By William Deller

Britain is a democracy, one of the oldest, isn’t that so? Every few years we have a General Election, when an atmosphere of excitement is built up around the idea of electing a Government to run the country. Many speeches are made by contending politicians, newspapers are full of political analysis, debates are held on television, all leading to a climactic polling day when the electorate vote for the party they believe is best able to run the country. The process concludes by the successful parties forming a Government led by a Prime Minister who lives in 10 Downing Street and runs the country with the help of those Ministers he appoints.

Only it’s not quite like that; the Prime Minister doesn’t run the country because most of his actions are constrained by the rules and regulations of the European Union of which Britain is a member! This is like sailing a yacht across the Atlantic according to instructions given in a rule book! The election is a confidence trick played on the electorate.

DOUBLETHINK was originally described by George Orwell in his nightmare world of 1984 and represents the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously and accepting both of them. For most people this process creates mental paralysis, but DOUBLETHINK is exactly the process that operates in the minds of those who support British membership of the European Union. They do their best to maintain the fiction that the British Government rules Britain, while knowing very well that control is in the hands of the European Union. Their vilification of anyone who is clear-sighted enough to disagree has been extraordinarily successful politically, but surely it is a gross failure of leadership to accept the nominal role of governing the country knowing that really someone else is in charge. Membership of the European Union has made DOUBLETHINK an essential element in British politics thereby creating confusion in many policy areas.

Britain’s position is potentially calamitous; it is a small over-populated and under-resourced island in an over-populated and under-resourced world. It has to compete, as never before, with the emerging nations of the world for natural resources. It has to compete, with these same emerging nations, in the market for manufactured goods in which we once had a dominant position. As emerging nations become more prosperous and consume more resources, Britain will face even more challenges to its position in the world which some see as over-privileged. Britain may have to reinvent itself. For the past 30 years, as much of manufacturing industry moved to the emerging nations, Britain has increasingly relied on the finance industry as a source of income. The experience of the last decade has shown this to be delusional. More than ever Britain needs hands-on government to deal with the huge number of diverse challenges, to steer the country through the dangerous waters of the 21st century; Britain needs pragmatism not ideology.

Politicians’ successful use of DOUBLETHINK in relation to the European Union has led to its application in other areas. Because Britain’s natural resources are unable to support its population it has to import a large proportion of essential requirements, and the law of diminishing returns applies to further population growth: any new member of the population consumes more than they add to the gross domestic product. Inevitably, population increase means reduction in the standard of living and/or the quality of life. However, within the European Union there is common citizenship which means that any EU citizen is free to come to Britain to find employment and to make the same claims as a British citizen to the variety of available benefits. Not surprisingly this has resulted in considerable immigration into Britain from the rest of Europe, particularly the areas with lower standard of living, lower social benefits and higher unemployment. As a result, despite the population level in Britain already being unsustainable, it is increasing rapidly. Experience shows the effects of such increase: need for more housing, pressure on the countryside for more house building, requirement for more schools, requirement for more health facilities, increase in living costs, more crowding on trains, more road traffic, not to mention the increase in Government debt. World population increase means that there are many millions of people around the world who would jump at the chance of squeezing into our small island. DOUBLETHINK allows our leaders to observe what is happening, yet ignore it because of their ideological commitment to membership of the European Union.

‘Equality’ is another issue causing much confusion. Humans are incredibly diverse – in age, physical attributes, ambitions, abilities, interests, family structure, and particularly behaviour. Yet the preoccupation of our age is ‘equality’, which is the direct opposite of diversity. This is another example of DOUBLETHINK when we hold the opposites of ‘equality’ and ‘diversity’ in our mind and believe both of them. This example has been accompanied by much legislation and litigation with regard to ‘equality’, ‘human rights’, and ‘discrimination’ to try to define humanity in a legalistic sense. Unfortunately this creates endless disputation and inhibits creative thought about the real nature of humanity and how to deal with diversity.

An extension of the preoccupation with ‘equality’ and an example of where it leads, is the homosexual controversy. On the one hand it is said that homosexuality is equal to heterosexuality, and therefore the institution of marriage should be available for same sex couples. However we know, through the teachings of Darwin and the observation of many wild life programmes on TV (if not through our personal experience), that heterosexuality provides the basis for the propagation of animal life and thus the evolution of mankind to its present level of sophistication; whereas homosexuality is merely a sexual practice which has no significance in the grand scheme of life. This is another example of DOUBLETHINK when we recognise that homosexuality has no historical significance, but also insist that it should be considered as equivalent to heterosexuality. This leads to the conclusion: If homosexuality has no historical significance then neither does heterosexuality! Unfortunately this results in trivialisation of traditional marriage and a lack of support by the Government for the family.

DOUBLETHINK can be seen in the concept of climate change as a consequence of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, which was given impetus by Al Gore’s identification of a correlation between rising global temperature and the increased amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. He claimed this proved that the latter caused the former, although there is a strong argument that the former caused the latter. Of course there is climate change; there always has been as any British citizen knows. However the creation of climate change hysteria diverts attention from the real threat to the planet: population growth.

If climate change is happening and is the consequence of anthropogenic (man-made) global warming, then surely the very first consideration should be the rapid growth in world population; yet those who advance the arguments about anthropogenic (man-made) global warming most strongly, ignore the need to limit growth of world population which they say is the direct cause of global warming! Global population growth is the greatest threat to the planet; it creates conflict, starvation, drought, pollution and disease; it results in over-farming, over-fishing and deforestation; it destroys natural habitat and eradicates species. It is impossible to take seriously a campaign that says we should limit the carbon dioxide emitted into the atmosphere but completely ignores the global population growth which it claims is responsible.

It is tempting to see climate change as nothing more than another scam to promote expenditure of vast amounts of public money on futile measures intended to reduce UK emissions of carbon dioxide – such as wind turbines, biofuels, solar panels, carbon capture and the introduction of carbon trading schemes to enable city traders to gamble on carbon emission permits. The creation of a network of wind turbines, pylons and cables will have a negative impact on the natural world, and degrade the countryside. Closure of coal-fired power stations – which currently provide almost half our energy - will result in the imposition of further energy costs, not only on consumers but also on businesses which will find it increasingly difficult to compete on the world market. It is no surprise that much of the climate change hysteria has emanated from the European Union.

DOUBLETHINK is also associated with the new buzz word ‘growth’. The particular problem of population growth mentioned above is only one aspect of the imperative to growth that operates in society. We are continually told that ‘growth’ will solve all our problems and yet we know that delusions of growth led the world into the financial crisis of 2008. Growth has many positive connotations but in today’s world – overpopulated, overexploited, polluted, limited in natural resources – growth has become the disease for which it pretends to be the cure. Some may see growth as a cure-all for every problem but when stimulated artificially, growth is destructive.

In Britain today there are no wide open spaces waiting to be explored and exploited. Most types of growth have negative repercussions: a new railway or road has a negative effect on peoples homes and the countryside, a new housing estate creates extra demand for all the usual services, increasing population means more traffic on the roads and more potholes, increased birth rate requires more schools and teachers.

Throughout history, natural growth – in living standards, in availability of technology, in availability of health facilities, in the provision of community facilities - has been an accompaniment to life. Ordinary citizens do not generally demand growth. They are content living in settled communities, which rapidly become unsettled when growth is unleashed.

The urge to growth or tumescence is a normal inclination of leaders and politicians; their technique for retaining power is to appeal to humanity’s desire for more. Physical expression can be seen in the Pyramids of Egypt, or present day skyscrapers. A political expression can be seen in the European Union which aims continually to extend its borders, its powers, its population and its expenditure. The unquestioned imperative for growth is very evident in business, where it seems that everyone (in the short term) benefits from growth – bosses, employees, shareholders, even the Government (through higher tax receipts). In the long term the burden of such growth has to be carried by society and is reflected in a deterioration in the quality of life.

Almost every type of growth has a negative impact on society and the environment. The only commodity where growth is now easily available is the money supply! This was exploited as credit by the commercial banks in the period leading up to the credit crunch; now central banks are providing credit through quantitative easing (QE). The availability of money unsupported by real wealth simply results in an asset bubble, such as the one that led to the financial crisis of 2008.

The practice of DOUBLETHINK became a fixture in British politics with British membership of the European Union. It has enabled politicians to vilify any one who questions their policies, and to evade the essential challenges of the present world scene. British leaders have effectively given away the powers that would enable them to face up to the enormous issues of the 21st century. It is time they rediscovered the pragmatism that has, until recently, been the significant characteristic of traditional British leaders.