'Ailing: People's distrust of politicians in Britain is severely damaging to the country's democracy. Tyrannies Across The World Are Crushing Dissent. In Britain Contempt For The Political Class Is Growing.
By
Max Hastings
Few modern prophets prove themselves
wise enough to invite comparison with Moses, but Francis Fukuyama made
more of an ass of himself than most.
Twenty
years ago, the American academic wrote a book entitled The End Of
History. In it, he announced that with the end of the Cold War and
collapse of Communism, liberal democracy had triumphed. It would become
forever the dominant system around the world, 'the final form of human
government'.
Americans
alternate bouts of flagellation about their country with orgies of
self-congratulation. They loved Fukuyama's book, which represented them
as the winning side, and bought it in truckloads.
For five minutes, it seemed possible
that the author's thesis could be right. In the Nineties, even Mother
Russia, cradle of tyranny, seemed to be embracing popular consent and
freedom.
Communism was the last of the 20th
century's evil 'isms' to suffer defeat, after two world wars in which
the democracies battled against militarism, fascism and Nazism.
And there was more good news, with South American military dictatorships giving way to elected governments.
In South Africa, minority white
apartheid rule yielded to one-man, one-vote black government without the
violent struggle many had feared.
A few surviving regimes, notably in China, Vietnam and Cuba, still professed themselves communist.
But
the big beasts in Beijing were as greedy and materialistic as Wall
Street bankers. Only a dwindling band of British university lecturers
continued to fool themselves that Karl Marx was right about mankind's
destiny.
Yet today, barely a generation since the publication of The End Of History, its thesis echoes hollow.
Even
if communism is a dying duck, everywhere brutal dictatorships are
flourishing as if their societies' flirtations with democracy had never
happened.
Freedom: A Turkish demonstrator wearing a Guy
Fawkes mask sits in front of a giant picture of the founder of modern
Turkey Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and a Turkish flag at the entrance of Gezi
park near Taksim square in Istanbul
Naive Europeans hailed the 2010
'Arab Spring' as promising a new era in the Middle East. Yet it seems
more likely that those nations - Tunisia, Egypt and Libya - will merely
be ruled by new autocrats.
The truth is that democracy is ailing - not least here in Britain. Many people despise and distrust politicians.
They
doubt that the energy expended on trekking to a polling station once
every five years will benefit them or their societies.
A
few years ago, Portuguese Nobel prizewinner Jose Saramago wrote a
brilliant allegorical novel about democratic corruption, entitled
Seeing. It was set in a nameless modern city during an election
campaign, where three-quarters of the voters are so disgusted by their
politicians that they returned blank ballots.
The government, bewildered and furious about the mass protest, orders a rerun: this produces 83 per cent of blank papers.
The
writer's point, of course, is that modern politics has become
meaningless to most people. It has simply descended into a struggle for
power among small and unrepresentative elites, devoid of convictions or
integrity, who ignore or defy the views of the people who elect them.
Rulers: China may increasingly embrace
capitalist economics, but President Xi Jinping (left), pictured with
President Barak Obama(right), and his politburo are implacable in
denying their people liberty to do anything save make money
Force: Russia's president Vladimir Putin is an
unashamed Stalinist and his country is in the hands of a gangster elite,
committed to suppressing dissent and bent upon personal enrichment
Earlier this month, Turkey's
prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, adopted one of the notorious
phrases of the old fascist dictators: 'My patience is exhausted.'
He then committed thousands of riot police with batons and tear gas to
remove peaceful protesters from Istanbul's Taksim Square.
Erdogan has said that democracy is an instrument to be exploited only
as long as it is useful. He is thought to aspire to changing Turkey's
constitution to make himself an elected dictator.
Most
educated urban Turks are appalled by his desire to break with the
country's century-old tradition of secularism and to once more put Islam
at the heart of law.
He has restricted alcohol sales and attempted to criminalise adultery. More journalists are in prison in Turkey than in China.
Erdogan
has been able to act despotically because as prime minister, he has
delivered economic growth. He has won three elections through the votes
of the small business class and rural peasantry, who value stability and
traditional values far above personal freedom.
He
can claim popular support, even though his style of rule is a travesty
of democracy. Turkey is only the latest example of a nation bent on
rolling back personal freedoms or resisting demands for it.
China
may increasingly embrace capitalist economics, but President Xi Jinping
and his politburo are implacable in denying their people liberty to do
anything save make money.
Russia's
president Vladimir Putin is an unashamed Stalinist. His country is in
the hands of a gangster elite, committed to suppressing dissent and bent
upon personal enrichment.
Putin himself is thought to have accrued billions in his personal bank
accounts. South America, 20 years ago, seemed to have turned its back on
dictatorships, but today the continent is suffering a resurgence of
personal rule.
Venezuela's Hugo Chavez is dead, but his successor intends to continue his disastrous tradition.
Argentina
gained democracy in the wake of the 1982 Falklands War, but is now the
victim of crazy Peronist economic policies that are wrecking the
country.
President
Cristina Kirchner can claim popular support: she wins elections by
bribing the poor. But while Argentina still votes, its political system
is a travesty.
Weak: Most people who care about British
politics are appalled by the weakness of the current Coalition, led by
Prime Minister David Cameron (left) and Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg
(right)
Likewise in Africa, most rulers can
claim legitimacy because they have won polls, but they rule in pursuit
of personal or tribal profit, rather than in the national interest.
South Africa's ruling ANC party is riddled with corruption and its President Jacob Zuma has been up to his neck in it.
The
government of India, hailed as the world's largest democracy, is mired
in corruption. Paul Collier, professor of development economics at
Oxford, wrote a brilliant book a few years ago, confessing that his own
youthful faith in the ballot box as the solution to the Third World's
troubles had been sadly mistaken.
Without
a free Press, a tax system that forces citizens to think about what is
being done with their money, an independent judiciary and an effective
and uncorrupt civil service, democracy does not work.
Hitler showed back in 1933 that if a would-be tyrant can win just one
election, he can bribe or fiddle the results of every poll thereafter.
Once
a ruthless man or woman holds the levers of power, he can make sport
with polls. The story becomes much more alarming when we see politics in
deep trouble on our own doorsteps.
In
the U.S., sensible people talk and write openly about a democratic
crisis. The bitter divisions between Republicans and Democrats have
created gridlock in both houses of Congress.
The old willingness to cut deals and make compromises to keep government moving has become a dead letter.
A large chunk of the U.S., and especially its old, white, mid-Western,
Western and southern heartland, feels as disenfranchised as do UKIP
supporters in Britain. It sees a host of things being done, or not done,
in Washington, which inspires bitter hostility on religious, economic
or social grounds.
Damaging: Sir Brian Leveson, whose report last
year into Press ethics threatens an unprecedented legislative assault on
Press freedom, that vital pillar of democracy
The U.S. came closest to being a
single nation in the Forties and Fifties, partly as a result of World
War II. Today, though, it is profoundly divided, and likely to remain
so, not least as a result of the rise of the Latino population.
Different
sections of U.S. society want vastly different things for the country;
their political leaders lack the will or gifts to reconcile them. And so
to Britain.
It is strange
to think that less than a century ago, universal adult suffrage seemed a
precious thing - finally granted to women only after World War I.
Consider
the huge impact of some general elections, above all that of 1945,
which produced a Labour government committed to creating the Welfare
State.
Today, by
contrast, ever fewer people trouble to vote, especially in local and
European elections. They feel a contempt for our political class, which
seems utterly remote.
We
have leaders so excited by plunging into foreign wars that they pay
scant attention to the humbler hopes and fears of voters at home. Most
people who care about British politics are appalled by the weakness of
the current Coalition.
This
could well be the shape of things to come, with the major parties
repeatedly failing to secure absolute majorities at General Elections.
The
result is that we get government at the speed of the slowest ship in
the convoy. Most modern ministers of all parties have spent their entire
adult lives in the fishbowl of politics and know nothing of real life
as lived by the rest of us.
Britain's democratic process invites almost as much public cynicism as
do those of Africa or Asia. Accountability seems chronically lacking.
The EU and its distant, all-powerful
bureaucracies feeds more public disillusionment. Almost every day,
decisions about our lives are being made without the consent of
Parliament, and often against its wishes.
Lord
Denning, an unusually wise judge, presciently wrote in 1974: 'The
Treaty of Rome is like an incoming tide. It flows into the estuaries and
up the rivers. It cannot be held back.'
He was quite right, but his bewigged successors today have plenty of their own crimes to answer for.
More and more unpopular and visibly unjust British law is made by the
judiciary, often flagrantly over-riding the expressed wishes of voters
and Parliament.
We are
entitled to ask: why does no other country in Europe suffer as severely
at the hands of its judges - for instance, in upholding the rights of
terrorists and their sympathisers at the expense of public safety - as
does Britain?
The
judiciary displays a sorry combination of conceit and complacency. It
has contributed substantially to the British people's mounting belief
that, while they supposedly live in a democracy, they are denied their
rightful voice in their own destinies.
It is another judge, Sir Brian Leveson, whose report last year into
Press ethics threatens an unprecedented legislative assault on Press
freedom, that vital pillar of democracy.
There
are today some welcome signs that politicians are seeing the perils
implicit in implementing Leveson's ill-considered recommendations. But
it is dismaying to see judges repeatedly displaying their paucity of
wisdom - the quality that, above all, we are entitled to expect from
them.
Meanwhile, it
remains true that democracy, for all its imperfections, is the least bad
system of government to which mankind can submit.
But
IF it is to function, we must be able to see some small correlation
between what we think we have voted for and what sort of society we get.
Heroes of democracy: It is strange to think that
less than a century ago, universal adult suffrage seemed a precious
thing - finally granted to women only after World War I
The corruption of democracy in Africa, Asia and much of the Middle East places nations at the mercy of elected dictators.
In the U.S., Britain and much of the rest of Europe, we are instead
threatened with chronically weak government, incapable of getting big,
important things done to preserve our prosperity and even safety.
To
restore voters' faith in democracy, we need also to restore that of our
politicians. One of my favourite stories of Winston Churchill concerns a
moment in 1942 when he was much troubled by the prospect of preparing
and delivering a speech to the House of Commons about the war which at
the time was going badly.
His
chief of staff, General 'Pug' Ismay, said emolliently: 'Why don't you
tell them all to go to hell, sir?' Churchill turned on him in a flash
and said furiously: 'You must not say such things. I am the servant of
the House.'
Who can
imagine any modern British prime minister saying, far less believing,
such a thing? Until we can restore to politics the legitimacy that can
derive only from respect for its processes, democracy in Britain will
remain in almost as sorry a condition as it is today across much of the
rest of the world.
Even if
someone was silly enough to buy Francis Fukuyama's book today, the
euphoric vision it offered could invite only hollow laughter.
http://tinyurl.com/kxdxtu4
1 comment:
Sophie's Rant...
http://actwellyourpart.blogspot.com/2013/06/sophies-rant.html
"We punish success and honour failure because we are stupid.
We frown upon work and promote mooching because we are stupid.
We consider classical goals of real education, enlightenment, and intelligence to be passé while American Idol, ‘The Preezy of the United Steezy,’ Honey Boo-Boo, Girls, the Kardashians, etc, are the epitome of culture and attainment because we are stupid.
We denigrate the responsible ownership of guns, but champion pot smoking because we are stupid.
We snort at a culture of life, but embrace a culture of death because we are stupid."
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