We have today to deal not with a divided but with a united plutocracy, a homogeneous mass of the rich, commercial and territorial, into whose hands practically all power, political as well as economic, has now passed.
Does that not fairly sum up the situation we are faced with as 2024 draws to its close. Is this from a recent article in the Spectator? Prospect? The Critic? Or some obscure Substacker letting off steam? No. That was Hilaire Belloc and Cecil Chesterton (brother of G K) writing in 1911 in their book The Party System. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. If Belloc and Chesterton were able to see that the political parties were a problem in their time, how much easier should it be for us over a hundred years later?
In Part Two we looked at the structure of the constitution of the United Kingdom. In this part we‘ll see how the main political parties have subverted it and removed real political power away from the electorate.
Early political parties began to emerge in the 17th century, a transformative period in British history. In England, early factions were primarily concerned with issues of sovereignty and the power of the monarchy, splitting parliamentarians between those who were for the ‘Court’ and those who were for the ‘Country’. The ‘Tories’ and the ‘Whigs’, ancestors of the Conservatives and Liberals, emerged during the Exclusion Crisis of 1678-1681. Initially, these groups were not formal parties as we have today, but loose alliances based on shared interests and principles. The Tories basically supported the Monarchy, and the Whigs were in favour of reform.
Whichever way the members of Parliament split, they represented a governing class under the King that had Three Estates – the Crown, the Lords and the Commons with the latter composed of men who, at the very least, were merchants who may have had significant land holdings.
North of Hadrian’s Wall, the Parliament of Scotland also recognised Three Estates: The Clergy, the Nobility and the Royal Burghs who each sent a representative. These would be augmented by Officers of State and the Shire Commissioners by the end of the 17th century. Despite being unicameral, the Scottish Convention was a little ahead of the English one in some respects and the Westminster parliament took on some of its ideas. During Cromwell’s Protectorate there was even an Anglo-Scottish parliamentary union for six years. Those who are interested can read about it here.
Thus, on either side of the Anglo-Scottish border sat parliaments which represented the Crown and the elites. The ordinary people – lesser merchants, artisans, peasants - didn’t get a look in. Political power rested in the hands of the few and the few were quite content with that.
After the Glorious Revolution which established a constitutional monarchy, matters began to change. Glorious for whom, exactly? Well, not for the broad mass of the English, Welsh and Scottish people. Just for the few.
Initially it had been the Whigs who were better organised in Westminster. They had political clubs to co-ordinate tactics and strategy; they employed electoral agents; they orchestrated a highly sophisticated propaganda campaign, deploying a wide range of visual and aural tactics, along with pamphlets. They sought to mobilise the populace nationwide to support their platform through mass petition campaigns and political rallies. It didn’t take the Tories long to mimic them but around a platform of commitment to the existing settlement in church and state (as established by law) and opposition to Protestant Nonconformism.
Party identities were temporarily blurred in the aftermath of the Glorious Revolution. The dethroning of James II and his replacement by William III & Mary II seemed to have solved the issue that had given rise to party strife in the first place. Moreover, the Whigs, who had started as a party in opposition to the executive, now found themselves in power.
Some historians have even denied that parties existed during the reign of Queen Anne (1702–1714), insisting instead that political connections based on family ties were more important. However, division lists show that from the mid-1690s through the reign of Anne, most peers and members of Parliament voted consistently along party lines. Likewise, poll books reveal that the parliamentary electorate voted for party tickets. It is hardly surprising. The two parties had developed fairly sophisticated organisational structures to ensure unity: regular planning meetings, political clubs, circular letters and regional whips, electoral organisations, and extensive propaganda campaigns.
While there were divisions on a number of policies, an important one for the Constitution was the parties' respective attitudes toward the Glorious Revolution. The Whigs believing that James II had been overthrown for breaking his oath; the Tories believing that the king had deserted and left the throne vacant, and therefore that no resistance had taken place in 1688. Although a few Tories remained loyal to the exiled Stuarts, most Tories were prepared to accept the Hanoverian succession in 1714. However, the implication of some leading Tory politicians in the Jacobite rebellion of 1715 split the Tory party and permanently discredited them in the eyes of the new Hanoverian monarchs, leading to the Whig ascendancy under George I and George II.
Hence, long before the age of Parliamentary Reform in the 19th Century a party system existed in Parliament. It is appropriate here to reflect on what sort of organisations political parties are. It seems a statement of the obvious but, they have leaders, they have lieutenants, and they have foot-soldiers. They are hierarchical. There may be some element of ‘bottom-up’ policy influence in the best parties but essentially, party policies will be set by the leadership. By a few. They are oligarchies.
Whereas in early 19th century Britain only about 4% of the adult male population was enfranchised, it became imperative for the ruling class to avoid violent upheavals such as occurred in the French Revolution. In response to pressures within and without Parliament a series of reforms were enacted which extended the franchise gradually through the 19th and into the 20th century.
The enfranchisement of women came after the First World War. Universal suffrage for all over the age of 21 came in 1928 and over the age of 18 in 1969. The noteworthy feature of reforming pressure in Britain throughout this period was that reformers did not wish to tear down the established political system; rather they wished to join it.
The elites, however, realised that the granting of democratic rights to the majority of the population could lead to their losing control and eventually to the loss of their power and influence. This was to be out of the question. After all they were the ones who had been educated at the great public schools and universities. They alone knew how the World worked so they should control the political system. What better way to achieve this than to make sure they took control of the political parties.
Gradually during the latter part of the 19th Century and the early 20th Century the main political parties exerted more and more control over both Parliament and the choice of ministerial appointments which, hitherto, would have been the Monarch’s prerogative. In the first decade of the 20th Century a point was reached where the parties refused to accept the appointment of any minister of whom they did not approve and the parties’ usurpation of power over the executive was complete.
As the 20th Century progressed, the Liberal Party gave way to the Labour Party which arose largely out of Fabianism and the Trade Union movement. From the mid 19th Century onwards, as a result of the Industrial Revolution, the merchant and banking class had had the great industrialists added to their ranks. Many of these people had contacts, ties and interests across the Atlantic Ocean, so they followed events in the USA closely. They could see as well as the wealthiest American families that they needed to control government and steer it in a direction favourable to themselves.
We have already seen that political parties are oligarchies. They are also by their very nature collectives and collectivism is a Marxist revolutionary concept. The so-called Conservative version is as dangerous as the socialist one because it contains the capitalist wing of the Marxist revolution and pretends to be in favour of free enterprise.
As many who have looked into the relevant history will know, big business is by no means antipathetic to Communism. It is American plutocrats who in the first half of the 20th century financed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia as well as the first Soviet Five-Year plan and the industrialisation of Russia. They facilitated the Gulag. They also financed the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Big business loves authoritarian government because it provides a captive market and a reliable tax base, the proceeds of which can be diverted towards their interests while dissent is dealt with harshly.
What we have witnessed at the recent General Election is the handing over of political power from one collective to another, each of them a faction of the Marxist World revolution. We can see that, since the system demands a majority after every election, the result is that we have a perpetual tyranny. We have been conditioned to believe that there is a statist Red Wing and a libertarian Blue Wing to the political spectrum when, in reality, it is the whole system versus the people.
The Blue Wing created a disaster out of the Covid “lockdowns”, mass migration, and permitted a cultural attack on indigenous Britons so clearing the way for angry voters to give to the Red Wing a massive parliamentary majority.
"It is the Parliamentary majority which has the potential for tyranny" warned Lord Hailsham in his book The Dilemma of Democracy in 1977.
ALL political parties work towards the destruction of our constitutional separation of powers in that the House of Commons is no longer "the traditional protector of our liberty” (Hailsham) and a check on the powers of the State. Through the voting system the "single elective authority" of the revolution becomes the tyranny of the majority (of seats, not people). The executive sits in Parliament and controls its agenda. It is a pseudo-democratic despotism.
The "Collective" threat to our liberty as sovereign individuals starts with persuading us that only by voting for a political party are we free when, in fact, the opposite is true. The collective (Marxist) trick played upon us every time we hold an election is contained in the party manifestos. These may be 60 to 100 pages long and we are assumed to have read the lot.
Manifestos are often vague to allow as much ‘wriggle room’ as possible but nevertheless they may detail the policies the party will adopt if elected to government. Few, if any, voters will find themselves in agreement with the entire package; but we must consent, with our votes, to all of it. There is no option to reject the unattractive policies. Thus, do we surrender our sovereignty.
This means that the WHOLE package gets a complete go ahead before it has been evaluated. On top of this, your MP is whipped to vote as directed by PARTY. Now we can see clearly the meaning of "elective dictatorship" (Hailsham).
The winning party will often have succeeded with 40-44% of all votes cast in a voter turn-out of 68-70% of the electorate. In our recent General Election, however, the Labour party won just 33% of all votes cast which was actually just 20% of the electorate. Our first-past-the-post system has rewarded it with a landslide in terms of the number of parliamentary seats it holds so it has taken power with the support of just one fifth of the electorate. Any claim that the ‘will of the people’ supports Labour policies is hollow. It does nothing of the sort. We will see policies which were not in the manifesto, and others that were will be quietly dropped. And they will be debated and voted on only by the Members of Parliament. The people, meanwhile, will not be invited to have a say on anything for at least the next four years.
“But now a dim suspicion has begun to arise in the minds of at least a section of the people that this historic optimism is not quite as true as it looks, that the electors do not as a fact control the representatives, and that the representatives do not as a fact control the Government, that something alien has intervened between electors and elected, between legislature and Executive, something that deflects the working of representative institutions.
That thing is the Party System.” (Belloc/Chesterton)
On top of this we can add venality and corruption. The system is riddled with both. While it has certainly gone on for much longer than most people realise, it was Lloyd George who spectacularly brought it into the open with his infamous sales of honours which led to the establishment of the Tory 1922 Committee and his downfall followed by the Sale of Honours Act (1925).
In more modern times we are familiar with the cash for questions scandal and the MPs’ expenses scandal which was exposed by the Daily Telegraph. Whilst people remember moat-cleaning and duck houses, it is flip-flopping the designation of main residences to avoid taxes on property sales that is much more serious, the more so because many of those residences were financed through expenses claims – our money.
Lobbying by corporations (including banks) and business organisations is endemic. Money flows into party coffers in exchange for favourable policies, or even government contracts (Remember the COVID PSE contracts), but personal gain is also a major driver of the corruption. How else have politicians such as Tony Blair become so wealthy in such a short space of time. How was Boris Johnson, who was famously skint while he was in Downing Street, able to buy a £4 million country house in Brightwell-cum-Sotwell in Oxfordshire so soon after leaving Parliament?
We know politicians are influenced and bought by the hyper-wealthy. The worst example of this is Blair who, we are frequently reminded by one commenter on conservative fora, met George Soros in New York before he became Prime Minister. Soros, it is claimed, bought the Climate Change Act and the mass migration policies started by the Blair government.
However, the worst aspect of the Blair/Brown years from 1997 is the constitutional vandalism wrought by them which removed power from Parliament and placed it further beyond any form of democratic control than ever before. For example:
- Devolution which has brought the United Kingdom to the verge of break-up.
- Bank of England independence. The monetary policy committee sets interest rates, not the Chancellor of the Exchequer answerable to Parliament.
- The Climate Change Committee headed by Lord Gummer. Climate policy is placed in the hands of zealots while no democratic debate about any part of it takes place. Gummer is invested in green energy projects.
- Net Zero, flowing from that committee, written into law so judges may adjudicate on it. Climate and energy policy is potentially placed in the hands of the judiciary.
- Planning – Natural England, the head of which is a zealot, has a say over who builds what and where. The needs of snails, newts and bats take precedence over the needs of human beings.
- The Supreme Court in which judges may have a veto over the policies of elected politicians.
This is all breath-takingly stupid, completely barking mad, because it removes decisions altogether from the democratic sphere which will affect all of us,
Although many politicians were scions of the wealthy or aristocratic families, with increasing ‘democratisation’ others were added to the body politic who were not. They proved to be depressingly easy to buy. While the reforms were happening the political parties were being organised in the country and in Parliament in a way that ensured that political power was moved further and further away from the electorate.
The concept of Parliamentary Sovereignty had been born with the Glorious Revolution when Parliament drastically curtailed the power of the Monarch. The Earl of Shaftesbury declared in 1689, "The Parliament of England is that supreme and absolute power, which gives life and motion to the English government”. This placed Parliament above the people, and it is the root of the argument about who or what is sovereign, the People or Parliament. Parliament has got away with it because the people had no political power in the 17th Century. One could be forgiven for thinking that democracy in Britain had been a sham from the start.
As we observe the aftermath of the American Presidential election, we are reminded of the words of the first President of the United States, George Washington, when he made his farewell address just before he retired.
“When Americans vote according to party loyalty, rather than the common interest of the nation, I fear it will foster a spirit of revenge, and enable the rise of cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men who wil usurp for themselves the reins of government; destroying afterward the very engines, which have lifted them to unjust dominion.”
This is exactly what has happened.
The Dark Lord, Destroyer of Democracy, Wrecker of Constitutions is back. With his hand in the glove-puppet Starmer, he ensures the adoption by the current government of Gates/Soros/ UN/WEF policies.
Next: What we might do about it.