Douglas Carswell's Blog

The Power of None

What do UK contributions to Eurozone bailouts, the failure to deport Abu Qatada and wind farms each have in common?

They are, explained my constituent, “the sort of things I voted Conservative to stop. Yet they just seem to happen anyway”.

No one voted to allow industrial-size wind turbines to march across the countryside, changing the English landscape forever. Yet officialdom is actively encouraging it.  For all the talk of localism giving people more power, it is often impossible for local people to make more than token objections.  Worse, every householder is now forced to pay for wind farms via hidden surcharges on their energy bills. 

No one seems quite sure when it was decided that we could no longer deport people we do not want to live in our country. But it just sort of happened - and nothing any politician says about it seems to make any difference.

We thought that we had stayed out of Europe’s single currency. Yet under governments of all three parties, we have somehow been slipped the bill to prop it up. When did anyone ask my constituent’s permission to commit her tax pounds in this way? 

Far more toxic than any specific concerns about Euro bailouts, or the way we deal with radical preachers or future energy needs, is my constituent’s sense that she – and people like her – are being ignored. 

Out there in the world beyond SW1, there is a growing feeling of powerlessness.  A perception that things are being decided for us, by officials whose priorities are not ours and who care little for what people think. 

At a time when the digital revolution is giving people ever more control over their lives, the notion that remote public officials should decide things for us is not just dated. It will prove indefensible. 

This feeling of powerlessness is, I sense, about to grow very powerful.

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