Politicians Have Forgotten the First Rule of Politics
Young Peter is not, it turns out, a rival to Old Nick. Read Paul Burke’s magnificent squashing of Mandelson’s political reputation in the Spectator. Prince of Darkness, indeed. “Plodder,” says Burke. Yes, say I, but those people make the world go round, plodding round the mouse wheel.
By Old Nick of course I mean Machiavelli. And Machiavelli has a message for us, and especially to people like Mandelson. Machiavelli used a great phrase: mantenere lo stato. The one great absolutely necessary thing to do in politics is ‘to maintain the state’: that is, avoid ridiculous, expensive Miliband policies, avoid silly Mandelson gizmos and avoid daft Campbell narratives. Instead, simply hold the state together. Well, I think our ruling class forgot to maintain the state.
To read the rest of this article, you need to donate at least £5/month or £50/year to the Daily Sceptic, then create an account on this website. The easiest way to create an account after you’ve made a donation is to click on the ‘Log In’ button on the main menu bar, click ‘Register’ underneath the sign-in box, then create an account, making sure you enter the same email address as the one you used when making a donation. Once you’re logged in, you can then read all our paywalled content, including this article. Being a Donor will also entitle you to comment below the line and access the premium content in the Sceptic, our weekly podcast. A one-off donation of at least £5 will also entitle you to the same benefits for one month. You can donate here.
There are more details about how to create an account, and a number of things you can try if you’re already a donor – and have an account – but cannot access the above perks on our Premium page.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
Satire: sorry, but if the original Spitting Image were around now clowns like Lammy, Reeves, Stsrmer, Hermer, Burgon and Gardiner would have been eviscerated long ago. As for Zac Polanski…
That would be an amusing job for AI if only I knew how to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/@TheCrewkerneGazette
Polanski would be ignored. That is to say his puppet would spout some nonsense and the rest would not even pause in their bickering.
I rather expect that there would be few creatives willing to take on providing the satire nowadays and too few companies willing to run the risk of lawfare.
Soft censorship perhaps? No rules need be imposed.
I think this analysis is mainly right, but the levels of depravity, vanity and corruption is quite apalling. Maybe not so bad as in earlier history e.g. thr Borgias and Machiavelli, etc. but bad for us.
We need to make them more transparent in some way.
At least a free press (and that is utterly vital for a properly functioning democracy) found Mandelson out. Making sure that the press is totally free and never to be owned in part or whole by government or government influence, is key.
Newspaper/press magnates can be as big a threat to democracy as government owned MSM.
“…..Few men are placed in such fortunate circumstances as to be able to gain office, or to keep it for any length of time, without misleading or bamboozling the people. ….”
Perhaps (if this is true) the reason that so many serious, sensible thinking people avoid seeking a career as a politician.
Great essay from James Alexander insightful, stimulating.
I would go as far as to say that serious, sensible people would avoid the world of politics like the plague.
The world of politics mostly attracts people who would be useless for almost all practical tasks, bullshitters, narcissistic personalities, psychopaths.
For this reason, serious, sensible people would not even have the chance to go anywhere near political power: they would never be selected for any role. Just like a cabal of gangsters filters out those with moral scruples.
Which is why government should be small enough that it could be drowned in the bath.
It shouldn’t matter much to the man in the street who is prime minister or president.
Why do serious, sensible people give validation to these bullshitters & psychos by voting for them?
I did once, over 40 years ago. Never again…
Yes, great essay, one of the best things published here. More! More!
Leftism is a cancer that has spread unchecked through our institutions since the start of the 70s. It has even spread to the Tories who have behaved as left of centre for the last 20 years.
Cicero
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.” – Marcus Tullius Cicero
Post 1850s, business created a massive clerical class. People of above average education but below average toughnes,imagination, ingenuity and daring. The need for centralisation in WW1 and WW2, then creation of welfare state nd nationalisation produced a ast number of clerks. People feeble of body, mind and spirit. When Edward III was told his son, The Black Prince was surrounded, fighting for his life he replied ” Let him earn his spurs “.The ruling clss ruled because it led in battle and won. Recently the Arcbishop of York said ” The desire to be spoon fed , to have our problems solved by others to be given short snappy answers has sunk deep into our culture”. A vast bureaucratic middle class want a safe, comfortable and secure life without having to have to be temperd by adversity and their mettle tested, as they know it will be found wanting. Staus without the sweat. If one looks at bread, yeast accounts for 2% of weight yet causes dough to rise. If we look at British history from Newton onwards, barely 100 people( the yeast) give us the Industrial Revolution and The Empire. Since the 1870s; those tough daring innovative people have… Read more »
I live in a tiny Northumberland village whose school has about 35 pupils. The playground must be one of the safest places in the whole world, yet I was rebuked in writing at length for seeing my 6 year old grandson only as far as the school gate and not waiting with him until he was let into his classroom. The school’s ‘concern’, you see, was ‘safeguarding’ … or how best to bring up children in a state of permanent infantile dependency.
Well said.
Thomas Sowell, the American economist, said that the first rule of economics is that there is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it. The first rule of politics is to forget the first rule of economics…
Perhaps one answer is to ensure no one should enter political life until they have done a proper job and had time to be cleansed of what their left leaning, woke educators have instilled in them. I would ban all parliamentary assistants, SPADs and the like from starting in parliament in their early twenties and drifting upwards within the Westminster bubble.
We have had several generations of politicians whose objective has been to destroy the State, not maintain it.
They have almost succeeded.
The Uniparty was and is very opposed to the British state as their bitter opposition to the democratic Brexit vote
JUST JOINING DOTS LIKE ANY CRITICAL THINKER 6 years ago, we were all getting fearmongered over the biggest psyop the world has ever seen, resulting in the wanton destruction of most of the UK domestic and manufacturing economy. That was quickly followed by the heavy handed and frightening introduction of what they all knew, and we were to eventually discover was a totally ineffective injection in every aspect but its potential damage for all those frightened enough to chuck themselves under the bus. The consequence was immense, not least with the covered up EXCESS DEATHS and Fertility/Miscarriage issues, the ‘myocarditis epidemic’ aspect AND the current ‘epidemic of turbo cancers’ together with linked to the vaccine denials and claims of pure ‘coincidence’. The number of MP’s & Peers from both Chambers who actively rebelled against this steam roller, was so small one could count them on two hands…..out of a total of over 1,500 representatives, which must mean over 99% never questioned the rulings…..yet over one third of the uneducated population saw fit to refuse the injection. My question is were all those representatives just sheep, or could the dirty hand of the izrail/Epstein/Mossad/Rothschild BLACKMAIL lobby have been all part of… Read more »