No 10 and the secretly funded lobby groups intent on undermining democracy | George Monbiot

Thinktanks such as Policy Exchange are working to shift power away from state institutions – into the prime minister’s officeTo accumulate power, a government with authoritarian tendencies must first destroy power. It must reduce rival centres of power – the judiciary, the civil service, academia, broadcasters, local government, civil society – to satellites of its own authority, controlled from the centre, deprived of independent action. But it must do this while claiming to act in the people’s name.So it needs an apparatus of justification: arguments that can be fed through a sympathetic press and manufactured into outrage against its rivals. This is where the intellectual work of such a government is focused. Continue reading…
Via: No 10 and the secretly funded lobby groups intent on undermining democracy | George Monbiot