Conservative Commentary
"the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian
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Conservative Commentary "the blogger whose youthful effusions have won him bookmarks all over Whitehall ... horribly compelling" - The Guardian |
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Saturday, November 29, 2003
Quote of the Day
"Often when I am kneeling down in church, I think to myself how much we should thank God, the Holy Ghost, for the gift of capitalism." - Enoch Powell On what for the far-left is 'Buy Nothing Day', I think these words have particular resonance. Go out and get yourself something nice.
I'll be back on Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Friday, November 28, 2003
Celebrity Guest Post #1
Benjamin Zephaniah comments on Government proposals for student top-up fees announced in the Queen's Speech
Way I wuz taught mah 'istory,
Your family empire smashed all a Africa's universities,
Mistah Blairrrr yur gonna pay,
You wanna privatise Woolwoofs and B&Q,
I'll tell ya what to do wid yur top-up feez.
UPDATE: DumbJon responds:
Benjey got filthy rich from his verse Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, November 27, 2003
Murray's Modest Proposal
Jude Wanniski digs out a priceless piece from Murray Rothbard on the logical folly of 'humanitarian' intervention and warfare. Is someone starving somewhere, however remote from our borders? That's a problem for our national interest. Is someone or some group killing some other group anywhere in the world? That's our national interest. Is some government not a "democracy" as defined by our liberal-neocon elites? That challenges our national interest. Is someone committing Hate Thought anywhere on the globe? That has to be solved in our national interest. Read the whole thing. A potent challenge to those 'humanitarians' always eager to see other people's sons die in battle, purely to rescue that month's Mezistanis from peril. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"The Prime Minister may strut his stuff on the world stage, but when it comes to domestic policy, never in recent history has a prime minister been so weak, so feeble, so utterly unable to do what he wants." - Michael Howard Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Justice for some
Jean Freke should count herself lucky she is a woman. The eighty year-old widow awoke in the night to discover two six-foot burglars smashing her door down to steal whatever they could, callously assuming she was too old and vulnerable to mount any defence. The spirited lady, desperate to protect her pension money, rushed downstairs with her late father-in-law's army sword, and the cowardly thugs fled in fear of the octogenarian. Mrs Freke is rightly a heroine to decent people, and even the British police took the now unknown step of speaking in defence of a victim of crime. Detective Inspector Garry Smith said: "The attack on Mrs Freke was despicable and cowardly with a vulnerable widow being targeted in her own home. Quite right, too. But what if she had been an old man? I suspect that very different treatment would have followed, authority's idea of legitimate self-defence at best extending only to vulnerable old women, if them. For whatever reason, his 'disproportionate' behaviour would no doubt be the subject of instant investigation by the police, and he would now be preparing for a court case as we speak. One need not extrapolate this from the ridiculous treatment Tony Martin received after putting one 'persistent offender' permanently out of action. We only need to remember what 77 year-old Bill Clifford endured a couple of years ago. A gentleman who fought in the Second World War for this country, his retirement was plagued by feral young hooligans taking out their aggression on anyone who dared to challenge their tyranny of misery. As they broke his windows and attempted to kick down his front door one day, he flung open his door in fury and scared them off with a replica handgun. You can probably guess what happened next. The police who were so indifferent to the suffering he endured were suddenly right on the scene, and the poor man faced criminal charges for his desperate efforts. On the day of his court appearance, Mr Clifford, who had harmed no one and had never been in trouble with the law before, hanged himself rather than endure the shame of being treated like the criminals against whom he defended himself. It is instructive to imagine how Bill Clifford must have felt in the days and nights before he took his life. The anger everyone else feels about cases like his, certainly. But also how much of his sense of self-worth must have been destroyed as he contemplated his time in the dock. One supposes he thought back to his childhood and his youth, to all the people who had known and respected him, to everyone who had looked up to him for his military service and to all the friends and family who felt able to trust and rely on him. It must have rattled around in his mind how each one would have viewed his present predicament; in particular what his parents would have thought if they had lived to see their son answering criminal charges in court, how his stern grandfather or warm grandmother would have reacted. Imagining how his neighbours might watch from their windows as he made the journey to the court house that morning must itself have been a haunting thought. With his suicide he was at least spared the reality. What an outrage against the most elementary principles of justice such cases are. What a signal they are of the sick liberal cancer at the heart of British society. A few weeks ago, Tony Blair was back at the usual place on Remembrance Sunday, laying the standard wreath at the Cenotaph in honour of Britain's war dead. I'm sure his contorted expression of awe and sadness was a sterling effort. Yes, he can put on a good show of respect for the conservative values that move his people. Certainly Blair knows how to exploit people's patriotism and fairness when it suits his agenda. But Bill Clifford and those like him are the reality of how Blairite Britain treats its war heroes. Don't ever forget it. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, November 26, 2003
Quote of the Day
"However much I might wish to, I cannot be a father to a pebble - I cannot be a brother to a puppy - I cannot make my horse my consul. Just so, I cannot, and should not be able to, marry a man. If I want to be a brother to a puppy, are you abridging my rights by not permitting it? I may say what I please; saying it does not mean that it can be." - Sam Schulman Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Grotesque
Scourge of Islamofascism everywhere Charles Johnson reveals the winner of the British Political Cartoon Society's best cartoon of the year, Dave Brown of the Independent. The winning entry is not in fact from 1930s Germany, no matter how much it might belong there:
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, November 25, 2003
Not one for the memoirs, Tony
Speaking of our Prime Minister, his much trumpeted appearance on The Simpsons seems to be rather less than it was cracked up to be if today's Guardian report on the episode is anything to go by. What starts with Smithers finally persuading Mr Burns to withdraw his own money from an ATM machine rather than borrow it from him soon draws in Grandpa's D-Day love affair with Edwina (played by Jane Leeves from Frasier), JK Rowling and Sir Ian McKellen, both playing themselves. As does Mr Blair. They gave Brett 'Hitman' Hart a better cameo than that. There must be a lesson in all this somewhere about the limits of how far even being probably the second-most powerful man on the planet can take you. UPDATE: It seems (see comments) that the scene is actually considerably longer and funnier than the Guardian claims. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Thoughts on Tony Blair
Waking up last week and feeling like writing, I scanned the press and decided to write a piece on the Prime Minister's domestic agenda. Specifically, I was to say that if he lost the vote on Foundation Hospitals, then there was little point in him going on. But I soon found that Stephen Pollard had already said it all so well in the Independent. New Labour owes its political success to the hope it offered that it would transform public services. Sage words, certainly. But now that we know the margins of 'victory' - seventeen votes - one wonders if they are really an accurate diagnosis. Certainly an outright defeat of the Foundation Hospitals Bill would have had exactly the symbolic significance Mr Pollard describes. But given the feebleness of the bill and the narrowness of the victory, one wonders how meaningful it is that this did not occur. Yes, it could have been worse, but how can things now get better? If this most enfeebled, most marginal effort to reform properly the National Health Service could have been overturned by just nine Labour backbenchers voting the other way, then what use is it as symbolism? The seventeen vote margin, won by yet another pledge to try a fox hunting ban, will not be a permanent majority existing to support Blairite reforms. It was the absolute maximum support New Labour could manage for the absolute minimum of reform. So how can anything more radical ever hope to pass? If Blair could only get a majority of seventeen in favour of the first step on the road to reform, then how does he propose to carry his party with him on the rest of the journey? I just can't see it happening, even if Labour's 400+ MPs were there for a decade, which of course they are not, a fair few soon to be voted out in favour of opposition members as reliably hostile to Labour as any of the party's own awkward squad. I think Oliver Letwin was basically right when he declared last year his suspicions that Tony Blair secretly envied the Tories their radical new policies. Blair probably recognises that Conservative policies on the state sector are the only way Britain's public services will ever perform satisfactorily, but knows of course that his party will do all it can to reject the destruction of the last reason it has for existing: the belief that government and the state can more effectively and more equitably ensure people care and education than those people can themselves. So he is forced into a feebly slow, piecemeal approach to an issue where boldness above all is required. But now with even that piecemeal approach looking like it has reached the limits of what Labour backbenchers will accept, he can do nought but sit back and watch the schools deteriorate and the health service collapse as he waits to feel the full force of public anger. I have said it before and I will say it again. Tony Blair is emphatically not going to go down in history as a great Prime Minister or as a great Labour leader. He has now been in office for the majority of the thirteen years since Margaret Thatcher left Downing Street, and has with his two landslide victories undoubtedly been the dominant figure of the post-Thatcher era. But what has he to show for any of this? What great effect has he had on British society? By this stage of the Thatcher government - late 1985 or so - inflation had been cut, the unions tamed, the miners smashed, cruise missiles planted, privatisation pushed through, rioters clubbed and income tax slashed. Even if one disagrees with these measures, no one contends that Thatcherism had anything but an enormous impact on British society. Blairism, by contrast, has nothing. A few foreign wars, a couple of toy parliaments, Bank of England independence ... and that's it. It's now far too late for anyone to claim Tony Blair as a radical, reformist Prime Minister with a domestic agenda that will revolutionise Britain. Even the most patient must now acknowledge that if he hasn't done these things in seven years, he never will. Assuming Blair's historic legacy to the British people is not total government from Brussels, then I think it is safe now to conclude that five years after leaving office, Blair will have no recognisable legacy of any kind, any more than Harold Wilson did by 1981. There will by then be no Blairites, no swarms on left or right harking back to a golden Blairite age, and no one believing he had some great contribution left to make to Britain had he only been in office a little longer. Yes, he'll have won three wars. Yes, he'll have pushed through the odd constitutional reform. Yes, he'll have taken Labour from opposition to unprecedented electoral triumph. But as hard as it might be to imagine now, in terms of Tony Blair's impact on Britain and the legacy that will exist half a decade after he departs from Downing Street, it will scarcely be different than if he had never been born. Just wait and see. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, November 24, 2003
Thoughts on Michael Howard
Pondering Mr Howard's first couple of weeks as Conservative leader, it struck me that his ascent to the position confirmed one well-told tale about politics, and refuted another. What Michael Howard's leadership confirms is the long history of the Conservatives choosing as their chief someone who, even a short time before, very few would have predicted would be holding the position. The last time anyone fulfilled most expectations in becoming Tory leader must be Anthony Eden in 1955. In recent decades, everyone who has held the position would have seemed a far out possibility just a couple of years before. Who would have guessed in 1973 that unpopular Education Secretary Margaret Thatcher would soon be Conservative Leader, and would take the party into the 1990s? The only person who predicted John Major's ascent in advance was Norman Tebbit in 1987, an endorsement withdrawn not long afterwards. Certainly few in 1988 were predicting the heights the Treasury Chief Secretary soon reached. William Hague in 1995? He was only just getting used to being Welsh Secretary. Iain Duncan Smith in 1999? Iain Duncan Who? And finally Michael Howard in 2001. Howard's promotion even to Shadow Chancellor was seen as a backwards step. No one realistically imagined he would be Leader of the Opposition in a matter of months. But once again expectations were confounded. In the uncertain business that politics is, it seems as firm a rule as one can find that Tory leaders emerge suddenly, and from nowhere. Don't be at all surprised if Michael Howard's successor is someone who currently is barely a household name in his own household. What Howard's ascent refutes is the cynical claim that in modern politics the House of Commons matters not a jot. Discussing the leadership last month at a meeting with John O'Sullivan (former National Review editor and special advisor to Mrs Thatcher) and some other bloggers, it was noted how well Michael Howard had performed in the House. This was swiftly dismissed as not mattering at all. O'Sullivan and I interjected in unison that it mattered very much to MPs. And so it turned out. Michael Howard's position and reputation today are built to an enormous degree on the skill and power of his performances at the despatch box against Gordon Brown. It was this factor above all which turned him from a voice of the past to the man Tory MPs were able to back unanimously as their new leader. The House of Commons may rarely play a major part in the lives of ordinary Britons, but in cases like this - as with Lord Howe's resignation speech - its effects can be extremely decisive. Finally, it is significant that the fury expected from Tory activists denied a say on the leadership has not surfaced, nor even shown any real signs of existing at all. I predicted this the day after IDS was deposed. All indications so far are that Michael Howard will be the only contender, ensuring that MPs can 'crown' him leader that very day. Some say members across the country will be angered to have been denied a say in who should lead next. I do not believe this. My experience of the Conservative Party grassroots is overwhelming one of exasperation at the infighting at the top and the harm done to the Tory cause in every local constituency and borough by constant press reports of infighting. If we can have even a full leadership contest without any of this then I think the members will by a huge majority be relieved. They won't denounce Tory MPs for removing their right to put an 'X' in a box: they will recognise instead a whiff of that determination for unity that ensured the Conservatives were the natural party of government in this country for such a large chunk of recent history. What better testament to this could there be than the wonderful news of 6,000 people who have joined or rejoined the party in the short time since Mr Howard took over? This is a leadership that is succeeding and a Conservative Party that is going places again. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, November 22, 2003
Quote of the Day
"Came home and had Arthur Scargill to lunch. Today Derek Ezra, Chairman of the Coal Board, announced the closure of about fifty pits, with 25,000 miners' jobs going. This is what Arthur has been predicting for some time, having been bitterly attacked as a troublemaker by the right-wing members of the NUM. He was tremendously bouncy and cheerful." - Tony Benn, 11 February 1981 I think these few sentences demolish the view to which some still hold that Arthur Scargill's battle was initially one only about his concern to protect miners, not a political campaign. Twenty-five thousand of his own members were to lose their jobs, and Scargill's reaction that day was to be "tremendously bouncy and cheerful" that he has been proved right. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
You only want stability when the government is getting it right
In my Politics class this week, proportional representation was discussed. I won't bore anyone with the usual litany of arguments for and against, but there was one rather instrumentalist defence of the system proposed without any real opposition (I was put on the pro-PR side) that I think deserves a critique. This case was that PR ensures stability to a country in its economic affairs. Without the great electoral swings you often see under plurality systems of voting, it is easier to think into the future and know there will be a large element of continuity. There will not be very different policies even a decade or two from now, and one can plan ahead on that basis. Well, it is certainly true that PR forces the sort of consensus that ensures economic policies - like others - really stick, changing only slowly and rarely. But this is only a good thing when those policies are themselves beneficial. It's all very well praising a country that has a basically sensible approach to policy for the way in which its political system works to preserve that approach even after quite considerable shifts of public opinion reveal themselves at election time. But what if the policies themselves are wrong and the relative immunity of coalition governments to elections and parliamentary swings ensures that the damaging approach the government is pushing forward is not reversed? Stability when things are going well is a very fine thing. But the other side of that coin is stability when policies mean a stagnating economy that is harming most people. In those circumstances, the last thing a country needs is an electoral system that puts huge obstacles in the way of voters kicking the existing government out of power in the way that they were able to do here in 1979 and 1997. The great difficulty in all proportional voting systems for those without a natural inclination to put their trust in politicians is the way they produce coalition governments that, once solidified, become very difficult to remove. PR virtually inoculates leading politicians against the decisions of the voters. This may seem a good thing when the economy is growing, unemployment is low and there is no great desire to rock the boat. But it is a disaster when things are going badly wrong to have a voting system that makes a straightforward change of government very difficult and a complete reversal of policy near impossible. I would gladly trade a little stability when things are good for the ability to make decisive and necessary changes when things are bad. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Chief Gnome on the polls
The always interesting Anthony Wells examines recent opinion polls and judges what they mean for each of the UK's parliamentary parties. The Conservatives have reason to be optimistic, the Labour Party should count its lucky stars things aren't worse for them, and the Lib Dems are back at the bottom, he reports. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, November 20, 2003
Erroneous?
"At every opportunity opponents of Bush are labelled, explicitly or implicitly, as unthinking bigots. What is striking is just how erroneous a claim it is to caricature opponents of the Bush way in this manner." - Peter Kilfoyle
Thanks to Harry and Samizdata. UPDATE: Reporter David Frum, who attended the march, details just how low these cretins sunk: The organizers of the protest installed a mobile jumbotron at the front of the square. On it, images of the speakers were interspersed with herky-jerky art-school style film clips. Just before the toppling of the effigy - and in order to work up the crowd into a more frenzied mood of rage and hate - the jumbotron broadcast images of George Bush, stepping out of his limousine into Buckingham Palace and standing at attention at the welcome ceremony. Now here's the interesting thing: Whenever Bush appeared, there appeared superimposed upon him crosshairs - like those of a sniper's rifle. I wonder what the organizers meant by that? Eugh. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Tuesday, November 18, 2003
Not a lurch, but a step to the right - and a good thing too
Samizdatista David Carr analyses what new Shadow Home Secretary David Davis' statement of personal support for the death penalty for serial killers indicates. This is quite revolutionary really. For the last decade at least, the Conservatives have been on the run. Having lost every scrap of moral legitimacy to their opponents on the left (even before they were booted out of office in 1997) British Tories lost whatever ability they had to influence the national discourse. In fact, so beleaguered and timid did they become, that no senior Tory could stick his or her head over the parapet of national life without getting promptly chased back into their hidey-holes by a contemptuous and excoriating press. Interestingly enough, the Guardian itself agrees. How else to explain the three following remarkable events of recent days? In the first, Rupert Murdoch announces that he - or "we" as he prefers to put it - might be about to tell his editors to back the Tories rather than Labour. Two days later, David Davis, less than a week into his new job as shadow home secretary, told the Sunday Telegraph that he favoured the death penalty for serial murderers. Then yesterday, only hours before Blair was to address them, the Confederation of British Industry published a survey showing that three-quarters of its top companies believe that the government is less business-friendly than five years ago. Where the two differ is in their view of whether the Conservatives believing fervently and fearlessly in conservatism is a route to or from electoral success. On this issue, I rather incline towards the Samizdata view. Endless comparisons are made between the modern Conservatives and the Labour Party of the 1980s, based mainly or wholly on the huge majorities of the governments they opposed. In the usual media thinking, a "lurch to the right" is seen as being exactly as fatal as a "lurch to the left". According to this view, the political spectrum is exactly symmetrical: most voters are located at the centre and any move away from this ground in either direction is damaging. So the Tories are now simply mirroring what Labour did two decades ago. I think the reality of politics is nothing like as simple. While it is certainly true that moving to the left can scarcely if ever make a party more popular, as capital punishment in particular demonstrates, moving to the right certainly can. On immigration and asylum, on taxation, on crime and punishment, on the EU - on a range of issues - the British public is generally to the right of the political class. By taking a more conservative stance on any of these issues, a centrist party usually gains in popularity. As Rupert Darwall has said, the political spectrum is not symmetrical. Socialism doesn't work; free markets do. Liberalism on criminality fails; toughness works. Going against the grain of human responsibilities and nature's incentives ensures mayhem; going with the grain means order. Ordinary voters are possessive of a lot more common sense than conservatives are often prone to give them credit, and they can see many of these things. That is why just about every time power has changed hands in the last four decades, Labour has entered government by moving to the right, and the Tories have entered government by moving to the ... right. The ambitious, pre-Thatcherite, Selsdon Park promises of the Conservative opposition in the 1960s stood in sharp, enticing contrast to the drab tax-and-tax-and-tax-and-tax-and-spend strategy of the Wilson government, and 1970 was in fact the only time a post-war government with a decisive majority has given way in one election to another government with a decisive majority. We didn't stick to Selsdon, of course, and soon paid the price. But we learned the lesson of 1974 in choosing the following year a new leader with the guts to see a job to its end. The last time the Conservatives were in opposition should be a key reference model for how we should approach the same task today, yet it is scarcely mentioned. What Margaret Thatcher did was employ exactly the confident approach outlined in the above quotes. She took on socialist assumptions, challenged the left-liberal dogmas and ideals of the time and showed immense confidence in what conservatives really believed. In very sharp contrast to the 'wets' of her day and their modern Portillista equivalents, she never sought the approval of the Guardianistas or aimed to appeal to the high priests of liberal opinion. Her strategy was to defeat the left, not to embrace the less unappealing sections of it. We know now how well it worked, and it should be obvious why: when a party moves right of the centre ground, what it is offering is to relinquish government control over large areas where the state is currently dominant, to extend opportunities to many more who aspire to do better. That was Thatcher's appeal, and it took Labour until 1997 before they managed to catch up to what the Tories offered to the aspiring classes, an effort to catch up helped to no small degree by the poverty of ambition of the then-tired Conservative Party. So certainly the left needs to move to the centre-ground if it wants to do well at elections. But the right does not face quite the same dilemma. People vote in Conservative governments when the Tories appeal to their aspirations, when people see a significant different in what they can hope to gain from the parties. When both parties are on the centre-ground, that difference is not obvious, and people may be inclined to vote on other issues. But when the Tories leave a chasm of aspiration between themselves and Labour, the choice is clearer - and the swing voters of Middle England overwhelmingly show themselves willing to jump that chasm whenever we have the courage to offer them greater opportunities. Obviously, there are limits to how radical the Conservatives can be at any one time. We must always be measured in ensuring the amount of clear blue water between the parties. Britons will gladly vote for change, but almost never for revolution. Equally, the shift has to be confined to only a few issues. Moving rightwards on every issue succeeds only in making the party look extreme without giving its spokesmen the chance to defend each move. But on the two or three issues where the party chooses to be radical and ambitious, it can pick up common sense support and spend the months and years that follow arguing and debating in a way that opens minds to new ideas and concepts, shifting public opinion our way and whets voters' appetites for the reforms on offer. So when it comes to issues like crime, surely an issue currently near the top of the public agenda, the Tory strategy need not and must not be one of cowering before the liberal dogma of closing one's mind to argument and eyes to evidence. We can easily pick up more support by tackling head-on the notion that it is preferable that millions of innocents be prisoners in their own homes than that we imprison criminals until they reform or grow too old to terrorise others. It means we should stand up for those who defend their homes from intruders. And it means we can remind the considerable majority of people who favour capital punishment for murderers that their local Conservative candidate is the only one likely to agree with them. Whether or not one takes the view that David Davis got it right on the issue itself, if the statement he made signals a new confidence on the right about conservative principles, it can only be good for the Tories' electoral chances. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
What America is thinking in 2003
Dick Morris, the American Machiavelli and former Clinton spin doctor, has of late become a very informed and interesting columnist on US politics for the Jewish World Review. With the political situation in the states so polarised, his more detached approach offers a more reliable guide than most commentators can offer to how ordinary voters feel. John Hawkins has collected together a series of quotes from his columns over the last year, and they make very revealing reading. For those not firmly of the left, the story they tell is certainly an encouraging one. When it comes to next year's Presidential Elections, the two most striking quotes of the bunch relate to the Bush tax cuts, which - rightly or wrongly - are likely to be credited with the sudden upswing in the US economy that Americans are now enjoying. Passing a tax cut likely draws the active support of 25 to 30 percent of the voters. Canceling one already in place probably gins the number up to the high 40s or low 50s. But opposition to a tax increase, which will be the basis of the Bush campaign, gets your support up into the 70s and 80s. Any Democrat who squirms on the tax-cut issue in the primaries has no chance - zero - to win the nomination. Each will have to take the "pledge" to oppose the Bush tax cuts. Thus, Bush will have succeeded in creating a situation where anyone who can win the nomination can't win the election. Democrats are not about to nominate anyone who backs the tax cut, and Americans are not going to elect anyone who favors a tax increase. Do read them all. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Quote of the Day
"A number of times I've attacked the idea of identity cards and people have written me, 'If you haven't done anything wrong, what have you got to fear?'. Just wait until the first time you're stopped on the street by a policeman and you don't have your papers." - Peter Hitchens Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
The EU: 15 countries, 300 million citizens, but only one view recognised as legitimate
When one considers for a moment that the EU is a political institution with its own flag, its own currency, its own foreign minister and the power to make criminals out of people who sell apples in pounds and ounces, to determine certain tax levels for its members (for example the minimum VAT levels) and to make laws under which hundreds of millions will live, it really seems rather creepy how lacking it is in any internal opposition. There is no sense of the government on one side and on the other an opposition which is internal to the EU's structures but external to its governing powers. By contrast, the EU has quangos and other bodies dedicated precisely to rooting out and delegitimising anyone who disagrees with the particular course it takes, for example declaring opponents of to the euro to be exemplars of "monetary xenophobia". So when a representative of a national government at least speaks out on such matters, most democrats would hope that this obvious lack of any internal and structural opposition would be taken into account by the EU - that disagreement and alternative ideas from this source would be rather welcomed. But once again, the official reaction to Gordon Brown's perfectly sensible and factual Telegraph column on the EU Constitution's implications for British sovereignty, and to his speech warning of the dangers of a drift towards a fully fledged, job-destroying, social democratic Europe, demonstrates perfect continuity of these fundamentally undemocratic traditions. The President of the European Parliament has now accused the Chancellor of - horror of horrors - "appealing to Eurosceptics"; in other words, of listening to and responding to the concerns and viewpoints of the vast majority of the people of his country. The President goes on to assert that even to make the case against the present direction of the EU's ruling body is to risk "marginalisation" of Britain in Europe. Lest there be any doubt that countries and their representatives must give pro-Brussels views or none at all, he also baldly states that "Britain's case falls on deaf ears with its European colleagues when it is couched in Eurosceptic language". So we have no internal opposition, publicly funded quangos to denounce and delegitimise external opposition, and a warning to any political leaders from member states that should they go as far as to step out of line in a speech or newspaper column, their countries will suffer and their views be ignored unless they match those of the European Commission. This is the body, the institution, the superstate, to which Tony Blair and his closest cronies want to surrender Britain's final rights of self-government over almost every area of policy, from how we educate our children to how we indulge in space exploration. What cynically realistic judgement he shows by refusing us a referendum on this issue of an EU Constitution. How right we are to continue to demand one, and to remain determined to vote 'No'. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, November 17, 2003
Three steps to a safer countryside
As the Telegraph details the extent of rising crime in Britain's largely lawless countryside, where the police seem interested only in the activities of poor old Tony Martin and his fellow desperate householders, the paper offers three simple steps for tipping the balance back in favour of the decent citizen. Of course, these steps would also help enormously to improve quality of life in urban areas of the country. First, citizens must be allowed to defend their property. Tony Martin became a national cause celebre, despite his unappealing character, because homeowners across the countryside sympathised with his predicament. Mr Martin had been repeatedly burgled, and let down by his local constabulary. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, November 16, 2003
Quote of the Day
"In fact, hard as it may be for some to stomach, Bush has been at the forefront of the fight against the fascism of our age. Those who march against Bush next week should think what message their protests send to those in the frontline of the fight against modern fascism around the world. But they won't. Let's stop kidding ourselves, these protestors who oppose Starbucks but not death squads don't care about fascism anymore and they don't care about international solidarity." - Harry Hatchet Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Relative 'poverty'?
Ross, Marcus and Madsen deliver a triple-whammy against those who define poverty as earning below an arbitrary percentage of a moving average income. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, November 15, 2003
Quote of the Day
"There is no future in trying to find a middle road between folly and common sense." - The secret Conservative Manifesto for the 1978 Election, released today Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Wednesday, November 12, 2003
Quote of the Day
"Saatchi is to reform Conservative Central Office into an election fighting machine, rather than the Augean Stables it currently is." - Telemachus describes the Herculean task facing the new Tory Party Chairman. (Also check out his account of the importance of the message of 'fairness' in promoting the Conservative agenda.) Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Israel above all should know better than to reward hostage-taking
As soon as a government shows itself willing to surrender prisoners in exchange for hostage releases, any time a terrorist leader is captured in the future - normally a great moment for any free country - all his supporters need to do is capture some sympathetic civilians and threaten to kill them if their favoured man is not released. And because the precedent has been set, if at any point the state then refuses to release their prisoner to go out and plot further murders, then they can be sure that it will be they who face the blame for what happens to the hostages, having already shown themselves willing to release prisoners in some cases, so why not this? A state which concedes to hostage-taking does not protect its people by showing itself willing to compromise with terrorists. On the contrary, it ensures that terrorists know one proven way to get what they want, and that there will in the future be far more innocent people held hostage and killed. It is enormously depressing that even the Sharon government has shown itself willing to make this mistake, setting the above precedent with all its ill and bloody effects, effects which will be infinitely harder to reverse than they were to bring into being. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, November 09, 2003
Quote of the Day
"Robert Mugabe has won the Rhodesian elections outright. It's a fantastic victory and I can't remember anything that has given me so much pleasure for a long time. When I think of the systematic distortion by the British press of Mugabe's position, it's an absolute disgrace. The Tories must be furious." - Tony Benn, 4 March 1980 Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, November 08, 2003
Freedom, not fascism, defeats fascism
The BNP will never be defeated by stooping to totalitarian lengths of the sort that would delight the Socialist Workers' Party's Anti-Nazi League, which calls for the expulsion of all university students who support the racist party. They will be defeated if and when a genuinely free society is willing to refute their obnoxious arguments and pay heed to the concerns about mass immigration that lead people to support them. Free societies are better than this, and that is why our model will always be superior to that proposed by every Nazi incarnation. This sort of undemocratic measure will fail, and deserve to. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Some things are worth our boys dying for, but Iraqi human rights aren't among them
"There are now almost 400 people dead who wouldn't be dead if that resolution hadn't been passed and we hadn't gone to war." The short-sightedness and the disregard for the Iraqi victims of Saddam implied by those words are, in my view, anything but liberal. Well, it probably isn't liberal. But such an attitude does show that Howard Dean's heart is in the right place on at least one issue. For anyone aspiring to be US President, the American people must come first. The idea that one can trade American lives for Iraqi human rights is as fanciful as it is cold-blooded. Just like Britain, America had no duty to send its boys out to the Middle East to die for the human rights of the Iraqi people, and if intelligence had indicated that Saddam Hussein posed no real threat to American national interests, her President should absolutely have let him stay in power and saved those four hundred American lives. Who are these people to deem themselves fit to decide who lives and who dies, to be willing to sacrifice their fellow countrymen to their own concerns about human rights in some foreign land? We are not the world's policemen, and we should not stump up the cost in pounds or in lives of attempting to be. If Gene and Harry want to go and fight to free enslaved peoples, I will support their international brigade. But for them to call on national armies - of which they are not members - to support and die for their values, rather than these soldiers' countries, is out of this world. Armed forces are there to defend the national interest. It is not our responsibility to secure the human rights of Iraqis (or Cubans, or Koreans). Unless doing so advances British interests then nobody in Britain should have to die to that end. If Howard Dean can see the relevance of such principles to his own country, he's a lot closer to being a fit President than some who supported the war. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Thursday, November 06, 2003
Quote of the Day
"Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from preconising its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are enemies of freedom." - Enoch Powell Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Monday, November 03, 2003
Quote of the Day
"And how did you enjoy the show, Mrs Washington? ... Yes, I'm afraid we did enjoy the show, Mrs Washington." So begins and ends Peter Preston's Guardian column today, demonstrating that neither he nor, it would seem, the paper's editor can tell the difference between George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. I look forward to the Guardian report sympathising with the blood on Pat Nixon's dress, and asking whether Jimmy Carter's reputation has fully recovered from Monicagate. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
Link of the Week
I have plenty to say at the moment, but little time in which to say it until Thursday or so, so posts will be rare until then. In the meantime, do check out Unpersons, the link of the week, which has had some excellent posts of late, on 'fair' trade, communism and university access to name but a few. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Sunday, November 02, 2003
All too typical of what the left is becoming
It is always gratifying when a politician gets a taste of the disastrous consequences of his actions. The words of the despicable Richard Ingrams today. Barely a week goes by without this weird old bigot castigating Israel or demanding that British Jews be forced to identify their ethnicity before their opinions on the Middle East be given a hearing. Now he is even willing to side with terrorist cronies of Saddam and/or Bin Laden against those within democratic societies who disagree with his politics. Ingrams is a man who disgracefully denounced our security forces' undercover elimination of IRA terrorists and politicians, but who is quite willing to countenance Islamofascist rocket attacks on the ministers of democratic governments. Though these positions clearly show a man whose moral compass points 180 degrees the wrong way, his views are not necessary inconsistent: the common thread of both positions is a preference for the means and men of terror as opposed to the forces of law and democracy. Sometimes conservative bloggers are accused of delighting in finding the wackiest lefties and picking on easy targets such as the moonbats on the Democrat Underground or Guardian forums. But Ingrams' column today - published in The Observer no less - shows just how deeply imbedded in the 'respectable' left's thinking is this sort of deranged hate for Bush's America; a hate that permits them to cast aside the most basic human feeling and excuses their allying themselves with some of the world's most evil mass-murderers. The moral equivalence and fanaticism of leftist anti-Americanism is a cancer that may already have spread too far to be removable. For now, the left is led by a Prime Minister obviously close to Washington and obviously unwilling to indulge in such moral equivalence. But when he falls, we may see a resurgence of this suicidal anti-Western spirit in the Labour Party that would rival the influence CND had in the 1980s. Time will tell. Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link | Saturday, November 01, 2003
Where to read the EU Constitution
Posted by Peter Cuthbertson | Permanent Link |
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Adolf Hitler once said that the strength of the totalitarian system was that it forced even those who feared it to emulate its methods. In calling for police chiefs to ban all members of a particular political party from joining the force, David Blunkett keenly 
There is one position on the Iraq War I find even less appealing than the general anti-war view. This is the view that irrespective of the threat Saddam Hussein posed to this country, it was worth the deaths of dozens of British troops to remove him from power in Iraq because doing so aids the cause of human rights. This callous view that no amount of spilt British blood is too much if it means we save slightly more Iraqi blood is openly defended over at 
I have been to two eurosceptic meetings recently in which the difficulty of reading the EU Constitution was raised. It costs about £20 to buy a copy, and although it was pointed out that it can be read on the internet, no one could give a link. So I have set up a quick page linking to whichever is the most recent draft. The page - 
