You know, I think Nick Clegg is
right.
People know something is wrong with British politics. Obviously, as Austrians we know that what is wrong is that democracy is a God that has failed, and that the worship of government in the last hundred years has taken us from relative upwardly growing civilisation (pre-1914) towards downwardly collapsing chaos (post-1914).
The processes which grew from the industrial revolution onwards (such as the rise of technology) have countered the collapse due to Big Government, but the trend is there and people are sick of it.
Alas, they are falling into the trap that the cure for politics and government is to let a 'different' political party take over the government, rather than simply reducing and eventually removing the government, but this is the very trick which makes democracy seem so much more appealing than other forms of government.
We constantly get fooled into thinking that a few different faces being driven around in the government limousines means everything will change for the better. Virtually all incumbent governments are eventually dislodged by different politicians promising 'change', and virtually all newly-incoming governments quickly become indistinguishable from the the governments which preceded them.
The almost very definition of this is the Obama government, in which Obama waved the 'Change' banner and told us that you can 'take my promise to the bank' that the U.S. will pull its troops out of Afghanistan. Naturally, as soon as Obama was lowered into the limousine, then the troops numbers in Afghanistan were actually
increased.
But the people were fooled. They had their little game at the election and let off some steam, and thought everything would 'change' for the better. This is the beauty of democracy. Everything changes and everything remains the same.
The same is true for Nick Clegg back in Britain. He seems to have tapped into this unconscious hatred of government, which has filled everyone outside the tax-eater class. David Cameron and Gordon Brown are now running scared. They even accuse Nick Clegg of having no substance to his politics despite Nick Clegg being the only contender for the prize who has produced a
costed manifesto. (Obviously, it's full of appalling holes, but at least it has some
numbers there, unlike either of the other two parties.)
But it doesn't matter anyway. Because no-one is going to 'examine' Nick Clegg's policies with a 'more forensic' attitude, simply because he's higher in the current polls than either Cameron or Brown. Voters will go on their gut, just like they always do. And they hate Brown, and they think Cameron is a slippery chancer. Cameron had a chance, because even a slippery chancer is better than a robotic Stalinist tyrant. But has Clegg become 'real' and 'substantive'? This must be the question which is terrifying Tory Party HQ.
Because the tax-payers in this country are sick of the Conservatives and they are sick of Labour, but given only the other one as a choice, they keep swinging from one to the other in a bid to remove themselves from the useless growing oppression of big parasitical government. Cameron's big hope was that he could wave the same 'Change' banner that Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair thrust into the sky, and convince the voters that somehow the Tories have changed from the last time they were in office, when they were the most corrupt government that Britain has ever had.
Obviously, the Labour Party have now adopted that despicable mantle, but in the TV debates Nick Clegg (apparently) demonstrated that he is a realistic contender. I didn't spot this myself, because he just looks like a political clone to me, with nothing to say other than "I'm not Gordon or Dave", but I can accept that he was at least different.
This may mean that he has wrested the crucial 'Change' banner out of the hands of slippery David Cameron.
Possibly, he has. And if he does the same job with the next two TV debates, in which Brown and Cameron will fight a joint dirty war to bring him down, he could be a major player in the next British government.
Obviously, nothing will change if he is. But at least we'll have had a bit of fun in the process, and we will give the next bunch of muppets another five years to prove once again that government doesn't work. And we'll forget the lesson of the previous hundred years, that it never does, never has, and never will.
It seems we take a long time to learn this kind of lesson. Yes, the 'Big Society' idea of Cameron or the 'Orange Book' idea of Clegg may help us shake off a little democratic socialism, eventually, but I hold little hope of that.
But eventually we will learn the lesson, when the 200-year experiment with socialism/democracy (they're the same thing) finally falls apart. Let's hope that this is within our lifetimes. I, for one, am getting bored with waiting for this
real substantive change.
The route for the collapse of big government will be one of states breaking apart. And this process may have been underway for some time. As well as Scotland and other European nations gradually breaking away from larger unions, the first real big sign that democracy is finished is when a small part of the United States successfully breaks away, without being nuked back into line by Mordor-on-the-Potomac.
It may just be a single city.
So when the Free Spanish Republic of Miami is formed, or the Free English Dominion of Portsmouth, or the Free Trade City of Anchorage, then we'll know that we're getting somewhere.
Secession, anyone?
The Tories are hoping to decapitate Ed Balls, next week, in his West Yorkshire Morley constituency, which has been gerrymandered especially for him to give him a 10,000 majority - but is 10,000 enough? (Ed Balls doesn't actually know where Morley is. His tax-fed driver takes him there and it's a great basis for his expenses claims, but aside from that it could be anywhere in the grim North.)
