Elites in UK politics - the Public School PPE degree - Passport to the Establishment

Last year, I wrote about the UK Establishment versus Scotland’s independence and also about the insidious infiltration of UK democracy at the highest level by a privileged elite -public school (Oxbridge, Fettes, Roedean etc.) PPE degree holders, often from rich, privileged, and sometimes politically dynastic backgrounds - using their connections and their PPE degrees as a Passport to the Establishment. (Andrew Neil has now caught up with me in his recent documentary Posh and Posher on BBC television.)

The UK Establishment versus Scotland's independence

Elites at the top of the Labour Party - PPE degrees

After various indignant outbursts from PPE degree graduates and undergraduates, I made it clear that I had nothing against the degree itself - indeed, if I had gone to university it would possibly have been my degree of choice, since it offers three subjects that are essential to a functioning democracy, politics, philosophy and economics - but only to its use, especially by well-connected public school graduates as a direct entry, fast track  route to the highest jobs in politics and government, and in the process, without any direct exposure to the real life of the nation, effectively marginalising or excluding from high office people from less privileged backgrounds.

In the process, a narrow, self-sustaining elite that is profoundly undemocratic and unrepresentative of the people is created,with a shared view of life and society that totally fails to understand the needs of the people and is inimical to their interests.

This is not, as will instantly be claimed by those with a vested interest in this insidious perversion of democracy, the politics of envy.

It is a burning resentment of the way in which the democratic processes of the United Kingdom, and therefore Scotland, a nation with deep egalitarian and democratic instincts, have been high-jacked, notably and contemptibly by the upper echelons of the the thing the Labour Party has now become - a party utterly alien to the people it claims to represent and to the aspirations of the Scottish people to control their lives and their futures.

We are currently being misgoverned by an unholy coalition of wealth and privilege, a Tory Party reverting to its atavistic instincts to destroy public services, dismantle the NHS for profit and attack the living standards of ordinary people while protecting the rich, supported by a compliant, principle-free and largely impotent partner, the Liberal Democrats, now effectively a subordinate part of the Tory Party, all liberal and democratic values abandoned.

Labour - having misgoverned the UK for 13 wasted, blasted years, betraying every principle they ever espoused, mismanaging the economy in the lead-up to, and during a global recession, and leading the UK into disastrous foreign wars in support of the most right-wing government the United States has seen in generations - are now trying to induce a mood of collective amnesia about their failure, while criticising the appalling coalition that they effectively put in power.

Don’t let any of these people back into power in Scotland on May 5th.

If the Scottish National Party is returned for a second term after the Holyrood elections, they will have a difficult task ahead of them in the most challenging economic times. But the Scottish people will be governed by their ain folk, not by an alien, rich privileged elite, whether it calls itself ConLib or Labour, nor by their puppet party leaders in Holyrood, the Three UK Stooges.

If the Scottish National Party is not returned for a second term, then Scotland and Scots face a bleak future. That is the stark reality.

Make the right choice on May 5th, Scotland!