Charlie and the Consent Factory

I apologise for the doubtless alarming and upsetting reference to Chomsky in the title of this post. As a confirmed anti-idiotarian I spotted it as soon as I thought of the title; I left it in, however, because in this case (ie for once) I think it's actually quite an appropriate notion, although I doubt the great "public intellectual" would agree with me.

Speaking on the Today programme yesterday morning, the Lord Chancellor, Charles, Lord Falconer, opined thus:

Everybody recognises that political parties should be state-funded if we want a healthy democracy.

This is, of course, the same Baron Falconer of Thoroton, PC, who recently rejected calls for an English Parliament to represent the people of England. He would, of course: an English Paliament elected by English voters would be Conservative-controlled and as such is inconceivable. Far better, as under the current system, to take advantage of the corruption of funding whereby Scottish and Welsh constituencies receive significantly more public funds per capita while privately earning rather less. Quite happy with this state of affairs as they are, they are quite prepared to elect and re-elect Lord Falconer's cronies in Scottish constituencies from where they can run English affairs as they like to: with Scottish votes.

Ah, cronies: that's where I came in. Lord Falconer is hardly an exemplar of a healthy democracy. He holds the increasingly questionable distinction of being the very first peer created by Tony Blair, an honour for which, as he cheerfully admits, he qualified by dint of his long and distinguished public service as Tony's flatmate in their Bar days. Following an unremarkable few years in the Lords, unsullied by excellence of any kind, he was made Lord Chancellor, which lest we forget is one of the most senior and important functionaries in the government of the UK, after the previous one objected to Blair's class-war attempt to destroy the office. Not bad for yer basic QC. Clearly Blair, unable for the present to destroy the office, thought he could do worse than with a pal in there.

And so to this pronouncement, this transparent attempt to influence opinion by pretending it's already been formed in his image. What is it about state-funded party politics that he feels would be so healthy for democracy, exactly? Perhaps by his evidently warped standards, as detailed above, it would be ideal, but to people with a more received definition of "democracy" and "health" it could only be disastrous. How long until guidelines were laid down detailing within exactly what ideological boundaries a political party would be eligible for state funding? If that sounds outlandish, try and imagine impeccable progressives like Gordon Brown consenting to state funding of the BNP, or again humourless crusaders like Gordon Brown consenting to state funding of the Monster Raving Loony Party. There are few who would rejoice as heartily as I (a sometime Anti-Nazi Leaguer in my teens) at the prospect of the BNP going broke, but the price in this case would be far too high. What Lord Falconer actually means is, "Pretty soon, what with all this dreadful exposure of our funding scandals, we won't have any cash to run the next election. Just as membership of and donations to the Conservatives are on the increase. Curses!" He wants to nationalise party politics before his party runs out of money. That's healthy democracy. Honest, Noam.