Sir Humphrey from Yes, Prime Minister shares this political wisdom:
This is a British democracy… British democracy recognizes that you need a system to protect the important things of life and keep them out of the hands of the barbarians [i.e. the people]. Things like the opera, radio 3, the countryside, the law, the universities (both of them) and we are that system [the permanent national bureacracy]… we run a civilized, aristocratic government machine tempered by occasional general elections. Since 1832, we have been gradually excluding the voter from government. Now, we’ve got them to a point where the just vote once every five years for which bunch of buffoons will try to interfere with our policies…