Peter Hitchens Democracy? That just means being ruled by secret cliques

IT IS grimly funny to listen to leaders and supporters of a supposedly ‘Conservative’ party using the word ‘unelected’ as a form of abuse. I know the Chancellor is peeved that he failed in his dismally planned and badly executed attempt to make a lot of poorly paid people worse off. But I think that he and his media toadies speak from the heart when they rage against the House of Lords.

I suspect that David Cameron and George Osborne are thoughtless and fashionable republicans, who can think of no good reason to keep the Queen – though at the moment they dare not admit this. It’s not that they actively want to set up a guillotine in Trafalgar Square. It’s just that they wouldn’t waste any tears if the Crown were abolished. Knowing little and caring little about the past, they see no merit in it.

Real conservatives are in favour of all kinds of unelected power and authority.

As well as the Monarchy, there’s the Church, the judges, not to mention the chiefs of the Armed Forces, parents, privately owned media companies, the BBC, school heads – and the thousands of strivers who have won the freedom to hire and fire through hard work and business success.

Democracy plays little part in these things, and a good thing too. To say that you are an elected politician in modern Britain isn’t much of a boast.

It means mainly that you have been picked by a narrow selection committee of politically active careerists and fixers to stand in a safe seat. Backstairs-crawlers, flatterers and obedient conformists naturally do well in this process.

These days it also means that you have been approved by some secretive group of whisperers clustered round the party leadership, who can also remove you if you show any signs of independence.

And we see the results in the Commons every Wednesday, when the backbenchers of both main parties show all the wit and independence of football hooligans, braying mindless applause for their own leaders, and equally mindless abuse

AT LAST, the clocks of Britain are telling the truth again. Noon is at noon, dusk falls at the proper time and I can see my garden in daylight before I leave for work. Enjoy it while it lasts. The Eurofanatics still want us on Berlin Time all year round.

for the other side. And then they humiliate themselves by asking tame, planted questions handed to them by the whips.

THESE whips have power over them because they, not the voters, are their real employers. They can give them well-paid jobs if they are obedient and get them deselected if they cause too much trouble. That is why the House of Commons was so useless over the taxcredit row, and why the Lords, for all their faults, spoke for the people. Any proper conservative would have known that all along.