It is natural to view political debate through the prism of competing parties detailing their various offerings to the public – but this approach has only triggered a centrifugal force where our traditional politicians are all very similar, but for differences in detail .
The result is that on substantive issues – like the National Health Service – all political parties are absolutely in favor of it, but none will offer solutions to its obvious problems of rationing of procedures, low productivity, waste – and, according to international comparisons, suboptimal results in many critical areas, such as cancer treatments.
All parties are afraid to tackle NHS reform, whether at UK level or at devolved level – where many key decisions are made. Instead, the game is played where parties accuse each other of seeking to privatize it (ironically the SNP and Labor may claim to have privatized it more than the Tories).
What is much more worrying is that health care decisions are outsourced – not to the private sector (which is just an arguably more efficient delivery system, but has nothing to do with politics) – but to supranational bodies, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), which are totally irresponsible.
Worse still, the removal of all democratic accountability for what is, after all, a public service, is delivered through an international treaty. It is difficult (and practically impossible) to repudiate such treaties. So when a country such as the UK (or, say, ‘independent’ Scotland or Wales) agrees to a treaty, it does so knowing that it is unlikely to renege on that agreement. .
It is the process by which world government is established, not by democratic adoption in response to popular desire or outcry, but by national politicians and their parliaments establishing technocratic authorities that are beyond reach. democratic.
The WHO is the epitome of this model and it is the vehicle that leads us towards the total loss of democratic choices and the imposition of policies that our own politicians cannot reverse even if they wish.
This is of course the antithesis of ‘taking back control’ because it doesn’t matter whether you believe in the UK or an independent Scotland, whether inside or outside the EU. If a national government concludes a WHO treaty that transfers to Geneva-based technocrats the power to decide what to do in the event of what it – and it alone – decides is a global pandemic, then you can expect lockdowns or to vaccine passports or digital identifiers (under the pretext of health) to be decided without your direct elected officials being able to do anything about it.
Some cynics tend to portray anything written about international health care, or involving vaccines or the murky world of politicians, lobbyists and big pharma as delusional conspiracy theories, and I get that. . Personally, I believe that the inability of most people to hold back their water, or for governments to act competently, is such that outlandish theories are much more likely to be closer to explaining how and why things happen than to create fictions. notions of people conspiring together – especially when involving large numbers of people.
The simple fact is that the transfer of health policy to the WHO is not some convoluted conspiracy theory, but is happening in plain sight. At present, the WHO is in the process of negotiating a ‘pandemic prevention, preparedness and response treaty’ with its members – and, as things stand, our UK Parliament is ill-equipped to undertake the task of overseeing its ratification next year.
Not only is the WHO seeking to arrogate powers over our freedoms to go about our daily lives, to meet socially or to travel without a vaccine – it is also seeking to appropriate powers in areas other than health care. health – such as censorship of scientific debate and ultimately freedom of expression. The WHO intends to suppress opinions contrary to those of its own “experts”, deciding what may or may not be published globally and what may or may not be taken into consideration when proposal of government policies and practices.
Already, WHO policy seeks to guide our governments on policies such as preventing the use of electronic cigarettes to reduce tobacco consumption or banning the advertising of alcoholic products. I wrote about last week.
What defines politicians as different is when they forsake the sure centrism of immediate responses to reported but often self-organised disasters (like inflation) on our 24-hour media cycle and instead seek to find solutions in looking at our problems differently.
The real democratic deficit we suffer from is not whether the British political establishment is right to see itself as a unitary British state – or as a voluntary union of different nations (the latter position which, in my view, is a absolute nonsense). No, the deficit is about where sovereignty really lies, does it reside with the people – as represented by their parliament – or can it be outsourced to other supranational bodies, never to be reclaimed?
We desperately need to find politicians who choose to be held accountable to their constituents rather than quietly and shamelessly churning out cliches and sound bites as they hand over their authority to unelected and unaccountable officials all the time. who are also open to corruption and fanaticism but cannot be held accountable for their actions. This is how democracy dies and the people of any nation risk being disenfranchised.
Brian Monteith is a former member of the Scottish and European Parliaments and director of Global Britain