Are the British a Servile People? Idealism and the EU

In this paper it is explained how successive British governments have surrendered UK democracy to layers of international bureaucracy which have acquired completely unaccountable power over our legal, political, economic and social decisions. The largest of these transnational bureaucracies is the United Nations and the most powerful is the European Union, whose aim it is to turn itself into a post-national state.

This process has, Kenneth Minogue argues, deprived UK elected politicians of real power and taken away their opportunity to behave in a genuinely statesmanlike manner, leaving them to become involved in make-believe changes to society, expenses manipulation and general nest-feathering.

Professor Minogue analyses the transnational bureaucracies that add to the burden of regulation and increasingly control so much of our lives. This increased meddling, he argues, is creating a feedback loop where ever more regulations are required in an attempt to undo the damage caused by the initial unnecessary state interference.

At the heart of the matter, Professor Minogue argues, is the curious form of idealism that disdains pride in Britain and British culture, preferring to give allegiance to a far more vaguely defined ideology of internationalism. This rejection of national sovereignty, and the subsequent embracing of unaccountable transnational institutions, as advocated by the political establishment, has led to the British people submitting to more and more authority which comes dressed as virtue.