I have just read a fascinating article by Philip Johnson in the Telegraph. It plots the source of todays attitudes towards politicians and the dire state of our politics.
Some paragraphs particularly caught my eye - here are some extracts:
(Referring to the 1997 Labour landslide) """This brought into office a fundamentally different administration from any seen since the early 20th century. Because Labour had been out of office for so long, none of the senior Cabinet posts was occupied by anyone with experience of governing.
Furthermore, Labour came to power sporting a sneer for the nation's institutions and a swaggering determination to smash them......
........Inexperience linked to a disproportionately large parliamentary majority was a dangerous concoction. Labour then set about undermining another bulwark of the system, the Civil Service. After 18 years of resentment about its treatment at the hands of what it considered to be a predominantly Tory-supporting media, Labour also believed that Whitehall was stuffed full of conservatives, both with a small and large "C", who would resist the "reforms" they wanted to push through that turned out to be nothing of the sort.
This involved the introduction on an industrial scale of management consultants to provide advice once given by civil servants. A baleful consequence of this was the imposition of a target culture that stifled local decision making, removed discretion, cost the earth and suffocated common sense.
This machinery has been presided over by a Chancellor-cum-Prime Minister so convinced of his own rectitude that he considers himself entitled to waste vast sums of our money and then to demand that we thank him for doing so. To listen to Gordon Brown in the Commons last week merrily rattling off the public spending totals for the next few years - "£672bn, £702bn, £717bn, £738bn, £758bn" - as though this rate of increase were either sensible or even possible - was to wonder at man's capacity for self-delusion.
Combined with a predisposition to micro-manage individual behaviour and ride roughshod over ancient liberties, it is hardly surprising that democracy and freedom are once again subjects to be tackled by political writers. It is a debate we have had before and presumed settled; but we reckoned without the damage it was possible to cause in just a dozen years.""""""""""""""
So much of the above rang true to me. I think we can all see the truth behind the way 'cool Britannia' undermined our traditions alongside stifling political correctness and the madness of multiculturalism, matters not touched on by this article but certainly back up his arguments.
The full article is here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/philipjohnston/5538179/The-rot-that-set-in-as-New-Labour-took-root.html