We pay they play. British democracy is DEAD.

..

Two images stay in my head which refuse to go away.

Both occurred on the debate on the explosion in the use of food banks in the Houses of Parliament.

One was the laughter on the government benches, leering hectoring guffaws during a ‘debate’ on food poverty and hunger in one of the richest countries in the world.

How could a government paid for by the people find amusement in increasing numbers of people so poor that they have to turn to a food bank just to survive?

It was a truly sickening illumination of the separation between the ruling classes and the electorate.

The second image was captured on the front page of The Daily Mirror for posterity – it was the minister for Work and Pensions leaving the debate early. Iain Duncan Smith has a direct and baleful impact on the food poverty situation but decided he didn’t even need to pretend to care – so he left an underling to cover for him and sloped off.

It leads me to think that democracy in this nation is finished – and what remains is little more than a fake shop front to convince people that our corporate overlords are in some way restrained by government machinery and supervision . Perhaps the reality is that protest and activism are suppressed and the corporations enabled.

This morning we covered the shameful collusion between shale gas executives and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (Decc) uncovered by Greenpeace. When confronted by behaviour which is clearly a breach of the public trust the Decc was predictably airy and dismissive saying:

“Decc has working relationships with external partners across its portfolio and this is no different with regards to shale gas. It is right and proper that Decc facilitates discussions between companies, regulators and other interested parties as part of this.”

Other interested parties? The wide range of anti-fracking groups that have sprung up across the UK will find getting the kind of access and warm co-operation afforded to Centrica and other big corporates is impossible. The Decc clearly demonstrates by its actions that the environmental concerns of the wider populace are secondary to enabling fracking companies to get out good PR that ‘manages’ opposition .

To the Decc, people who care about the environment are the enemy, so they won’t be getting any post discussion drinks and food while ‘useful’ strategies are cooked up.

Department after department that should work in the public interest has been exposed time and again as batting for big corporate interests, so its no surprise that the Decc is wining and dining corporate executives, sharing staff and working together to promote fracking. They didn’t even think it necessary to provide an incredulous public with any kind of excuse or justification for what is a clear case of corporate capture of a public body.

An isolated example? – hardly!

Richard Murphy reports via his Tax Research UK blog of the strange tale of Volker Becker who has been appointed to the board of HMRC as an adviser. Volker helped Npower to dodge billions of pounds in tax by running a front company in Malta – so he seems an odd choice.

As Richard dryly remarks:

“He is a German national who has been a director of a company that has clearly been involved with tax avoidance . How this qualifies him to supervise our national tax authority is hard to explain. Candidly it is time to sweep this Board clean and give HMRC the leadership it needs and deserves. That would be one that believes in collecting tax, for a start.”

This on the back of cuts in HMRC staffing levels, tax cuts for corporates and £35 billion that HMRC should have collected but didn’t (and this is a very conservative figure)

Remember how George Osborne became “beer drinker of they year” just before the introduction of minimum pricing on alcohol was abandoned? This following months of friendly meetings with supermarket chains, lobbyists and alcohol manufacturers – and where inconvenient research, some commissioned by the government itself was quietly buried by Home Office.

Or how big tobacco lobbyist and Downing Street advisor Lynton Crosby was implicated in the abrupt U-turn over plain packaging for cigarettes?

Or how doctors are convinced that Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt is deliberately attacking them for political reasons and that his government is determined to deliver the NHS to corporate interests?

Or how about a governor of the Bank of England, appointed by George Osborne who after 16 years of working for Goldman Sachs is unsurprisingly opposed to measures to limit banker bonuses and to breaking up the banking oligopoly which controls 85% of accounts in the retail market. This may have something to do with the fact that the Tory party gets half its funding each year from the finance sector.

I could go on and on.

Now perhaps even parliament itself no longer even feels the need to pretend to be representative or accountable.

The MP Michael Meacher reports via his blog:

On Monday, something happened in the House of Commons that should cause electors to wonder what parliament is for. The motion before the house was that “a commission of inquiry be established to investigate the impact of the government’s welfare reforms on the incidence of poverty”. At the vote the government was defeated by 125 votes to two. The result: nothing at all – it wasn’t reported and the government is ignoring it.

naturally. What exactly is Parliament for then? Michael further notes that:

There is a major constitutional issue here. The government arbitrarily takes the view that unless it is defeated on its own business – almost impossible – all other votes are regarded as advisory and set aside. This will begin to matter when there is a public petition which gains enough signatures

I think it already matters.

Voters are deserting the democratic process in records numbers. Less thank half (46%) of the younger generation (18-24) even voted at the last election and its not hard to see why.

In a Guardian / ICM poll a staggering 64% of people said that they didn’t trust politicians to keep their promises.

In other words, once the election is over its back to business as usual – where government departments cosy up to big corporations, parliament itself just rubber stamps government legislation and where voices of protest are marginalised and excluded.

Small wonder that the same poll found that the overriding feeling that people have towards politicians is anger.

But worse is on the cards.

The Haze reblogged George Monbiot’s disturbing article on how legislation doing the rounds at Westminster (currently blocked in The House of Lords) threatens to further criminalise virtually any gathering that can be deemed to cause a nuisance – which pretty much is the tin hat on any form of protest or activism.

Another piece of repressive legislation will gag charities and other NGO’s who have the temerity to speak out on issues like poverty and social justice – troublesome organusations like the Trussel Trust and their meddlesome statistics on food bank usage, or Oxfam who reported on food poverty in the UK, or Shelter who try to give the homeless a voice in the public arena.  This legislation has been watered down by actions in the House of Lords but such attempts will not go away.

What a contrast these repressive bills against charities and protestors illuminate when set against the easy access and cosy relationships afforded to corporations and corporate lobbyists across Whitehall and Westminster.

Now ordinary voters can only watch helplessly as votes are cast to further exclude the people from democracy.

What is the answer?

I have no simple solutions, but we must start by fighting the braying of the mainstream media against the poor, the disabled and unemployed. 

This diversionary tactic is working well – Britain is now the most unequal nation in the western world and bottom of more league tables involving health, poverty, social justice, education and the environment than I care to list , but far from confronting the politicians, the banks, the big corporations or the collusive civil service, we find that all the headlines are all about benefit claimants and immigrants

As long as all debate is couched in a ‘benefits street’ framework there is no hope.  

Too many journalists in the modern era have a very incestuous relationship with power.

Even the big independent portals like The Guardian and The Independent are endlessly fascinated with the soap opera of Westminster and people with fame, influence and power – the little people like us don’t get much of a look in.

This is perhaps where sites like Sodium Haze and others remain important as independent voices of reportage and protest.

The Haze does have a great deal to say about the kind of progressive socially just solutions that we can adopt to make our society happier, healthier and sustainable – but we must first collectively acknowledge that any hope we might once have invested in tribal politics and the Westminster  charade has gone.

DEMOCRACY IN BRITAIN IS DEAD.

LETS FIGHT TOGETHER TO GET DEMOCRACY BACK.