The case for true democracy

Tuesday 29 December 2015

The honours system, hereditary peers, peerages, the House of Lords, the Monarchy, and the establishment make our undemocratic Constitutional Monarchy an international joke and a laughing stock. It shames us and is an embarrassment, especially as we point and wag the finger at Europe and other nations around the world, hypocritically preaching democracy. Great Britain is not great (beyond these shores), and will never be so, nor will it be truly democratic and equal (at birth), until all these ‘great’, ‘Christian’ (sorry, just wanted to clarify – something else (nice and divisive) for the ‘troops’ to get behind, eh Dave) institutions are dismantled and consigned to the history books, along with all the bloodied finger nails scrapped off along with them. Our descendants – even Telegraph readers’ descendants (the ones they can’t brainwash) – will look back in hundreds of years’ time and wonder why we put up with such an unfair and unequal system for so long.

For those who venerate, laud and defend these institutions it’s because they are either part of them (therefore have a vested interest in their protection), and part of the small number of people (percentage wise) who benefit from their entrenched power and privilege, and are therefore selfish and greedy, or they are politically, socially, economically and historically myopic and ill-informed. They act and behave as if these pernicious institutions of subjugation are an act of nature and of God – like a mountain – that we should just accept the existence of and get over. But is entrenched, hereditary power and privilege a force of nature and an immoveable mountain, or is it just greedy human beings protecting huge advantages of power, privilege and opportunity over other human beings and then having the temerity to expect the subjugated and grossly disadvantaged to be thankful for it through the creation of a deceptively maintained fairy tale?

An immoveable mountain… a force of nature… an act of God… Really? … Vive la France! We heard the same arguments in support of slavery in the 19th Century. They were wrong then and they are wrong now. This country would have been much more democratic, more equal, and much greater if we had gone the same way as France in 1789. For example, look at the damage hereditary rule has done to the modern world. People think the first world war was caused by the build up of arms and balance of power politics, etc etc, but it was actually caused by European monarchies treating their people like their own personal possessions and play things and Europe their own game of Risk. The first world war then led directly to the second and to the cold war, Nato, the UN, the disintegration of Yugoslavia and the EU. Conservative Eurosceptics couldn’t be more wrong when they point the finger at Europe and the EU for being undemocratic. The vile irony is they should be looking much closer to home, and they would be if their short-sighted, jingoistic prejudices didn’t cloud the limited intelligence and judgement they have. They are wrong politically, socially, economically and historically, and so are monarchists, who often, unsurprisingly, represent the same thing.