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The UK, along
with most other Western countries, calls itself a “democracy.” But what,
exactly, is democracy supposed to be?
According to Georgetown
University [[1]], it is “a framework of governance built on
the principle that power resides with the people. In a democracy, citizens
exercise authority either directly or indirectly through elected
representatives, ensuring that government decisions reflect the collective will
of the people while protecting their individual rights.”
Democracy doesn’t meet the spec
“Democracy,” as it exists today, doesn’t do anything like what
that definition says.
What I want from government
Myself, I want six things from government, and nothing more. One, peace and
tranquillity, with my rights and freedoms upheld. Two, the rule of law; that
no-one should be allowed any moral privileges over me or anyone else. Three,
dignity; to be treated as the human being I am. Four, objective justice; to be
treated as I treat others, and never any worse. Five, freedom; to be able to do
whatever I want, as long as I don’t objectively harm, intend harm to, or
subject to unreasonable risk, any innocent person. And six, never to have to
pay any more for government than its services are objectively worth to me.
I do not think my stated desires from government are at
all unreasonable. Yet none of them are satisfied today. Nor have they been
satisfied for many decades. And I know I am by no means alone in my
dissatisfaction.
What should we all want from government?
Not everyone who feels the same way as I do would
necessarily agree with all my particular gripes. But, if I read the entrails
right, (and as a Reform UK campaign manager, I see plenty of them go past!), I
think there is quite strong agreement between the desires of many dissatisfied
people today, and my own. What we really need is a government that always acts
for the public good. Which John Locke defined as: “the good of every
particular member of that society, as far as by common rules it can be provided
for.”
What we need from government, I think, is not ruses
like over-the-top “protection” from every conceivable threat we could be
exposed to, which too easily turns into harassment of innocent people for acts that,
in reality, harm no-one. To put it in one phrase, what we need – and have
always needed – from government is an environment in which we can all
flourish. And that is all we need from it. But democracy today, very
definitely, fails to deliver any such environment.
Rights and freedoms
As to democracy protecting my individual rights, don’t
laugh. For most of my life, and particularly over the last 40 years, successive
governments have been deliberately and cynically violating my rights and
freedoms. I’ve documented this in a long series of essays since the
summer of 2025, culminating here: [[2]].
Very prominent among these violations has been the
imposition on all of us of an unbearable culture of arbitrary, collective, ever
tightening targets and limits on virtually everything we do. In chasing mirages
like “nett zero” and “safety,” those in power have inverted the burden of
proof, denied our presumption of innocence, and required us to prove a
negative.
Further, they have violated our privacy, our freedom of
speech, our freedom of movement and association, and many other basic rights
and freedoms. And they have made agreements with third parties like the UN and
EU, and implemented them with minimal or no scrutiny, without us the people
being allowed any say at all. Through such ruses, they have made policies that
have shot our economy – and our rights – to hell.
Further, they are taxing us out of existence. And they
have impoverished honest people like me, while rewarding corporate, finance and
other vested interests, and the kind of scammers that are only good at
manipulating the system to their advantage.
They have been dishonest towards us, and behaved as
hypocrites. They have bombarded us with scares and propaganda, emitting a
miasma of falsehoods, deceits, lies, evasions and self-contradictions.
They have sidelined objective science, fabricated
“evidence” to suit their policies, sought to suppress the voices of
truth-tellers, and whitewashed real wrongdoings. And they have failed, repeatedly,
to evaluate objectively the costs versus benefits of their policies to the
people they are supposed to be serving.
“My” MP and his party
As to my Tory “elected representative,” our relationship
has been toxic for more than 20 years. Since before he was even a candidate.
When in 2008 I wrote a nine-page letter to him, urging him
to find out the facts about the “global warming” scam and then to vote against
the climate change bill, he didn’t even deign to acknowledge my letter. Then he
voted for the damned bill!
Earlier, when my career had been severely damaged (and was
eventually destroyed) by a Labour bad law called IR35, which his party were
talking about repealing when they next got power, I asked him to make sure they
did just that. He looked at me as if I was a worm, and moved on to the next
person. And when Liz Truss had got rid of a small part of that bad law, and he
was appointed chancellor under Sunak, he promptly re-instated the whole thing
again.
He has also moved, in recent years, to a stance in which
he favours digital ID.
He crows about the pet projects, for which he has cut a slice
or two from the taxpayer trough. But underneath, he doesn’t want to do anything
for us, the people he is paid to serve. He seems to do very nicely out of the
current, corrupt system called the political state. And he wants to keep it
that way.
The will of the people
As to “the collective will of the people” in a
geographical area, no such thing exists. I shall return to the subject near the
end of this screed.
What I will say, though, is that John Locke made a rare
error in this matter. He said that to form a government, a society must be “one
body, with the power to act as one body, which is only by the will and
determination of the majority.” That is where the ideas of one-man-one-vote and
political “democracy” came from.
Unfortunately, Locke didn’t address situations like there
being more than two choices. Or a split between those who want one choice,
those who want another, and those who want neither. Or a significant number of
people, who find none of the offered options remotely appealing. These have come
back to bite us.
Recent UK governments
Tories
The Tories had been in power for 14 years (initially in
coalition with the Lib Dems) before they were ousted in 2024. And they did lots
of bad things to us.
Areas in which they mistreated us included: Ongoing deep
green environmentalist policies in “climate change,” air pollution, “species
extinction” and more. Resulting in de-industrializing our economy, and ever-tightening
anti-car policies. Suppressing free speech on-line. Draconian COVID lockdowns,
and trying to compel people to take vaccinations. Inviting four million
immigrants into the country inside four years, many of them dependants or not
on work visas.
Further: Implementing EU policies that went against our
interests. Signing us up, without even consulting us, to the UN’s “sustainable
development” agendas and other UN pacts, that all but squeeze us into a straitjacket.
And, in the words of the Telegraph, they: “put Britain on a path to the biggest
tax burden in its history.”
Labour
The 2024 general election delivered unearned power to
Labour. They got just over one-third of the votes cast. And only 20 per cent of
the votes of those eligible. Where is the “majority” in that? For every individual
that voted Labour, two explicitly preferred someone other than Labour, and
another two didn’t find any of the alternatives appealing enough to vote at
all.
And yet, 20 per cent of the votes got them 63 per cent of
the seats in parliament. The biased vote counting system made this a
“landslide” victory, giving Labour carte blanche to do to us just about what
they want for up to five years. Meanwhile, the Tories, Reform UK and Lib Dems
combined, with almost 50 per cent more votes between them than Labour, got just
30 per cent of the seats. And Reform, with a higher vote share than the Lib
Dems, took only 5 seats against the Lib Dems’ 72. Where are the “democracy” and
“representation” in that?
And, despite promising to create “change,” Labour have
carried on with many of the same old policies and attitudes as the Tories. Even
before I started my 2025 essays, Labour were already doing many bad things to
us.
In summer 2024, riots sprang up in many different areas of
England. The ostensible grievances were different. Government overreach, a
multiple child murder, police bias, and discontent over immigration policy, at
least. But there seemed to be in all these cases a common thread. People felt
alienated from a system that, instead of working for them, was actively working
against them.
And what was the response from Labour and their
establishment fellow travellers? Seeking to lock up those “guilty” of political
incorrectness, while releasing real criminals from prison early to make room
for them. Suppressing freedom of speech, particularly on social media, even
harder than the Tories did. And seeking to blame “far-right thugs” or
“fascists” for today’s ills, when the real blame lies with the political system
and those in charge of it.
On top of all this, we heard many proposals for more state
interference in our daily lives. Like: Banning smoking (already banned inside)
in pubs’ beer gardens and many other public spaces. Forcing pubs to close
earlier. And minimum prices on alcohol.
They want to expand use of facial recognition cameras. They
want more cameras to catch car drivers out, to give excuses for heavy fines.
They claim to have abandoned plans for compulsory digital ID, yet they still
plan a ban on social media for under 16s, which will require all social
media users to prove their identity.
Beyond this, they have been scapegoating innocent people
like pensioners. They want to force many farmers and family businesses to pay
inheritance taxes they can’t afford. And to slap VAT on private school fees. Moreover,
they want to offer “reparations” to other countries for the actions of slave
traders 200+ years ago, to be paid for by taxpayers who had nothing to do with
those actions.
They are imposing a new local government structure, which
they pass off as “devolution,” but which is in reality quite the opposite.
Their system will centralize power in a smaller number of mega-councils, and
eventually in just a few mayors. And in pursuit of this, they have postponed or
cancelled local elections, so allowing incumbents – including local Tories – to
continue in power without any democratic mandate.
Meanwhile, energy bills, water bills, driving and flying, to
name but four, are rapidly becoming unaffordable for many people. And there are
doubts about the resilience of the UK electricity grid, which has been impacted
by the intermittency of “renewable” sources.
On top of all these things, Labour are trying to psych
people up for a war against Russia!
To sum up
Recent UK governments have used against us many political
tools. Making bad, oppressive and restrictive laws. Allowing external
organizations to influence those laws without scrutiny. Setting arbitrary,
often collective, ever-tightening limits on what we may do. Bombarding us with
lies, scares and hype. Arbitrary and unjust taxation, national and local, which
has already reached historic highs and is trending upwards at an unprecedented
speed. Allowing the corporate cronies, that constitute many of their client class, to
impose on us extortions, like out-of-control energy and water bills. And
violating our human rights, such as privacy, the presumption of innocence,
freedom of speech and freedom of movement.
Governments and their cronies are governing us without our
consent, and they are failing to act for our benefit. They are continuing, and
intensifying, policies that put state control above the interests of the people
they are supposed to be serving. They are treating us like resources to be
exploited, objects, or even mere numbers in a database; not with the dignity
due to us as human beings. As a result, people increasingly feel alienated from
the state, from the political system, and from governments.
Sham democracy
After the Enlightenment, the idea grew up that ordinary
people ought to have a real say in the direction in which the country they live
in is going. The élites, not surprisingly, were loath to allow us any say at
all. But gradually, oh so gradually, they started to offer us a pretence of a
say: “democracy.” However, over the centuries our enemies have perverted the
idea, that ordinary people should have a full and fair say in how they are
governed, into a sham that delivers nothing of the kind.
Our “votes,” totted up in more or less complicated ways,
“elect” members of an organization, that makes decisions about what the
political élites will do to us. These members are supposed to “represent” our
interests. But most of them never do any such thing. And some of them – more
often than not, the ones in power – are totally opposed to us and our
interests.
At lower levels, city, county or local councils, the
situation is just as bad. There is nothing to prevent such councils from “going
rogue,” ignoring the needs and wishes of those they are supposed to be serving,
and implementing policies strongly opposed to our interests.
The political process has become more and more unpopular, as
we have found ourselves for more and more of the time ruled over by a faction actively
hostile to us. Moreover, power gained through election tends to attract exactly
the kind of devious psychopaths that want to harm or impoverish others, and to
evade accountability for the results. Far from giving us any say in the
direction of a country, the current “democratic” political party system tends
to produce kakistocracy – the rule of the worst.
So today, all the mainstream political parties (except,
obviously, Reform UK) are merely slightly different factions of the same
criminal gang. A gang that, with its fellow-travellers like bureaucrats,
academics and corporate vested interests, simply wants to use the power of the
state to rule over us, harass us, impoverish us and violate our rights. Any
semblance there may have been of meaningful democracy has been replaced by a spectacle
of sham elections between indistinguishable parties that, in reality, form a
single “Uniparty” or Tyranny Party.
Why sham democracy doesn’t work, and never can
In an article on my theory thread [[3]],
I concluded that the people of a geographical area are not a voluntary society,
but merely a community. They have not joined together in a common cause. So, they
cannot have a “collective will.” Once you appreciate this, and what it implies,
you start to see why democracy, as currently conceived, does not work, and
never can work.
One man, one vote
“One man, one vote” is a sound way to run a voluntary
society. (It is, however, worth noting that there are others: for example, the
shareholding method). This modus operandi is sound, because everyone in
the society can be presumed to agree on the society’s aims, and therefore on
the direction in which they want it to go. If they do not agree with these
aims, they can, and should, leave the society.
But even if everyone agrees with the aims, there will be
differences in opinion on how best to achieve the desired direction, or on who
would be best equipped to guide the society. These need to be resolved.
Majority voting is a popular way to do this, since it gives an illusion, at
least, that everyone’s desires matter equally.
In contrast, when “one man, one vote” is used to select a
tendency among people who are merely a community, there will always be disputes
about what direction is desirable. And these disputes will become hard-edged
and, ultimately, will become issues on which neither side is prepared to make
any concession at all. The UK in or out of the EU is a case in point.
Majoritarianism breaks a community apart
Further, even if run completely fairly and honestly,
democracy would still be a majoritarian system. Yet, as Mahatma Gandhi told us:
“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.” And many decisions
come down, ultimately, to matters of conscience: to deciding, in a particular
instance, what is right and what is wrong.
Moreover, democracy, as it exists today, is neither fair nor
honest. And the idea that ten people can vote to tell nine people what is to be
“legal” or “illegal” for them to do, is a travesty of all conceptions of
freedom and justice. Democracy is coming to be seen as the empty sham it is.
Thus, democracy ends up breaking apart the very sense of
“we” that seemed to give it legitimacy in the first place. The victims of
unjust policies feel harshly treated, and become disaffected. Those who have
been harmed by the policies of particular parties come to hate those parties,
and those that vote for them. And those who have been harmed by policies of
successive governments of all parties, come to feel hatred and contempt for the
whole political system, and for anyone that uses it for their own ends.
To sum up
Sham “democracy” destroys the cohesion, the “glue” which ought to keep a community of people together. And that’s why it has failed.
