WE ARE being led by fools, wrote Professor Matt Goodwin, the author of best seller Values, Voice and Virtue, an investigation into the growing chasm between an unaccountable and sanctimonious self-proclaimed elite and the working people of this country who pay their salaries.
As Goodwin notes, one side sees the world as flat, borderless and culture-free, while the other is deeply attached to the country’s character, borders and history. Strangely, the political power of both sides is inversely proportional to their actual numbers. The minority imposes its views, regulations, and laws on the majority without relenting. At no point does that same minority feel the need to seek the consent of the majority. Quite the opposite: to that grouping, ‘consent’ means simply to secure all it wants while their opponents are forbidden from speaking up. The threat of retribution, as we know, is real: job losses, ‘debanking’ or indeed harassment and arrest, among other things.
Rather than working to solve the problem, our self-appointed elites double down on their bet: that the accumulation of ever more powers will be consequence-free for them. Having conquered the heights of political power, they can do as they wish. To them, we have only one option: to accept meekly what they have in store for us and pay for the privilege of seeing our country dismantled.
Democracy died a while ago. They won and we lost (for the moment).
Parliament, the institution through which the voice of the electorate is supposed to be heard, has been de-fanged. Without checks, they can and do the exact opposite of what we want. But we should no longer pour our ire only on our political class. Most are merely actors in a play, whose lines are written for them by others.
In theory, they have the power and the legitimacy bestowed on them by their electoral victory; in practice, the civil service advances its agenda regardless of what their supposed political masters, and the people, might want. Our politicians might put their signature to documents and hold office, but the power is in the hands of our permanently funded civil servants – the true revolutionaries.
To them we owe the degrading of our armed forces, sacrificed on the altar of diversity; our open borders; our politicised police; our schools as centres of indoctrination instead of learning; and our universities’ prostitution, selling their increasingly worthless degrees to the highest bidders.
Indeed, on this topic, our own top 20 universities were exposed as preferring to nurture slow-witted rich foreigners than poor gifted native children, as was reported by the Times, which showed that ‘while Britons need straight As to get on to prestigious Russell Group degree courses, their international classmates can buy their way in‘.
Consequently, our civil servants must now become the object of intense scrutiny. Their names, reasoning and powers must be broadly known and understood. Conflicts of interest must be thoroughly examined, not by insiders, but by us, the eternal outsiders. They must also become eminently sackable, with privileges that extend no further than the average private sector worker.
We must demand such powers and fight to get them. Otherwise, the descent of our country into further decrepitude is all but guaranteed.
Interestingly, multi-media platforms allow us to see behind the curtain to gauge their calibre. Often, perhaps unsurprisingly, it is risible. As a case in point, on the topic of currency and cash, one of the most important issues facing us as free subjects, a few weeks ago Danny Kruger MP asked James Bowler, the Permanent Secretary of the Treasury, a very simple question regarding the Bank of England and the Treasury’s plans to introduce a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) into our economy.
‘What’s the CBDC for?’ asked the Member of Parliament for Devizes, the beautiful Wiltshire market town. James Bowler’s answer, if one can call it such, was shockingly vacuous.
In this interminably uncomfortable minute, interspersed with ‘um’, ‘you know’ and nervous paper shuffling, he pronounced that ‘this is about being modern’.
That was it.
There was no analysis, no context, no actual knowledge of a topic that could easily turn our already troubled nation into a science fiction dystopia, in which the government controls every aspect of your spending, holds your money in its own accounts and is technologically enabled to penalise you directly should it choose to do so.
Indeed, the Treasury Select Committee report pointed to the real dangers attached to the introduction of CBDCs and sought safeguards and commitments that the government ‘would not have access to users’ personal data’; that the authorities would be prevented ‘from accessing personal data’, and that the government would ‘not program a digital pound’, presumably to manipulate the currency remotely, targeting groups or individuals.
Reassurances from the Bank of England or the government are worth as much as those given to keep immigration under control, inflation at 2 per cent or terrorist organisations from occupying the streets of our capital every Saturday. The digital pound will kill anonymity, give the government the ability to ‘disappear’ your money and block certain users from purchasing items on a whim. The people entrusted with keeping the commitments sought by the Treasury Select Committee will be the likes of James Bowler.
Imagine for a second what such government officials would have done with that power to those who doubted the imposition of mandates during covid, and who have been proved right in hindsight. As it happens, James Bowler CB (Companion of the Most Honourable Order of the Bath) led the Covid Taskforce from October 2020. As his CV states, he was responsible for the management and leadership of the ‘government’s strategy to tackle the pandemic’ – the biggest and most expensive policy failure in the history of our nation.
This senior and presumably talented bureaucrat cannot string a sentence together, explain why a digital currency is needed, or give context to this crucial currency change. He is supposed to be one of our most impressive ‘experts’. If he is, the state of our country is no surprise.
Professor Matt Goodwin opined that we are being led by fools. Perhaps he gives them too much credit. It is much more likely that we are being led by frauds.