The postponement of elections has always been an echo of contemporary catastrophe, as one the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse rides roughshod over the land. War, Pestilence, these were the grim riders that justified such extraordinary measures, halting the democratic process only when the very survival of the nation hung in the balance. But now, in 2025, we witness the emergence of a fifth horseman, one more insidious and mundane: Tyranny, or perhaps better named, Bureaucracy. Cloaked in the guise of administrative reform and devolution, this ethereally dull and shadowy figure has been unleashed by the Labour government, in collusion with Conservative councils, to trample upon the democratic rights of millions.
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Samizdata quote of the day – grasp the profundity of this betrayalDecember 7th, 2025 |
 8 comments to Samizdata quote of the day – grasp the profundity of this betrayalLeave a Reply |
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Just heard of the “devolution” scheme that will get rid of traditional government bodies and replace them with more distant government. Now it seems that they are delaying the elections for the new bodies for two years. I have not found anything to confirm or deny whether the old traditional bodies will be dismantled on schedule, or if they will stay until any putative new elections.
I am not a trusting sort, especially when dealing with politicians, but for some reason I am getting a hint of the early 1790’s in France and and government successions then and there. We shall see.
Subotai Bahadur
If an elected official reaches the end of their proper term and then won’t leave, they must be made to leave.
Otherwise, you are slaves.
In my somewhat jaundiced eyes the whole exercise is aimed at drawing local authority back to the centre and then handing an approved authority back to larger, more easily constrained, units.
Bureaucracy has been on the rise since the mid 19th century – with the creation (by Sir Charles Trevelyan – who had, contrary to the history texts, useless in India – and had also mislaid about a quarter of the population of Ireland in the late 1840s) of the Civil Service.
Already in the early 1900s former Prime Minister Rosebery was warning of the power of the bureaucracy – and in 1929 Chief Justice Hewitt produced his book “The New Despotism” explaining how bureaucracy had gained terrible power.
But the process has indeed advanced still further – elected politicians in the United Kingdom are little more than puppets of officials and “experts” now – and the judges have become part of this bureaucracy (selected by it – and with its attitudes).
Senator Roscoe Conkling was correct – either you have government responsible to the people, or you have a bureaucracy which elected people did not hire and can not fire.
You can NOT have both.
Ironically Gladstone supported the creation of the Civil Service because he thought it would serve liberty, and Disraeli opposed it because he thought it would get in the way of his “Social Reform” (must not have people saying, on the basis of long experience, “this action will make things worse” – which it does).
Both men were exactly wrong in their expectations – so, had they known how things would turn out – Gladstone would have opposed (rather than supported) the creation of professional administrative structures, and Disraeli would have supported it (rather than opposed it), they would have reversed their positions.
As for the postponement of elections – yes it is a vile practice.
The United States did not do so – in the middle of World War II, or even in the Civil War (which killed more Americans than all other wars put together – and out of a population that was a tiny fraction of today).
There is no real excuse for postponing elections.
“But we are reorganizing local government”.
There was no delays to elections in the massive reorganizing of local government in the 1970s.
And these “reorganizations” cause HARM not good – they cost the taxpayers a fortune and produce chaos.
As for calling the creation of vast new authorities, ending local councils, “devolution” – that reverses what the word “devolution” means.
In our area we had the upcoming county council elections in 2021 cancelled and postponed to a five-year term to 2022 to merge everything into a unitary, and then to “settle things in” the next elections were postponed another five years to 2027. Normally we would have had elections in 2021, 2023, 2025, but all thrown in the bin of organisation efficiency.
See also the probably apocryphal words of “Petronius Arbiter:
“We trained hard — but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams we were reorganized. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by reorganizing, and what a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress while actually producing confusion, inefficiency, and demoralization.”
Apparently, he was an optimist.
jgh – and it will not produce “organisation efficiency” – quite the contrary.
The people do not want this reorganization – any more than wanted all the other reorganizations, all of which (over the last 60 years) have increased costs and reduced efficiency. But the politicians do what the officials and “experts” tell them must-be-done. Remember all the documents the politicians see produced or chosen – by these officials and “experts”.
And there is also the oft remarked point – that Labour would have lost all these elections anyway.