever remaining respect the electorate may have had for them: Westminster has been revealed as a snake pit inhabited by vicious anoraks. Knock on doors if you want to, Hazel, all you'll find out is that shared instincts and emotions of the electorate are revulsion at you and your kind, tinged with weariness and outright boredom.

Far from failing to get its message across, the Government has been only too successful for that message is: We care more about our sinecures, our expenses and our job prospects than we do about any matter of principle.

Even the Thatcher cabinets, for all their savage ministerial infighting, still split over matters of conviction

Margaret Thatcher and members of her cabinet in 1990

Back in the day most people with an interest took it for granted that politics was a cut-throat affair, but still understood that the blood-letting wasn't merely for personal gain; even the Thatcher cabinets, for all their savage ministerial infighting, still split over matters of conviction. There may have been no such thing as society, but there remained an argument to be had about what replaced it.

But since the Major years, the pragmatism of a politics decoupled from any real ideology, has shrivelled into a mere careerism; which brings us to 2009, and jockeying for power among opposing claques of ministers who make Swift's Lilliputian Big and Little Endians look like philosopher-kings.

Do you really give a toss if that Balls has ascendancy over this Brown, Smith or Harman let alone Blears? I think not. All long-serving governments end up with kitchen cabinets fighting over the leftovers of power just as all political careers end in failure.

Yet I can't remember a time when those leftovers have seemed quite so mouldy and inedible. Still, at least they provide a little sustenance - when Cameron and his hungry hordes get into office, they'll find even these scraps gone, and the cupboard altogether bare.

FIRST POSTED MAY 5, 2009

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Pygmy? Perhaps. I've always thought she was a cross between a Chipmunk and Woody Woodpecker.

Posted by TomNightingale at 11:44am on May 6, 2009

The prospect of something worth the name in government isn't even the evil of two lessers. Cameroons, power without point or more of the scum left over from the erstwhile cream of the working class. As long as Proportional Representation is not on the agenda, the majority of the electorate will not get a look in. Thatcher NEVER had a majority of the vote (and won fewer votes each subsequent election - even Minor won more), let alone more than a quarter of the electorate.

Posted by allan kessing at 12:56pm on May 6, 2009

Another splendid article by Will Self. Why the Parliamentary Labour Party hasn't yet realised that it and future Labour Governments were doomed from the day it supported Blair's illegal war and slaughter in Iraq, it is difficult to understand. New Labour and its unprincipled self-seeking accolytes are well and truly and most deservedly down the pan, regardless of whatever additional useless and ill-considered schemes it spins around.

Posted by Lee Chadwick at 2:31pm on May 6, 2009

Allan - PR is dangerous in that it lets in Nazi scum. It is also a killer of democracy since we vote, not for the person (who therefore has a motive to be nice to us) but for the party (which doesn't.) I don't know if you have been following what Mr Cameron has been saying, or if you ever look at Conservative Home. If you ever get round to it, I think you will see that there are some really encouraging signs there.

Posted by prziloczek at 11:31am on May 7, 2009

Democracy is dangerous in that it allows people who don't understand their own best interests (as distinct from 'perceived' self interest - smoking, living on junk food or junk thinking,eg religion) to vote. PR is democracy. If nazis or tories or monarchists or unionists exist in the electorate they are entitled to representation in proportion to their numbers. If you don't like their views, do your best to dissuade them or, failing that, others from voting for them.

Posted by allan kessing at 1:57pm on May 7, 2009

PR isn't dangerous except to large political parties with the cash to spend conning the voters. Political parties are what's dangerous to democracy, as we have seen too often, they stifle individual thought with whips, and are ego trips for the leader, [seig heil]. I'm hoping enough voters will realise this, abandon belief that there is somehow a difference between the three main parties, and start voting in independents who are usually rooted in their community rather than metropolitan chatterati who get handed safe seats for brown nosing. Imagine a house of commons full of independents, the government elected from among them and removable immediately if they get too big for their boots. Would we ever wage illegal wars? Would we sell off our gold reserves at the lowest price ever? Would we hand over billions to banks and commit the electorate to decades of debt? To become an MP for a political party you first have to accept the party doctrine, which you may not agree totally with, accept the discipline, make friends and 'influence' people to select you, and tow the party line at all times, loyalty to the party is considered most important rather than loyalty to the voters and their concerns. Sound like democracy?

Posted by Peter Simmons at 11:41am on May 11, 2009