Minnie’s Musings

So, Elon Musk is widely regarded as extremely clever. He certainly knows his stuff when it comes to make a shed load of money. But he is spectacularly ignorant when it comes to government and politics.

Having sacked government employees across America – adding to unemployment statistics in the process – and cancelling programs specifically designed to support citizens to become productive members of society, he is now shoving his extremely sticky beak into our politics.

So, appearing via video link to announce we need a new government, he appears to be advocating insurrection. Apparently we need to over throw the current incumbents and presumably install his current bromance buddy Stephen Yaxley Lennon (or his preferred and deeply condescending moniker Tommy Robinson) in No 10 and all will be well.

Now, we may not be happy with how things are going. There are a myriad of problems which the Labour government is failing to solve with any speed. But they have a huge majority and therefore a mandate to govern. Like it or not, they are here for another four years.

This is parliamentary democracy that was birthed by the Magna Carta (an embryo, yes, but the first salvo in our battle against absolutism) and honed during the Stuart dynasty and the 19th Century reforms.

If we did one thing vaguely beneficial during our imperial era we spread the idea and structures of democracy. This is a good thing. It has its flaws, but the basic principle is that we all vote at least every five years and therefore have our say. Then we go with the majority vote and our chosen representatives go about the business of government.

We don’t throw our toys out of the pram and insist on repeated elections until the noisiest faction gets their way. This is why we are still hobbling down the path of Brexit. It’s what over half of us voted for. Having been persuaded by some disingenuous lying, perhaps. But so be it.

This is what government is for. Making the best of a bad lot.

Elon is a wannabe dictator having already shown himself to be a not so closeted white-supremacist and an ignorant one at that. And Yaxley-Lenon is a demagogue, channeling his inner moustached midget with a spring loaded arm.

100 000 people cheered them in London yesterday but that is still only less than 2% of the population of London and less than 0.2%of the population as a whole, so hardly the proclaimed “silent majority”.