Dumb Jon notices the Tory Party bounding like a graceful gazelle from kamikaze attacks
on the British nation to hara-kiri as it prepares to eat its own nostril
contents on the World Wide Watch.
Can we perhaps
step away from the cultural Marxism - ‘cultural Marzxism?’ - of the
gay-marriage, Really Believe in Global Warming, Hug-a-Hoodie because the stocks
are so uncool maaan Tory Party for a moment? You can’t laugh all day long because
someone might notice and cancel your takeaway delivery order of twenty-six 14” thick crust
pizzas with everything….
You’ve got
to ask yourself just exactly what sort of political i.e. partisan, strategic,
public relations reasoning goes on at the party’s highest levels behind this
internet-age equivalent of undressing upstairs at night with the lights on and
the curtains open.
In what way
do the Powder Blues Who Lose imagine that every aspect (real, imagined,
speculative, alternative reality and visionary) of this needless persecution
will not somehow be plastered across the BBC, the Twitter sphere, the Guardian,
the BBC web pages for UK (and for politics), Facebook, the BBC London pages,
Channel Four and the BBC gardening and weather sites from now to Election Day?
There will
likely be special flowcharts and commentary showing how both Sarah Palin and
the IDF are helping the Toriez inflict their very own Night Of The Long Knives on the shrinking democratic UK Right’s equivalent of a gentle giant on his way
home from the cigar store: all full of pizza and chocolate and light-heartedly
bantering with a Klan cop and surrendering by light-heartedly running towards him
in a friendly and non-threatening manner?
Someone
might devise a specialist search engine:
www.google.dividedtories.org.uk
But a party
that conducts its business in secret and far, far away from its membership and
the electors probably reasons that as MacMillan won’t even publish a hardback
about l’Affaire Bow Group, who’ll
ever know?
David
Cameron, Barack Obama and the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt,
may have been caught out being less than graceful at Nelson Mandela's memorial
service by taking selfies, but at least they got one bit of etiquette right.
They didn't arrive at the service after the deceased. At the funeral of a
friend of mine, I turned round to watch the coffin being brought into the church
only to spot my therapist scuttling in behind it. My psychological wellbeing
has been greatly improved ever since.
Top
xeno-psychologist Roy Hobbs explained today that “To argue that when certain
people do in fact act like total wankers they are at the same time being
totally cool by not parking a 40-vehicle motorcade, a fold-up eco-bike and the
Danish Embassy’s State Skoda in a football stadium when the crowd is already
singing the first verse of ‘Let’s kill some Zulus’ - though that might admittedly
actually upset some people - and then to also
assert that such crassness could also refreshingly take the sting out of global
grief was an act of intellectual flexibility, meme-plaiting, non sequiturs and
treble-standards with which only a Guardian writer would start his analysis.”
You could argue that world leaders have
a duty to be statesmanlike at memorials and that hatchet-faced solemnity is the
order of the day. You might even wonder how much any of them really cared that
Mandela had died. Most of them would probably only have met him a couple of
times at most and in the ordinary run of events you don't go to memorials of
people you've only met twice.
Political gossip
columnist Emma Bradford praised the G-13 celebs as “Extraordinarily sensitive,
given the circumstances. President Obama in particular has risen to the
occasion splendidly. Having never found time to meet the world’s most popular
black man in the scant five years of his globe-trotting Presidency, Big O’s appearance today
at a globally televised funeral says it all, really”.
But world leaders have to do what world
leaders have to do. And if it means jetting halfway across the world, both to
represent your country and to show you are important enough to be invited, then
needs must.
Henry Brubaker at
the Institute of Studies seconded that emotion by
explaining that “It was an act of diplomatic time-management genius for Queen
Gertrude, The Big Number Two and the Big Number One to visit the funeral in
person.
They could simply
have paid tribute by dispatching proxies such as a drone Lego X-Wing Fighter, by
sending an over-flight by the Royal Air Craft, or simply by allowing American Consular staff to be murdered by Soweto businessmen and going back to
bed; blaming their televised murders, rape and dismemberment on critical
reaction to a You Tube trailer for the racist film ‘Pearl Necklace.’
Getting censorious about Obama, Cameron
and Thorning-Schmidt having a laugh is to miss the point. If they had laughed
the whole way through the service, then it would have been a misjudgment. But
they didn't. They were serious when required, which is the way it should be. A
memorial is a sad time, but it's also a time to remember the fun bits of the
dead person's life. Irreverence is not the same as disrespect. I'm not sure
that Mandela would have taken a selfie at Obama's memorial if the positions had
been reversed, but I'm fairly sure he would have seen the funny side of Obama
posing at his.
“Actually,” chuckled
Tom Logan “in life Nelson Mandela was well known for his terrific sense of
humour. You only have to remember his promises upon his historic release from
Batman Prison during Antiques Roadshow of a better life for every South African
when the ANC came to power to realize what a natural genius he had for comic
timing and the delayed punch-line. I’m sure he’d get a giggle out of three
leaders of the Free World acting like students in Wetherspoons at a Freshers’
Weekend Hos ‘n Bros pub crawl sending
their shiny, happy smiles to Facebook.
Like"
A memorial should celebrate and reflect
the life of the deceased. Remember Margaret Thatcher's funeral earlier this
year? Everyone at St Paul's
Cathedral behaved with the utmost solemnity. But was there ever a more joyless,
soulless service? Thatcher left this world into a public emotional void.
Compared with that, Obama's selfie could almost be construed as an act of love.
Nikki Hollis
observed today: “If only the mourners at the Thatcher planting had loosened up
a bit and sung a couple of verses of ‘Don’t
Cry For Me, Argentina,’ let off a few party poppers like the SAS at the Iranian Embassy and passed out trays
of post-Soviet Russian vodka shots it wouldn’t have been such a snooze.
And how
right that Guardian writer is. After all, what does
the very word Obama mean to most everyone if not the world’s latest and widest-used synonym for an
act of love?”
The news that Louise Mensch is to stand
down, causing a by-election in her marginal seat of Corby,
is a shock but not totally unexpected.
BBC quality journalism;
the tax-funded discoverers of the not
totally unexpected shock.
‘Shock’ in
journalese usually means a total surprise, rather than a sudden sensation or
jolt.
Mrs Mensch has announced that she is
finding it increasingly difficult to juggle her family responsibilities with
her political career; something that she has spoken to us about in the past.
Start spreading
the news, I’m leaving today…
She is to move to New York with her three children to join
husband, Metallica…
That would be the
one fine thing. I like Metallica.
…manager, Peter
Mensch.
She said: "I am completely
devastated.
I imagine that a
great number of people in Corby, including its
brand-new Conservative majority, share her pain and are repeating her words verbatim tonight.
It's been unbelievably difficult to manage
family life. We have been trying to find a way forward with the Prime
Minister's office but I just can't spend as much time with my children as I
want to."
Hoo-boy, I can’t
wait to read what James
writes about this one..
She had been allowed to go back to the
constituency on Thursdays and Fridays in a special concession from the PM but
it hadn't proved enough of a help.
I am completely devastated - it's been
unbelievably difficult to manage family life.”The Prime Minister, hinting that
she was in line for promotion,…
..Presumably because
he can spot utter dedication to the Conservative cause when he sees it…
…
said he only accepted her resignation "with enormous regret".
He thanked her, adding: "You're a
truly inspiring Member of Parliament,…
I imagine there’s
just so much inspiration about in Corby right now.
….championing your constituency of Corby with flair and energy over the past two and half
years,
…but now, not so
much….
…while also serving with great
distinction on the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Select
Committee."
When Louise Bagshawe (as she was then)
was first elected, I asked her about her political ambitions.
"I don't want to be a
minister," she told me. "I think David Cameron and George Osborne are
doing a fantastic job of it already."
So she’s an acute
judge of character and political acumen as well as a…
Oh, never mind.
Nevertheless, her profile rose, with
appearances on programmes like Have I Got News for You?
And she embraced social media in a way
that very few MPs had ever done before.
With 100,000 followers on Twitter she's
now launched her own site.
Okay, it’s just
possible that I, and other conservative bloggers, might be suffering from a little
traffic envy here.
But we’re
amateurs, creating the atmosphere and keeping the faith – we didn’t take the
job from someone who might just possibly have stuck around all the way to the
next General election and beyond.
Published work in Catholic newspaper The
Tablet aged 14
Became Young Poet of the Year at 18
Read Anglo-Saxon and Norse at OxfordUniversity
Worked for record company EMI as a press
officer and later moved to a marketing job at Sony
Published first novel Career Girls in
1995
Joined the Conservative party at age of
14
Won Corby
seat in 2010 general election
But it was on the Culture Media and
Sport Committee that she really showed her mettle as part of the investigation
into the phone hacking scandal.
Because sticking
it (however rightly) to the only media company in the world that allows
conservatives to speak their minds largely uninterrupted by anchormen’s sneering
and outraged fellow leftist guests is just about the best mark of integrity you
can make.
Except possibly
staying the course for a whole parliamentary term.
Before entering Parliament she was
already a best selling "chick lit" author.
She was put on the 'A' list of
candidates by David Cameron, which meant she was fast tracked into Parliament.
And it’s a
triumph.
Nevertheless, taking the seat of Corby, which had been held by Labour for 13 years, was no
mean feat. With a majority of only 1,895, this is a
marginal seat.
The Conservatives have already told us
that they won't relish fighting a mid term by-election.
At least our reserves
of British understatement haven't run dry.
It's likely to be held in November, in
tandem with the Police Commissioner elections.
Labour have their candidate, former MP's
son Andy Sawford,…
Nice to see the hereditary
principle triumphing again (see David Dimbelby’s upcoming epic expose of
nepotism in Regency England)
… already in place and are good to go.
The battle for Corby
begins here.
And at least with
this
from Wikipedia it’s easy to see that Cameron, the master of puppets himself, can’t have stumbled upon any red flags before
he parachuted her in:
With parents who were
active in the Party, Mensch had joined the Conservative Party when she was 14.
But because of her religious background and the changing society she became
increasingly critical of the Established Church of England and flirted with anti-monarchy
groups. Consequently in 1996 she switched to the Labour Party, saying that she
believed Tony Blair to be "socially liberal but an economic Tory" and
secretly Catholic. By 1997 she had returned to the Conservatives, helped her
mother, Daphne, win a seat in EastSussexCounty
Council from the Liberal Democratsand campaigned in the 1997, 2001 and 2005
general elections. In 2001, Mensch co-founded the Oxonian Society with Joseph
Pascal and Princess Badiya bint El Hassan of Jordan.
And most of all this
lays to rest forever, along with such outdated ideas as nationalism, equality before the law,
parliamentary sovereignty and the Conservative principle of trust the people, the false idea that
metropolitan elite chick lit authors married to foreign millionaires from the
sober world of rock music lack the bottom to represent and govern the people
with dedication. And in Corby, it’s not as if
they aren’t accustomed to having
their dreams crushed by both main parties.
I can’t help but think that
the gloating from the Left about this will be a little, um, constrained,
however.
In these first happy, warm springtime days of March as we rush to pack away our winter coats and fleeces, our gloves and anti-chapping cream and hurriedly air out shorts and short-sleeved shirts and pull on lightweight summer trousers which seem to have shrunken somewhat around the waist since last year, there’s always the threatening thought at the back of your mind; the sure and certain knowledge that cold, rainy cheerless days will inevitably return again as the world turns and so we’ll have to put everything back again for April, May and June.
It’s nice therefore to know that in the political world as in the English weather the presence of Nemesis follows our owners and leaders despite their famous PR skills and that acute political knowledge that is superior to the Neanderthal base that the Tories have abandoned in favour of the liberals of both Coalition parties. The Greatest Political Leader of All Time allows his dwindling domestic powers as chief executive of the province of Britain to oversee the design of stamps and to scuttle the Royal Navy to be sold cheaper by the hour than a celebrity performance of hit songs of the Eighties at some Saudi Prince’s private party.
‘For £50,000 a year, members of the party’s Leader’s Group were invited to “join David Cameron and other senior figures at dinners, post-PMQ [Prime Minister’s Questions] lunches, drinks receptions and important campaign lunches”.
‘The Leader’s Group is the most exclusive of seven Conservative donor clubs. Founded when Mr Cameron was in Opposition…
‘A £25,000 donation earns membership to the “Treasurer’s Group” which offers the chance to meet lesser members of the Tory Cabinet. For £10,000 supporters can join the Renaissance Forum which offers the chance to circulate with “eminent speakers from the world of business”.’
You have to wonder what happens in the lower Bolgias of this, Mrs. Thatcher’s personal hell?
£20,000 will get you into the Championship where amid champagne and truffles public IT and engineering contractors can pledge their support for the mission and infrastructure design of the UK’s new joint Franco-French defence establishment.
For 20,000 Euros industrial leaders can sip schnapps and a variety of pure meat dishes with the Merkel Korps where in return for favourable nod to EU provisioning apparat they can promise their full support to Chris Patten in his ambition to make the BBC the institution that all rational people want it to remain.
£5,000 buys a place at the Legion des Regions where County and Constituency Tory Party Association chairmen dine at leisure with bankers and EU officials to carve out the next plan to snap up a formerly free European county on the cheap and mortgage its children’s lifetimes and its representative democracy to the greater glory of Liquidity and knighthoods.
A couple tons will get you to a posh do of the First Division Club where one of the Conservative Party’s licenced Eurosceptics will raise a laugh a minute over the back-room shenanigans in the House of Commons during the three line whip enforced against voting for a referendum over continued EU membership.
For 25 pounds sterling you can join the Conservative Party. Here you can: be ignored by the leadership forever more; get to buy your own food and throw it down after work before rushing off to spend endless unrewarding hours knocking on doors up and down the length of Britain in all weathers trying to persuade complete strangers that, contrary to all recent evidence, the Tories are the party of nation-state, the family, defence of the realm, free enterprise and law and order, and don’t you worry your pretty, empty little heads about policy. And the best of British luck to you if you do.
All Conservative Party social affiliates follow a strict dress code: Black tie, no casuals and no hope for voters.
Dumb Jon's A-Z of Cameron: a must read for those considering going with A Leading Brand this Thursday in the democratic spirit of Hobson's Choice and Buggins's Turn.
26 reasons why I'm pamphleteering throughout Castle City in purple and gold instead of my native dark blue this year, and for those petty souls who will insist on details, here's what a patriotic government might just look like.
It’s not despair you understand; nor even the twisted hope that somewhere, someone is assembling a high-velocity leadership challenge for the Tory Party, because I truly do believe in the rule of law.
No. It’s just that sometimes, even when things are bleakest, you just have to speak or write the truth.
This is from Conservative Home which, from the comments you get on the site on those posts where commenting is actually enabled, seems to be the Belgium of the British ‘Right’ – in all senses of the word ‘Belgium.’
Cameron promises to invite other main party leaders into war cabinet if he becomes Prime Minister
COMMENT: "David Cameron's first speech of the election year did not contain much new but was interesting for its emphasis on bipartisanship and the commitment to invite other party leaders into the war cabinet of any Cameron administration:
"I can announce today that if we win this year's election, I will invite leaders of the main opposition parties to attend the war cabinet on a regular basis so they can offer their advice and insights. When a nation is at war, it needs to pull together. I am determined that with a Conservative government, it will."
This will appeal to the great many swing voters who like the idea of parties working together in the national interest."
I can actually see great advantages in this.
It would be a good thing to have all the main parliamentary parties on board; sharing their knowledge and opinions and helping to make policy in the national interest, and thus to command greater crossbench support in both Commons and Lords when hard and controversial measures need to be made for common defence against the totalitarian threats that face us.
The Liberal and Labour Parties served well alongside the Conservative Majority in the Second World War and I would have little fear that if the leaders of those parties were intimately involved in the struggle against our jihadist attackers our county would be well led indeed.
But given that the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats of the Third Millennium are stuffed to the gills with pacifists, veterans of the British movement to promote Soviet hegemony called CND and with people who actively hate western civilisation and who wish to destroy it from within, I feel that David Cameron had better bring those parties into his War Cabinet who have no history of approving or excusing communist, Fenian, or jihadist terrorism or active involvement with nationwide organised subversion intended to break up the Union and hand the parts over to various foreign powers. This would be the UK Independence Party, the Ulster Unionists and most of the BNP’s national membership, and I can foresee some problems with that.
Oh, and if you seek popularity through targetting ‘swing voters,’ how about reintroducing hanging for murderers: particularly of child murderers and cop killers?
Highglights not verbatim of Mr Cameron's speech:
11.42am: (Big announcement): Cameron says that he will establish a National Security Council on day one of a Tory government and will invite the leaders of the other two main parties to sit in the war cabinet on a regular basis when the country is in conflict.
11.39am: You can trust Conservatives to deliver on promises because…
Where would we be without the gift of laughter?
…you can see we have changed ourselves.
And there you have it. Bulls eye. “Vote for us because we aren’t us.” We’re not Maggie Thatcher. Like, ew! We’re a little bit John Major but not at all Winston Churchill who wasn’t kind to all the foreigners. We’re certainly not Benjamin Disraeli who feared the Two Nations of Prosperous and Poor: forever opposed and unconnected, because if we had one iota of Dizzy’s nous, we’d realize that Britain is now Three Nations: the welfare predators; their BigState apparatchiks that herd them and feed on them, and the producers on whom they all graze.
We have opened up candidate selection and have many more women and candidates from ethnic minorities.
We are just the same as politically correct social engineering New Labour but without the proletarian charm of Tony Blair and Jack Straw.
Not only that, candidates are undertaking social action projects in their constituencies.
Civic pride, charities, voluntary work leadership – all good, old, conservative things. I can’t help feeling that social action projects involve rather a lot more national taxpayers’ money and public employees than the real thing. I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.
Throughout the last four years we've worked with other parties - with Labour on education reform…
Which is like working with Sinn Fein on local government reform, except that it’s already been done.
…and the Liberal Democrats on fairness for the Gurkhas.
And in WW2 and the Falklands you’ve found a couple British wars that all but the bicycle-eating, allotment-tending, alpaca-wearing wooden bead Buddhists of the Lib Dems' Far Left can admit were a bit okay.
Well done, Mister Cameron: you’ve discovered the Liberal Democrats’ Sensible Neurone.
We have called for election debates whatever our opinion poll position because they are the right thing for democracy.
We will undertake the most dramatic decentralisation of power in Britain for a generation.
Yes – national power will head straight outwards to Brussels and Strasbourg on the one hand and inwards to the fake charities and quangos that concoct and administer funds for social action projects on the other. I’m thrilled. Really.
11.37am: We will also rebuild society.
Does anything in the experience of the last 65 years of hands-on, top-down, centralized social engineering tell them that it is possible and wise to ‘build’ society? Have these bozos ever heard of Michael Oakshott, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Hayek or Roger Scruton? Hasn’tGeorge ‘Two Brains Osborne’, the intellectual powerhouse behind the New Tory Party discovered that even some top government scientists now believe social engineering is a whole lot more dangerous in the hands of national government than just plain letting people get on with it ever was?
I mean, it’s not like the Right is short of several generations’ worth of brilliant, detailed, and thoroughly peer-reviewed studies (of the sort readable even by top pols) explaining with handy footnotes and pictures just exactly how the whole notion of ‘building society’ sucks like a top-of-the-range-Dyson in a pillow fight?
Comprehensive education. Prison reform. Council housing tower blocks. Town planning. The Probation Service. Income Support. Child-related benefits. Prison reform. The permissive society. Child-centered education. Criminal court sentencing reform. Local government reorganization.‘European’ ‘Legislation.’
Are there any bells ringing in the (you should excuse the expression) minds at Tory HQ? Or are all the active brains outside the back locked in the, um, powerhouse?
We are progressive conservatives who will protect NHS funding.
This actually isn’t controversial at all.
Given that the only religion common to the British is their belief in the NHS despite anything and everything that shows it to be a disease-raddled, incompetent, murderous hell-hole of corruption and excessive costs, Mister Cameron’s merely admitting here that his cabinet will be subject to the law of gravity, if not the ancient laws of the land.
Of course, when the money runs out for everything else and he’s still trying to ‘fully fund’ the Stalinist Beveridge project, the stretcher bearers won’t be carrying him to an NHS hospital.
Through a pupil premium we'll get extra resources to poor children.
Local Education Authorities, in all their treasonous Gramscian power, will still exist and will therefore control teacher recruitment, ‘training,’ indoctrination and employment from top to bottom.
So it won’t work if the only choices for schoolchildren and their parents are A) Left-wing indoctrinated school A; or B) Left-wing indoctrinated school B; or C) Left-wing indoctrinated school C; or D) go ‘private’ by attending direct fee-paying schools (if any) or via the housing market which represents the true mechanism of parental schools choice, or E) help build a theocratic element into education via attendance at ‘faith schools.’.
Or does pupil premium refer to some new source of kebab meat or ocular treatment?
Through welfare reform we'll give people independence and dignity.
Well, they could sack me I suppose, so that would be one welfare ‘crat down and a few hundred thousand to go, but if the Tories don’t stop the fountainhead at it source: the pudendas of tax-supported third, fourth, fifth and more-time mothers, they won’t save substantial sums of money.
We'll strengthen families.
How? By imprisoning ‘wife’ beaters for less than the twentieth offence and by not allowing the accusers to with draw their allegations because they ‘forgive’ the tattooed scum who smack the dozy cows and their kids around? By insisting on ‘Asian’ girls going to mainstream British non-Muslim schools all the way to the age of 16 and by pursuing them with the force of law when they disappear?By tying any (limited) child-related benefits to the mother and by making child support work instead of abolishing the Child Support Agency?
We'll increase Britain's commitment to the poorest people of the world.
If that means the ‘Gazans’ I’d rather the Tory leadership fellated their own loaded shotguns right now, thank you so very much. But you never know; it might be female black Africans, the Indian Untouchables, and some Australian Aborigines that they mean, though I suspect there are other agencies than the UK taxpayer who ought to be helping such folk out.
11.34am: Conservatives have been honest about the need to cut spending but much more than that we need a complete overhaul of the economy. There'll be a cut in the main corporation tax, a new high speed rail network
To be paid for, now doubt, out of the profits made from discovering cheap, clean, renewable and sustainable power sources such as: unicorn droppings; the cornucopia; and Mister Crazy McCrazy’s perpetual motion battery – you know, the one he’s invented and that he tells us about at work to disguise his utter unwillingness to get a paid job rather than live on benefits?
...and 100,000 more apprenticeships as we build a new dynamic and enterprising economy.
11.33am: Britain can't go on with a divided government. The campaign to win the General Election starts today. On Monday we'll publish first chapter of our manifesto.
Entitled ‘What I did on my holidays,’ no doubt.
They are so trivial, peripheral, and ignorant. All this will do is to confirm the New Labour agenda and ‘achievements’ as permanent and desirable.
Even treating these clowns an anti-Labour protest vote will be worse than wasted. God help us all.
Paper Tories from the sky
Spineless men who cringe and lie:
Men who mean not what they say
Hollow men of the Blue Beret.
Pale blue rosettes on their chest,
These are men, the EU’s best.
One hundred men will drink today,
But only three on the chardonnay.
Changed to live in Labour’s land:
Run from combat, hand-to-hand.
Men who chat by night and day'
Double-talk from the Blue Berets
Pale blue ties upon their chest
If these are men, they’re PR’s best.
One hundred men will trough today
All but three eat the canapé.
Back at home a young wife waits
Her Tommy brave has met his fate.
He has died for those oppressed
Leaving her his last request:
Who will help the small platoons
Whose pay was swapped for silver spoons?
There'll be a man we’ll raise one day.
He’ll need more balls than a Blue Beret.
Here are a couple of my favourite optimists, i.e., actual conservatives who don't feel quite ready to reach for the razor blades and bubble bath.
Goodnight Vienna says: "A few years ago I'd have been jumping up and down, applauding a speech like this but we've been tricked and cheated so much that it's hard to trust - in fact I don't think I'll ever trust a politician again: question, question, question. Until I see the small print and the action to match the words I'm going to keep my hat handy."
David Duff is still more upbeat, thinking that there might be an outside chance, with some parts even worth an A: "I had my caveats on certain points, and I wouldn't trust that bunch of scrounging crooks who sat behind him further than I could piss into a gale, but the overall ideology, if you like, the philosophy, that drove the speech was entirely sensible, honourable and proper. Within a few months words will give way to deeds and then shall we see "power being power what our seemers be."
It goes downhill a bit after that.
Sue, being Sue, is brief and forthright, and if England had bullfighters...
Well, I pity the Nu Labour/Blu Labour 'Brit' who finds his way into her sights any time soon. "It doesn't make any difference whether Cameron gave a rousing speech. After all,..."
EU referendum consigns all my fellow-Tories’ promises to a bin somewhere in Brussels, but, hey, this is a victory speech by Britain’s’ brightest and bluest– it’s supposed to be a happy event; not marred by facts or any form of truth. On some Tory luminary talking the talk: “Has this dumb cluck heard of IGCs and treaties? Because nothing can be repatriated without the treaties being rewritten and that cannot be done without a unanimous agreement at an IGC.”
Peter Hitchens puts it all in an historical context: and it’s the culture war that really decides it, in his eyes.
You can say what you like about public debt, or rearmament, or Europe, but in the end the C&UP is never going to deliver conservatism because it’s accepted the Liberal Left’s culture.
“The Tory Party went into administration, where it remains, controlled by the trustees of the establishment and the thought police of the media — who ensured David Cameron's succession.”
Powerless but office-seeking, apostate and apologetic, authority-spurning and long since bought off the auction block by the political class, I wish my old friends and comrades in the Party good luck and happiness of their time in the “Government.”
Maybe their rulers will let them keep something shiny when it’s been decided that they need to be replaced.
Spare me if you will for a moment the accusations of racism that might rightfully derive from this post’s title.
There’s method in my madness and it’s not to rile my non-anti-immigration readers; nor to win undeserved praise from some of my fellow anti-immigration readers.
Read this interesting and truthful article, and look at the Lisbon breakdown graph that the gentleman has provided.
Much of what Mr Deva says is true, and even sounds a bit like Euro-skeptics such as I might make. In the main body of the argument, with a squint and a quick read and a full bladder that makes you finish it fast and move on, you might think that I had penned many of the criticisms, or Trixy, or EU Referendum. (How’s that name-dropping and egotism for you! I’m on holiday, so I’m treating myself.)
I’m just going to take exception to one or two things in the early, descriptive part of his post, just for fun and context, and then I’m going to do what I guess most of my readers will have done when reading the speculative part of his post.
The European Union, first established as the EEC in Jan 1958 comprises of three separate but interdependent institutions.
Unless you think that that old thing in the Treaty of Rome about ‘ever-closer union’ actually means something, but that would be crazy, right?
Remember this history so when we get onto the Tory-bashing it’ll be fresh..
Oh, and:
In legislating for these 500 million people my primary duty is to first determine what is best for my own constituents in the South East of England, what next is best for my party the Conservative Party and third what is best for all the peoples of Europe whose interest are represented by the European Parliament.
This is no more different than a Member of the Indian Parliament from Mumbai going to Delhi every week and representing first his electorate and then the interest of the whole of India or a United States Senator from California going to Washington every week and voting to protect the interest of California and then that of the United States according to his party interest be they Democrat or Republican.
Did you see what he did there? He said that a national of one country legislating for his constituency first and then for all the members of a collective polity of many nations is the same as, say, an Indian legislating for his home constituency first and then the nation of India, or an American legislating for his home state and then for all of the United states of America.
It might do some good explaining to someone involved the difference between regional representatives from all over a single nation (albeit some very diverse nations) legislating for the whole nation, so that Indians only make India’s laws and Americans only making America’s laws, and Englishmen making Ireland’s laws (without bayonets being involved,) or Germans making France’s laws (ditto) or Austrians making Italy’s laws (but with nicer pastries.)
Now for that table.
Wow.
I’d love to know where those percentages come from. I imagine they’re true in some way though as with all things ‘European’ we’re in a number of halls of mirrors as well as smoke-filled back rooms when trying to quantify anything at all; except possibly the number of ‘member states’ involved.
Now it’s time for the boot of sarcasm to meet the buttocks of Cameronian ‘Euro-skepticism.’
So how do we fight back?
Firstly, like all British Conservatives, I am working tirelessly to demand that Prime Minister Brown deliver upon his party’s manifesto commitment to hold a referendum on the European Constitution.
So, trying to persuade Gordon Brown to fulfil a promise is your first line of attack?
What’s number two: build this big horse and then run away from Brussels, but when the Belgians come out to drag it inside, and you what…?
It is a travesty of political and common law justice to deny the British people and (peoples of other nations) a say in how they should be governed.
So restoring legislative sovereignty to the nation-states would be a minimal first step, I’d guess, unless you have a sophisticated new version of ‘pooling sovereignty’ which has always made the same sense as ‘pooling virginity,’ and for similar reasons. Let’s see if restoring legislative sovereignty is on your menu, shall we?
Secondly, the importance of the party’s new European Conservative and Reformists Group in the European Parliament – the body’s first ‘official opposition’ - should not be underestimated.
Oh, I’m sure that we don’t underestimate it, exactly.
As British Conservatives, we are an outward looking, free-market oriented and in favour of greater individual freedom and less regulation.
Anybody out there not either glumly nostalgic now or weeping tears of laughter again?
For the first time, the European Parliament has a group which shares our credo – and a genuine commitment to reform.
In the early days of the group, we should now be asking the following questions:
How do we reform the EU to bring about smaller government and more powerful citizens?
Who knows? Nobody’s ever tried it, though I did read in a libertarian science fiction book once that there’s no political situation anywhere that can’t be improved by the importation of a couple of million Saturday Night Specials.
Of course, I’m not a libertarian and would prefer some solution based around an actual collection of elected and genuine representatives of the people such as, you know; big place built by Pugin, in London – no foreign citizens allowed voting for representatives except for certain Irishmen by long agreement, big fuss about some receipts a few weeks ago.
How should Europe do less… –
Mate, just exactly who in the Commission, the powerless ‘parliament,’ or the Council of Ministers actually wants ‘less’ and is prepared to make sacrifices (such as facing up to critical editorials in Le Monde, the Guardian, or on the BBC) to achieve ‘less?’ When did anyone in the Court ever pass a verdict that enforced ‘less?’
Ever?
…and how should they do it better?
‘Better’ implies well. What does the EU do well that anyone ‘outward looking, free-market oriented and in favour of greater individual freedom and less regulation’ would sincerely want it to do, and which couldn’t be done easily enough by mutual consent and goodwill without the ’help’ of the Commission, parliament, Council, and Court? Customs union? Nothing easier for nations that really wanted to co-operate, I’d have thought.
It’s not like, say, building armed forces and then getting them to agree to enthusiastically and effectively fight a common enemy which would be a good idea if you could do it, but I wonder if you managed that you’d also need a powerful and intrusive continental bureaucracy to enforce more intimate things like weights and measures, plug design, banana curvature…
Recognizing that an average birth rate of 1.5 will leave a deficit of skills talents and a depopulated internal market,
… or who shags whom and with what result.
Though effective border controls that doesn’t allow floods of modernity-hating barbarians to head for European welfare entitlements might help, plus lower taxation that allows working couples to have a decent standard of living and to afford modest but slightly larger families. But if even we can’t manage that in Britain - and we’re an island for crying out loud! – then it’s unlikely (to say the least), that ‘Europe’ will be able to do it.
… how do we deregulate the EU?
Without latter-day Lancasters and Wellingtons, you’ve got me beat.
Any ideas yourself given the permanent institutional and legislative bias for centralization explicit in the Treaty of Rome’s ‘ever closer union; you being the elected and publicly financed professional politician and all?
How do we develop new safeguards for the rights of member states?
Tricky...
Might have something to do with the fundamental nature and internal processes of the European Communities…EEC…EC…EU…
Nope. Nothing springs to mind.
How should subsidiarity be strengthened: by a subsidiarity panel, new treaty provisions on interpretation or a ‘states' rights' clause?
How has ‘subsidiarity’ ever returned delegated powers back to ‘sovereign’ nations without larger powers being internationalized up to the EU by treaty or just plain cheating? Has it ever been done? Is it possible given, blah, blah, blah…
What legislative areas should we repatriate and how?
See above. I mean it. Seriously. Check the history.
How can – and how far should – National Parliaments otherwise be more closely involved in EU decision-making (by pre-Council meeting mandates for ministers, for example) or by sitting as the revising Upper Chamber of the European Parliament to review subsidiarity and intergovernmental pillars or through a permanent "Congress of National Parliaments" to review subsidiarity and pass treaty amendments (except those of "constitutional" nature)?
Putting national parliaments on top of continent-wide European institutions to check that continent-wide European institutions pass internationalized powers back to national parliaments, huh? It’s so simple, it’s brilliant!
Oh.
B) Does this mean we get to play the boy for once, and even so how does it prevent us still being screwed? or
A) Is this on offer?
I mean, seriously; are they just humming in Paris and Berlin and Madrid and Rome to let their 65 year-old parliaments (along with our 745 year-old parliament) climb on top the 55 year-old European institutions and ask them to Stop! Wait a minute! What do you think you’re doing? That’s no way to treat an expensive constitutional instrument.
Is there anyone singing that song who isn’t a British Tory speaking in Britain to other British Tories?
How do we open up the Council of Ministers?
I’d use surgical knives myself but hey, that’s just me.
Should its legislative work be held in public?
That worked so well in Britain these last few years, yeah? We were right on top of that old expenses thing – we hardly let it get anywhere these last 12 years…
Maybe if you did it like the US Congress does it, and also broadcast all the committee proceedings…
Maybe then, and only then, would the BBC inform us it’s all so beautiful and sign off with a humourous piece about the Yoghurt Wars, or Alfonso, the Commission cat…
How should we increase the reporting requirements to national parliaments of ministers before and after they attend the Council of Ministers?
You know, if ministers only governed their own countries according to the traditions, moralities and the shared myths, histories and legal systems of those particular countries, then they’d only have to report to their own parliaments, and you’d get to cut out the middle man, and even the ubermensch…
How do we make enterprise, employment growth and wealth creation central to the EU's instincts and philosophy?
I think we may well be back in Lancasters and Wellingtons territory here.
Look, the continentals vary a lot, from state-worshippers to liberty-lovers, but I doubt that continued membership of the EU or its looming successor is going to achieve anything ofthe sort. Why not let the French do their own thing and farm weekday mornings and drive to Paris in the evening for income top-ups? Let the Germans make cars to go fast on their autobahns only to slow down when they hit everyone else’s wiggly roads anyway, and let the Czechs, poor buggers, be free for once.
A career open to the talents was a French aspiration: let us all dream of such a thing by not telling us how many hours we can work, and for whom, and for how much.
Should we make even greater use of "mutual recognition and cooperation" rather than "harmonisation", in completing the single market?
How about free trade or separate intra-national agreements? Look how well suppressing landfill to meet Dutch and Danish drainage needs is working for UK refuse disposal and see how well continent-wide legislation about work and trade function.
Is there much further scope for self-regulation by sectors on the basis of EU-wide guidelines and codes of conduct?
Try non-regulation of sectors, or the law of the land, buster – they just might work.
This particular land, by the way.
Which European social legislation poses the biggest burden on the labour market and needs to be repealed?
Nobody help him, folks. He’s got to work this one out by himself.
Is further action needed to tackle the continuing problem of anti-competitive price differentials across Europe, as Conservative manifestos have proposed?
Protectionism, tariff-unions, or free trade. Take your pick, and stick to it, why don’t you?
How much co-financing or re-nationalization of the CAP should there be?
This isn’t a trick question. I think he really means it. Oh dear.
How far should the CAP provide financial incentives for environmental protection?
Or anti-virus software? Or better munitions? Or nicer-shaped tomatoes? Or better footballers?
Should the CFP be abolished?
!
If so, what should replace it?
Er...Fishing?
How do we allow two-way flexibility, with opt-outs available to member states in policy areas other than internal market, competition policy and trade?
How indeed? How also do we allow two-tone flip-flops with bake-outs to member states in hay fever areas other than internal junket, quizzes and fade?
Keep it simple, if you can.
These are but some of the challenges facing my political generation. If we do not address them, future generations will not thank us for leaving behind a Europe of turmoil, chaos, failing birth rates, debt, low employment and even conflict - the very thing the founding fathers of the EU set out to eliminate forever …
(Failing birth rates? Really?)
… when they created the current unstable, undemocratic, unrepresentative edifice.
That was simple but somehow I don’t believe he’s got it, do you children?
Someone seems to have taken the clue away, and I don’t think it’s coming back via the Conservative Party any time soon.
