This was by far the biggest backbench rebellion in Boris Johnson’s disastrous run as Prime Minister but it will make damn-all difference to anything. Democracy is dead in the United Kingdom. In fact, as in the rest of the world, it actually died long ago.
What we saw in parliament during the pretend debate over the government’s latest draconian Covid measures wasn’t democracy in action but rather the ghost of a charade of a pantomime of a mockery of democracy: empty words and gestures with zero purpose because the result had already been decided long ago.
More lockdowns, more restrictions, more masks, more needless destruction of livelihoods and freedoms had always been part of The Plan, so the government with help from the Labour Opposition benches voted accordingly.
Most of us were brought up to believe by the brainwashing programme that is our education system that our elected representatives in parliament could make a difference. Sometimes, we were given examples of the kind of impassioned oratory produced by FE Smith or Winston Churchill or Nye Bevan or whoever in order to illustrate how all it takes is a few articulate men to change the course of history. But I doubt this was true even then. And it certainly isn’t true now.
Let’s consider, as an example, this perfectly decent offering from the dapper, sideburned, backbench MP the Hon Sir Desmond Swayne, MP. Here is a taste:
Mister Speaker, in a typical winter’s day between 200 and 250 people will die of flu. Do we hide behind our masks? Do we lurk at home working from home? Do we demand people’s bona fides before going to a venue? Do we require people to be vaccinated as a condition of keeping their jobs?
The question as to whether the measures before us today are proportionate actually comes down to a matter of opinion: do you take seriously some of the extraordinary extrapolations that we’ve been given, particularly given the record of before?
The fact that these are things that might take place we have to balance against the known costs and damage to enterprise, economy and society. And in the end it comes down to a matter of opinion, a matter of prejudice, and we are typically capable of organising our lives and making these decisions for ourselves.
We decide what our risk appetite is. Notwithstanding the carnage on our roads, certainly killing more people than Covid at the moment, some of us still decide to drive…
All good points, well made, which neatly sum up the outrageousness and the injustice of the Boris Johnson government’s (and every other government’s, come to that, with the odd exception in places like Brazil) response to the pandemic. But really, Swayne might as well not have bothered. The same can be said for all the other parliamentarians who spoke in this debate. They might just as have stayed at home for all the difference they made.
Lots of us feel understandably disappointed with our MPs’ performance over the last 20 months or so. We’ve watched all our freedoms being whittled away and our money being squandered and our lives ruined and our country destroyed, to no obviously effective purpose, and our MPs have largely surrendered to all this without a fight.
But — not to defend them exactly: I’m quite sure they’re a bunch of craven, useless second-raters — I’m not sure that any of them could have made much difference because parliaments aren’t really sovereign any more. Decisions are taken at a supranational rather than a national level. What we’re experiencing now is something called ‘global governance.’
It’s not quite the kooky idea of a one-world government of the New World Order but something slightly more subtle and probably more dangerous. If it were a recognisable government entity we could fight to overthrow it. But instead, it’s a series of nebulous committees, meeting behind closed doors, friendships between like-minded and powerful people, embedding all manner of rules in the system which we are powerless to change because neither we nor our elected parliamentary representatives ever get a meaningful vote on them.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson, Health Secretary Sajid Javid, erstwhile Vaccines Minister Nadhim Zahawi and so on: they have no real autonomy; they are just stooges of the system, chosen because they are sufficiently weak or corruptible or stupid or blackmailable and won’t put up any resistance when told what to do by their overlords at the World Economic Forum, at the World Health Organisation, at the Trilateral Commission.
You’ll note, for example, that all the above – in common with senior politicians around the world – have been pictured wearing the multicoloured wheel badge representing the United Nations’ sustainability goals. This might sound fluffy and innocuous but the UN, via its sinister and all-encompassing Agenda 2030, is a key driving force.
It helps explain why whichever party you vote for you invariably end up with the same policies. In the UK, for example, Labour Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer is a member of the Trilateral Commission, one of those shadowy supranational organisations pushing toward the same goals — ‘sustainability’ (a cosy codeword for eco-fascism), biosecurity, Central Bank Digital Currencies, etc — currently being chased by Boris Johnson and leaders around the world. Whether you vote Labour or Conservative makes zero difference: you always get the same Uniparty.
That’s why Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour and Boris Johnson’s Conservatives voted for the same draconian policies. Because they’re on the same globalist team; because they don’t give a toss for your freedoms or for parliamentary democracy. Welcome to the New World Order: you own nothing, your votes count for squat and you’ve probably never been unhappier…