The Nolan Principles and DOGGHIE

(Image credit: Civil Service College)

In 1994, then UK prime minister John Major appointed a senior judge named Michael Nolan as chair of the newly formed Committee on Standards in Public Life. And he asked the committee to produce a report within six months. The terms of reference were: “to examine current concerns about standards of conduct of all holders of public office, including arrangements relating to financial and commercial activities, and make recommendations as to any changes in present arrangements which might be required to ensure the highest standards of propriety in public life.” This need arose because of a number of scandals around that time, notably the “cash for questions” scandal.

The resulting report, published in 1995, was entitled “Standards in Public Life.” It can be downloaded here: [[i]]. The original statement of the principles, as “The Seven Principles of Public Life,” is on page 14. But the wording, having evolved over the intervening almost 30 years, is now significantly different from that in the original. The latest wording can be found here: [[ii]].

Who do the principles apply to?

The preamble says that the principles: “apply to anyone who works as a public office-holder. This includes all those who are elected or appointed to public office, nationally and locally, and all people appointed to work in the Civil Service, local government, the police, courts and probation services, non-departmental public bodies (NDPBs, aka quangos), and in the health, education, social and care services.” It goes on: “All public office-holders are both servants of the public and stewards of public resources. The principles also apply to all those in other sectors delivering public services.”

That covers, in my estimation, pretty much anyone whose job is paid for with taxpayers’ money, and who has any influence at all on government policies or on their implementation or enforcement. We, the people of the UK, should therefore be entitled to expect that everyone in government, including politicians at all levels, civil servants in all government departments, quangocrats, police, court staff, and all staff in all the major government service providers and their contractors, will keep strictly to, and always bear in mind, these principles in everything they do in their jobs.

According to the Good Government Institute, the Nolan principles have proved influential, and are enshrined in codes of conduct across the UK public sector, from schools and government departments to hospitals. They have also been incorporated into the Ministerial Code, the Civil Service Code and the Civil Service Management Code. And many local authorities, charities and educational and healthcare bodies claim to adhere to the principles.

Let us now look at what each of the principles says.

Selflessness

“Holders of public office should act solely in terms of the public interest.”

A question here: exactly what does “the public interest” mean in the context of democratic government? The usual meaning is “the benefit or well-being of the public.” Here, “the public” must be considered both as an aggregate, and as a group of individuals, each of whom must receive benefit or well-being.

I am reminded of John Locke’s definition of “the public good.” That is: “…the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for.” So, I interpret this principle as requiring holders of public office to act for the benefit of each and every member of the public who pay their wages. And not for the benefit of any particular set of interests, including their own, those of their friends, or those of political party agendas or lobbying groups.

And how well do they keep to it? An obvious example of one that didn’t keep to it is former Tory MP Owen Paterson, disgraced for his advocacy for companies to which he himself was a consultant, that led to multi-million-pound government contracts for those companies.

But I see a wider question as well. If a political policy goes against the public interest, or its costs to the public are greater than the benefits to that same public, are not office holders who promote or support that policy breaking the Nolan selflessness principle? After all, government is supposed to be for the benefit of the people. Is it not?

Integrity

“Holders of public office must avoid placing themselves under any obligation to people or organisations that might try inappropriately to influence them in their work. They should not act or take decisions in order to gain financial or other material benefits for themselves, their family, or their friends. They must declare and resolve any interests and relationships.”

Owen Paterson, very obviously, broke this principle too. But there is, again, a wider question to be asked. Over recent decades, politicians have repeatedly taken on, without our say-so, obligations to, or policy ideas from, external actors. Most notably, the EU, the UN, the World Economic Forum, and multi-national corporations including Big Pharma. These obligations then result in policies being imposed on people in the UK, that go against our interests.

Such policies include all those that have been imposed on us through EU directives, or through agreements with the UN. These include its Sustainable Development Goals and “Agenda 2030,” and particularly projects of its World Health Organization. Today, these policies include, at least, “nett zero,” the extremist approach to air pollution called “clean air,” and the WHO’s “vision zero” road safety scheme.

To make commitments to external parties to impose such policies goes against any idea of democracy, or government of the people by the people. So, are those that promote those commitments, and support those policies, not also violating the Nolan integrity principle?

Objectivity

“Holders of public office must act and take decisions impartially, fairly and on merit, using the best evidence and without discrimination or bias.”

Many environmental policies, in particular, are set on the basis of political commitments made, without any explicit consent from the people, to external actors like the UN and its WHO. And they are set without any regard to their costs, or to the fact that their benefits to the people are highly dubious, if indeed there are any at all. Some decisions, indeed, are made on the basis of no evidence at all – for example, the “climate crisis” declaration of May 2019.

As to decisions being made on merit, in 2020 incoming chancellor Rishi Sunak had the “green book,” which sets the rules for how public sector projects are to be assessed, changed: [[iii]]. Reasons given were that “the process relied too heavily on cost-benefit analysis,” and there was “insufficient weight given to whether the proposed project addressed strategic policy priorities.” This seems to imply that policies governments deem to be strategic, including “nett zero,” are to be exempt from cost-benefit analysis from the point of view of the people they are supposed to be serving! No matter how damaging the effects of those policies will be on us.

Moreover, are not disguising, understating or suppressing the costs of a policy, or overstating its benefits, or failing to do an honest, objective cost-benefit analysis from the point of view of the people affected by it, themselves also violations of the principle? Those who do these things are certainly not behaving as “both servants of the public and stewards of public resources.”

But there’s more. In recent decades, successive governments have more and more picked on scapegoats to be punished, without any impartiality or consideration of merits. For example, small businesses were closed down during COVID, while many larger companies and government offices could continue to operate. And I myself have suffered the destruction of my career as a software consultant through a bad tax law called IR35, supported and strengthened by Labour and Tories alike.

Meanwhile, car drivers have been particularly singled out as scapegoats for heavy taxes and fines, with drivers of some new cars hit for more than £5,000 yearly in vehicle excise duty from April 2025. And the latest victims of Labour’s schemes of plunder are family businesses, and most of all, farmers.

Government, if it is to be legitimate, must act not only in the interests of the people as a whole, but also in the interests of every individual among the governed. Real criminals excepted, of course. So, those that set discriminatory policies, as in my list above, are clearly violating the Nolan objectivity principle.

Accountability

“Holders of public office are accountable to the public for their decisions and actions and must submit themselves to the scrutiny necessary to ensure this.”

Accountability is another word, whose meaning is not as clear as it ought to be. If A is accountable to B, does this mean that B has a legal right to claim recompense from A if A’s actions cause damage to B? If A is government, that certainly isn’t how things work today! Lack of accountability by the “sovereign” for its actions is built in, at a fundamental level, to the Westphalian state system, under which we are forced to live today.

But the idea of scrutiny suggests at least that the decisions of office holders should be routinely audited, by independent and unbiased parties, for compliance with this and all the other principles – selflessness, integrity, objectivity, openness, honesty, leadership. Decisions that fail the test on any of these grounds should not be implemented. And should those, that have made such bad decisions, and thereby damaged the lives or prosperity of the people, not also be required to compensate the victims? Or punished, or sacked, if that is merited?

Does such an auditing process happen today? Not a chance.

Openness

“Holders of public office should act and take decisions in an open and transparent manner. Information should not be withheld from the public unless there are clear and lawful reasons for so doing.”

The recent machinations of both Tory and Labour governments are, surely, far from open and transparent. How about the Tories’ 2020 ruse that exempted projects labelled strategic, including nett zero, from any requirement for cost-benefit analysis? Or Labour’s recent breaking of their manifesto commitment not to raise National Insurance rates?

As for information being withheld… There is an entire industry, both within government and nominally private, whose mission is to prevent truths inconvenient to the establishment from reaching the general public en masse. One example of such a truth is the huge increase in excess deaths since the roll-out of COVID vaccines. Another is that the “science” behind the climate change narrative, and thus behind nett zero, is fundamentally flawed.

Honesty

“Holders of public office should be truthful.”

That politicians routinely lie, is today a truism. Tony Blair’s lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction have even given rise to a popular anagram of his name!

But in my view, honesty needs far more than mere truthfulness. It requires also candidness – that is, telling the whole of the relevant truth. It requires straightforwardness – not attempting to mislead, conceal, confuse or obfuscate. And it requires sincerity – that is, the absence of pretence or deceit.

Do politicians and other office holders today behave with honesty in all its aspects? Don’t make me laugh.

Leadership

“Holders of public office should exhibit these principles in their own behaviour and treat others with respect. They should actively promote and robustly support the principles and challenge poor behaviour wherever it occurs.”

While this is a fine sounding statement, I don’t think it goes nearly far enough. Holders of public office ought always to reflect their stated principles in their own behaviours. They must always practise what they preach. And any kind of hypocrisy is totally unacceptable. Hypocrisy should be a dismissal offence.

Thus, for example, those that promote, support, make or enforce “nett zero” or policies that flow from it, must themselves be seen to live a nett zero lifestyle. There must be no flying to climate conferences (most of all in private jets), or arriving by helicopter to give speeches on reducing CO₂ emissions. Those that want to force others to stop driving cars, or flying in planes, or eating meat, must themselves give up those very conveniences and pleasures. And those, that want to phase out the use of fossil fuels, should themselves stop using fossil fuels, and products made using them, altogether. Then, we will be able to see whether or not an economy mired in the UN’s “sustainability” rhetoric is actually sustainable.

Assessment of the principles

The Nolan Principles are considered, in general, to have been a success. One reason is that they are attractive to ordinary people, because they accord with a common-sense understanding of what is right and what is wrong. However, by 2020 some commentators were suggesting that, due to the Tory government’s behaviour over COVID, we had reached a “post-Nolan age.”

Suggestions have been put forward over the years that the principles might be made more explicit, or tightened, or even added to. Reactions to these ideas have been mixed. But what is, to me, the most obvious question does not seem to have been asked. That is: Why not just enforce the damned things? After all, most individuals in government employ have signed a contract committing to upholding the Nolan principles. So, why not call out those that have broken their contracts? Fine them, sack them, even cancel their pensions? Saves money, too.

Local government under Reform

Reform UK has recently taken power in several county councils, including Kent and Greater Lincolnshire. In those places, they have begun to implement a project called DOGE, Department of Government Efficiency, based on the model piloted in the USA by Donald Trump and (for a while) Elon Musk. UK DOGE seems, from all I have read about it, to be entirely a financial exercise. Identify areas of fat, and excise them.

That’s fine, as far as it goes. But might it not be even more powerful, if combined with auditing the ethical basis on which decisions have been made? Would, perhaps, a programme of “Nolan Audits,” identifying failures of selflessness, integrity, objectivity, accountability, openness, honesty and leadership among both elected councillors and local government employees, yield significant benefits to us, the people? Particularly while we are struggling under a burden of ever-increasing local taxes? Much of which are used to fund stuff like cycle paths and 20mph speed limits, that we neither need or want? Or to have police or cameras lying in wait to catch us out driving a smidgeon above some arbitrary limit that wasn’t even there 20 years ago?

Introducing DOGGHIE

My friends, I suggest to you an extension of the DOGE project, which I call DOGGHIE. That is, the Department of Good Government, Honesty, Integrity and Efficiency. It will combine current DOGE projects with what I call Nolan Audits.

It will seek to deliver good government, because it will ensure that all decisions made are in the interests of the people served.

It will seek to deliver truthfulness, honesty, candour, straightforwardness and sincerity in every interaction that government has with the people it is tasked to serve.

It will expose, and ridicule, hypocrisy in all its forms.

It will not allow external parties, such as the UN, EU and WEF, to influence in any way how people in the UK live their daily lives.

It will make all its decisions objectively and justly, based on the evidence, the whole evidence, and nothing but the evidence. It will not discriminate for or against anyone, except on the basis of how they behave.

It will hold decision makers and implementers responsible for the effects of their actions, and will order reparations or punishments as demanded by justice.

Good DOGGHIE!

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[[i]] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a7e4497ed915d74e33f124b/1stInquiryReport.pdf

[[ii]] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/the-7-principles-of-public-life/the-7-principles-of-public-life--2

[[iii]] https://lordslibrary.parliament.uk/government-investment-programmes-the-green-book/

The Rhythms of History

(Image credit: Giammarco Boscaro, Unsplash)

Recently, I discussed the ideas of two thinkers of the past, who have greatly influenced me: John Locke and Franz Oppenheimer. Today, I’ll introduce the ideas of another thinker, Jason Alexander, who gave me the foundation for my view of history in the large.

Jason Alexander

Unlike Locke and Oppenheimer, Alexander is not well known. (He is American, but is not the actor of that name!) I met him just once, in San Francisco in 1990, and corresponded with him from time to time until about 2006. In his early years, he was a follower of Ayn Rand; but he was, in effect, expelled from her movement in the 1960s. I am not sure whether or not he is still alive; but if he is, he would now be in his 90s.

He calls his view of history “Ages and Stages.” The big picture is of an ongoing battle between us human beings and those that want to hold us back. This battle involves a series of forward-moving revolutions, during which we make great progress. But these are punctuated by, often long, periods of stagnation or backsliding, which result from counter-revolutions, or reactions, launched by our enemies. Alternating ages of light and dark, if you will.

I have adopted Alexander’s scheme of revolutions and counter-revolutions as the basis of my large-scale view of human history. However, there are considerable differences of detail between us. In particular, my list of revolutions is not the same as his.

From this point on, therefore, I shall be discussing my own views rather than his. For those of you who only know me as a Reform UK person and campaign manager, let me introduce my alter ego – Neil the political (and ethical) philosopher!

Human Nature

I shall now give my view of the nature, which is shared by all human beings today. And of the natural imperatives, which dictate to us how we should behave.

Control over our surroundings

At the most fundamental level, it is natural for us to take control of our surroundings, to use them for our benefit, and to leave our mark on them. It is a major, and vital, part of our nature.

This is why we build buildings, take part in economic activity, and engineer solutions to make the world a better place for us to live. It is what elevates us from mere animals into human beings. It is also what leads us to seek to build civilizations, which can provide us with the environment in which we are able to fulfil ourselves.

Reason

Beyond this, it is natural to us to seek to understand what we see around us and what we experience. To do this, we need to use our faculties of reason.

We need to examine the world as we see and experience it. We need to seek the true facts from the evidence, from all the evidence, and only from the evidence. And we need to think rationally, logically and honestly in our efforts to understand more and better.

The natural law of humanity

At the level of the individual, it is natural for each of us to behave in ways, that better our species and move it forward. Put another way, for human beings, just as for all other sentient species, there is a “natural law” or as John Locke called it “law of Nature,” which, if we choose to study it, can tell us what are the right and wrong ways for each of us to behave. John Locke paraphrased this law as follows: “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.”

I myself call this law the natural law of humanity. And those who behave up to the natural law of humanity, I call human beings worth the name.

Civilizations

Moreover, we are social. While every one of us is an individual, each with our own body and mind, it is natural for us to associate with others. And doing so brings us advantages as individuals, such as the division of labour. Thus, the ethically right behaviours for each of us include those which enable us to function effectively as members of a civilization. Such as respecting the human rights of those who respect our own equal and opposite rights.

Above the level of the individual, it is natural for us to form ourselves into social groups, and to organize them in such a way as to bring benefits to everyone in them. By doing this, we build civilizations, providing the habitat in which we human beings can live our lives to the full. When such civilizations succeed, the results can grow to a large scale. And they can endure over time, sometimes for many generations, or even for centuries.

Economic activity

We have always been by nature an economic species. Economic activity – Franz Oppenheimer’s “economic means” – is how we interact with each other when seeking to co-operate together to take control of our surroundings. It is natural for us to be creative, to solve problems, and to trade with each other for mutual benefit.

The habitat we need is one of peace and tranquillity, dignity and respect for our humanity, individual justice, human rights and freedoms, a free market, and free trade. In which we can all ply our trades and businesses, develop and make use of our skills, and enjoy the rewards we earn. The purpose of building civilizations is to provide such a habitat for all human beings worth the name.

Five Revolutions

Since the Neanderthal extinction around 40,000 years ago, I identify five periods of history, during which we human beings have been rapidly moving forward. Each of these periods seems to have had a characteristic flavour of revolutionary change for the better.

The Neolithic revolution

The first was the Neolithic revolution of about 12,000 years ago, just as the Earth came out of the last ice age. That was the point at which we differentiated from, and became superior to, mere animals. And it was a practical revolution.

Our ancestors began to settle down in communities, to cultivate crops, and to domesticate animals. We began to put into action the part of our nature, which leads us to take control of, use for our benefit, and leave our mark on, our surroundings. The paradigm of our first revolution was Humanity. We found the essence of what makes us human.

Ancient Greece and Rome

Our second revolution, a mental one, was seeded in ancient Greece, beginning in the early 6^th century BC with Thales of Miletus. Its paradigm was Reason.

It led us to think rationally and abstractly; for example, to do mathematics and philosophy. It enabled us to build new and better kinds of civilization, such as Athenian democracy. And among the civilizations which grew out of this revolution was Rome, which managed to incorporate, and to build on, some of the best of the Greek culture.

The Renaissance

Our third revolution was the Renaissance, starting in the mid-15^th century. Its paradigm was Discovery. Of ideas both old and new, of new places, of ourselves. It was, for want of a better word, a spiritual revolution; a rise of the human spirit.

The Renaissance brought, not just a re-discovery of ancient learning, but a movement towards what became known as “Renaissance humanism,” with new moral perspectives and a feeling of cultural renewal. It helped us to emerge from the tyranny of the Catholic church and the feudal political system. It brought a sense of renewed confidence in our own faculties. And it brought a new sense of freedom for us human beings, who had for so long been suppressed by orthodoxy.

The Enlightenment

Our fourth revolution was the Enlightenment. Seeded by John Locke in the 1680s, it grew towards fruition during the 18^th century. Like the second, it was a mental revolution. Its paradigm was Freedom. From it have flowed all the (relative) freedoms we have enjoyed in the West over the last three centuries. And it brought new ideas, more friendly to the individual than before, that are commonly called “Enlightenment values.”

Enlightenment values included: The use and celebration of human reason. Rational inquiry, and the pursuit of science. Greater tolerance in religion. Individual liberty and independence. Freedom of thought and action. The pursuit of happiness. Natural rights, natural law of humanity, natural equality of all human beings, and human dignity. The idea that any society exists for the individuals in it, not individuals for the society. Constitutional government of the people, by the people, for the people; as so memorably expressed by Abraham Lincoln. Government for the benefit of, and with the consent of, the governed – all the governed, real criminals excepted. The rule of law: that is, those with government power, such as lawmakers, officials and judges, should have to obey the same rules as everyone else. An ideal of justice which, as put forward by Immanuel Kant, allows that “the freedom of the will of each can coexist together with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law.” A desire for human progress, and a rational optimism for the future.

The Industrial Revolution

Our fifth revolution was, and still is, the Industrial Revolution. Like the first, it was a practical revolution. Its paradigm was and is Creativity, supported by the free market, free trade and honest business. It has enabled people in those countries, which have fully embraced it, greatly to increase their standard of living. And so, greatly to increase people’s quality of life and chances of happiness.

It has also enabled us human beings to take greater and greater control over our physical surroundings, and to use them more and more for our own advantage.

Five counter-revolutions

But each of our forward-movement revolutions is eventually followed by a regressive, anti-human counter-revolution from those that are hostile to us human beings and to our progress.

The state

Our enemies’ first counter-revolution, starting perhaps around 3,200 BC, was the rise of the political state. And the state itself – a top-down system, that enables an élite forcibly to rule over a, potentially large, group of people – was its counter-paradigm. What our enemies did back then was pervert the part of our nature which seeks to control our surroundings, into an insatiable desire for them to control us.

Institutional religion

The second counter-revolution began in the 4^th century AD, when Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire. The counter-paradigm was institutional religion, and the church that embodied it. Against our natural urge to look at reality and think rationally about it, churchmen promoted dubious dogmas and mumbo-jumbo.

The church, along with the dogmas and narratives it peddled, enabled the unscrupulous to control people mentally, just as the state enabled them to control people physically. This led to the Dark and Middle Ages.

Orthodoxy, tyranny and dishonesty

The third counter-revolution, which followed the Renaissance, had three main strands: orthodoxy, tyranny and dishonesty.

The pressures for orthodoxy were supplied mostly by the church; though often, kings and princes helped them along, too. Meanwhile, tyranny and dishonesty, already features of many states, became all but enshrined in the idea of the state through the work of Niccolò Machiavelli. He prompted rulers to be sly, deceitful, and unscrupulous; as well as cruel, oppressive and heartless.

Collectivism

Our enemies’ fourth counter-revolution began in the 18^th century. It was based, at its root, on a collectivist reaction against the Enlightenment and the values it had brought.

Over time, a slew of political ideologies emerged, all of which were hostile to the human individual, and to his and her rights and freedoms. Socialism, nationalism, communism, fascism, social or religious conservatism, élitism, or false “liberalism,” for example. And all these ideologies inexorably increased the power of the state, and the scope of what it did. The result? Continuing oppressions and wars world-wide.

Suppression

Our enemies’ fifth counter-revolution has been growing for the last 80 years or so. It began during the second world war, with the events that led to the formation of the current international order. Its counter-paradigm is Suppression. Suppression of truth, suppression of rights and freedoms, suppression of prosperity, suppression of our humanity and our creativity. Suppression of us human beings.

The main thrust of our enemies’ fifth counter-revolution today is a push to suppress our industrial civilization, to shut down the economic free market, and to use taxation, regulation and extortion to squeeze us ordinary human beings out of existence.

In the UK, the extremists among our enemies – including many prominent individuals among all the mainstream political parties – want to halt the use of fossil fuels (and so also of all products made using them), and to destroy economic freedom entirely. If not stopped, the result will be the destruction of prosperity and freedom for everyone, except (for a while) for a clique of self-serving élites. And, looking further out, the extinction of the human species.

The UN and Maurice Strong

The fifth counter-revolution is being hurried along by the EU, successive UK governments (both Tory and Labour), and many other national governments, notably in the “Anglosphere” and in Europe. But it is in origin a product of, and is most of all being driven by, the United Nations. The recent decision by the International Court of Justice, the UN’s highest court, that says that those claiming to have been harmed by human-caused climate change are entitled to “reparations,” is the latest proof of this: [[i]].

The Canadian former oil baron, Maurice Strong, was the individual that, more than any other, perverted the UN into a bureaucracy intent on destroying human civilization, and in particular Western industrial civilization. Strong was, among much else, secretary-general of the UN’s Rio Earth Summit in 1992.

Indeed, I rate Strong as the evillest man of the 20^th century. Ahead, indeed, of Stalin, Mao, Hitler and Pol Pot. Those four all set out to commit genocides against particular groups of people. But Strong set out to commit genocide against our entire civilization. He gave this away in a 1997 magazine interview, in which he said: “Frankly, we may get to the point where the only way of saving the world will be for industrial civilization to collapse.” Over several decades, Strong influenced those around him in the UN, including those at the very top, to move towards provoking that collapse.

Where are we today?

It is these provocations, prompted by Strong and others almost as evil – politicians, bureaucrats, globalists and internationalists, wannabe dictators, corporate bosses and billionaires, dishonest academics, and many more – that we human beings are suffering under today. Those that seek to destroy human civilization claim to care about the environment. But they don’t care about the most important environment of all – the environment for human beings worth the name, the environment in which we can fulfil ourselves.

Ask yourself: Do we human beings, today, have the environment of peace, dignity, freedom and justice, which we need in order to flourish? Surely not. Our daily lives are watched as never before. Our basic rights, such as privacy and freedom of speech, are in serious danger. Indeed, our enemies want to label as “misinformation,” and suppress, any statement – however factual – that contradicts their narratives. And senseless wars continue in places like Ukraine and Gaza.

Moreover, the absolute basics of developed civilization, such as affordable, reliable energy, transport that meets our needs, and a free market economy, will soon be taken from us forever, if we let our enemies have their way.

Further, throughout their history, states have re-distributed wealth. Always in favour of the ruling class and their cronies, and at the expense of everyone else. But today, predatory taxation, impositions, and extortion – for example, fines for breaking of arbitrary rules by people merely going about their daily lives, without harming or intending to harm anyone – have increased to a level that is unbearable. And many people who are poor financially as well as politically, such as small business people and pensioners, are among the hardest hit.

So, life for ordinary people has become, more and more, an Orwellian nightmare. Far from creating and maintaining the human environment of peace, dignity, freedom and justice which we need, our enemies are doing everything they can to destroy our environment.

Things must change. And, I think, they are starting to change. The rise to popularity of Reform UK is only one symptom of this change. There is a new feeling in the air, perhaps a resurgence of the human spirit; not unlike the mental changes for the better, which accompanied the Renaissance.

As well as all this, more and more people are starting to wake up to what is being done to them. And they don’t like it.

Where are we headed next? That’s a big question. One which I must, unfortunately, leave for another day.

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[[i]] https://www.carbonbrief.org/icj-what-the-world-courts-landmark-opinion-means-for-climate-change/

Oppenheimer’s Razor

 

This is the third in a set of short essays about political philosophers who have influenced the development of, and ways of thinking about, politics in the last 500 years. I have previously discussed one of the good guys, John Locke, and one of the bad guys, Jean Bodin. Today, I’m going to look at another of the good guys: Franz Oppenheimer.

His life

Oppenheimer was a German Jewish sociologist. He lived from 1864 to 1943, and considered himself to be a liberal socialist. He certainly had no time at all for capitalism, whose ultimate outcome he regarded as slavery.

Like John Locke, Oppenheimer studied medicine, and he practised as a doctor for a decade. He worked as a magazine editor, then studied economic theory, and became an academic.

Late in life, in 1938, he was smuggled by friends out of Nazi Germany. He travelled, via Tokyo and then Shanghai, to Los Angeles, where he lived the last five years of his life.

The State

Though he wrote much, Oppenheimer is remembered mainly for one book. He published Der Staat (The State) in German in 1908. An English translation was made in 1922. You can find it here as a PDF [[1]], or here in a variety of formats, including plain text: [[2]].

Despite his socialism, he was no lover of the political state. “The State may be defined as an organisation of one class dominating over the other classes,” he said in the introduction to his book. And “…the State, as a class-state, can have originated in no other way than through conquest and subjugation.” “Its basic justification, its raison d’être, was and is the economic exploitation of those subjugated.”

Oppenheimer’s legacy and genius, in my view, lies in one crucial distinction. Very early in his book, he pits what he calls the economic means against what he calls the political means. “There are two fundamentally opposed means whereby man, requiring sustenance, is impelled to obtain the necessary means for satisfying his desires. These are work and robbery, one's own labor and the forcible appropriation of the labor of others… I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the ‘economic means’ for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the ‘political means.’”

He also wrote: “All world history, from primitive times up to our own civilization, presents a single phase, a contest namely between the economic and the political means.” And: “The state is an organization of the political means.”

Further: “But always, in its essence, is the ‘State’ the same. Its purpose, in every case, is found to be the political means for the satisfaction of needs.” Franz Oppenheimer was the first thinker to identify, and to call out for what it is, the most egregious of all the users of this political means: the state.

Writing in 1908, Oppenheimer had an optimistic view of the future. “The tendency of state development unmistakably leads to one point: seen in its essentials the state will cease to be the ‘developed political means’ and will become ‘a freemen's citizenship.’ In other words, its outer shell will remain in essentials the form which was developed in the constitutional state, under which the administration will be carried on by an officialdom. But the content of the states heretofore known will have changed its vital element by the disappearance of the economic exploitation of one class by another.”

Reactions to the book

“The State” was a successful book. Oppenheimer’s distinction between the economic means and the political means has, rightly, become a classic. However, almost 120 years later, we are still waiting for the “disappearance of the economic exploitation of one class by another,” which he predicted. Indeed, for the last 60 years at least, exploitation of ordinary people by the state and its cronies has been getting steadily worse.

While he was without doubt right about the state having arisen out of conquest, his more detailed picture of the genesis and development of the state has not retained such a strong following. Myself, I find more persuasive the ideas of Robert Carneiro: “A heightened incidence of conquest warfare, due largely to an increase in population pressure, gave rise to the formation of successively larger political units, with autonomous villages being followed by chiefdoms, the process culminating in certain areas with the emergence of the state.” [[3]].

Oppenheimer’s Razor

I heartily agree with Franz Oppenheimer in his identification of the economic means versus the political means. He has led me to make a further distinction, between users of the economic means and users of the political means. This, I dub Oppenheimer’s Razor. It divides honest working and business people from those, that like to use political power to line their own nests and those of their cronies.

Users of the economic means include: honest working people (whether manual or brain-workers), tradesmen and business people. They strive to do their work, whatever it may be, honestly, conscientiously, and in the interests of those who pay for it.

Users of the political means, on the other hand, include: almost all politicians, many government officials, bureaucrats and jobsworths, advisors and influencers, technocrats and “experts,” financial and big-business élites, many academics, and drivers of and activists for political agendas. They take their rewards, regardless of whether the benefit they provide to those who pay for their “services” is commensurate to what they receive. And, in many cases, they provide no such benefit at all, or even have nett negative effects on the lives of those who pay for their “services.”

Thus, I have come to see Oppenheimer’s Razor as the dividing line between two radically different groups. The members of one group naturally use the economic means. The members of the other naturally use the political means.

And access to the ear of the state, and access in whatever degree to state power, seems to bias those who have them towards using the political means rather than the economic. Perhaps this may be a demonstration of Lord Acton’s famous dictum that “power tends to corrupt?”

The state’s exploitations are more than just economic

I am a little surprised, though, that Franz Oppenheimer did seem to miss one trick. He saw the state as being by its nature a system of economic exploitation. It is, indeed, that; but the state exploits its victims in other ways, too. He did identify slavery as one consequence of the political means. But he did not seem to understand the full scope of what the state does.

Many users of the political means, and those that hang on to their coat-tails, seek to impose on others policies, that harm the victims in ways beyond simply taking away their money or wealth. For example, impoverishing them by taking away their access to the market, or by making basic needs such as energy or food unnecessarily expensive. Or violating their human rights, for example privacy, freedom of movement or freedom of speech. Or inverting the burden of proof, so denying them their right to the presumption of innocence. Or by controlling them, or persecuting them. Sometimes in ways, that could go as far as genocide.

If Oppenheimer, a German Jew, had been writing his book in 1938 rather than 1908, I think he would surely have taken into account this use of state power to victimize innocents.

Parasites and pests

Myself, I identify, among the users of the political means, two overlapping tendencies. Which I label parasites and pests.

Parasites use the resources they appropriate to enrich themselves and their cronies, or to rake in money in order to implement their pet schemes. They are bad enough.

But pests go further. Pests (or, otherwise put, vermin) want power for the sake of what they can do with it. Pests want to control people, to persecute, and to screw up people’s lives. They seek to influence, or even to control, governments. They use political power to hurt people they don’t like. Often, they seek to impose on people a particular agenda of how the world or some aspect of it should be, regardless of whether or not those people want it.

The users of the political means have been able to extend their influence, and to corrupt people who were not originally either parasites or pests, by a variety of means. By carrots – also known as crossing palms with silver, that silver having been taken from taxpayers. By sticks – by threatening people with bad consequences if they fail to fall in line with the goals of the politicals. And by propaganda – by overwhelming the minds of those who are not mentally strong enough to resist corruption. As a result, there is a far higher proportion of parasites and pests among the political élites, and among those that associate with them, than there are in the population as a whole.

On top of all these, there is the globalist or internationalist wing of the users of the political means. You will find many parasites and pests in the United Nations and its agencies, including the World Health Organization. You will find them in the European Union and its hangers-on. In the World Bank, World Economic Forum and International Monetary Fund. And in other globalist and internationalist organizations, too. Such as the World Wildlife Fund, World Business Council for Sustainable Development, World Meteorological Organization, and many more.

But in reality, neither parasites nor pests are fit to be invited into any society or even community of human beings worth the name. They are traitors to human civilization, and enemies of humanity. They deserve to be kicked out of our civilization, and denied all its benefits. While, at the same time, being both required to pay full compensation to all those they unjustly harmed, and chastised with suitably demeaning punishments.

To sum up

Franz Oppenheimer did humanity a huge service, by identifying the economic means and the political means, and the divide between them. I have now followed up his work, by highlighting the divide between the users of the economic means and the users of the political means. A divide, to which I have given the name of Oppenheimer’s Razor.

It is now up to us to take up the moral cudgels which Oppenheimer left for us, and to use them. First, to defend ourselves. And eventually, to fight back against our enemies, the users of the political means.

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[[1]] https://dn790005.ca.archive.org/0/items/stateitshistoryd00oppe/stateitshistoryd00oppe.pdf

[[2]] https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51544

[[3]] https://www.socionauki.ru/journal/files/seh/2012_2/005-030.pdf

The Westphalian state

 

Last week, I wrote about John Locke, the 17^th-century father of the Enlightenment, and his forward-looking ideas on political philosophy. Today, I’m going to look at the other side of the coin. That is, the political system, in the grip of which we actually live today; the “Westphalian” state. Which, you may be surprised to learn, was designed a whole century before Locke produced his masterpieces, and was first implemented during his lifetime.

States and monarchs

The state, a group of people in a geographical area, ruled over by a king or a more or less tightly bound group of oligarchs, has been the major political structure in most of the world for more than 5,000 years. States could be small – as in the city-states of ancient Greece, or the Hanseatic towns of Germany. Or they could be large or very large, like the Roman Republic and the Empire to which it led, or the USA or India today.

Before the 14^th century in Europe, and in France in particular, the monarchical state had been rivalled, and often exceeded in influence, by the Catholic church. But as the French monarchs became more and more powerful, they started to claim that they ruled by divine right. By the early 16^th century, with the Renaissance and the rise of Protestantism, the French king had negotiated a concordat with the Catholic church. And began to persecute Protestants.

Jean Bodin

Into this political and religious maelstrom stepped a man named Jean Bodin, a legal scholar and political philosopher with strong monarchist leanings. Although he was in some ways a Renaissance man and a humanist, he advocated a state with strong control from the centre.

His Six Books of the Commonwealth (published 1576) outlined his ideas. A Canadian university has seen fit to publish on the Internet an abridged English translation of this work: [[i]]. This includes both a biographical sketch of Bodin, and a summary of his arguments.

Sovereignty

Fortunately for the casual reader, the essences of Bodin’s system – the ideas of sovereignty and its opposite, subjection – are elucidated in just two chapters of his book.

In Book 1, Chapter 8, he defines sovereignty as “that absolute and perpetual power vested in a commonwealth which in Latin is termed majestas.” While a sovereign can always choose to delegate tasks and powers to a subject, he says, the sovereign always has the right to take them back again. “However much he gives there always remains a reserve of right in his own person, whereby he may command, or intervene by way of prevention, confirmation, evocation, or any other way he thinks fit, in all matters delegated to a subject, whether in virtue of an office or a commission.”

Later, he says: “It is impossible to bind oneself in any matter which is the subject of one’s own free exercise of will… It follows of necessity that the king cannot be subject to his own laws.”

Powers of the sovereign

In Book 1, Chapter 10, “The True Attributes of Sovereignty,” we find the nub of Bodin’s ideas.

“The first attribute of the sovereign prince therefore is the power to make law binding on all his subjects in general and on each in particular.” And: “I mean by this last phrase the grant of privileges. I mean by a privilege a concession to one or a small group of individuals which concerns the profit and loss of those persons only.”

The second attribute of sovereignty is the power to make war and peace.

“The third attribute of sovereignty is the power to institute the great officers of state.” That is, to choose to whom the sovereign wishes to delegate tasks and powers, and to appoint and dismiss them.

“The fourth attribute of sovereignty… is that the prince should be the final resort of appeal from all other courts.” “With this right is coupled the right of pardoning convicted persons, and so of overruling the sentences of his own courts, in mitigation of the severity of the law.”

As for the fifth, to issue a currency: “only he who can make law can regulate currency.”

The sixth: “The right of levying taxes and imposing dues, or of exempting persons from the payment of such, is also part of the power of making law and granting privileges.” And: “If any necessity should arise of imposing or withdrawing a tax, it can only be done by him who has sovereign authority.”

It is interesting to note that much later, in Book 6, Bodin says: “The last method of raising revenue is to tax the subject. One should never have recourse to it until all other measures have failed, and only then because urgent necessity compels one to make some provision for the commonwealth.” Would that today’s governments ruled with so light a touch!

Sovereign immunity

Bodin touches on the doctrine of “sovereign immunity,” also known as “the king can do no wrong,” in Book 2, Chapter 5. “It is in no circumstances permissible either by any of their subjects in particular, or all in general, to attempt anything against the life and honour of their king, either by process of law or force of arms, even though he has committed all the evil, impious and cruel deeds imaginable. No process of law is possible, for the subject has no jurisdiction over his prince.” Lack of accountability is built into the system at its very roots!

To sum up

To paraphrase all this. In Bodin’s scheme, the “sovereign” – the king or ruling élite – is fundamentally different from, and superior to, the rest of the population in its territory, the “subjects.” The sovereign has moral privileges. It can make laws to bind the subjects, and give privileges to those it chooses to. It can make war and peace. It appoints the top officials of the state. It is the final court of appeal. It can pardon guilty individuals if it so wishes. It can issue a currency. And it can levy taxes and impositions, and exempt at will certain individuals or groups from payment.

Furthermore, the sovereign isn’t bound by the laws it makes. And it isn’t responsible for the consequences to anyone of what it does (also known as “sovereign immunity,” or “the king can do no wrong.”)

The Westphalian state

Previously, the main justification for kingly or oligarchical rule had been “might makes right.” But Bodin laid a new, stronger intellectual foundation for the state. It is no surprise, then, that kings and political élites liked his ideas, and set about putting them into practice.

After the Peace of Westphalia in 1648, a system of states grew up in Europe, which was heavily influenced by Bodin’s thinking. Some experts think that the treaty of 1648 itself had little to do with the idea of sovereignty as expressed by Bodin. But despite this, the states that have grown up since then have been described as “Westphalian.”

As since developed in international law, the principle of Westphalian sovereignty dictates that no state may interfere in the internal affairs or the territory of another state, however small. Building on the work of thinkers like Hugo Grotius, this principle of non-interference was codified in the “law of nations” in the mid-18^th century.

Monarchist expansion

Bodin’s ideas were eagerly seized on by kings, since his idea of sovereignty gave them a new justification for increasing their power. One example was Charles I of England, who declared in 1646 that “A subject and a sovereign are clean different things.” He was to discover, three years later, that when subjects are angry enough, even sovereigns can be brought to justice.

Perhaps the most brilliant example of the results of Bodin’s system was found in its native France. The “Sun King,” Louis XIV, reigned from 1643 to 1715, in a highly centralized, autocratic manner. He was even reputed to have said, “L’état, c’est moi!” I am the state! And he made wars. Many wars.

Problems with sovereignty

There are several problems apparent today with the idea of sovereignty, and with its application.

A dichotomy of meaning

The first problem with sovereignty today is that the word now has two quite different meanings. One is as Bodin defined it: a system which has a sovereign (whether one individual or many) and subjects. The other means an essence that gives the people of a territory a right, under international law, to non-interference in their internal affairs.

Even today, this leads to misunderstandings. Among Reform UK supporters, some think of sovereignty as this right to non-interference. They see it as a good thing, and necessary to support a democracy. Others, including myself, stick to Bodin’s meaning of the word, and see sovereignty as a problem needing to be fixed, not as a solution to anything.

My own answer to this dichotomy is to use, for the Westphalian right to non-interference which we need, not the word “sovereignty,” but “self-determination.” And when applied to a democracy, self-determination reflects not only the right to non-interference by external parties, but also the wider right of the people, and no-one else, to determine the political direction of their country.

Bodin’s sovereignty contradicts the rule of law

Knowing what we learned in the Enlightenment, it is now clear that Bodin’s kind of sovereignty is incompatible with the rule of law, in which every individual under the law must obey the same set of rules.

In Bodin’s scheme, the sovereign has a right to make laws for the subjects, which it itself need not obey. It can give benefits to its favourites. And by implication, it can unjustly harm those it does not favour. Moreover, it is not in any way accountable for the harms it does.

Westphalian sovereignty does not guarantee non-interference

The history of the 20^th and early 21^st century shows that the claims of states to non-interference by other states are by no means always honoured. If you don’t have the might to defend yourself, you are likely to lose the right to non-interference.

Not only has this been shown by invasive warmongers such as Hitler and Putin. But we see it also in the continual meddling in other states’ affairs by the supposed leader of the Western world, the USA, and its allies, including the UK. From Iran in 1953, to Vietnam, to Nicaragua, to Panama, to Iraq, and seemingly now back to Iran again.

Sovereignty in the UK

I shall now bring my thoughts closer to home, both in space and in time.

Who or what is the sovereign?

The name used for the sovereign of the United Kingdom seems to have become a bit of a movable feast. A few years ago, it used to be called “the crown in parliament.” But that term doesn’t seem to be used any more.

Today, the sovereign of the UK is some unclearly defined amalgam of the monarch and the parliament. But whatever it may be, it still considers itself the rightful ruler over everyone in the realm, other than itself. It is still a Westphalian state. And it claims for itself all Bodin’s privileges.

How does the sovereign behave towards us?

Does this “sovereign” of the UK today make laws to bind us? Hell, yes. How about the unnecessary, unaffordable, destructive madness that is “nett zero?” Or the violation of our right to free speech that is the “on-line safety bill?” Virtually all laws being made today are, like these two, bad laws. They are, as John Locke put it, “the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words.”

Does it tax us? Hell, yes. Harder, and harder, and yet harder, until none of us have any pips left to squeak. How about predatory inheritance taxes on farmers? Or VAT on private school fees?

Does it grant privileges to its favourites? Hell, yes. How about paying subsidies to the makers of ugly, expensive, grid-destabilizing, bird-killing wind turbines? Or allowing its propaganda arm the BBC to rake in money through a regressive, unfair, ruthlessly collected licence fee system?

Does it use bad laws to hurt those it doesn’t like? Hell, yes. How about IR35, which ruined the careers of many independent people, including my own? Or ULEZ, to victimize drivers of older cars, who can’t afford to upgrade them?

Does it disobey its own laws? Hell, yes. How about Boris Johnson and Partygate?

Does it make wars? Hell, yes. How about Tony Blair lying about weapons of mass destruction to “justify” a war in Iraq? Or Boris Johnson in 2022 “persuading” the Ukrainians not to go through with a deal that could have ended the war honourably?

Does it appoint the “great officers of state?” Hell, yes. But they are hardly great! With only three exceptions – two of them very brief – every government in the UK since at least 1960 has behaved worse towards the people than its predecessor.

Is it the final court of appeal? Debatably, as the saga of the 2019 attempt to prorogue parliament attests. But when the UK was a member of the EU, the sovereign gave up this role to the European courts, thus negating the UK’s Westphalian sovereignty. For anyone to give away self-determination is utter madness.

Does it issue a currency? Yes, but it manipulates its value, like the Roman emperors used to. And it wants to take it away from us, and replace it by some electronic system that will make it easy to cut off people, whom it doesn’t approve of, from their own purchasing power.

Does it behave responsibly in what it does to us? Does it do what any government founded on Enlightenment principles would do, and always strive to be a nett benefit to every one among the governed? You must be joking.

The state is out of date

For 25 years and more, there has been a meme going round that the state is out of date. Indeed, a book was published in 2014 with exactly that title: [[ii]]. I myself still have a copy of the original version of that book, from 1997. And the meme, I think, is spot-on right.

UK politics today is a complete mess. We are used to politicians lying to or misleading the public. We are constantly bombarded with false narratives, like “there’s a climate crisis and we’re all going to fry!” We are used to government and its officials acting arrogantly and recklessly, denying accountability, failing to practise what they preach that others should do. The current political system, the Westphalian state, has become morally bankrupt.

Instead of being a nett benefit to us human beings, as they should be, successive governments have set out, in John Locke’s words, to “impoverish, harass or subdue” us. Or all three at the same time. And yet, despite how much they have taken from us and keep on taking from us, the state is in debt to the tune of something like £180,000 per person in the UK. This is not a sustainable situation. As well as being morally bankrupt, the state is all but financially bankrupt, too.

So, how to go forward? As I outlined near the end of my earlier missive about John Locke’s ideas, we need to dismantle the whole corrupt system, kick out the degenerates that infest it, and build a new system to replace it. And the sooner, the better.

In conclusion

The political system we live under, the Westphalian state, is failing. And as it fails, it increasingly flails at, and so endangers, all of us. In my view, it is now in its death-throes. I really do think we ought to be putting it out of its (and, far more importantly, our) misery, as soon as we can. And replacing it with a system that can, and will, genuinely deliver government of the people, by the people, for the people.

Reform UK, I hope, will be an important tool in that process.

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[[i]] http://www.yorku.ca/comninel/courses/3020pdf/six_books.pdf

[[ii]] https://www.amazon.co.uk/State-Out-Date-Can-Better/dp/1938875060

Government: Why do we need it? And what can we do when it goes wrong?

Today, I’m going to try to answer two simple-sounding, but deep, questions. One, why do we need government? And two, what can, and should, we do when it goes rogue?

Over the decades, I have felt a need to make myself into something of a political philosopher. But I had to start somewhere, with ideas I could use as a foundation. I chose to build on the work of the political thinker, whose ideas I find more persuasive than any other. That is, my 17^th-century hero and almost-namesake, John Locke, father of the Enlightenment.

John Locke’s life and character

Born in 1632 in Somerset, Locke was educated at Westminster School during the Civil War, then at Christ Church college, Oxford. He became a Student (today a Fellow) of the college, where he taught Greek, rhetoric and moral philosophy.

He was by nature a generalist, broadening his knowledge and his activity into many fields. He learned about medicine, took a degree in the subject, and used his medical knowledge in the service of his patron, the first Earl of Shaftesbury. He took a great interest in experimental science, and became a Fellow of the then new Royal Society. Later in life, and particularly after the Glorious Revolution, he became a government bureaucrat.

He was a progressive thinker for his time; for example, he preferred Descartes as a philosopher to Aristotle. He sought to be objective and rational. And he had a strong sense of right and wrong.

Two Treatises of Government

His master-work of political philosophy is Two Treatises of Government, written in the early 1680s, and published in 1690, not long after the Revolution. A Canadian university has published these works on the Internet: [[1]]. He also wrote major works about religious tolerance, the philosophy of knowledge, ethics and natural law, economics and education. He even wrote a self-help manual, “On the Conduct of the Understanding.”

The First Treatise demolishes the ideas of absolute sovereignty and the divine right of kings, as they had been presented by Sir Robert Filmer, a monarchist of the first half of the 17^th century. But it is the Second Treatise, which lays the foundations for a new and better system of government, on which his fame rests.

Locke started from a view of humans living in a “state of Nature.” This is “a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another.” Further: “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges every one, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty or possessions.” That’s a pretty good first cut at how human beings ought to behave, no?

He recognizes that all human beings are bound together by this law of Nature. “By which law, common to them all, he and all the rest of mankind are one community, make up one society distinct from all other creatures.” But among those born human, some fail to keep to this law of Nature. “And were it not for the corruption and viciousness of degenerate men, there would be no need of any other, no necessity that men should separate from this great and natural community, and associate into lesser combinations.”

To counter the dangers posed by these degenerate individuals, Locke posits that a group of people may choose to form a “political society.” This they do “by agreeing to join and unite into a community for their comfortable, safe and peaceable living.” This is his version of the “social contract” idea, and his rationale for forming a government. And the political society thus formed is: “one body, with the power to act as one body, which is only by the will and determination of the majority.” (That’s where the modern idea of “democracy” came from!)

Locke thought that the law of Nature is, in practice, not enough on its own. “Though the law of Nature be plain and intelligible to all rational creatures, yet men, being biased by their interest, as well as ignorant for want of study of it, are not apt to allow of it as a law binding to them in the application of it to their particular cases.” And thus, some form of government is a regrettable necessity; just as a referee is a necessity for a football match.

Establishing a government, he says, can solve some of the problems which are inherent in the state of Nature. First, it can provide: “an established, settled, known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them.” Second, “a known and indifferent judge, with authority to determine all differences according to the established law.” (In Locke’s time, the word “indifferent” meant what we would now call “impartial.”) And third, “power to back and support the sentence when right, and to give it due execution.”

Now, to the nub of his case. “The great and chief end, therefore, of men uniting into commonwealths, and putting themselves under government, is the preservation of their property.” And: “The end of law is not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.” If a government fails to respect and preserve the property of the people, or fails to respect their natural rights or freedoms, it loses its legitimacy. All its legitimacy.

Moreover, he says of governments: “Their power in the utmost bounds of it is limited to the public good of the society. It is a power that hath no other end but preservation, and therefore can never have a right to destroy, enslave, or designedly to impoverish the subjects.” He defines the “public good” in the First Treatise: “the good of every particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided for.” I read that as meaning that government must always deliver a nett benefit to every single individual among the governed, except for those real wrongdoers that break the law of Nature.

Further, he cautions that “a great part of the municipal laws of countries” are no more than “the fancies and intricate contrivances of men, following contrary and hidden interests put into words.” And such laws are “only so far right as they are founded on the law of Nature.” So, laws made by politicians, that go against the law of Nature for human beings, are not valid. As Edmund Burke put it a century later, “Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny.”

Locke also makes it clear that any government, that departs from its remit of upholding the good of every single individual among the governed (real wrongdoers excepted), is no longer legitimate. “Wherever the power that is put in any hands for the government of the people and the preservation of their properties is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it, there it presently becomes tyranny.”

In one of his most famous passages, he says: “But if a long train of abuses, prevarications and artifices, all tending the same way, make the design visible to the people, and they cannot but feel what they lie under, and see whither they are going, it is not to be wondered that they should then rouse themselves, and endeavour to put the rule into such hands which may secure to them the ends for which government was at first erected.” That’s exactly where we have been for most of my lifetime, in the UK and virtually every other Western country.

He says of government power: “All power given with trust for the attaining an end being limited by that end, whenever that end is manifestly neglected or opposed, the trust must necessarily be forfeited, and the power devolve into the hands of those that gave it.” Moreover, the people always retain “a supreme power to remove or alter the legislative, when they find the legislative act contrary to the trust reposed in them.” And they are entitled “to resume their original liberty.”

What to do when government goes wrong?

So, John Locke has spoken. If a government goes rogue, we the people have a right to kick it out. We have, in essence, three levels of sanction open to us:

·       One, we can alter the legislative, by putting different people in charge.

·       Two, if putting new leaders in is not enough, we can remove the legislative. We can dismantle the whole corrupt system, kick out the degenerates that infest it, and build a new system to replace it.

·       And three, we can ditch the whole caboodle and go back to the state of Nature.

It is my contention that, in the position in which we in the UK now find ourselves, the first option is no longer workable. As Tories and Labour have played “pass the parcel” over the decades, things have got worse virtually every time. And none of the other mainstream parties are any better. Even putting Nigel Farage and Richard Tice in charge of the Augean stables that the governmental system has become would not be enough, because the system they would inherit is too corrupt. To reform (one word) that system would be unworkable.

So, I posit, we need to plan for the second option. If reforming the UK government cannot work, then it needs re-forming. That means, dismantle and replace the whole system. Legislative, executive, and where necessary judiciary too. Get rid of the monarchy as a political force; though there may be scope for retaining a ceremonial rump as a self-financing tourist attraction. Get rid of the parliament – at least in its current form. Sack every government employee or contractor that has worked against the interests of, or been dishonest or deceptive towards, the people who paid their wages; and any government employee that failed even to try to benefit the people they were supposed to serve. Cancel their cushy pensions, and make them pay compensation to those they ripped off. And punish them on top, if that is appropriate.

Get rid of the quangos, BBC, Met Office, corrupt “advisors” and academics, and all the rest of the degenerates that have lived off us, exploited us and oppressed us for so long. And investigate, and where appropriate bring to justice, the companies that have co-operated with or knowingly profited from the corruption.

There will, no doubt, be quite a bit of disruption for a while. Some unlucky people will get caught in the crossfire. And there will be lots of noise and squeals from those that have unjustly gained from the current, bad system, and are finally experiencing justice for what they did, and not enjoying it. But in my view, there is no other viable alternative. In the words of Ferdinand von Schill: “Better an end with horror than a horror without end.”

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[[1]] https://www.yorku.ca/comninel/courses/3025pdf/Locke.pdf