When we are told we are more impactful than the Opposition we are not cheered by the compliment, or critical of the Opposition, we are alarmed by the Government's success in reducing Parliament to an irrelevance.
Politically appointed regulators, a dominant and tame state news agency, the use of public money for Party purposes, a civil service neutral only in name, and an irrelevant Parliament is pretty close to a prescription for the end of democracy.
The Law Lord, Devlin, captured the innate conservatism of the judiciary in his description of them as a "body of elderly man who have lived on the whole unadventurous lives… old-fashioned in their ideas." But even they are likely to be further reigned in by this Government.
We have no constitution - reflecting norms accrued over a timeframe of longer than one Parliamentary term - capable of inhibiting the actions of this Government should it come under real political pressure.
We are, I am afraid, set on a path more likely to end in violence than any peaceful transfer of political power.
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