As the i reported, Emily Darlington, Labour MP for Milton Keynes Central, ‘is seeking to make the Electoral Commission recommend enhanced DBS checks for candidates and then publish whether or not parties have agreed to the vetting. The aim is to ensure political parties justify whether their candidates are fit for office and name and shame those who refuse to participate.’
This is troubling when one considers that DBS (Disclosure and Barring Service) checks include not just criminal history but ‘non-crime hate incidents’, which may even appear on the records of people who haven’t been contacted by police. These highly-political charges are far more likely to be directed at those with Right-wing opinions.
When western European countries do things like this, I try to gauge whether this is normal by asking the question: what if Hungary did this? In most of these cases, I imagine the assessment would be that it was an assault on liberalism and democratic norms. In which case, what if Britain is undergoing the sort of ‘democratic backsliding’ usually levelled at central European countries with conservative governments? What if Keir Starmer is actually one of these illiberal ‘strongmen’ we read about, just not a very effective one.
– Ed West
It is It is a matter for the electorate as to who is fit for elected office or not, based upon the representations made at the stump. There is no place for interference by the blob in its many forms.
Wow! I had naively thought you do a NCHI you get six coppers round your gaff!
This is disturbing. They can put you on the “naughty step” and not tell you why?
Even the STASI used to come round your flat on the QT, take a shit and not flush.
First full disclosure – as a Parish Councillor I have volunteered for a DBS check as the Village Hall has events with children, and my Wicksteed Park DBS check is no longer valid – as I was made redundant from Wicksteed Park, by the Covid Shutdown, back in 2020.
However, no one should be FORCED to get a DBS check to stand for election.
That should be obvious.
As for the International Establishment ritual attacks on Hungary – the largest city, and capital, of Hungary is governed by the left.
Yet this fact does not prevent the International Establishment, for example the Economist magazine, saying that the conservative national government of Hungary is going to be removed soon – and they clearly do not mean voted out in an election, they mean some sort of “Colour Revolution” organized by outside forces (organized by the International Establishment – both government, such as the European Union, and Corporate – such as the banks and other such who decided to remove Pope Benedict XVI).
Such actions are clearly unacceptable.
If both candidates and government employees have to pass through a test conducted by un-named and unknown bureaucrats to be elected/hired; what basis is there to claim that the government so installed reflects a) the will of the people, and b) has the consent of the governed?
Subotai Bahadur
Subotai,
None whatsoever to either a) or b). And it (as I said) is al done on the QT. They don’t even have to tell you what “Fell Deed” you are “guilty” of…
So long as I get to define “fit for office”, I think this is a great idea!
He’s one of those illiberal “weakmen”.
I seem to remember Falklands veteran Simon Weston being blocked from standing for Police and Crime Commissioner following the disclosure that he’d had a run in with the police in his youth. If I remember correctly, it was something to do with him being a passenger in a stolen car.
Since then, he’d joined the army, turned his life around, raised millions for charity, and proven several times over that he is a good egg.
His redemption had been for nothing. The files don’t forget, nor do they forgive.
An enhanced DBS check can contain information about spent and unspent convictions, cautions and “any information held by local police that’s considered relevant to the role”.
If the police record that someone accused you of a crime, and the police think it relevant to an enhanced DBS check, they can divulge it, even if no action was taken against you on the basis of the complaint. It is also clear that NCHIs recorded against your name may get divulged in such checks, as might any case where the police recorded a crime against your name but didn’t tell you or try to charge or prosecute you on grounds of “evidential difficulties” (as happened to Helen Joyce).
If political parties routinely subject their candidates to enhanced DBS checks, it will open the door to people making spurious complaints to the police against people they don’t like, simply to sabotage their electoral prospects. Of course if you stand as an independent and refuse to undergo such checks you’ll be accused of having something to hide.
Can you run a DBS check on yourself? Are you allowed to know what it discloses about you?
An enhanced DBS check may contain “any information held by local police that’s considered relevant to the role” which might have seemed reasonable once upon a time. Given West Midlands Police’s behaviour regarding Maccabi Tel Aviv fans, I’d suggest these things need to be kept as far away from the electoral process as possible. And from any other process, come to that.
bobby b “Can you run a DBS check on yourself? Are you allowed to know what it discloses about you?”
Ha! Where would the fun be in that, Sir?
In fact, you can do the lowest level check to find out your own unspent convictions – in case you have forgotten, I guess.
BTW my family were all competitive athletes and thereafter coaches, trainers and helpers etc – of the most minor kind – and we have had hundreds of DBS checks go through this house. All blank, but the cost has not been insignificant. And just to let kids do a bit of sport growing up.
Now in Pre Totalitarian England…
I am convinced that the ideal political system for much of the Left is the Iranian Islamic Republic:
Where there is a strong vetting to candidates to assure basically they all have the same “religion”. For today England basically Marxists and Islamo-Marxists. So they can fake it is a democracy because it has some kind of vote.
Maybe who UK forbids coming and who allows will be a sign of things to come on who will be allowed to be a candidate.
https://x.com/profnfenton/status/2011486071314403525
Note this not only for England, most of EU bureaucracy thinks the same.
WindyPants – if Simon Weston (a good man) is not allowed to stand for election, then YES the system is a farce.
An evil farce.
luckucky – yes the “liberal” (it is not really liberalism at all) establishment in Britain keep out good people, and let in evil people.
They are obsessed with “racism” (by their definition, Winston Churchill, Charles De Gaulle and just about everyone else, was a “racist”) – and have what is called an “out group preference” – which is a nice way of saying they hate their own people.
They believe that Western prosperity, indeed Western civilization, was based on “slavery”, “empire”, “exploitation and oppression” – and to atone for this, Western peoples (Western nations) must be destroyed.
It seems I was mistaken – the International Community, the international Corporate State, DO intend to remove the Hungarian government by “democratic” means in the April election – although they will launch a “Colour Revolution” if they lose.
The new political party led by Peter Magyar (Hungarians are called Magyars) is promising an income tax of 9% (rather than the present 15%), more money for pensioners (lots more money for pensioners), more health care spending, more education spending, and more everything spending.
The promises (lower taxes and lots and lots more government spending) are utterly absurd – but are, of course, popular with fools.
What would such a government really do?
What it would really do is serve the International Community via its representative the European Union – and, of course, give way on Third World migrants into Hungary – whilst denying that it will do that.
I do not believe that the International Community (the Corporate State) has any special hatred of Hungary – they “just” want to destroy all nations, at least all Western nations.
And the European Union is very much part of the International Community and is committed to this principle of destroying all Western nations.