But I don’t think anybody could have failed to be moved by the Prime Minister’s appearance on Piers Morgan’s chat show at the weekend, in which he cried while discussing the death of his daughter, Jennifer, in 2001.

What Gordon and Sarah Brown went through is simply unimaginable to one who hasn’t been there. It’s beyond awful. And beyond politics. Brown handled himself with dignity and humanity in that interview, which I found to be a genuinely affecting piece of television.

I found the contrast particularly marked coming, as it did, just a week after Alastair Campbell theatrically choked back the crocodile tears and “took a moment” to compose himself after Andrew Marr lobbed him a softball jibe so gentle it may as well have been dipped in marshmallow fluff and coated with chocolate sprinkles.

The Centrist isn’t suggesting that Campbell is an insincere man. On the contrary, Campbell once threw the Centrist and his wife out of the lobby of parliament (through which they were passing, innocently and with the utmost decorum, after a drinking session with a parliamentary researcher friend). Clearly he is a man of some principle.

Whether fragile Ali’s tears were genuine or not is up to us, the viewers (and the voters) to decide. But nobody could, or should, doubt the sincerity of the Prime Minister’s pain in that interview last Sunday. To do so would be to show an astonishing lack of empathy.

And if there’s one thing that politics really needs right now, it’s a little more humanity.

Still, it points out that the nation’s lawmakers abused the system, wrote the rules to benefit themselves, intimidated the civil servants they hired to run the lavish expenses system they created, and, in general, behaved like tinpot dictators in their own third-world government.

And we let them get away with it.

With typical stiff-upper-understatement Sir Thomas writes of a ‘flawed’ system, in which MPs could submit expenses with no receipts or underlying evidence, and receive thousands of pounds without question. A system in which the taxpayer became the Bank of the British Parliament, and a very generous bank at that.

A system in which MPs allowed themselves more in expenses each year than the average British worker earns in wages.

Of the three MPs and one lord now facing criminal charges, The Centrist’s favourite was MP Jim Devine, who bewailed his innocence and said with bewilderment, ‘I don’t understand why I was picked on.’

If it ain’t fixed…

What Sir Thomas didn’t say in his report is that this flawed system cannot be fixed. It cannot be fixed because the people who made this flawed system still run the flawed system and still benefit from the flawed system.

And never in the history of mankind has somebody who benefits from a system altered it in a way that made sure they could never benefit from it again.

So the problem is not the expenses system. The problem is the entire governmental system of this nation.

Britain has no true balance of powers. And that is where it all went wrong, and where it will always go wrong.

Who is going to overlook a revamp of MPs expenses to make sure that MPs follow the same rules the rest of us do?

The unelected lords? The Prime Minister (who is the head of the party in power)? The still shaky legged and fawn-like Supreme Court (also made up entirely of lords)?

When the people’s representatives are grifting the system, who protects the people’s treasury?

One nation, under the thumb

The British parliamentary system is designed to give one party power over all elements of government in every inch of this nation. From London to the Outer Hebrides, from a tiny town in Surrey to central Liverpool to rural Yorkshire, with minor exceptions of rebellion easily quashed or out-manoeuvred, whichever party is in power holds all of the cards.

They are judge, jury and executioner on all issues.

The SNP has a bit of power in Scotland, but if the party in charge in Westminster turned off the cash flow, they wouldn’t last five weeks. So they only rebel so much.

A conservative council in the southeast will talk a good game, but they still must meet targets set by the party in power in London, and when their conservative constituents aren’t looking, they all quietly step to it.

Absolute power, absolutely

The question is, what can we do?

How do we get ourselves as taxpayers in the position to redesign this government so that one house of Parliament really does balance the other? So that the Supreme Court is supremely independent and can act as a counterweight to the government in charge? So that there is an executive branch independent of the parliamentary and judicial branch to provide a third balance in a delicate triptych of power?

Given what such an elegant system would do to the British tradition of ‘to the victor goes the spoils’, The Centrist does not believe that any political power with any chance of ever being elected would ever agree to enact such a system.

They would be too unwilling to give up the tantalising possibility of absolute power, should they win an election.

Absolute power with all that such power implies. With all the damage it could do to their immortal soul… and how much fun would that be along the way?

If they won’t do it, and we, the taxpayer can’t make them, what will happen?

Get to work, Dimblebore — you and all of your ink-stained friends

Well, this is where the media comes in.

This is where the Fourth Estate gets off its Docklands barstool and pulls its own weight for a change. This is where the media learns there’s more to a job at a national newspaper than good Christmas parties and junkets to Thailand.

There’s a price to pay.

It’s time they put their necks on the line and took real chances in the names of the people they write for. It’s time they started educating and protecting, and quit pandering to the lowest common denominator among their readers.

The press should begin a national discussion about the British governmental system. What works and what doesn’t. And how it can be adapted to the age in which we live.

How to extricate the royal family from its historical role completely.

How to ensure a balance of powers within Parliament to prevent corruption and to protect the people from their duly elected MPs.

In order to make Britain a healthy, empowered democracy.

It’s time.

It’s a little Christmas card (or Hannukah note) to all of you.

It’s sung to the obvious tune.

Walking in a Labour Wonderland

In the meadow we can build a snowman
And pretend that he is Gordon Brown
He’ll want to raise our taxes, we’ll say ‘No man!’
But he’ll say it’s vital to future sustainable economic growth

Later on, we’ll vote Tory
It’s the end to every story
As we face unafraid
The recession we made
Walking in a Labour wonderland

Happy holidays everybody!

‘Surely it’s the Canadians?’ you’re no doubt thinking. But no. With handbags at 10 paces, the US Republicans have squared off against the British left and they’re batting each other with soft leather as the prescription papers fly, each claiming the other has a barbaric medical system.

Evil and Orwellian

In the US, Republicans are using the NHS to scare Americans into opposing President Barack Obama’s health care reform plans. Calling the British system  ‘evil and Orwellian’, they’ve run advertisements that claim the Obama plan would, like the NHS, ration health care, deny the elderly and the terminally ill life-lengthening drugs, stop people from seeing specialists, create a government barrier between the general public and care.

GOP grassroots groups have run an expensive advertising campaign that shows the union flag and Big Ben as a voice intones ‘$22,750. In England, government health officials have decided that’s how much six months of life is worth. If a medical treatment costs more, you’re out of luck’

#welovetheNHS

The British Medical Association responded in tones of outrage and wounded pride, insisting that life expectancy in the UK is longer than in the US. One anonymous representative of the BMA said, ‘Doctors and the public here are appalled that there are so many people in the US who don’t have proper access to health care. It’s something we would find very, very shocking,’ she said.

The BBC supportively showed scenes of people in Los Angeles waiting to enter a free clinic and the reporter said, breathlessly (and quite wrongly), ‘This is the only place for the unemployed and the poor to get health care.’

On Twitter, so many people in the US were writing posts about being scared of the NHS that ‘NHS’ became a trending topic. Almost immediately Britain responded en masse, making ‘#welovetheNHS’ a trending topic, as thousands of people wrote about how they have the best health care system in the world right here in the UK.

Get a grip

As ever, there is some truth in the words of each side.

The GOP ads might be insulting, but nobody’s saying they’re untrue. They just seemed outraged that it’s being said at all.

And if you look at what is alleged in the ads, well, that is what the NHS does.

It just sounds so negative when they say it like that. All accusing like.

Face it: In England the hospitals are run by the government. Doctors are hired by the government. Doctors are the government. Government officials make awful managers. And bad doctors.

Hospitals are filthy, and people die because of it, and primary health care varies wildly in both quality and thoroughness. Access to specialists is controlled by the government, so if your GP has been told not to make referrals, you won’t get to see a specialist. Waiting lists for everything are absurdly long, medical tests take weeks to complete, and people die because of all of it.

That is insane.

And the American system? Well, the American medical system is outstanding. One of the best in the world. And so well funded. If you have ever been very ill, wherever you live in the world, odds are some element of your survival had something to do with American medical research.

The problem is, not all Americans have access to that high-quality health care. In the US, if you are poor, the government funds a not-very-good free basic health care system for you, much like the NHS. If you are middle class and permanently employed, your health insurance plan probably provides damn good care. Unless you actually do get sick. In which case they just might drop you, and then no insurance company in the country will pick you up again.

The problem with the US system is that it is riddled with holes. The lower middle class, the self-employed, those who work for small companies, and the chronically ill all fall through its cracks. Neither the government nor insurance companies protects those people, and there are millions of them. A huge percentage of the population – between 20% and 30% of the working-age population – is uninsured and does not qualify for government health care. Many parents can’t afford to insure their children, so then young people don’t get the health care they need.

Before this recession hit, the leading cause of homelessness in the US was illness.

That is insane.

Take it from me

I have lived in both countries. And I can say that without a doubt the level of care I received in the US was consistently better. Doctors were more experienced and compassionate. The drugs I was prescribed for illnesses were more varied and better chosen. My care was better monitored. Specialists were routinely suggested if I developed problems.

I had the same GP for 10 years even though I moved constantly. I could see him no matter where I lived if I was willing to make the trip, and I was willing because he was brilliant.

But I did not have health insurance so I saw specialists only as a last resort, and I had to save up for it, or put it on my credit card. When my doctor prescribed drugs he often gave me free samples so I wouldn’t have to pay the outrageous prescription fees.

I never had a catastrophic illness, so I never had to face that awful situation. But a few years ago, I knew somebody whose wife was having a baby, and they had saved up $10,000 in advance of the birth in case there were complications.

By contrast, in the UK I’ve seen probably a dozen different GPs over the years. Every time I move, I must register at a new surgery, be assigned at random a GP who does not know me. Wait months for my records to transfer. Begin again the process of convincing them that my health problems are legitimate. Have the same tests again.

With one exception, all the GPs I’ve seen have lacked compassion, behaved like androids and been slaves to their computers. I’ve found them to be overwhelmingly complacent, insulting, lazy and scary. I found the lack of choice in this system depressing and difficult to accept.

I never once in America thought I could die from illness. In the UK on several occasions I have seriously wondered if I would survive. Each time my GP couldn’t have cared less.

I once sat on the pavement outside my GPs surgery in London, too sick to go home. The doctor I’d spoken with on the phone 30 minutes before had forgotten to tell me the surgery closed every day from noon to 2pm. For paperwork.

A stranger on the street helped me get a cab. The cab driver told me that he thought the health care he received in prison had been better than the care he got from the NHS now that he was out of jail.

But I’ve never had to pay a dime. I do not risk losing everything if I get cancer.

The problem I have is: Everyone’s treatment is free, yes. But that treatment is of such dubious quality that it’s hard for me to say that British people are better off than the Americans who re-mortgage their house to pay for an operation. At least the Americans get the operation, and they can choose their hospital and their surgeon.

An apple a day

What I’m trying to say is this: Both systems are unacceptable.

The British system is authoritarian, grim, unbelievably dirty, dangerous, depressing, badly run and the GPs seem to have either limited medical knowledge or astonishingly poor communications skills.

The American system is unfair, too expensive, results in too many people going to emergency rooms for routine care, leaves people at the mercy of greedy insurance companies, and destroys lives.

Both systems have something to offer. The completeness of the British system – the way it ensures everybody gets some basic health care - and its obsession with the elusive idea of fairness is impressive.

The richness of the American system – the way it values and rewards research and spares no expense or time in trying to save lives – and the compassion shown by its doctors should be the goal of all health care systems.

What the Obama plan is trying to do, I suspect, is bring in more completeness without losing the richness. There’s no guarantee that he will be able to do that, as democracy is ever a study in compromise and there is blood in the water right now. But at least he is trying, and a debate is underway.

In Britain, though, I suspect there will be no debate at all. For the population has been presented with a bogeyman. Sitting right next to France with its outstanding healthcare system, it looks only west, pointing a tremulous finger across the Atlantic and saying ‘We love the NHS! Best health care system in the world! We don’t want to be like America.’

If the discussions in both countries were less hysterical and nationalistic, both could have systems more like the one in France, which offers an interesting combination of the American and UK systems; it costs more than the British system but less than the American and actually seems to work better than either of them.

Please shut up

The thing that gets me is how similar the right-wing Republicans’ scare tactics are to those used by the largely left-wing pro-NHS contingent in Britain. Each creates a simplistic caricature of the other system and uses it to stymie badly needed change.

Each country could learn something from the other, and each could take some caution from the other’s mistakes. But as long as the loudest voices are the most extreme, everybody will suffer.

So please, see that the answer is somewhere in between. Don’t be brainwashed. For your own sake, acknowledge the weaknesses in whichever system you unfortunately have where you are.

And whether you live in America or Britain, until more rational minds prevail, my advice is this – Don’t get sick.

Let’s take a break from busting the government-sponsored myths about swine flu, and watch Parliament head out for its covetable 82-day summer holiday. Shall we wave a fond farewell to them as they duck into their Jags, gun the engines and roar off to (one of) their homes?

It’s almost impossible to write a post that conveys their cowardice and corruption, and my own contempt for the self-protective reform legislation they came up with just before running away – running, as all cowards do.

But then, I’m hardly surprised. We are asking them to reform themselves. And that never works.

I mean, think about it. What if you had a really good deal – I mean a really sweet deal – at work. Let’s say you made around 70K and up, your work week was about three days, your expenses added 25K to your pay free and clear, and those expenses needed to be approved only by you, your annual holiday allotment was in excess of three months, you were massaged by a subservient and docile staff paid for by somebody else, you were protected from your bosses completely, except for one day every five years or so. 

And then some do-gooder shows up and says, ’This is wrong. And you have to change it. Nobody can make you change it, but it is immoral and irresponsible of you not to change it so you must change it and give yourself less – less freedom and less money.’

Would you? Honestly?

Well, neither will they.

Britain has a whorehouse in it

So here we are at a spectacular impasse, in which our elected government has so abused this country’s ancient and veneered political system that the vast majority of people in the country look at them as no better – and possibly worse – than criminals. Their approval ratings are uniformly low, regardless of which party they’re in.

There would have been a revolution in France already over this, had it happened there. If this had happened in America, MPs would need armed guards to protect them from their constituents. In the Ukraine the nation’s entire population would be out in the streets every night, holding candles, singing songs, bringing the economy to a halt. 

But here? Well, it’s been a very British revolution so far. Isolated shouts during BBC’s Question Time have been the only evidence of the simmering outrage. That, and so many MPs losing their seats in by-elections.

Lord have mercy on our souls

I believe the country is furious over this huge con job in which we were all the victims and our own governmental representatives were the thieves. But it’s a quiet kind of fury that often expresses itself in increasing political apathy, a belief that each politician is as bad as the other, and comments like ‘I couldn’t vote for any of them, so I think I’ll stop voting.’

There is nothing worse for a democracy than a population losing its faith. Personally, I’d rather see people setting themselves on fire in the streets of Westminster than see them shrug and walk away.

So, before you all give up on the democratic system, remember: you are not alone. Politicians – whether they are elected fairly and honestly or seize the role as dictators – are prone to believing themselves invincible, and taking more than their share.  This might have been the biggest scandal I’ve ever seen in politics, but it is not an unusual kind of scandal, when you think about it. A bit of petty stealing. Padding the old nest. It’s a time-honoured tradition.

Politicians will always treat you with contempt.  But they do it at their peril. Remember: you have all the power. You cannot fire them now, but, working together, we can eventually fire them all. And soon.

Even better: you can remember who they are.

Remember the MPs with two, or even three houses paid for by you, while you struggle to make your mortgage.

Remember the MPs who bought porn and charged it to you.

Remember the MPs who had you pay to clear their yards, or their moats, even while you broke your back to clear your own.

Remember who they are. And treat them with the contempt they deserve.

Those duplicitous, thieving MPs may have slipped away for now, but they have to come back sometime, and when they do, as they say in Texas, you need to open up a can of whup-ass on them that they’re unlikely to ever forget. In the voting booth.

Having heard the same thing over and over, though, one could be forgiven for becoming suspicious.

When a government says the same line over and over, they’re trying to influence the way you think.  And when the press repeat that line without investigating it, that’s your propaganda machine, right there.

Ministry of Disinformation

Propaganda. Not a word we’re used to seeing in the modern age, but these are interesting times.

Britain is ‘well placed’ to survive the recession. Britain is ‘one of the most prepared countries  in the world‘ to handle swine flu. The recession ‘started in America‘.

You heard those over and over and over again, right? Each one repeated by the government and the media blankly. Each one a little piece of propaganda.

The International Monetary Fund later said Britain was the worst positioned in Europe to survive the recession. Britain now has the most cases of swine flu in all of Europe. Among the most egregious sub-prime lenders were European banks including Barclays and Deutsche Bank.

Let’s get serious

The Centrist, no doubt like you, takes the word ’serious’ seriously. If you say a dead person had serious health problems, I tend to think, ‘Hmm, HIV positive? Terminal cancer? Multiple Sclerosis? Parkinsons Disease?’

Nah, how about asthma, diabetes or epilepsy? All  rarely fatal, eminently treatable health conditions.

(And can somebody please tell the British press that the word ‘fit’ is as archaic as  ’swoon’ and in its own way as wrong as ’spastic’? The modern term is ’seizure’.)

I know people with every single one of those mild health conditions, and I’ll bet you do too. I myself have asthma, which the government, through the National Health Service, has treated with an almost devil-may-care lack of concern, tossing me an inhaler when it first flared up a couple of years ago and telling me to let them know if I was ‘worried’ about it.

Now I know that if I die of swine flu, the government will use my asthma to explain it, as part of its propaganda, so that you can continue to think swine flu is just a bad cold. They’ll put on their sad faces, look moist-eyed at the BBC camera and talk about my serious health problems.

Let me tell you now: my asthma is mild. It should never, ever kill me. I have had flu several times and survived just fine. I’m just a bit of a hypochondriac, really. Not terminal. Not serious. Ought to live.

Here’s the truth

The government’s inability to get a handle on swine flu, it’s failure to take it seriously enough and to properly educate the population about it, it’s failure to encourage self-quarantining as other countries have, the fact that it has not encouraged people to work from home and the fact that it did not ask them to stay out of crowded places, allowed the virus to spread out of control.

Because of all of that, those seven vulnerable people caught the virus through no fault of their own, and now they’re dead.

Rest in peace

Increasingly there are murmurs outside of the mainstream press that this government doesn’t understand how epidemics work.

But I believe it’s more callous and soul-chilling than that. I think the government doesn’t want you to know how serious the situation is, because then you might lose faith in them. You might support the Labour  party even less than you already do. You might vote against them in the next election.

And that genuinely appears to be all that matters to them. Or at least, that’s what matters most.

So the propaganda machine swings into motion, and it keeps telling you everything’s Ok. You probably still think swine flu’s not that big of a deal. It’s just a mild flu or a bad cold. The young and healthy will be just fine. Right?

Who told you that?

The government and the press. And you believed them.

Did you know that swine flu disproportionately impacts the young and healthy? It’ll kill you if you’re old or ill, but it almost prefers to kill the young and healthy. The British government doesn’t want you to know that. You need to know that. Everything is not going to be Ok.

Google it

Again I say: Don’t believe this government. It’s scared. And scared, bad governments lie.

And don’t trust the mainstream press: it’s slow on the uptake.

Do your own research. And be careful out there.

I use the word ‘outstanding’ because I think that’s the word they’d use. And The Centrist is nothing if not supportive.

According to the Times, Health Secretary Andy Burnham says it’s all going to plan. (By the way, did you ever wonder how his background qualifies him for this job? Well, he’s got a degree in English from Cambridge, and he’s a keen cricketer and an MP. What more health experience do you want during a deadly pandemic?)

Mr Burnham said: ‘Our approach has focused on containing the spread and working with the local NHS to identify cases, isolate them as quickly as possible, treat them with antivirals and treat those around them and offer prophylactic treatment to those around them. This is very resource-intensive, but it has been highly successful.’

Yes, the government’s containment plan worked so well that Mr Burnham’s quote was in a news article entitled: ‘Swine flu spreads so rapidly it cannot be contained’.

The same article noted: ‘The number of confirmed cases in Scotland increased by 111 yesterday — the largest one-day rise since the outbreak began.’

If that’s containment working well, I’d hate to see it working badly.

I can see why they’re stopping it.

A personal story

Let’s take a closer look at the government’s containment policy.

I’ll start with a personal example: a friend’s school in north London called for help after the vast majority of its students didn’t show show up last week - all were home with fevers. In my friend’s five-year-old’s class, 20 of the 25 students were ill.

The government swooped in. Those with the highest fevers were tested for swine flu. They tested positive.

The school was closed. Parents were told to pick up Tamiflu at the school, and were given no other advice about what to do. My friend went back to work, her daughter went out to play with friends. The government does not recommend not doing this, by the way. They recommend nothing if you are not personally exhibiting symptoms, even if you have been exposed to the virus in an up-close-and-personal way.

In its early stages, swine flu has such mild symptoms you could mistake it for hay fever or a cold. But during that time you will be spreading the flu to potentially vulnerable people.

This might go some way toward explaining why the government’s containment policy didn’t work. Or rather, why it worked so spectacularly well that swine flu is now raging out of control.

There’s more, though.

My friend wasn’t particularly worried about the whole thing, but she wanted her daughter swabbed just to reassure her that she did not have flu. But the health authorities refused to do it. They told her no further swabbing was happening at her school. Even those whose children had mild symptoms were told they could not be tested.

So out of, say, 100 children at her child’s school who probably contracted swine flu, only a handful were added to the government’s chart of verified cases, because the government refused to test the rest of them.

Now, the government’s numbers show that around 3,000 people have had swine flu in the UK so far.

But if you extrapolate the situation at my friend’s school out to a national level – if the government is only swabbing a fraction of those exposed to the virus country-wide, in other words – it’s possible, even likely, that 10,000 people or more have already had this disease.

Save yourselves

I suggest all readers take a look at how other governments are handling the outbreak, because I’ll tell you what the government won’t:  this epidemic is going to knock us all on our arses this autumn. We could be left with empty offices, closed shops, a decimated workforce.

Other governments are urging their populations to stockpile enough food to feed their families for at least two weeks in case stores are closed if the staff become ill, or in case they themselves become ill suddenly. If you contract swine flu and you have to go to the store for bread, you will spread the virus. Just ilke that.

Other governments ask parents to self-quarantine for seven days if their child’s school is closed because of swine flu – in case their child has the flu but has not yet shown symptoms.

Other governments are taking this seriously.

As far as I can tell, the British government’s entire swine flu plan is Tamiflu. Don’t worry, they keep saying, we have Tamiflu.

Tamiflu has a mild palliative effect in some cases if given in the first day or two of the virus.

That’s all we got, people.

And the NHS seems to be hinting that we don’t actually have that much of it.

If you stop and think about it – if you, for example, read the Wikipedia page about the swine flu epidemic of 1918 – that should scare the hell out of you.

But the government, well, it’s got it all under control. You can tell that by way in which the virus is spreading like wildfire.

No need to worry.

The article was about prisons in the deep South in America reintroducing the concept of chain gangs as additional punishment and humiliation. Groups of prisoners chained together wearing comedy striped pajamas were forced to clean litter and break rocks on public roads.

The writer (whose name sadly eludes me) wrote that the use of the chain gangs was a message from the South to the rest of the country. And that message was: ‘We’re still here. We’re still stupid. Fuck you.’

Chaos theory

Watching the selection of John Bercow as Speaker of Parliament yesterday reminded me of that fantastic introduction to an article about ignorance, ineptitude, petty governmental ladder climbing, and the kind of tin-pot-dictator-envy that seems to be a bizarre hallmark of our modern democracy.

As I listened to duplicitous Labour MPs lying shockingly to the cameras and the voters of Britain, smirking as they did so (seriously, why does the Labour party allow Diane Abbott to ever go on television when she’s such a good advertisement for any other political party?), I actually felt nauseous.

After the last few months, how can it be that they’re not taking any of this seriously? How foolish are they?

Parliament is regarded with contempt by a vast majority of the country at this point. Those who work in government are ashamed to admit that to those who do not. I have never in all of my life seen a western government held in such low regard by its citizenry. I cannot imagine how they expect to lead a country that increasingly refuses to follow.

And if they cannot lead, then there is no legitimate government, and that – as anybody who remembers the 1970s will tell you – means chaos.

But otherwise, everything’s fine

The idea that, after the last few weeks, Labour would be so callous as to choose a speaker solely because he would upset the Conservatives is breathtaking.

At a time when Parliament is this close to not existing as we have known it, they’re still playing games of British bulldog with our government.

Let’s just reassess where we are right now. We are engaged in two wars – neither of which we show signs of winning. North Korea is perfecting its nuclear catapult. Iran is enraging extremists Muslim groups – who already weren’t too fond of us – against us. We are in the midst of the worst global economic crisis since the Great Depression – and despite what the Prime Minister might say we as a nation are culpable in that crisis.  Every single member of Parliament has been in some way tarnished by a corruption scandal on a scale none of us has ever witnessed in our lives. And throughout it all the Prime Minister has appeared to be out of his depth, terrified and at sea.

Nightmare

This is a nightmare situation. And the election of the Speaker could have been a first step towards waking us up from this horrible dream.

Instead, the selection of John Bercow for petty political purposes perpetuates the horror. And the smiling lies of the Labour and (some) Lib Dem MPs on the news last night means that they either do not understand or do not care how angry we are, and how sad, and how tremendously awful this situation is.

After hundreds of years of democracy, through wars and deprivation, from Cromwell to now, how is it possible that this feckless lot have managed to undo so much good, and leave us in such a desperate situation?

But they have, haven’t they? And the message Labour and Lib Dem MPs sent to voters last night was the same one those southern prison wardens sent to America 15 years ago.

‘We’re still here. We’re still stupid. Fuck you.’

Mr Brown went on at some length about how he could not possibly resign now because, as he explained it, we need him. We really, really need him.

According to the BBC: 

‘Mr Brown went on: ”What would people think of a Labour government faced with an economic crisis… if we ever walked away from them at a time of need? We are sticking with them and working with them.”‘

If he ‘ever’ walked away? Is Labour planning to stay in power in the UK forever?

He keeps saying things like that.

 ’I will not walk away’ he said on Friday, as if that would make the country feel better.

The mind boggles

There is so much wrong with this statement, that the mind boggles.

1. He’s not ‘faced with’ an economic crisis. As the chancellor for 10 years he built this crisis up from nothing. Did anybody else ever hear him mention America’s financial practices before the British property market bubble burst? No? Me neither. Through lack of regulation, short-term thinking, and poor practices, he made this.
2. No political party gets to decide when to leave. As much as he’d like to stay and help, most of the voting population has strongly indicated that they’d prefer a different fireman in this emergency. And in a democracy the voters decide who is in charge.

Why does the Labour party at the moment seem to consider democracy to be optional? Leaders of the party keep explaining why an election is unnecessary. I’ve never heard anything like these verbal political contortions in my life.

Please leave us alone

Let me ask you something. Did you ever, when you were a teenager, have one of those boy- or girl-stalkers? You know the kind: they asked you out (or maybe you asked them), and you went out once, but there was no there there. So you decided… nah.

But they kept calling, and coming around, clinging to your sleeve in the hallway, gazing at you lovingly, refusing to accept that the feeling was not returned. Begging, even.

And there would come a horrible moment when you thought, ‘I’m actually going to have to be mean to this person to make them go away.’ Even worse, maybe you found yourself wanting to be mean to them, because they were so needy, or so wrong about you and what you felt.

That’s what Gordon Brown (and by association, Labour) reminds me of now. He thinks we love him. Or at least, he thinks we need him. We know we don’t. We keep telling him this, but he won’t believe us.

Gordon Brown is stalking us

We might have to be mean to him to make him understand that, when you get right down to it,  we’re just not that into him.

Well. That was all a bit unexpected, wasn’t it?

I mean, there we were, happily watching our economy crumble, our housing bubble burst, and our country stumble scarily, when all of a sudden Parliament imploded.

Let’s take a minute, shall we? Because this is big, people. In our lives, we may never face anything more important for our country than what we’re looking at right now. What we have here is your basic constitutional crisis. A government in freefall. A parliamentary system that has just proven it fundamentally does not work in modern times. And all right smack-dab in the middle of  global economic crisis the likes of which few if any of us have never seen.

Great. I was hoping to spend the summer lying in the sun reading smutty novels, and now I’m going to have to spend it playing Jefferson to your Franklin.

What now?

Let’s approach this pragmatically. There’s a lot to be done, and a relatively short time span in which to do it. So here are some steps to get us started.

Step One: Don’t trust your government

Look, it’s nothing personal. I know these guys, and they seem nice. But they have nothing to gain from a constitutional convention, and everything to lose from what is best for the nation right now.

It would be great to think that they would put patriotism ahead of their party and do what’s best for the country but they’re politicians.

So that’s not going to happen.

From this moment forward, take it as given that every word they say is a lie. They’re well-intended lies, and in their minds ‘white’ lies told for the good of… well, themselves. But lies nonetheless.  

So when Alastair Darling says the recession will be over by Christmas… (Why?? Why did he say ‘Christmas’? Of all the loaded phrases he could have chosen. I mean, seriously.)

Well, you know what to think.

Step Two: Don’t trust the other political parties either

Now, I don’t know about you, but I’ve been seeing lots of Conservative banners about in my neighbourhood. And UKIP has big signs and billboards up out in the countryside. And my more liberal friends are all planning to vote Lib-Dem to teach Labour a lesson.

It would be great to think we could just vote for another political party and they’ll swoop in and fix this situation and we can all get back to our jobs and busy lives; problem solved. But it’s not going to work that way this time.

Whichever political party wins at the next election will promptly find itself in the position Labour is in now, with nothing to gain from fixing this broken system.

Here’s why: The British parliamentary system was designed for a closely divided house, a powerful House of Lords and strong monarchy. None of which exists anymore.

In the modern politically divided democratic age this antiquated system gives absolute power to any winner with a strong majority. Given the mood swings of the public, and the fact that so many of you, like me, are independent centrists who vote for whichever party you think is right on this occasion and for these times, strong majorities will keep happening.

Labour – with a huge majority – has had absolute power for 12 years. If the Conservatives sweep to power with a landslide in the next election, they will have that same absolute power. The opposition is neutered by its minority position, and the party in power legally controls all the branches of government.

Absolute power. Absolute corruption. They go together like a horse and carriage.

It might not rhyme, but it’s truer than any couplet.

Step Three: Demand an election

This government has no credibility. They’re going to tell you they need to stay in power to ‘fix’ things. Would you let the fox ‘fix’ the hen house?

Just how stupid do they think we are?

If they refuse to call an election, we’re going to have to be rather firm, I’m afraid. We will have to march, and there will need to be a bit of civil unrest. It could all get a bit heated. But this is how it works. If they won’t jump, we will have to push.

This is an unelected government, and I don’ t know about you, but when an unelected government pushes me around, or treats me like I’m an idiot, it makes me very, very irritable.

The election is just a house-cleaning, though. It’s not a full solution.

Step four: Demand a constitutional convention

Now we will have to take a look Parliament, and the way three branches of government are essentially one big undemocratic tree trunk.

This convention cannot be the usual suspects (get thee behind me, Hazel Blears). It needs to be a mixture of academics, ordinary citizens, and a few politicians. I can see Simon Schama on this committee (how wonderful would that be?) and Sir David Attenborough. No actors, please. Or artists or poets (I beg you).  A good mix of politically engaged citizens, politically independent scholars, and a handful of politicians who have proven themselves not to be completely useless.

The process must be open. They should blog and tweet about their discussions and disagreements.  They should be given no more than four months to do the work, and whatever they come up with should fit on the front and back of an A3 sheet of paper.

Less is more, when it comes to constitutions.  All we really need from them is:

• a basic outline of a new Parliament structure with a real balance of powers
• a bill of fundamental citizens’ rights (not to be confused with human rights)
• a brief explanation of what we can expect from our government

The rest we can build over time.

So, let’s get started.