There seems to be a spate of group self-abuse going on with excitement at the prospects of a general election. I do not share this excitement. Indeed I look upon the prospect with dread and depression. I'm a democrat, right? So I should welcome the chance for the people to have their say, right? Wrong.

I'm with Winston when he said:

No!
Originally uploaded by Mig_R

"Look at all the power [Mr Attlee] is enjoying today. No Government in time of peace has ever had such arbitrary power over the lives and actions of the British people, and no Government has ever failed more completely to meet their daily practical needs. Yet the right hon. Gentleman and his colleagues are avid for more power."

Nobody currently vying for Mr Attlee's job today even remotely proposes sufficiently to reduce what Churchill went on to call "this idea of a group of supermen and super-planners, such as we see before us, “playing the angel,” as the French call it, and making the masses of the people do what they think is good for them, without any check or correction, [which] is a violation of democracy."

No!
Originally uploaded by Will...

The stakes are abhorrently high. That you and your coterie of friends and sycophants should have control over the better part of half of the entire nation's income. And with it the power to condone or more frequently condemn the personal choices of millions - more, probably, than lived under the Pax Augusta in Rome's entire empire.

I want a revolution. A revolution of devolution. I want power, the vast majority of it at least, held by people I can go and meet at my local civic centre. If there is anything that needs a joint decision between two or more civic centres let them agree on it mutually, and if, in the very last resort, something that has to be dealt with at a national level, let them send representatives to argue the case on an ad hoc basis if possible but with a minimum of permanent representatives - just enough to give every civic centre a voice - if necessary.

No! Not even you!
Originally uploaded by Ming Campbell

And I want to be able to elect some of them every year so that if they are not doing a good job we can make our views plain on a sort of a "1 year moving average" basis to which they will necessarily have to react by forming and reforming their power sharing agreements to reflect the true will of the electors.

I find it repugnant that anyone believes they are so much greater than any of the rest of us that they believe they can run the country and our lives better than the Almighty gave us the free will to do for ourselves. They should humble themselves to recall again what Churchill said:

"Indeed, it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time; but there is the broad feeling in our country that the people should rule, continuously rule, and that public opinion, expressed by all constitutional means, should shape, guide, and control the actions of Ministers who are their servants and not their masters."

We seem to be at the last roundabout on the road to Serfdom (probably courtesy of some new town super-planner). We must decide to go right round it and head back the way we came.

Coincidentally, overnight I've been pointed to this article by a fellow Georgist, Fred Folvary, on a similar issue on the other side of the pond.