Die-Nasty: Keeping it in the family

With the unopposed coronation of yet another Labour leader, family ties in the Brown cabal have never looked stronger. As Wendy Alexander takes her place alongside her brother Douglas in the inner circle, Labour’s upper reaches are starting to look a little incestuous.

Add this latest appointment to a cabinet which already includes the brothers Milliband and husband and wife team Yvette Cooper and Ed Balls, it could be argued that Brown is employing family ties to strengthen the unity of a Cabinet that is already packed with his former advisers and treasury stooges.

This isn’t a surprising move for a centralising control freak such as Brown, but if family relations are to become a lasting factor in the Governments of the future, does this have implications for the democratic process?

America has had its fair share of political dynasties, with the Kennedy’s and Bush’s (and now the Clinton’s) divvying up parts of the country along bloodlines at various points in its history. It is possible that sections of the electorate look to these families as the embodiment of certain values which become more than the sum of the individual candidate, perhaps displaying a tendency towards feudalism that hasn’t yet been completely erased from the human psyche. In a country like America where the President is also head of state, this can become even more pronounced.

This side of the Atlantic the phenomenon is less severe, perhaps because we have the royal family to benignly satisfy a repressed and irrational desire for subordination? Whatever the reason, as respect for the Royals wanes, and Prime Ministerial power becomes more Presidential, we may see a few more “Douglas’s” rising to prominence.

This in itself is not anti-democratic as such, but combined with an increasing reliance on cash to get anywhere near elected, we should keep our sceptics hats on regarding this one.