For someone who has self-admittedly been writing about British politics for 25 years, Miss Daley doesn’t seem to have a firm grasp of this subject.
“I have never ceased to be in awe of the pre-eminent common sense of British voters,” she writes, and on this superstition she bases her hope, nay, near-certainty that the “unelectable joke” Ed will be kept away from Downing Street.
I’ve used the word ‘superstition’ advisedly, for this is the proper term for a certainty that has no rational or evidential basis. In that, a superstition differs from both scientific fact and true religious faith.
Miss Daley does try to produce evidence for the Brits’ “unimpeachably sagacious electoral judgement”, but in doing so she pathetically emphasises the weakness of her belief.
She cites the 2011 referendum on the change to the single-transferrable-vote system as an example of the electorate’s awesome wisdom displayed by its putting “two fingers up to the great Progressive Alliance”.
Credulous Miss Daley seems to believe that most Brits are capable of weighing the pros and cons of that system against first-past-the-post or proportional representation to arrive at the conclusion that, when all is said and done, the existing system is more in keeping with the country’s constitutional tradition.
I’d like to know the address of the planet she is living on. Assuming that the property prices there are reasonable, that’s clearly the place to be.
Here on earth, where we are stuck for the moment, a fair assessment would be that 90 per cent of the electorate don’t know their electoral systems from a hole in the ground. If they happened to vote right that once, it’s not because of their intimate familiarity with the ins and outs of constitutional conundrums, but because they don’t give a whit one way or the other. Hence it’s easier to keep things as they are.
While praising the unimpeachable sagacity of British voters, it’s useful to remember that we’re talking about the same people who three times in a row (in 1997, 2001 and 2005) voted in the worst and most destructive government in British history.
Only the 2008 economic crisis, largely the work of the Labour government, put an end to that orgy of stupid irresponsibility, and then only partially.
Hence Miss Daley’s consternation: if the Brits self-evidently boast unimpeachable electoral sagacity, then how is it that the Tories, who aren’t “that bad”, are locked neck-in-neck with the same party that produced the economic debacle – and is still led by the same people who were directly responsible for it.
This creates a very real possibility that next week we’ll be governed by a coalition of the “unelectable joke” and the SNP, a party that has all the disgusting qualities of Labour and then some, which addendum includes all-abiding hatred for the dominant population of these Isles.
Miss Daley rebukes the Tories for reducing the argument to the purely actuarial data of pounds and pence. However, it’s the only argument that can possibly keep Dave in truncated power: appeals, say, to tradition, social cohesion or, God forbid, the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom would just confuse our sagacious voters – not to mention the fact that they’d sound hollow coming from Dave.
The problem with modern democracy, however, isn’t that voters can at times be persuaded to vote the wrong way, but that they can be first corrupted and then bribed into doing so.
Socialists get into power not because they persuade people of the benefits of socialism but because they gradually make people dependent on it.
This election won’t be decided on the Tories’ economic or any other performance as compared to Labour’s. The decisive factor will be the number of voters who depend on government spending wholly or partly.
If that number has reached the critical mass, Labour or some Labour-led coalition will carry the day. If it hasn’t, the Tories may have a chance (not that they deserve it, but this is another matter).
Considering that about 50 per cent of the UK economy is public, which is to say more or less socialist, one suspects that the critical mass either has already been reached, or is about to be.
The very premise of our modern democracy run riot is that first every person will vote on his narrow selfish interest, and then the sum of millions exercising petty selfishness will add up to public virtue.
This is another superstition, based as it is on two false premises: first, that, given modern ‘progressive’ education, voters know where their real interests lie; and second, that they are incorruptible.
It takes an exaggerated faith in human goodness, of the kind Miss Daley evinces, to believe that someone on welfare and in some cushy government sinecure, will realise that his long-term interests will be served better not by a suicidal growth in government spending, but by sound economic policy.
And it takes rank idiocy to assume that such voters will be altruistically prepared to forgo further handouts for the sake of public good and vote for a party that seems to be marginally less destructive in that respect.
This isn’t to make a firm prediction that we’ll be regaled with the sorry spectacle of Ed at 10 Downing Street. However, the matter of which nonentity will occupy the quarters at that address won’t be decided by the awesome sagacity of the electorate.
It hinges solely on whether or not the critical mass of corruption has been reached. If it has, then the purely rational arguments on the comparative merits of the Tories and Labour will have nothing but onanistic value.
One way or the other, one hopes that those voters who still read the papers will eventually be able to rely on more “unimpeachably sagacious” opinion-formers than Miss Daley. Opinions formed by her, kindly speaking, superficial musings will have nothing but destructive value.