Politicians are elected but by no means are they representative

Political leaders are in a state of ­advanced denial about the decay of liberal democracy and their contribution to its decline."

Their refusal to adopt realism in analysing the root causes of rising ­nationalism, popular democracy and counter-revolutionary movements is self-serving. It en­ables the political class to sustain denial in the face of overwhelming evidence that their old world order of supranationalism, centralised power and political correctness has done incalculable harm to the free world.

The politicians’ expenses scandal is yet another example of how removed the political class is from the people. Yet political leaders such as Foreign Minister Julie Bishop continue to promote the myths of the politically correct ­establishment, whose faithful will converge this week for the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Last week, an opinion piece by Bishop was published in US News: “Economic Globalisation and Elites under Siege”. She framed her argument in reference to Samuel Huntington’s 2004 essay on the denationalisation of America’s elite. Bishop revised the essay to include politicians in the elite category and surmised that Huntington’s core thesis was “the inevitability of globalisation was increasingly distancing the elites from the majority”. The solution, according to Bishop, is for “political elites” to “challenge those making false promises of returning people to a lost era of greater simplicity, prosperity and certainty”. Instead, the elites should “better explain why globalising forces … cannot be turned back”.

Bishop’s article illustrates some of the intellectual habits of the political establishment: a tendency ­towards historical revisionism that results in social, economic and political solutions that deepen the democratic deficit. Kudos to Bishop for breaking ranks with the PC supranationalists by quoting the supremely politically incorrect Huntington, but let’s be true to his writing. Huntington divided transnationalism into three descriptive categories: universalist, economic and moralist. He contended that economic transnationalism was rooted in moralism. The moralistic approach “decries patriotism and nationalism as evil forces and ­argues that international law, ­institutions, regimes and norms are morally superior to those of ­individual nations”. Huntington’s solution was not to ­entrench “globalising forces” but rather to ­embrace “nationalism devoted to the preservation and enhancement” of American culture rooted in Anglo-Protestant values.

During the Brexit debate, I categorised the moralistic approach as supranationalism. It is an anti-democratic form of gov­ernance that threatens the ­future of free trade. Yet the WEF continues to champion it. In the Global Risks 2017 report, WEF leaders propose that the five major challenges for 2017 are: reviving economic growth, reforming market capitalism, facing up to the ­importance of identity and community, managing technological change, and strengthening global mechanisms. It associates ­Eur­ope’s popular movements for sovereignty and traditional values with polarisation. In yet another misdiagnosed risk assessment, the WEF lists a range of minority categories associated with neo-Marxism and contends that rapid changes in attitudes towards them have led “older and less-educated” voters to feel left behind. The ­results are “cultural schisms” and a lack of political cohesion.

It is difficult to deduce how the WEF maintains global power with so little demonstrable capacity for evidence-based reasoning and its devotion to neo-Marxist ideology. Almost a decade before Huntington described the dead soul of transnationalist moralism, economist Bernard Connolly wrote an extraordinarily prescient book analysing the neo-Marxist origins of the European Union. Connolly served as a senior economist in the European Commission before ­exposing its dogmatic ideology in The Rotten Heart of Europe. Apart from presenting an extensive economic analysis of the EU, Connolly predicted a coming era when a “self-serving trans­national” collective comprising “political, bureau­cratic, business, financial and media elites” might sacrifice sovereignty to satisfy their own interests, or act as Lenin’s useful idiots for “the soc­ially destructive neo-Marxists”. ­Unfortunately, as the 21st century has shown, the two paths to supranational rule are not mutually exclusive.

The self-serving ethic of the political class is a pronounced threat to democracy rarely recognised by supranationalists. The past week of Australian politics is a case in point. Like many Western countries, Australia is buckling under a record high national debt and deficit. In such a context, one would expect the politicians so fond of telling us to live within our means to live within theirs. But far from modelling austerity, politicians from both major parties have been caught out in yet another ­expenses scandal. Labor frontbenchers have lavished taxpayers’ money on business class seats for family members to join them on junkets across the country. The Australian noted that in the six months to June last year, Opposition leader Bill Shorten claimed $51,531 in family travel - more than three times that claimed by Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. But the Liberals have their own big spenders. Former health minister Sussan Ley lost her post after revelations she spent time looking at rental properties while on business trips in Queensland.

The Prime Minister has resolved to prevent future scandals by establishing a watchdog and making MPs’ expenditure public. There is a cost neutral alternative. Some members of Israel’s conservative Likud party make both their finances and weekly schedules publicly available to promote transparency and accountability.

When Australians are struggling to pay taxes, bearing the cost of green ideology in exorbitant utility bills and trying to pay down debt, the sight of politicians raiding the public purse to fly business class with their families is more than bad optics. It typifies the trashy ostentation of the nouveau riche. The democratic deficit is deepened not by a “less educated” public, as the WEF and PC establishment contend, but by citizens smart enough to see the emperor is naked, obese and unfit to govern. The solution is not to punish the people for their powers of reason but the emperors for their cupidity.

If the WEF wants to maintain free trade, it must relinquish supranational ideology and ­respect democracy. The West will be governed by the consent of the people. The soul of the free world is not for sale.