When elites fall out - by Richard... Monday, August 01, 2011

When elites fall out - by Richard... Monday, August 01, 2011

Read the last two paragraphs here. Read my Sunday piece and then my Mail piece. More than six months after I complain that public servants have lost their fear, up pops Oliver Letwin to say that they need "discipline and fear". But look what happens when you try to reinstall some fear to theparasite class.

The lack of self-awareness from Letwin & Co is quite staggering. It is the same phenomenon that you see in mass murderers and other psychotics. Theodore Dalrymple would recognise the trait. That much politicians have in common with the dregs of society.

But then, incredibly – unbelievably – you have this and this, a bunch of the "feral elite" complaining that the country is run by a ... er ... "feral elite". This is the view the likes of Greg Dyke, Caroline Lucas and Lord Smith of Clifton, who think we need a "people's jury" to apply a "public interest first" test more generally to British political and corporate life. Overworked as a cliché or not, you really could not make this one up.

But then, only last night I was writing that, if we don't come up with something, someone else will – and we may not like it. Well, someone else has, and we don't. We do have Referism. That is the only "people's jury" that matters.

The trouble is, you will never get the "feral elite" offer anything that amounts to the transfer of real power. If we want power, we are going to have to take it. The time is not yet, but what we are seeing here is the elites falling out. The time must be near.

COMMENT: "COMMON THREAD"

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A common thread - by Richard...

An interesting account of the current mood in Greece confirms our general thesis.When the political classes mess up, the response of the people is to disobey and then rebel. We did it in 1940. The Greeks are doing it now. And, in the fullness of time, we will be doing it again. It really is just a matter of time.

But the interesting thing is that these rebellions tend to be unplanned, entirely spontaneous and unpredictable. If there is an "ism" floating around, the progenitors tend to exploit the situation – but they do not create it.

The 1940s brought us Socialism – or a version of it. Who knows what the situation in Greece will bring. My gut feeling is that, if we don't have our own "ism" ready and waiting, then people may opt for one of which we do not approve.

That, therefore, is our agenda. The pols and the media may want to sell us bread and circuses, by way of political expediency, to keep us quiet and docile. But their agenda is not ours. The grown-ups need to be concerned with what happens when the situation finally goes belly up.

Greece points the way, but offers no solution. There, we are on our own.