Writing recently in The Spectator, Matt Ridley explained how his recent retirement from the House of Lords meant he would now be allowed to vote in this week’s UK general election. He said: “I shall scan the ballot paper with interest: who is standing for head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, or chair of the Climate Change Committee? I would like to read their manifestos, since they seem to be the folk whose ‘models’ tell the country what it must do, brooking no dissent.”
He argued: “This growing democratic deficit is not only a slow-motion coup; it’s surely a big cause of our stagnation. More and more people are drawing salaries for interfering in more and more ways in small matters that affect
