It is very difficult to distinguish between ‘deliberate from
incompetent’ when so many of the positions of influence these days seem to have
been deliberately populated by incompetents.
Anyone following the ongoing ‘Brexit Debacle’ either on
political programmes or watching the live debates from the chamber of the House
of Commons and you might easily be left with the impression that our
legislators are not all drawn from the upper echelons of our intellectual
elite.
Let us not forget that many of these current politicians
have never had any kind of job outside politics, unless it was working as a
‘researcher or young journalist.
But
whichever career path they trod to get their seats in the house, our politicians
should have been taught one very important, yet basic lesson; they were elected
by us, to serve us, in the interests of this United Kingdom, not Europe,
neither were they voted in to sit in parliament simply to feather their own
nests!
But of course this situation is not new, some 366 years ago,
when the ‘Rump Parliament’ was divided over the form that the new
representative should take. It was proposed that a redistribution of
constituencies be drafted, but with the proviso that sitting members of the original
‘Long Parliament’ should retain their seats. Oliver Cromwell strongly
criticized the scheme for promoting the self-interest of sitting MPs and
demanded a general election for an entirely new Parliament be held.
After going back on their word to suspend discussion of the
new representative; at least until Cromwell's proposal for an election had been
debated, Cromwell promptly led a company of musketeers to Westminster, and once
having secured the approaches to the House, he addressed the Members, calmly at
first, then with rising anger as he told them that their sitting was
permanently at an end and they must leave!
"It is high time
for me to put an end to your sitting in this place,
which you have dishonoured by your contempt of all virtue, and
defiled by your practice of every vice; ye are a factious crew, and
enemies to all good government; ye are a pack of mercenary wretches,
and would like Esau sell your country for a mess of pottage, and like
Judas betray your God for a few pieces of money.
Is there a single
virtue now remaining amongst you?
Is there one vice you
do not possess?
Ye have no more
religion than my horse; gold is your God;
which of you have not barter'd your conscience for bribes?
Is there a man amongst
you that has the least care for the good of the
Commonwealth?
Ye sordid prostitutes
have you not defil'd this sacred place, and turn'd the
Lord's temple into a den of thieves, by your immoral principles and wicked
practices?
Ye are grown intolerably
odious to the whole nation; you were deputed here
by the people to get grievances redress'd, are yourselves gone!
So! Take away that
shining bauble there, and lock up the doors.
In the name of God,
go!"
Oliver Cromwell MP's
speech on the dissolution of the Rump of the Long
Parliament, given to the House of Commons, 20 April 1653.
Now please do not think I am advocating revolution, but these
days, at council, national and international levels, our curse is the rise of
the modern professional politician who has lived a narrow life among like-minded
political anoraks. Therefore is it any wonder that such people, who only know
about politics, should so often turn out to be inadequate?
If these people had gone into business, rather than
politics, most would be making their living in middle management rather than
attempting to run our great country.
