Guardian columnist George Monbiot

is...

according to his twitter page, an "Unreconstructed idealist, professional trouble-maker." I always read his on-line articles and they frequently make me think long and hard about what I believe to be true.

In this article he sums up the politics of our current government thus:

To understand its position, you must first understand that the government is not managing the economy for the people of this nation. It is managing it for a tiny transnational elite, a kind of global gated community. To the people inside the gates, who fund the Conservative party, who own our politics, the media and the banks, the rest of us are an inconvenience, to be bribed, threatened or fooled.

The politicians who get to the top in these circumstances don’t just present no threat to the gated community; they actively do its bidding. That is why Blair succeeded where his Labour predecessors failed. Talent, hard work and intelligence all help, but only if they are harnessed to the interests of economic power.

Governments don’t ask themselves “what can we do that is good for the people?” They ask themselves “how do we persuade people that what we want to do is good for them?”