We’ve always known that Prince Charles has a monumental ego, utterly disproportionate to his actual abilities - but picking a fight with Descartes, Voltaire and Rousseau?
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We live under a government that seems to have a very schizophrenic attitude towards reform.
On the one hand, the government appears to be reforming things all the time. It is continually overhauling the education system or the health system. It talks endlessly about parliamentary reform. In the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal, lots of New Labour ministers and other politicians said the only solution to the scandal was to transform parliament, whether by cutting the number of MPs or by increasing the power of parliamentary watchdogs. And just this week, Gordon Brown unveiled plans to hold a referendum on electoral reform and fundamentally changing the way we vote. You could be forgiven for thinking that there are no sacred cows for the New Labour government, which fearlessly chops things down and talks about changing everything.
Although the reforms offered for debate by Power2010 fall short of the fundamental changes Britain needs, and certainly don’t go far enough to challenge the underlying structure of British politics, they should nonetheless be welcomed by all those interested in furthering the cause of democracy. Most of the ideas that made it through the deliberative assembly would, if implemented, move us towards an improved political system, giving people more power to take further steps toward a genuine democratic settlement as well as checking off some important changes from the reform movements long-standing list of demands.
MPs fiddle while the planet burns. Our rights and freedoms are under attack. Bankers blow billions and the taxpayer foots the bill. Politics is broken and it will take the people to fix it, the “demos” must take the lead in democracy. Power2010’s key premise is unashamedly republican.
In campaigning it’s very useful to decide on a few core messages that you wish to communicate to the public, the media and politicians.
It often puzzles me, what drives people to be sycophantic towards others? Many times during the course of this campaign we come up against blind adoration of the Windsor family from some of the monarchy’s most ardent supporters. These people demonstrate a stubborn refusal to accept anything but the most obsequious and flattering portrayal of these very ordinary people who history has happened to place in a favourable position.
The Iraq Inquiry is important to the monarchy debate for two reasons.
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