We didn’t deserve Labour

Joseph de Maistre’s spiffy aphorism proves the inadequacy of spiffy aphorisms when they are used in lieu of boringly systematic thought.

“Every nation,” he said, “gets the government it deserves”. This rings true, doesn’t it? We may argue whether or not this statement applies to autocracies, but it certainly works for democracies. We get what we vote for, and that’s all there is to it.

If we make a mistake, we can correct it next time, in whatever number of years have to pass before the next election. Until then, we must grin and bear it. We can moan, whinge, swear, throw fits, write scathing articles, but that’s it, as far as corrective measures are concerned.

Granted, armed rebellion could be an effective corrective measure, but that would mean throwing the constitution in the bin. If we did that, we’d be a different country altogether. If Britain is to remain Britain, we have to suffer the worst and most subversive government in our history for another three years. At least.

I shan’t bore you by listing all the horrendous damage this government has caused. The only thing it seems to have done effectively is reversing the largest democratic vote in British history, that to leave the EU. But even this positive note reeks of negativity, doesn’t it? That’s like congratulating a bankrupt on squandering his fortune. Well done, Nige, who could have thought.

Yes, we do get what we vote for. But, and here I have to disagree with one of my favourite political thinkers, that doesn’t mean we get what we deserve. And it certainly shouldn’t mean we must suffer the full consequences of our 2024 voting for another three years.

Looking at the catastrophe visited on Britain by this evil and incompetent Marxist government in less than two years, the calamity it will cause before 2029 is out doesn’t bear thinking about. What we deserve isn’t this government but deliverance from it.

Yes, our electorate made a mistake. But it’s not an unforgivable error of judgement. For one thing, the people didn’t have a clear-cut choice, a binary one between good and bad.

I’m fairly certain that a real Tory Party would have breezed through that election by a landslide. But it wasn’t a real Tory Party that was on the ballot, but a pathetic travesty that, during its 14 years in power, had become indistinguishable from New Labour.

Its record of incompetence and corruption was so plain for all to see that the electorate simply had to vote against it. Not for Labour – against the kind of Labour the Tories had become.

I wrote at the time that the only effective slogan for the Tories would be “We are the lesser evil”. But that was just a joke: voting masses don’t think in such terms. If the ruling party is perceived as inadequate, it won’t be saved by claiming, however correctly, that the opposition is even worse. “Tories out!” was the collective roar of the irate electorate, and even some intelligent people joined the mighty chorus.

That has proved to be a bad mistake, as some of us knew it would. But it doesn’t mean people deserve to suffer the worst consequences of their slip-up – they don’t deserve to see their country sink into a hole so deep that it would take generations to climb out, if at all.

Allow me to illustrate the point by a few examples. A lifetime smoker presents with emphysema just as an alcoholic suffering from cirrhosis of the liver is wheeled into the same hospital.

A pulmonologist takes one look at the coughing smoker, shrugs and says, “Nothing I can do. It’s your own stupid fault.” And his hepatologist colleague echoes him by saying to the drunk, “You have only yourself to blame. I’m not going to treat you; you deserve all you get.”

It’s the doctors’ duty, one they took an oath to uphold, to try saving their patients even if the latter have brought their misfortune onto themselves. People oughtn’t to be made to suffer for their mistakes more than they have to.

Moving along from such hypothetical medical examples to some sensible political equivalents, a system of governance ought to be designed in such a way that people won’t be made to pay too dearly for their voting mistakes. Safety valves must be built into a political system that would be activated when the machine begins to sputter and belch smoke.

It should be possible to remove a clearly subversive government before it subverts too much. Barring that, even if that government remains in place, it must be prevented from doing irreparable harm. No system could guarantee against a downturn in various indicators, but a sound system ought to be able to prevent a plunge into an abyss.

If you think this is stating the blindingly obvious, you are right. Moreover, such political thinking has been regarded as axiomatic for 2,500 years, since the time of Messrs Pericles, Plato and Aristotle.

Every sensible political thinker since that time has known that a government’s mission isn’t to create heaven on earth. It’s to prevent hell on earth. To that end, a successful nation should never rely on a single source of power. It’s not only the economy that’s improved by competition, but also governance.

No political arrangement can exist in its pure form without degenerating into something unsavoury. Echoing Aristotle, Machiavelli argued in his Discourses that, when their purity is intransigently maintained, a principality turns into a tyranny, an aristocracy into an oligarchy and a democracy into anarchy. For a political arrangement to last, and for liberty to thrive, a state must combine the elements of all three known forms of government.

However, as Marie-Antoinette’s milliner said when unveiling a new hat design, “everything new is well-forgotten old.” What Machiavelli argued was already old hat at his time, and my calls for a synthetic constitution distinctly lack novelty appeal.

For Britain already had such a successful constitution, and in fact seduced much of the Western world into following suit. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, the government was typically formed by the elected Commons, but its power to do harm was checked by both the Crown and, even more so, the hereditary House of Lords.

That perfectly balanced system has fallen by the wayside. The Crown has been deprived of the last vestiges of its power, and the Lords has been steadily emasculated to the point where a formerly virile institution has become a pitiful eunuch.

What we have instead is dictatorship of the Commons, with any government holding a large majority proceeding to do whatever it pleases, without feeling any restraining hand on the scruff of its neck. That this dictatorship goes by the misnomer of democracy only makes it more mendacious than other types of dictatorship, not morally superior.

Tocqueville, who, unlike de Maistre, was well-disposed towards democracy, was aware of its potential for a special kind of tyranny: “It [democracy] does not tyrannise,” he wrote, “but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

I thought I’d remind myself and you of this sage warning before joining that “flock of timid and industrious animals” to walk across the road and vote Tory in our local elections. I know I deserve better, but I’m not going to get it, am I?