John Major is slowly coming round to the idea of a one-party state. Frank Field has already. It is called a National Government.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1333561/John-Major-believes-Coalition-run-past-2015-poll.html?ITO=1490

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/blog/2009/jan/22/frank-field-mandelson-clarke-cable

http://www.1party4all.co.uk/Home/Account/TopicForm.aspx?topicsId=107
has a draft constitution for the incipient one-party state that should be the logical conclusion of these ideas.

It is tiresome how easily frightened so many British politicians are by these ideas.  Those who are frightened are reminded that Ancient Athens and Republican Rome from which the West draws its democratic traditions were in fact one-party states with shifting factions.  A party is administratively necessary to attract members, field candidates, change rules, count votes etc. 

It will not result in a totalitarian dictatorship if its constitution protects the rights of its members (the most important of which is free speech) against the leader and his cronies. 

China will show us the way.  Whatever you think of its human rights records, the average Chinese Communist Party member has more rights against his party than the average MP against his.  Check out their Article 4. 

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/25/content_6944738_1.htm

Also note that the Chinese Communist Party periodically revises its constitution to reflect changes in reality. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_People%27s_Republic_of_China

Can we have a sensible discussion about this, please?

Democracy, Onepartyism and Electoral Reform

We live in an elective oligarchy, not a democracy.

An oligarchy is a political oligopoly, or cartel, if you prefer.

A cartel is a conspiracy of providers who have mutually agreed to carve up a market between themselves and will do all in their power to keep out any competition.

Democracy in the old-fashioned sense was Athenian Democracy and this took the form of citizens being allowed to vote on policies and laws as individuals.

A modern form of this would be government by referenda, which of course we do not have. In fact, the British are the worst-treated nation of all the EU nations since most of them have already had a referendum on Maastricht and the Lisbon Treaty, while the British were denied a referendum on either.

Clearly, for direct democracy to operate, the exercise of voting for parties would become redundant.

Clearly, too, the form of democracy that operated in Ancient Athens and Republican Rome was without party, because the citizens of Rome would vote for or against laws. (Shifting factions are of course unavoidable.)

In a modern state however, a party would be necessary, if only to count votes, field candidates, propose policies etc.

But to even propose this raises the spectre of a one-party state and all the horrors that our knowledge of Hitler, Stalin and Mao will bring to mind.

The only flourishing and functioning one-party state is of course China. The continually revised constitution of the Chinese Communist Party reveals that they have got the theory right at any rate, and there are articles in it that are there to safeguard the rights of individual members against the leader and his cronies.

http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-10/25/content_6944738_1.htm Article 4

China is, ironically and paradoxically, the only country that is practising direct democracy, albeit with a very narrow franchise.

Perhaps the reason why it is now doing so well is because the system now practised in China is the most rational of all known forms of government. All the best people join it, the rewards are enticing, and there will be no problems with succession under their finely balanced constitution. The leader is elected by the Politburo (consisting of 9 members). The Politburo is in turn elected by the Politburo Standing Committee (consisting of 27 members) and also elects members to the Politburo Standing Committee.

If their current leader falls under a bus, there will be at least 9 people waiting in the wings with the experience and the talent to replace him, unlike our sad sorry system we like to pretend is a democracy.

Darkness at the end of the tunnel

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/oct/01/home-office-threat-level-fear

67 BC -  The tribune A. Gabinius passes his lex Gabinia. This gives a command to Gn. Pompeius Magnus, who is given unlimited imperium on water to fight against the growing pirate menace.

The Muslim menace is the 21st century equivalent of the pirate menace, is it not?


That was the beginning of the end of the Roman Republic, before it plunged into civil war from which Octavian emerged as the first Roman Emperor. From a liberty-loving people who hated kings the Romans eventually became a people who practised emperor-worship.  Proof that a people who prefer security over liberty will eventually deserve neither. 
 
If only we could all join together and extricate ourselves out of the disaster and dishonor of the wars that being America's poodle has involved us in.

But Cameron voted *for* the war and twisted the arms of the Tory front bench to do the same. He agreed with virtually everything New Labour did. He only said he would implement New Labour policies better than New Labour itself. And the Tories swallowed all that: hook, line and sinker.

The taste for military adventurism started with Blair over Bosnia. Its success whetted his appetite for military adventures.

Thatcher only got back what was snatched from Britain.

And now we have it: a Conservative government being more socialist than a socialist government and a socialist government led by a warmonger, getting away with it because people only go by labels and never look inside the package to examine the ingredients, too slow-witted to notice that the labels had been switched ...