Frank Fields Comments

I have stolen this from Frank Fields Blog, but here is the link (and I have added his blog to my blogroll)

Harold Wilson asserted that the Labour party was a moral crusade or it was nothing. The McBride affair has left Labour members looking at nothing. That is the reality check that McBride has wrought on the party.

The whole of the government's energy should be spent on governing now and building a programme from which, within and year, we will be seeking permission to rule for another five years.

Far from helping sketch out a new roadmap, the McBride activities shine a searchlight on the paucity of the government's programme.

Week after week MPs have been turning up but with almost no serious work to do. There is the odd bill to be sure. But there is no legislative programme to speak of. Even the debates that are put on to fill in time are ones that deny MPs a vote. The whole exercise is vacuous.

Labour MPs are left staring into the abyss - that nothingness of Harold Wilson's statement. There is a wish amongst all sections of the PLP for the government to start governing. We wouldn't care too much whether the ideas were Blairite or non-Blairite, as long as we could give the impression of supporting a government that was using the next year to mark out why we should stay in office.

We have lived through an age of record public expenditure provision, but are now entering one of increasing cuts. There have been some beneficial results from this huge tax-payer largesse, but they in no way match up to what radicals predicted would be the outcome.

Have we been on the wrong track, and if so, what should now be our approach? Or is the task to look much more carefully how each pound of tax-payers' money is spent so we get a much bigger bang for our buck? Instead of this debate, we see the energy at the heart of Number 10 going into trying to smear the opposition.

It is this contrast between how we should be behaving, and what has been exposed, that is the real killer. A necessary government information machine has been corrupted by a spin that seeks not to inform but control and, if needs be destroy. And it has been in existence for over a decade.

McBride sat on the Prime Minister's political War Cabinet. If this is the war the Prime Minister thinks the country wants he is in for a very rude awakening. In the meantime, Labour supporters are left bewildered and wondering what happened to the moral crusading side of our mission.

Poor old Labour party.

I agree with Mr Fields sentiments whole-heartedly, the Government has been shown up as poor, and it is incredibly that in Gordon Brown we have an individual who has craved power for year, and yet in less than two years he his legislative agenda has run dry.

The exercise of Government in the absence of such a programme is indeed vacuous, however the searchlight may have revealed this to be the state of affairs, but it is not the cause.

I acknowledge that Gordon Brown had failed; his ambition is shown up as exactly what it was, the pursuit personal glorification and power with a staggering lack of a substantive intellectual capacity. It is entirely possibly that if Gordon brown was PM 150 years ago he would have been dragged across the street from Parliament and shot in front of a cheering crowd. It is a sad fact that there are reality TV contestants that have in one show received more votes than the PM has in his entire political life.

However, this is not the whole story.

It was, and remains part of the European plan to seize the power of European States whilst leaving in place the existing and historical structures so as not to raise concerns from us sheeple that control was being taken from our hard-fought institutions, which embodied the Democratic authority of those nations; and is being transferred to our new post-democratic structures. This is obviously now in evidence as control has been sucked away from Parliament as Mr Field points out. Mostly this has moved to the EU, but Downing Street has also overused its prerogative, as evidenced with the Bank-Bailouts.

If the Palaces of Westminster are still there, and when tourist and Journalists can still take photo’s it is harder for people to accept the transfer in controls that are taking place. It is, and has been evidenced as easier for those who support the EU project to do so with the historic structures in place. (Much like the frog in the boiling pot, if we were thrown into the shackles of Euro-federalism we too would have jumped out of the proverbial boiling pot.)

In a time when the UK faces more debt than ever before, with our economy crumbling around us and with no clear, sensible plan for recovery can there really be nothing for Parliament to vote on? How about falling school standards, or our dirty hospitals? The reason is because our Democracy has been hollowed out, and MP’s know it, and admit that they have little control now over the affairs of this country. Most seem content with drawing their salaries, racking up expenses and re-assuring their constituents that things will all be fine. If we stay silent on the transfer of controls to the EU, things will get worse, because our leaders become more removed from those that they serve and because of reduced accountability.

The system is broke, and the ONLY way to fix it is to return all decision making lost to the EU back to the UK, either through Parliament, or to local councils and devolved assemblies. I firmly believe this, but I know that many do not. But please look at the way things are today, and ask yourself if you would be as frustrated as you are if you had a greater degree of control over the key decisions that affect us all.

The transfer of control to the point where it may never be recovered is nigh. Though Lisbon contains the illusionary decoy of offering an exit to those willing, the reality is no such. An exit would require a Qualified Majority Vote from within the EU, and a long delay before exit can be completed.

15-Apr-09 Update: Wow, as soon as I posted the above I saw Daniel Hannan has this piece that 85% of all legistlation passed in Germany since 1998 came from the EU - that 4 in every 5 pieces of legislation envisioned and enforced form the non-democratic centre.