Perhaps we live in such a depressing political system these days because all politicians seem to agree with each other: and in agreeing with each other they all speak the same language, of crap. Mr Arthur’s book brilliantly exposes not just the ludicrous and often meaningless way in which so many of our rulers speak, but also, in doing so, he reveals the confidence trick that is being played upon all of us. What characterizes so much politics these days is the utter absence of principle with which it is conducted. We live, for worse, in the era of the career politician. Soon it will be the exception rather than the rule to have ministers whose life has not taken the following path: PPE at Oxford (or something distressingly similar), then work as a special adviser, spin doctor or researcher, then the backbenches, then office. The question is not just how such people can possibly be acquainted with the realities of the people over whom they rule; it is how, with such an upbringing, they could have ever have hoped to speak a language the rest of us could understand, let alone take seriously.
Mr Arthur has presented us with a user’s manual to politicians. Anyone who reads it will not merely laugh out loud, but will be armed against all future attempts by the political class to lie, obfuscate and prevaricate. To this end some philanthropist should pay for a copy to be sent into every household in the land. However, there is an even more serious point. The continuous theme of this excellent little book is about the evils of the state, and of the importance of keeping politicians out of our lives as far as possible. Time and again their destructiveness, but also their sheer incomprehension and incompetence, are demonstrated: and we are their victims. Nor is this a party political point. They are all at it. Socialists, of course – that is their raison d’être – but also so-called liberals and, of course, in the era of the blessed Dave, so-called Conservatives.
This book holds lessons for us all. It is a further pointer to the fact that we need to get tougher with our politicians, and to abjure them for the way in which they patronise us and insult our intelligence. They have got away with it for too long. We are not a bovine people (or worse, an ovine one) to be herded about obediently by people who are, in fact, our intellectual and moral inferiors. This book opens a new front against these self-aggrandising, destructive and too often maleficent people. May it not be the last.
Simon Heffer – Associate Editor, the Daily Telegraph
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