The Dictator-spirit

These are extracts from a Guardian article by Jenni Russell:

Tony Blair's administration is removing the safeguards that protect all of us from the whims of a government and the intrusions of a powerful state. It is engaged in a ferocious power-grab.

The government is briskly and fundamentally reshaping the relationship of the individual to the state, of the Lords to the Commons, and of MPs to ministers.

The ID cards bill will allow the authorities unprecedented surveillance of our lives, and the power to curtail our ordinary activities by withdrawing that card.

The legislative and regulatory reform bill, now entering its final stages, will let ministers alter laws by order, rather than having to argue their case in parliament.

Then this weekend brought another shocking government proposal to increase its own power and weaken the restraints upon it. The government intends to drastically curtail the powers of the Lords. In future peers will have to pass any legislation that the government deems important, whether it was in the manifesto or not. They will effectively be neutered.

Two comments (from many) on the article:

Chenrezig:

"Is it just me or do these things have an eery parallel to Bush' America? It seems that he and Bush are up to the same thing as decribed by Jenni: seizing power and undermining real democracy. I would be curious to know what's going on in other European countries, whether there is a similiar movement by the political elites. I don't live in the UK anymore and I'm unfortunately starting to feel that that's a good thing. Boy, what a horrible thing to have to say."

anticant:

"In the 1930s E.M. Forster wrote: 'We are menaced by something much more insidious [than Fascism or Communism] – by what I might call ‘Fabio-Fascism’, by the dictator-spirit working quietly away behind the façade of constitutional forms. Fabio-Fascism is what I am afraid of, for it is the traditional method by which liberty has been attacked in England.' While the Blair brigade is bossy but probably basically benign, the same may not be true of its successor governments in twenty, or even ten, years’ time. As Forster said, 'As soon as people have power they go crooked and sometimes dotty as well, because the possession of power lifts them into a region where normal honesty never pays.'"