Political Aristocracy

Pondering on politicians - we have married partners in Cabinet, a battle between two brothers for leadership of Labour... surely there is a bigger gene pool of talent out there to draw on? Is this healthy? Reading (I shall probably give up -it's very dull) Douglas Hurd's 'Memoirs' - his father was also a Tory MP. I was DH's constituent for a while, he was an excellent MP, answering my student letters of protest in longhand, courteous, considered.

Anyway, I recently finished Diane Purkiss's The English Civil War: A People's History and now I muse, after our incredible history, what kind of democracy have we achieved? A very strange one, I think - a good one, but weird and wonderful. Like so many things in British life, if you started with a blank sheet of paper, you would not design this: but haviung got it, we tinker with it at our peril. We all await the promised civil liberties legislation, promnised by the Coalition to restore freedoms eroded under the last government. I'm afraid I'm cynical they will happen - but it would be best they do as the only historically verifieable method by which the British populace have made their elected governments accountable is protest, riot, or war. All very undesirable. So come on, political aristocrats - do your democratic duty.