Monday, August 01, 2011

When elites fall out


Read the last two paragraphs here. Read my Sunday piece and then my Mail piece. More than six months after I complain that public servants have lost their fear, up pops Oliver Letwin to say that they need "discipline and fear". But look what happens when you try to reinstall some fear to the parasite class.

The lack of self-awareness from Letwin & Co is quite staggering. It is the same phenomenon that you see in mass murderers and other psychotics. Theodore Dalrymple would recognise the trait. That much politicians have in common with the dregs of society.

But then, incredibly – unbelievably – you have this and this, a bunch of the "feral elite" complaining that the country is run by a ... er ... "feral elite". This is the view of the likes of Greg Dyke, Caroline Lucas and Lord Smith of Clifton, who think we need a "people's jury" to apply a "public interest first" test more generally to British political and corporate life. Overworked as a cliché or not, you really could not make this one up.

But then, only last night I was writing that, if we don't come up with something, someone else will – and we may not like it. Well, someone else has, and we don't. We do have Referism. That is the only "people's jury" that matters.

The trouble is, you will never get the "feral elite" offer anything that amounts to the transfer of real power. If we want power, we are going to have to take it. The time is not yet, but what we are seeing here is the elites falling out. The time must be near.

COMMENT: "COMMON THREAD"