Free The Light's on at Signpost by George MacDonald Fraser

in the days of Burke and the Pitts, when there was genuine force to the argument that the country was best governed by an educated elite, trained and fit to lead and make the many-headed’s decisions for them. Many MPs then looked on public service as something to which they were devoted by tradition; they could also, with some justice, consider themselves the intellectual as well as the social superiors of their constituents and the unenfranchised masses. Those days are long dead. No one in his right mind would suggest that today’s MPs are superior in intellect, morality, education, or judgment, to the people they represent; many of them are plainly inferior on all four counts. Some cannot even talk grammatically, and by their speech shall ye know them—assuming you can interpret the half-educated proletarian noises they make.
    I have mentioned Burke, and those who defend the practice of MPs following their own judgment against the voters’ wishes can quote, if they are familiar with his works or have even heard of him, his warning to the people of Bristol that their MP owed them his judgment, “and betrays…you if he sacrifices it to your opinion.” Fair enough for the eighteenth century, no doubt, but it was also this same Burke who said: “In all forms of government the people is the true legislator”, and, most tellingly: “I am not one of those who think that the people are never wrong…but I do say that in all disputes between them and their rulers, the presumption is…in favour of the people.”
    It appears that the great Parliamentarian was no more consistent than any other politician, but he would repay study by those who, in their complacent self-admiration, have so little regard for the wishes of those whose judgment they were only too delighted to accept when it sent them to Westminster.
    An excellent way of demonstrating the unfitness of MPs is to compare them to ourselves. I think I know my capacity and limitations, and I doubt if I have ever been competent to run a department of state, but I led an infantry section in war when I was nineteen, commanded a platoon when I was twenty-one, and in middle age edited a great daily newspaper. Now all these jobs required some degree of what is called leadership—a gift which people like Blair seem to think is automatically conferred by election. I hold no very high opinion of myself as a leader, but can it be contended that the sorry collection of placemen and party hacks and p.c. women and semi-literate nonentities who have crawled and toadied and lied their way to Westminster are fit to lead me and millions like me—educated professionals and workers and artisans and craftsmen who have made their way in the world by real skill and perseverance, not by blathering and caballing?
    If I weren’t so outraged at the idea, I’d be helpless with laughter. Blair, a junior barrister who has never done a real job in the realworld, to lead me? I wouldn’t follow him round the corner. Or any of his Cabinet of freaks and oddballs. Or the sorry parcel of yuppies and businessmen opposite.
    It may be asked, what’s the alternative, and the answer is that there isn’t one. The British political system has been defended as the least bad polity yet invented, and there is something in it— but only so long as the people who operate it play the game . I don’t apologise for using an old, perhaps outworn, expression; what I am saying is that our “democracy” is acceptable only if our elected rulers are honest, tell the truth, behave with decency, and strive to remember that they are there to serve the people as the people wish to be served.
    That is not what we have, or have had for thirty years, or look like having for a long time to come. Politics has become the preserve of the second-rate, a career primarily seen as a means of advancing personal ambition and lining the pocket; service is the last thing an aspiring parliamentarian has in mind. I must say again that