“only a mentally ill person”

PIER LUIGI BERSANI, IS  a man in a hurry. As leader of the centre -Left group in Italy’s parliament, he was commissioned by caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti to negotiate with other parties to find a functioning administration. But Mr Bersani has come up with a wonderful line to describe his country’s position, he is quoted as saying “only a mentally ill person” would want to run a recession hit Italy.

His comment (black humour aside) shows the masochistic depths a politician is prepared to go to  make his or her mark on history. There is either a Churchill or a Hitler struggling to get out when politicians are willing to seek office in such blighted times. Mr Bersani, one assumes, has met with little success in his mission. But his language is appropriate, not only for Italy and the rest of the euro zone; but also the UK.

Come the next election our very own troika of young, well groomed, professional politicians will court our vote. One will want to remain prime minster, another will try to disabuse him of his ambition in preference to his own. While the third will sit ready at the foot of the table to eat whatever scraps are thrown down, should another hung parliament be inflicted on this poor benighted nation of ours.

What is it that Ed Milliband thinks he can do that is any different to what Cameron is doing? Cameron knows the solution will take generations of unsympathetic sacrifice. Our national debt stands at £1.5 trillion and nothing that the chancellor has come up with so far will reduce it one iota; indeed, our year on year borrowing is set to increase. Yet Milliband thinks he has a solution that does not inflict such levels of sacrifice…it is called Keynesian economics and will result in further borrowing well above what the current chancellor is expected to make in the coming three years: which will prick- up the ears of the credit agencies and the IMF.

Milliband is not a mentally ill person, but such an ambition for himself  is becoming seen as predicated upon such a diagnosis, if he seeks to win the next election. Any politician who wins the next election is doomed to failure. For the simple reason that what needs to done to restore our economy comes nowhere near what any of the main parties are prepared to do.

During really hard times (as we are about to experience in this country) in ancient republican Rome, a dictator would emerge, for a limited period, and be given the task of restoring the republic back to health.

While I do not under any circumstance advocate a dictatorship for the UK, for however brief a period; democracy has its limitations. Limitations we as democrats must live by.

If all our politicians had been truthful to their electorate instead of point-scoring against each other as the Labour Party does today - and the Conservatives did when Labour were in power; then the nation’s interest would be truly represented instead of party interest.

But our party system is unable to transgress party opportunism, so we are left almost stranded as an ever febrile nation whose people are becoming  ever fearful for their futures and left almost panic stricken by their politician’s dishonest rhetoric, which  they hope will convince us all that they have an un-painful answer to the nation’s economic ills.

WE, UNLIKE ITALY, remain convinced as a nation that our three party first past the post system, (with the Lib-Dems courting scraps from the table) is the best way forward. Unless, that is, another party emerges that can undercut the main parties by tuning into the concerns of the British people that the other parties are out of touch with and fearful of igniting.

            

             Enter Ukip. Ukip can rally the British people to its cause because the British people, unlike the politicians of the main parties are afraid to tackle the electorate’s concerns over Europe and immigration. Ukip deserves our support, if for no other reason than by doing so it brings the Tory party back to its senses on immigration and Europe - which would mean, however, a new leader.

            

             The economic peril that faces our nation will not be challenged nearly enough by our three main parties. Their continued governance will only advance our nation’s decline into oblivion. All of the main parties have contributed to our national decline since the advancement of the liberal hegemony which began in 1909 when  Lloyd George set the seeds of the modern welfare state .

            

              Seeds that were limited in their ambition at the time, but have since grown out of control, like some colonising weed laying claim to a flourishing garden. The welfare state has grown like a cancer in the years since Lloyd George introduced the old age pension; set then at 70 when life expectancy was 45.

IF ED MILLIBAND fancies his chances as a prime minister, then he had better disabuse himself of union influence. For such influence will only retard whatever he has in mind for the nation’s recovery, Keynesianism included.  The unions will, has as been their historical purpose, anchor us in the past; and no Labour government has dared challenge them until Tony Blair and David Milliband; the latter of whom has chosen to depart from his Old Labour brother’s strangle hold on the modern Labour party .

            

            The last thing this nation needs is another Labour government. But the second to last thing this nation needs is a so-called ‘conservative’ government under the leadership of David Cameron. For the whole political class represented by the main parties are, as far as our relationship with Europe is concerned, in it together and cannot be trusted. Their rhetoric is just that, mere vacuous utterances aimed at winning support for another term during which they seek to steer us ever nearer to a United Sates of Europe.

            

             Ukip is becoming a serious democratic alternative. Like the free market in economics, there is now in operation a free market in voting. The age old three party system within the UK may now be brought to the brink of survival because of both the euro zone and the immigration crises. We have been coerced as a nation into accepting the EU. All the leaders of all the main parties believe that this nation’s future is as a canton within a United States of Europe. So what is left for a sceptical British people who wishes to cling to their sovereignty – why Ukip, no less.

            

              Ukip stands to endanger the prospects of all the main political parties. They will attract all of those who oppose EU membership, as well as the nation’s immigration flood gate. Ukip will do what the other parties dare not do. Ukip will challenge and stand full square against Europe; for they have no love for the ideal of European Federalism. But, and this is the truth, no party can reduce let alone overcome this country’s £1.5 trillion national debt. It will drag our country down. We would better prepare our people for that which they  are fated to experience, than bullshit them into believing there is an agreeable way out of our  nation’s economic predicament, as the politicians keep telling the electorate.

           

Mr Bersani is indeed right, only a mentally ill person, or one imbued with an ego of megalomaniacal  proportions, like our youthful trio, would ever want to govern over a fast becoming  insolvent nation. Yet they keep coming: they keep wanting the power, and the preening presence on the international stage – this time however, the mess they themselves created is beyond their ability to clear up.