In my recent post, ‘Milovan Djilas’ Revenge’ we noted the phenomenon of the ‘new class’ that views itself as the reason for government’s existence and sets itself up in opposition to the great mass of people who are not in a position to share its perks and privileges.
And the ‘expenses scandal’ currently wracking the British government is causing many to view the entire ‘politcal class’ as enemy and alien. In ‘Obliterating the Political Class’, Charles Moore of the UK Telegraph speculates that the political class is the problem and that any ‘reform’ passed by the current crop will only serve their interests.
Well, we haven’t yet had to call in the army, but I mention this to illustrate how the wrong reforms, in the wrong hands, could be even worse than what we have got. In order to work out what should happen next in this extraordinary crisis, we need to look at the politics of the situation.
The “political class” which most of us heartily dislike is not an accident. Commentators rightly note that all parties have colluded in the creeping growth of perks and allowances, which goes back, in relation to second homes, to Edward Heath’s Tory government in 1971. But the big money in this game only began under New Labour. It is only since 1997 that property fortunes have been made through taxpayer largesse.
The reason for this is that Labour really does believe in a political class. It thinks that having lots of full-time politicians paid lots by the state is good for them and good for the rest of us. It thinks that if they are paid by the state they will not be corrupt, and that, government being a self-evident good, it is better to have more of it.
Hence the big members’ salaries and expenses which followed devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the establishment of salaried councillors in local government, the power of unelected regional assemblies, the ever-greater numbers of ministers. Hence, too – because, by the same dreadful logic, politicians need more people to assist them – the growth of office space, researchers, advisers and spin doctors. Now that trade unions are weaker, peerages have got harder to sell and constituency support has virtually collapsed, Labour depends for its very existence on enormous amounts of public money.
So it is simply impossible for Gordon Brown to reform any of this properly. He would be destroying the system that gives him power.
Moore notices several characteristics of the modern ‘progressive’ state: the unshakable belief in administration over politics, the notion that government is a self-evident good, the explosion of highly paid helpers of every kind and the desperate lifeline to ‘public’ funding.
In the end, what Moore advocates is not a revolution but a restoration. It’s a conservative’s approach: what ‘progressives’ view as a step forward is really a step backward away from self-government into traditional oppression by the nobility, paid for by the serfs. And it’s time to restore what has been lost.
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