Wednesday, August 12, 2009

SHOULD A PEER BE RUNNING THE COUNTRY?

It’s the height of summer and I guess my mind should be running to the state of Britain’s piers – Southend, Brighton, Blackpool every charred Weston Super Mare. Instead of a breezy walk along battered planks my attention turns to the man running the country, Peter Mandelson – a peer of the realm.

This is the man who was twice forced to resign from the government of Tony Blair – men who were soul mates if only in the political sense. A man Blair wanted us to learn to love as he tells us he did.

This is the man who was then sent to Brussels as one of Britain’s EU Commissioners. There he raised many an eyebrow over his political antics and no doubt his snake hips.

Then he is hauled back to Britain by his former arch political enemy – Premier Gordon Brown. Suddenly he is a peer, Business Secretary and the power behind Brown’s tottering throne. In the reshuffle he emerges as deputy prime minister in all but name and the most powerful unelected man in the country.

I believe that the whole basis of being a democracy is that the people elect the government and those ministers should answer to the country both at the House of Commons dispatch box and at the ballot box.

However Mr Mandelson lords it over us in his ermine, sends his minions to face the political fire and is hence accountable to no one except himself.

When Britain gets round to reforming its badly dented political system may one of the first changes be that all ministers should be elected politicians, sit in the House of Commons and have to face the electorate every four years. If the Prime Minister of the day wants advisers, so be it, but only elected MPs should run our country.

In the meantime we have a politically disgraced peer running the country. Very queer!

4 comments:

Tony Murphy said...

I am simply baffeled by the mire of bullshit and mediocrity which is British politics.But as the saying goes "you get the government you deserve"The British people have complacently allowed their freedom to be eroded away by a government that seems intent on controlling every minute aspect of peoples lives and tax them into oblivion at the same time.
They should be marching in the streets (if they could get a permit)demanding that Gordon Brown,
the most inept Prime minister in history,be run out of Downing St.
His own party know they are politically doomed with Gordon at the helm and that even their wizard Mandleson cannot save him.But they blindly rally round,extolling the virtues of a fool and hoping that the complacent British electorate
can drag themselves away from their binge drinking long enough to vote for him again.Their contempt for the British public will only continue and inrease unless they say STOP -ENOUGH IS ENOUGH.

TONY MURPHY

Anonymous said...

did you hear Mandleson and Evan Davies having a go at eachother on the Today programme this morning? Worth going to BBC Radio 4 Listen Again to hear them. I'm not sure who won but they both had a lovely time!

Mary said...

Looks like Wolverine in a sheepskin lining to me - he obviously has this miraculous healing factor that enables him to bounce back from the brink every time.Lets hope he keeps his claws in -"I'm the best there is at what I do, but what I do isn't very nice "

Anonymous said...

There is nothing wrong about having a Peer coopted into the Cabinet. Lord Home had to renounce his Peerage to be Prime Minister. Let us fervently hope that Lord Mandleson will never be called to make that decision during my lifetime. His track record is a twisted as a left handed corkscrew and makes most MPs look blameless.