But let us take the question seriously, because it deserves to be. What does it actually mean, to be fit to govern?
It is not, I think, what the managerial mind supposes. It is not a glossy CV, nor a safe pair of hands, nor a tidy communications grid. Strip away the cant and ask the question the common Englishman (and our Scots, our Welsh, our Ulstermen will forgive me the shorthand, for the inheritance is theirs every bit as much as ours) has always put, plainly, to anyone who would rule him: what is government actually for?
The answer is older than any party in this room, older than this Union itself, this Union, our great Union. It is this. Defend the realm. Keep the peace. Hold the law level over the head of the richest man and the poorest alike. And then, having done those few hard things well, leave us our liberty and our property, and get out of the way. That is the whole of it. That is the inheritance of the common law, the law that stood here before Parliament and will stand here after it, the law that William Blackstone, Oxford’s own, took down out of the air and set in order so that every man and woman in these islands might know their rights. Measured against that standard, fitness to govern is not a question of experience. It is a question of spine.
And that is precisely where the parties opposite fail, and Reform does not. For fitness, properly understood, is the willingness to say what you want and to mean it, and to bring with you a team ready to put its shoulder to the national wheel and push.
– Gawain Towler giving an absolutely stonking speech.
Yes! That’s the sort of inspiring unapologetic stuff we need more of!
Surely one of the best opening remarks ever:
That is not governance. That is leadership.
Governance is the fiddly stuff like defining standards for screws, making the decisions when the pubs should close, what you have to do to be an official minister of an official church.
You know, the crap that we all hate. Until Apple ships a desktop with a screw that only they make, and is patented so no one else can make it. And it just dropped into the heating vent (y’all do have forced air heating these days, right?)
Anyway, yeah, more leadership. Less governance.
As someone who serves a Reform UK MSP and watches Reform UK performance in the chamber as part of his day job, I must say that the thing which has most shocked the Edinburgh establishment about the Reform MSP’s is how professional, focussed and united they are.
Everybody in the chamber is against them and taunting them continuously with catcalls about how they’re just a bunch of stupid racists, yet they seldom retort or even complain about it.
Their leader, multi-millionaire ex-financier Malcolm Offord (and ex-Tory member of the House of Lords) is clear, focused and business-like, which is a massive contrast to the often brutal and accusatory manner of the other party leaders.
So yes, Reform UK are making them look like a bunch of idiots. They’ve spent more than 20 years slinging insults at each other in the chamber and the Peter Murrell case has turned the volume up to eleven.
If we get the same approach in Westminster, I think Reform UK will do very well indeed, because people are sick and tired of paying politicians significant amounts of money in taxes, personal salaries AND office expenses to behave like errant schoolboys in a sixth form common room.
Presently in both North and West Northamptonshire the Reform Party “controlled” councils (Unitary Authorities) are getting a lot of stick – increasing Council Tax by the maximum, wasting money on new road signs that are just about their name and logo (no useful information), going along with the youth Parliament (“elected” by a few hundred activists) and so on….
The only thing the Reform Party has been able to change is to take down the flags – the Ukrainian Flag, the “Pride” homosexual flag, and so on, that used to be on council offices. Only the flag of the United Kingdom is now flying.
None of the rest of what is happening, in this area or other areas, is their idea – it is all the idea of the officials and “experts” who control the documents that councilors see and create the fake “choices” (“options”) they are given – “Policy” almost never comes from elected people either at local or national level.
Would the Reform Party be different at national level – would it get rid of the officials and “experts”, which would be a revolution in British governance.
I do not know – I just do not know.
But I know that if Andrew “Andy” Burnham wins the by-election next week the establishment will CORRECTLY take the message that nothing needs to change – that they, the establishment, can just carry on destroying the British people – so I wish the Reform Candidate in the by-election well.
I also wish the Conservative Party candidate in Aberdeen South well – if the Scottish “National” Party (which is not nationalist at all) wins, the establishment in Scotland (the left have controlled Scotland since the 1990s) will just carry on destroying Scotland – they will (again – correctly) take the message that the people grumble – but do not really want change.
Is there “ideological hegemony” for the left in Britain – do the British people just want to replace “Starmer” with “Burnham” but want endless leftism to carry on?
We will find out next week.
To achieve anything in national government, the Reform Party (or anyone else) would have to dismiss the officials and “experts” – not one or two, the whole system would have to be SMASHED. This would require repealing Acts of Parliament, some of which date back to the 19th century (to terrible people such as Sir Charles Trevelyan – whose failure in India, and utter disaster in Ireland, where at least a quarter of the population either died or fled the country, led to him being promoted and given the power to design the British system of governance), this would be a Revolution in British governance.
Would the Reform Party do that? Again I do not know – I just do not know.
from Grokipedia:
You might argue that the ‘political’ drift away from these principles have resulted in the mess we see around us. Especially the arbitrary authority.
“Defend the realm. Keep the peace. Hold the law level over the head of the richest man and the poorest alike. And then, having done those few hard things well, leave us our liberty and our property, and get out of the way. That is the whole of it.”
Just how many people work for the government doing all the additional stuff that this statement says that we don’t need? Even if we can agree that all these people are producing nothing useful and in many cases probably hinder other people’s efforts to produce things, that is a lot of people out of a job. The political fallout would be huge I think. It sort of reminds me of a joke about someone asking for directions and the guy saying, if I was going there I wouldn’t start from here.
They have, to be fair, been doing an excellent job of that themselves for the last quarter-century. There’s a reason the average turnout for their elections barely scrapes over 50%.
(Part of it being that less than half of us actually asked for the bloody thing in the first place. Just under 45% of the registered electorate voted “Yes” in 1997. I said at the time that anyone who thought a simple majority vote on a 60% turnout was sufficient for such massive constitutional change was delusional. The absolute fustercluck which would have resulted from the Nats scraping across the line with their referendum in 2014 doesn’t bear thinking about.)
Discovered Joys – that decline (that move away from Classical Liberalism) was well under away as far back as the 1870s – unions allowed to obstruct the entrances to business enterprises (the Disraeli Act of 1875 did not “legalize unions” as the false history books claim – unions had been legal for 50 years, since the Napoleonic War restrictions were removed, the Disraeli Act gave them POWER – made worse by the 1906 Act which made large scale Institutional Unemployment inevitable), local councils were forces to undertake about 40 functions (after 1875) whether local taxpayers wanted the councils to do these things or not, education started to be taken over by the government (Act of 1870) and on and on.
The decline of liberty, the rise of statism, has been going on for about 150 years. And not just in Britain.
For example, liberty in France reached a peak in 1869, and the “Unification” of the Italian and German lands was really a take over by Piedmont and Prussia – it led to higher taxes, conscription (for example in Sicily), religious and language persecution, and-so-on.
Most liberals supported Italian and German “unification” – showing that even in the 1860s liberalism had lost its way, was no longer really looking at making the state smaller, not really about individual liberty.
@Paul Marks
Indeed. Thus proving that people can adapt to increasingly hot water if you do it slowly enough. I’ll state quite firmly that I don’t think it was some masterful conspiracy but rather the slow ratchet of many mini poor decisions all tending towards ‘safety’ or ‘fairness’ at the expense of freedom. That and the very human bias to resist giving up something they have been given more than never having had it at all.
With the current world population and the reliance on technology to hold it together I see no quick way to reverse course. Although I have hopes that the reducing birth rate will eventually give us some elbow room. About 2170 I reckon.
Quite aside from the fact that Mr. Towler is completely correct, that is one of the best damn speeches I’ve read. That is one hell of a facility for language there. I would like to have heard it delivered in person.
Philip Scott Thomas – Mr Towler is clearly not correct as far as the Reform Party in office in local government, where they have not managed to free themselves from the officials and “experts” – although (yes) that is very difficult to do. Whether he is correct about a Reform Party national government none of us know – because it has not happened yet.
For there to be any chance of a Reform Party government with a majority in the House of Commons to get rid of the Civil Service and the “independent agencies” such as the Bank of England and-so-on – the Reform Party candidate must win the Makerfield by-election next Thursday.
Sadly both the Conservative Party candidate and the Restore Party candidate are, in effect, helping Andrew “Andy” Burnham – if he wins the by-election he will be installed as Prime Minister – and the establishment will just carry on destroying Britain (destroying the British people) – as they will CORRECTLY come to the conclusion that the British people do not really want to survive, at least not enough to vote to survive (let alone do anything else).
Discovered Joys – YES “conspiracy” may be the wrong word, but the mess does go back a very long way.
For example, a “classic” text of 19th century liberalism is supposed to be “The English Constitution” (1868) written by Walter Bagehot third editor of the Economist magazine (back then supposed to be a Classical Liberal publication – not the Corporate State rag it is today), but what does this “classic” books say? It says that we “should concede everything that it is safe to concede” to the new voters enfranchised by the 1867 (Disraeli) Act – Mr Bagehot assumed that these voters will want more government spending and regulations (he does not consider the possibility that they might not – or think of trying to convince them about different policies) and says it should be conceded to some extent.
So a gradual decline of liberty, a gradual rise in statism – rather than a sudden collapse into tyranny and bankruptcy – so that people like Mr Bagehot (and their children) can live out their lives in comfort.
Not exactly an inspiring vision – basically “after me the deluge”. And this was in 1868.
And how had the Mr Bagehot made his name?
He made his name defending bank bailouts (he did not invent the idea – there had been many bank bailouts – for example under Prime Minister Russell in the late 1840s, Ireland could die – but the London bankers must be bailed out) – but Bagehot wrote the intellectual justification for this corrupt (utterly corrupt) practice.
So if the rich are going to be bailed out why not the poor?
No wonder Mr Bagehot wants to “concede” to the poor – because he had already conceded to the rich, and so had no moral foundation to say NO to the poor (not that the new voters under the 1867 Act were really poor – but they were poor compared to HIM and his friends).
The Economist magazine, even under its first editor Mr Wilson (Mr Bagehot’s father in law – oh yes nepotism was in play) was pro Credit Bubble banker – and Credit Bubbles always, eventually, burst – so “requiring” bailouts (open or HIDDEN) for bankers and the business enterprises connected with the banks.
And if you are bailing out the rich – how can you say NO to bailing out the poor?
Thus Classical Liberalism destroyed itself – by its support for Credit Bubble banking. By its support for lending out “money” that was NOT Real Savings – cash money, the actual sacrifice of consumption.
By the way – getting rid of the Bank of England (founded in 1694 – yes that far back, although it did not do much for a long time) does not do the job of saving liberty – not if Credit Bubble banking continues to be backed.
“Free Trade in [Credit Bubble] banking – is Free Trade in swindling”.
If a money lender lends out “money” that turns out not-to-exist – then he should be left to go bank-rupt (indeed a good case can be made for sending him to prison for fraud – if he never had the money he claimed to have, indeed claimed to have lent out), and calling that money lender a “bank” should not make any difference (hence the word bankrupt) – “but what about the depositors” well they are not actually “depositing” money (like grain “deposited” in a grain silo) not if they are expecting interest on it (if they are expecting interest they are making a speculative investment – and must take the consequences if that speculation fails) – and (especially) not if the “money” they “deposited” never-existed-in-the-first-place – had, itself, no physical existence (was just an illusion).
Some people really do deposit money (and other things) – they use safe deposit centers (you pay them – they do not pay you interest). Some people used to deposit gold with the government for safe keeping – but the government stole it in 1672 (the “Exchequer Stop”), Americans should not laugh – the government stole their monetary gold in 1933 (apart from for people who managed to hide it – for the American government was far more extreme in its criminality than the British government had been – it, the American government, wanted your monetary gold even if you kept the gold at home), and cheated foreign governments in 1971 (the Swiss government broke the last links with monetary sanity in the 1990s).
Waffle about the “needs of trade” or “the needs of business” (Banking School talk early 19th century) requiring Credit Money expansion – requiring the lending out of “money” that does not exist, is just a cover up of institutional corruption.
And if the rich deserve to be bailed out – so do the poor.
For many years Russia exported real things, such as oil and gas – but many other real things as well, in return for numbers, lights, on computer screens – supposedly this “money” is in Belgium and has been frozen, in reality the money is not anywhere – because it does not exist, and never did exist. The “intelligent” Mr Putin was conned – as so many people are.
Up to 1966 the ruler of Abu Dhabi demanded payment in gold for his oil – he was told that “Dollars” were as good as physical gold because they could (at least by a government – not by ordinary people) be redeemed for physical gold, he did not believe that – and 1971 (the cheating of foreign governments by the American government) showed he was correct not to believe these promises. We deposed this ruler – the system does not like people refusing “payment” that does not exist.
By the way Mr Putin runs his own con-game – the “Ruble” has no real existence, and that is how he funds his war in Ukraine, by inflation (creating “money” from nothing) – indeed he does this more than the Western powers do.
He is an even worse crook than the Western rulers are.
That is exactly the bullshit which Establishment bureaucrats would have you believe