Party Politics, Uncategorized

The Purpose of Government

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In Britain, we see the two main System parties vie for public support. The Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn was regarded, until a week or two prior to the 2017 General Election as a joke. Deadheads such as Diane Abbott and Angela Rayner were openly laughed at by millions. Many more disparaged the “anti-patriotic” political histories of Corbyn and his closest allies. The Conservative Party under Theresa May was generally regarded as a safer pair of hands, more patriotic, more electable. What changed in those final weeks and days before polling?

The Conservative Party election bubble burst when Theresa May made a policy announcement about social care for the elderly. I believe that that suddenly floodlit, for millions, what the contemporary Conservative Party is all about. Since 2010, the Conservatives (firstly as the “Con Coalition” during 2010-2015), demonized and attacked –in some cases killed– unemployed, disabled, sick, generally poor and/or marginalized people. Now, however (as I had in fact been predicting since 2010), they were going after the pensioners, but that alone  (meaning also a backlash from pensioners or those nearing pensionable age) is not the whole story.

There was once a theory of government which said that the purpose of government was, in the language of today, defence of the realm, primarily: what we now call “defence” and, by extension, “national security”. External and internal defence. That was then. Today, in advanced countries, government is expected to do a great deal more than that. It is expected to care for the people in practical ways, either providing education, policing, health services, career opportunities, social assistance etc, or laying down the conditions in which those services etc can be provided by the private enterprise sector or the “charitable” or “non-profit” third sector.

This is the reason why Labour was able, despite all its flaws, to catch up with the Conservative Party: because Labour was at least offering (promising) help to the people, in circumstances where the only other party choice, the Conservative Party, was not.

The electorate, even in Britain’s notoriously unfair First Past The Post electoral system, is now in the driving seat. The people want things and services and they will not vote for any party which does not at least promise that the people will get what they want.

Labour is presently benefiting from this wish of the people that government provides help. Tomorrow, next year, in 2020 or, especially 2022, the wish may become a demand and the party benefiting may be one which, in 2017, does not as yet exist.

6 thoughts on “The Purpose of Government”

  1. Well, the clock is ticking. I would hope that Nationalists could start something, with a white British heterosexual male in charge – that would be a novelty. Not a woman, not a queer, not a Jew, not an Argentinian. Just a normal straight white male, leading normal white men.

    But maybe a split in UKIP would be the more promising development. At the moment, they are an uneasy alliance between free trade liberals and nationalists, these two positions being pretty much incompatible.

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    1. Forget UKIP. Yesterday’s news. Completely washed up. No leader to speak of (or at all), no underlying ideology beyond the simplest patriotic ideal, no useful policies even on immigration.

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      1. I agree. UKIP is finished. Their vote share decline at the general election was horrific by any normal standards. I think they lost about 90% or so of their previous vote. In my own Tory heartland seat (40% PLUS percentage majority, numerical majority of more than 20,000) , they went down from having a reasonable second place to coming fourth and losing their deposit. I think the public have recognised them for the media puffed anti-EU wing of the Tory Party in exile they always were. Indeed, they have no real distinctive political ideology of their own other than being anti-EU and this is the reason why they act like ferrets in a sack. I can’t see them turning into a British version of France’s Front National and if they don’t then they will disappear. I suspect that even if they did it is too late for this drastic change of course anyway.

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      2. Had UKIP gone “Front National” in 2014/2015, it would have broken through with several MPS in 2015. Many UKIP candidates achieved second place, a few very close behind the winning candidates. That was then. The existence of Douglas Carswell finished UKIP, because the sole (and so spotlighted) UKIP MP was a “libertarian” free-market crazie. I am still musing with the idea that Carswell was part of a plot to discredit UKIP. Maybe it was just “events” though. Now, UKIP is finished and it matters not who sits on its ramshackle throne.

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    2. I wouldn’t have a problem with a white British homosexual/bisexual man or woman leading a nationalist party. Germany’s AFD has a lesbian as one of its two vice candidates for the German chancellorship come Septembers’s general election. Nationalists in Britain have comprehensively failed to provide an electable alternative to the globalist and anti-British rabble of Liberal/Labour/ CONServative. One of the myriad reasons why is that nationalists have appeared to the pubic as having a total obsession with the subject of the LGBT population and having policies towards them that lack scientific understanding, regard for them as human beings/common humanity or even as fellow Britons. A nationalist party should either adopt pretty moderate policies on this subject or leave it to the individual consciences of party members/elected officials.

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