A defence of Priti Patel

Claims that Priti Patel broke the Ministerial Code and the resulting furore have exposed one of the greatest problems facing modern politics. No, not the widespread bullying of civil servants by ministers. But rather a systematic breakdown in the effectiveness of the fundamental ideals of liberal democracies.

We politicians have for years increasingly outsourced political power to various incarnations of an unelected establishment: civil servants, bureaucrats, experts, committees and quangos. In so doing, we are giving away something that is not ours to give, effectively disenfranchising the voters. 

Political power is owned by the electorate and only lent to their representatives for a few years at a time. Yet to an ever greater extent, decisions are not made by politicians and thus the decisions made by voters are not implemented. In many Western countries it hardly seems to matter what people vote for, the agenda stays pretty much the same. In my country of Iceland, the last time we had a change of government the majority of bills presented for the first year of the new government were inherited from the previous one.