10 April 2010 5:26 PM
Two war-weary Marines with a size 10 wellington boot...destroyed by the liars in Westminster
This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column
Please be angry about what follows. As you read this, a small group of your fellow countrymen will be setting out on a foot patrol in Afghanistan. All of them will be frightened, with good reason. All of them will be trying not to show it. Some will not be succeeding too well. One or two may have vomited up their breakfasts, and an NCO (himself scared deep down) will have tried to reassure them with bluster and authority.
Let us hope they all get back safe to base. But they all know what might happen instead. In the course of half a second, their happy lives as they have known them could come to a horrible end. A cunningly planted landmine may go off right beneath one of them, doing terrible things to his body, perhaps killing him, perhaps doing things to him that may be worse than death.
He will not be the only one hurt. Two or perhaps three will be grotesquely maimed, their lives changed for ever. I will not dwell on the possibilities. All of us know them.
There is nothing they can do about this. I can hear the bar-room pacifist bray that ‘they signed up for it, and shouldn’t complain’. But if others never signed up for the Army, we would all be slaves, including the bar-room pacifists.
And they did not, as it happens, sign up to be sent out on these foul, pointless, sacrificial patrols through Helmand and Sangin, during which they offer themselves to be murdered by a cunning and elusive enemy, so as to help Gordon Brown and David Cameron suck up to the United States.
They signed up to fight because they are the exceptional and spirited people that every serious country needs to guard its interests while the rest of us take our pleasures and snore safely in our suburbs.
But they seldom do fight. The Afghan Taliban have more sense than to tangle with what remains the best-trained combat army on Earth. So they lay traps, and our men, try as they may to be careful, fall into them. They are there because politicians of all three major parties are more interested in drawing their expenses than in thinking, and because – in sharp contrast to those they send into danger – they have no courage.
I mention all this because, last week, a disgusting and shameful court martial humiliated and devastated two Royal Marines because they lost their tempers.
These are men whose shoes I’m not fit to polish. So far as I can find out, they captured an Afghan in the middle of planting one of these horrible landmines. And, getting him alone, they beat him about the head with a size ten wellington boot.
The man, who was later handed over to the Afghan ‘authorities’ and has since vanished, received a split lip, a cut face and had some teeth loosened.
Well, dear me. It’s not exactly the Nazi SS, is it? Since the mine-layer hasn’t been tried or convicted, I can only speculate that his intended victims – British servicemen – would have suffered rather worse injuries than that if they had stepped on the device he was planting.
Sergeant Mark Leader, one of the men court-martialled for attacking the Afghan, had lost three friends to the Taliban’s landmines. Captain Jody Wheelhouse, who was also court-martialled, joined in with what his Troop Sergeant was doing.
Sergeant Leader, who was dismissed from the service, will not just be deprived of his livelihood and burdened for years to come with his conviction. He has lost pension rights worth £400,000. Captain Wheelhouse’s life (he was dismissed ‘with disgrace’) is likewise blighted.
I’m prepared to concede that both men should have restrained themselves. But I think their action understandable and trivial. They should have been let off with a reprimand. Why do we, soft on real criminals and allied to a country – the USA – whose armed forces casually fry innocent civilians from the safety of helicopters, turn in this way on good men who daily face dangers most of us would run from? We do it because our politicians like to pretend to themselves that our ill-judged and dubious interventions in Iraq and Afghanistan are actually humanitarian projects aimed at getting the locals to love us and embrace our way of life.
The truth – that the locals hate us and will not rest until we have gone – does not suit them.
So the soldiers have to live and die according to this lie, and be unjustly punished for the real crimes of others. These Marines should be reinstated.
The politicians who sent them there are the ones who should be dismissed with disgrace – and without their pensions.
It’s Tweedledead vs Tweedledeader
IF it’s wicked to smuggle a corpse on to an aeroplane, how much more wicked is it to smuggle the corpses of two dead political parties into an Election campaign? No normal human being actually supports or likes the Labour Party or the Tory Party. Their meetings are attended only by the very old and confused or by the desperately ambitious, or by people trying to find shelter from the cold and wet. If they sent out collectors into the streets with tins, they’d end the day with 75 pence, a few billion Zimbabwe dollars and a lot of buttons.
If it weren’t for semi-secret taxpayer subsidies, dodgy non-dom billionaires, and for equally dodgy trades unions, neither of them would be able to employ the squadrons of professional liars and con men politely called spin-doctors, or the stage sets where for the next few weeks their leading cliques will try to look sensible and important.
And if it were not for the absurd broadcasting rules, under which the BBC will give time to a party only if it’s already rich and powerful, they might have to fight for space against real, original ideas and policies. As it is, prepare for a contest between Tweedledead and Tweedledeader.
A hung Parliament, which I think a growing number of voters actively want, will be a good place to store these cadavers while we think of something better.
Achingly trendy, but is mocking religion what WE really want?
Atheism, and the mockery of religion in general, are big business these days. But is it actually what the public want, or what the cultural elite want us to want?
A really, really stupid and unfunny film (written by atheist and alleged comedian David Baddiel) called The Infidel is released this week, whose confused and foul-mouthed message seems to be that we’re all the same anyway, and that ‘fundamentalism’ is the problem. Could a film with a pro-religious message (even if it were ten times better) ever have got the backing?
The fashionable and over-rated author Philip Pullman – now so grand that the BBC interviewed him at Lambeth Palace in conversation with the Archbishop of Canterbury – has written his own anti-Church version of the Gospels, in a comically grandiose style halfway between Enoch Powell and EastEnders.
It calls to mind his declaration (before he was famous) that ‘I’m trying to undermine the basis of Christian belief’, a thought that significantly doesn’t get a mention on the covers of his bestselling children’s books. All those grannies and aunties might not buy them if it did.
April 10, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)
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08 April 2010 3:19 PM
A riposte to Tim Montgomerie
On Wednesday night I was among the speakers at a 'Spectator' debate about the New Tory Party. The motion - in which we were asked to decide if Mr Cameron is a Ted Heath or a Margaret Thatcher - made it hard to discuss some of the key problems of conservatism - since they arise directly from uncritical Thatcherolatry (Or should that be Maggieolatry?). Even so, much of what was said, by me, Simon Heffer, Kelvin MacKenzie, Bruce Anderson, Tim Montgomerie and Simon Wolfson, will be familiar to regular readers here.
I was amused to see that, before I had even opened my mouth, I was subject to specific (and in the case of Mr Anderson personal) assault from my opponents, which I take as a compliment. But Tim Montgomerie made one challenge which I did not really have time to deal with properly (being too busy rebutting the Cameroons' insinuation that I am some sort of Trotskyist sleeper, or that I remain a revolutionary uninterested in practical politics, or both).
Here it is: ’Peter Hitchens talks constantly of the need for a new party, an alternative to the Conservatives. I don't know what he is waiting for. Why doesn't he set it up? Because in his heart - like his two comrades tonight - Peter knows his views are good enough to entertain readers of a newspaper but would never translate into more than a handful of votes. There would be no return to being taken seriously if they ever had the courage of their convictions.’
It was accompanied by another standard Cameroon jibe, that I sit on the sidelines and do nothing except criticise. He put it this way: ’They are the critics hurling abuse from the stands. Theodore Roosevelt had their sort in his mind when he warned that it is not the critic who counts. Not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
‘Our opponents tonight are the cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.’
So I will respond to these charges here, and invite Mr Montgomerie to respond, either here or on his own 'Conservative Home' site, as he chooses.
Right. Now, to start with, I very much wish, before I die, to enter Parliamentary politics, with the intention of influencing and playing a part in the government of my country. I believe I have several qualifications for this. At 58 I am old enough and have lived long enough to have acquired some wisdom, about both private matters and public affairs. I am educated to a reasonably high standard. I have worked in my chosen trade for more than three decades and been moderately successful at it.
I know my own country well. There are few corners of it I haven't visited. I have not lived only among people of my own class and background. I have also had the great good fortune to have lived abroad, in the USSR and the USA, and to have travelled - as a reporter and therefore as a privileged observer - more widely than most people ever have the chance to do. I've seen and experienced things that most people will never see, including the edges of war and serious civil disorder.
I have considerable direct experience of politics, and of the things which politics influences. I was an education reporter, an industrial correspondent, a defence and diplomatic correspondent. I lived and worked in the bowels of the Labour and trade union movement for years. I worked for several intense years as a member of the Parliamentary Lobby, spending long days in the Palace of Westminster. I've had privileged private contact with senior politicians of all parties.
Add to this that I have a number of clearly-worked out political positions, explained in detail in four books and a large number of published articles. I'm reasonably coherent on public platforms.
Might it then be possible that a conservative political party would be interested in having me as a member of parliament, or at least as a candidate? Well, yes, I have had one significant approach, some years ago, from a constituency in the North of England which was winnable and which is now in Tory hands (I discount my propagandist entry into the lists for Kensington and Chelsea, which nobody, least of all I, ever imagined would lead to anything).
But I turned it down at the time because (and this came to me in a flash as soon as I considered the offer) I already felt that my position was so marginal, in Tory terms, that I would end up being a glorified social worker, absorbed into the vast mass of forgotten backbenchers, diverted into the displacement activity of constituents' problems, subjected to a discipline which would involve silencing most of my convictions. There are quite a few Tory MPs now in this position. They may have intended to infiltrate the Tory Party, but it has infiltrated them, as so often happens if you try entryism on an institution without an ideology or a plan. I reckoned then, and feel now, that I could have more influence on politics doing what I now do. And I wouldn't cross the Rubicon from journalism to politics, from which there is no return, in my view - unless it was for something more worthwhile than sorting out rows over dogs, traffic, parking and drains, brought to me by people who had no idea who their local councillors were.
In fact, this realisation - that life as an MP out of tune with your party was drudgery and futility - was one of the stages in my journey from being a critical sympathiser (and for a while, a member) of the Tory Party to recognising that it could never be a vehicle for serious conservative politics. And that it was in fact an obstacle to it.
Now the problem with people such as Tim is that they have never actually thought about the parliamentary process. Most people haven't. They think, because of the pomp and show of election nights, that MPs are chosen by voters. But they're not. A few long-serving MPs may have accumulated 'personal votes' thanks to their diligence or personal delightfulness, or celebrity. But in almost all cases, MPs are elected almost entirely because they have the right national party label for the time and place (Martin Bell, before anyone mentions him, only won Tatton because the Labour and LibDem parties withdrew in his favour. Dr Richard Taylor took and held Wyre Forest first because he was so completely non-political, and secondly because he seized a powerful local issue. Neither of these circumstances is common, and it is not open to me to be non-political). The personal characteristic, and personal political opinions, of the candidate have almost no bearing at all. Things are slightly different at by-elections, but there are not usually enough of these to create a national trend (the early years of the SDP, I agree, were a rare instance of a chain of significant by-election victories - but the much lower average age of modern MPs means that by-elections are now so rare this probably couldn't be repeated).
The crucial moment of decision, therefore, is not at the general election, but at the selection meetings of the major parties in the months before that election. And Tim must have noticed that such meetings are now tightly-controlled by the party centres, who have both encouraged retiring MPs to announce their departures at the last minute, so allowing headquarters to impose special shortlists and slip in their desired candidates. Tim also knows very well about the old 'A-list' or 'K&C list' as I think he once called it. What chance would someone with my views - immediate departure from the EU, tougher divorce, opposition to the sexual revolution, pro-grammar school, pro-death penalty, anti-PACE, in favour of withdrawing subsidies from future fatherless families, withdrawal from Afghanistan, against mass immigration - have of becoming a candidate in these circumstances? I mean, be serious. A party which wants Louise Bagshawe as a candidate in a winnable seat isn't going to want me, is it?
And if one did, what's the use of a single MP, with such views, in a party which rejects them? I don't want to be a Tory Dennis Skinner, thanks very much. An individual member of the House of Commons is one of the most powerless people in the country. Thanks to the whips, he has less freedom to speak his mind and act accordingly than an ordinary citizen.
So, yes, start my own party. Easy, isn't it? You just go down to Ikea and buy a flat-pack Party, and then, after a few false starts, you assemble it. Then you put up 600-odd candidates, get treated as a serious force by the BBC and the media, and, without any need for money or broadcasting time, compete on equal terms with the two dead parties which nonetheless have Lord Ashcroft or the Trades Unions. Next thing you know, you're in government. No, that can't be right, can it? And it isn't. The bottomless silliness and thoughtlessness of people who say 'Start Your Own Party' reflects rather badly on them. Think, for goodness sake, before you speak. It is my guess that Tim has never in his life actually thought about the political process in this country, because, as an insider, he has never had to. Well, will he please do so now. It will be thinking to some purpose.
As I have many times said (though Tim seems not to have noticed) a new party can't be created until the millions - the ones who vote tribally at general elections for whatever is put in front of them - see the need for it. They won't do that unless and until the Tory Party is plainly broken and finished. A few years ago, I decided my old garden shed was rotten and decrepit. To make space for the replacement, I had first to recognise this was true, and secondly to clear out the contents, and then demolish and cart away the wreckage of the old one. So it is with the Tory Party. In our two-party system, there will be no new party until there is, obviously, a need for one and a vacancy for one. That vacancy is what I am trying to create, by urging the public to sack our useless Opposition, which has entirely surrendered to the egalitarian, sexually revolutionary, internationalist ideology of Britain's enemies. It will be almost two decades before we shall have another such opportunity, since an election victory will re-invigorate the near-corpse of Toryism (while doing nothing for the country).
I do wish my Tory critics would actually take a break from smearing me as a Marxist sleeper, or calling me 'timid', and actually read what I write and listen to what I say. Then they might realise that I am not motivated by malice, or impossibilism, or frivolity - but that I am deadly serious, and I mean to do the Tory Party damage not because of some imaginary personal spite towards David Cameron (who in fact I find quite likeable when I meet him) or towards Michael Gove, one of the few leading politicians whose company I actually enjoy, but because I believe, after long thought and consideration, that the Conservative Party's continued existence harms this Kingdom, and stands in the way of urgent and necessary reform.
April 8, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (43)
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Blog and Counter-blog. The arguments go on
A few responses to points made by contributors over the past few days. Stephen Elliott asks why I believe Mrs Thatcher's (as she then was) alleged triumph in the Falklands was undeserved. Because of the facts. Her government was on the verge of selling (to Argentina) several of the ships which were vital to the Task Force. Her government's bungled diplomacy gave the Argentines the reasonable impression that we wanted to be rid of the Islands (especially the planned withdrawal of HMS Endurance). It was the Armed Forces, and above all the Navy which she had planned to devastate with cuts, which saved Lady Thatcher's bacon by recapturing the archipelago against all odds. Victory wipes out all previous follies, and so she got away with it and was praised for it. It's true that her resolve, and her wisdom in letting military and naval commanders get on with it without interference, made the victory more likely. But she had to be resolute. Surrender, compromise or failure would have finished her government for good. And if she and her ministers had had more sense beforehand, it need never have happened. The details are to be found in the 'Battle for the Falklands' by Simon Jenkins and Max Hastings, and are well-summarised in John Campbell's fine critical biography of Lady Thatcher, now available in paperback. I write as one who supported the war (and still does) and who (thanks to my father having served in the Royal Navy's South Atlantic Squadron before 1939, and having often told us of his experiences in the islands) knew quite a bit about the Falklands and cared about them more than most people before 1982, when they were largely unheard of.
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In response to Mr Barclay, I have found David Blanchflower's commentaries on economic matters quite persuasive. I make a point of not being influenced by letters to the papers signed by lots of economists, businessmen, generals, scientists etc. But I did notice that the IMF seemed recently to take a similar view to Mr Blanchflower's. I suspect Professor Blanchflower's judgements may be pretty objective, and they certainly make some sense to me, not least because of the clarity with which he expresses them. The Tories have in general been confused or wrong or uncertain about how to handle the current crisis, not because they are Tories so much as because they are inexperienced, and therefore indecisive.
No wider issue of policy arises here. It is a matter of crisis management. In my view economics should be made to follow politics as far as possible, but the only solution for the British economy is a slow, long-term withdrawal from welfare dependency, which could not possibly produce rapid tax cuts. Fake Tories are much given to such 'cuts' which of course have to be recouped in a couple of years, or switched into indirect taxation of various kinds. Spending must be reduced first, then tax can come down. And a genuine reduction in spending must be brought about by genuine changes in the attitude of government towards the welfare state, by far the biggest drain on the exchequer and the biggest inhibitor of lasting economic growth. I really don't see why it is somehow unconservative to point out that you can't pretend that NI cuts can be paid for by non-existent efficiency savings. Anyone who says this and means it is too stupid to be in charge of the economy. Anyone who says it and doesn't mean it is too dishonest to be in charge of the economy.
Mike Everett seems to think I know nothing of basic economics, because I don't pretend to any expertise in the subject. Wrong. Like most educated people of my generation, I know the basics. But unlike George Osborne (or the late Jim Callaghan) I don't think this qualifies me to be Chancellor of the Exchequer. As for the NI cuts, you don't need to be a mechanic to be able to work out that the petrol tank is empty.
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David Boycott writes: ‘What a pitiful article! As anyone with any knowledge of economics knows, Cable is at least as riven by contradictions and errors as either Darling or Osborne, despite getting much less in the way of media scrutiny.
Furthermore, only the most naive could suggest that either the Tories or Labour would offer Number 11 to the LibDems in any circumstances. Not only is there no modern precedent, but the next government is going to be entirely concerned with matters economic, so surrendering the Treasury to a third party would be no more than a painful form of suicide.’
Well, so far as I know, Vincent Cable is the only one of the three who is a professional economist or who has any experience of life outside politics. He is also, from my own experience of public debate, extremely popular in the country at the moment. As for not offering Number 11 to a third party under any circumstances, I am simply not so sure as Mr Boycott seems to be. There have been strong rumours, several times over the past year, that Gordon Brown would have liked to offer the Chancellorship to Vincent Cable (who is an old friend of his). Such an appointment might actually get whoever is Prime Minister after May 6th off a difficult hook (neither Mr Cameron nor Mr Brown are happy with their Treasury spokesmen). And the next government will not necessarily be a government of one party. Pitiful? Too harsh an adjective, I think. He may, like another contributor, have mistaken my description of public enthusiasm for Mr Cable for an expression of enthusiasm on my own part. This is a simple misunderstanding. I expressed no such enthusiasm. I find Mr Cable likeable and human, and respect his knowledge in the field, but cannot myself forget his enthusiasm for the Euro.
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A lot of people seem to have missed my point about Mr Grayling - that his expressed opinions conflict with actual Tory policy and with his own voting record. If they are really his opinions, he should resign from his position, or Mr Cameron ought to dismiss him. The fact that this has not happened tells us most of what we need to know. They have largely missed the other point, that the BBC's new support for the Tories (largely brought about by the Tory change on such cultural and moral matters) has survived this episode unhurt.
Stonewall supporters may continue to vote Tory without fear. Mr Cameron is devoted to the sexual revolution. Those who are not Stonewall supporters should look elsewhere.
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I'm surprised by David Martin's apparent anti-Roman Catholic sectarianism. I thought we had got over this sort of thing. I regard Roman Catholics as my allies against those who would make this a Godless society. That does not mean that, as an Anglican, I forget my differences with them, or they forget theirs with me. Any more than, when I ally myself with strict Calvinists (or attend their churches, as I also attend RC churches from time to time), I forget my differences with them. I do not believe that any of us has any claim to know the whole truth, and hope that all of us can learn from each other.
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George Franks writes: ‘You really have to devote rather more thought to your comments about British Summer time. We, as a company, start work early and frankly it is infinitely preferable to go to work in the dark than come back from work in the dark. I do not think that a journalist can have a clue about these matters, especially one who describes the advocates of lighter evenings as zealots and his prime reason being his enjoyment of tea and toast in the dark. I used to think that you had good ideas, but I fear that you have lost the plot.’
Well, I have a fixed prejudice against people who tell me I have 'lost the plot'. This phrase sounds like something enunciated by a person from EastEnders. No proper human being, who speaks his own mind rather than parroting the minds of others, talks like this. What does it mean? What plot? How lost? If Mr Franks disagrees with me (as he appears to do) he needs to tell me why, and offer me reasons. Also, he's ridiculously, demonstrably wrong when he claims that my 'prime' reason for objecting to fiddling with the clock is my enjoyment of tea and toast at dusk, which is obviously just an observation, and a reference to a gentle pleasure which is sometimes forgotten in the age of 24-hour drinking and all-night clubbing. My 'prime' reason, as is clear from the article, is that human beings are happier and healthier if their clocks agree with the actual time of day (thus, when the sun is at its zenith, it is noon).
I do not agree that it is 'infinitely preferable to go to work in the dark than to come home from work in the dark'. Some people might prefer one, others the other. If the clocks remained in tune with nature, both would get their wish for some of the year, none for all of it. The current proposal, to remain on summer time in winter, and move to double summer time in summer, would leave large numbers of people going to work in the dark for far longer than is now the case. Why should we all be driven into perpetual unnatural time by zealots (whom I describe as such precisely because they think that because one thing is infinitely preferable to them, we all must submit to it)?
If schools, or businesses, or government departments, in different parts of the country, wish to start their working day an hour earlier, or two hours earlier, then let them negotiate it freely with their employees and their pupils, leaving the rest of us to carry on with the time God gave us. We are not in the midst of a world war, as we were when this authoritarian idea was originally foisted on us, and we are not slaving away every hour of the day and night to produce munitions for vast battles in Flanders. There is no more need of this regimentation.
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April 8, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (28)
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05 April 2010 5:24 PM
David Cameron's answer on why you have to pay for his big country house
Congratulations to Cole Morton of 'Live' Magazine for asking David Cameron the hard question about his extraordinary expenses claims, in his interview published there on Easter Sunday.
I've slipped in a couple of comments in brackets.
Mr Moreton first asked the Tory leader about his wealth in general, and received this interesting response when he mentioned the £30 million figure that has been suggested as the Camerons' joint wealth.
'It's guesswork. Unbelievable. It's extraordinary. Look [touch of the Blairs there, PH], we own a very nice house in London, and a house in the constituency on which we have a mortgage. Other than that we both earn good money and we have some savings. But I don't want to give you a figure because that will be blasted all over the papers.
'You know where I work. You know my salary. It's all public. I don't have any outside earnings. I am very happy for anyone to do the maths.'
Mr Moreton responds: 'Let's do that, then. The house in North Kensington is worth about £2 million, and is mortgage-free. The one in Witney, Oxfordshire, would sell for about £1 million. He earns £131,000 a year plus allowances as Leader of the Opposition, and Samantha is thought to earn about three times that [I didn't know that- PH] as creative director of Smythson. Even with a very conservative estimate of savings, stocks and shares, their worth must exceed £4 million [before any inheritance].
Mr Moreton continues: 'They will never have to worry about not having enough money for food or a roof over their head - so why should the taxes of those who do have such worries be used to pay the mortgage interest on this multi-millionaire's second home?'
I think this a very fair, firmly asked yet courteously put and carefully-formulated version of one of the questions on my list of unanswered queries for Mr Cameron, published here a month ago. What was Mr Cameron's answer?
'Because as an MP you need to live in two places, and there is an expenses system for that.'
Yup, that's it. No explanation as to why that home should be a large house in a pretty village costing £1 million. No explanation as to why he cannot commute (as many of his constituents do daily), the 70 miles from Witney to London - miles which do not involve hacking your way through jungle thickets with a machete, hanging off the sides of matatu taxis or bouncing in ox-carts across rutted volcanic plains, but can be achieved through mainly dual carriageway roads and Motorway, or (via Oxford or Didcot) reasonably fast trains to London.
I agree that they ought to reinstate the railway from Oxford to Witney, a town which ought to have a station of its own - but I don't expect Mr Cameron, with his subsidised constituency home, has thought about that. There's even a 24-hour bus service as far as Oxford, for those late sittings. No explanation as to why he cannot rent a small flat, or stay in a B&B (perhaps he could get Mr Grayling to check some out for him), for a tenth of the cost. No explanation as to why he doesn't feel that he ought to pay for this himself, as he is so fortunate. No thoughts about the rightness or wrongness of an expenses system which allows wealthy people to claim on the same basis as those without wealth.
No, just a swift sidestep, to change the subject, thus: 'By the way, I caused future prime ministers, whoever they may be, not to be able to claim income on a second home. That was my act. I said it needed to happen.'
Jolly nice and puritanical of him, on behalf of other people, but no great burden for him. And hard news for any future premiers who don't happen to have Mr Cameron's personal wealth, or don't already possess a nice country house near London. Mr Cameron has his second home anyway, in a very nice part of the world which will always be convenient for the capital and the best schools (state or private) even if he gives up being a politician altogether. And you and I will have helped to pay for it.
I really don't think the Tory leader, who has tried to profit from the expenses scandal so much, and who has derided others who have said that their outrageous claims were 'within the rules' (as they were, and as his are) should ever be allowed to forget about this.
NOTE. I hope to respond to your comments in general later in the week.
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April 5, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (45)
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A media election, not a general election
Some readers will remember a past election (was it 1997? I think so) when the BBC fanned into an enormous blaze the uninteresting and unsurprising information that lots of Tory candidates weren't wild about Britain's deepening absorption into the EU.
Night after night, obscure MPs, of whom nobody had heard before, or would ever hear of again, were probed by BBC teams investigating their election leaflets, and finding insufficient enthusiasm for the European project. The idea was that the Tories were 'split' on this subject. Several anti-Tory newspapers joined in, there not being much else to talk about. But then in modern elections the whole idea is that there isn't much to talk about.
Then and since I've been convinced that whoever thought of this 'Tory split' angle was basing it on the undoubted splits that used to exist in Labour, on unilateral nuclear disarmament, or union laws or whatever it might be.
A similar impulse lay somewhere behind the astonishing claim, made in the final Labour election broadcast of 1997 election, that the Tories planned to abolish the old age pension. This wasn't true, but it was designed to be a kind of mirror image of the 'Labour's Tax Bombshell' Tory campaign posters of 1992, which was broadly true.
This broadcast, a masterpiece of totalitarian smear in which the Tories were mercilessly pilloried with the use of speeded up film and satirical playing of 'Land of Hope and Glory' chilled my bones when I saw it. It was intended to engender personal hate against those portrayed. I thought( and my fears were borne out) that a party which came to office with such methods was one that was to be feared in government.
I've also often thought that Labour's willingness to go to war in Iraq and the Balkans (or the Balklands, as I sometimes hear people call this region) has something to do with their furious envy of Margaret Thatcher's undeserved Falklands triumph of 1982, which they believe (with some justice) saved her electoral bacon in 1983.
The BBC, for much of this period, was wholly dedicated to the anti-Tory cause. It regarded the Thatcher Tories as despicable and self-evidently bad, and developed an adversarial relationship with the government which made viewing quite interesting, if infuriating for non-leftists. One of the reasons why 'Newsnight', once a compulsory watch, is now so hog-whimperingly dull is that the BBC has never been able to develop an equally adversarial relationship with New Labour, and will have (see below) the same problem if the Cameroons get in. That is because almost everyone in the BBC shares the basic assumptions of Blairites and Cameroons alike.
Now, for reasons explored in my book 'The Cameron Delusion' (an updated version of 'The Broken Compass'), the BBC and much of the print media are as devoted to the Cameron Tories as they once were to New Labour. And this has just been demonstrated in an interesting way, which shows us how the election is likely to continue unless unexpected events subvert it.
During last week's Chancellors debate, the Tory George Osborne did fairly badly. He wasn't a disaster, but he didn't need to be. He was as usual unconvincing and squeaky. Worse, he was plainly in trouble over his scheme to pay for a national insurance cut with 'efficiency savings', a claim which any serious politician, civil servant, economist and even political journalist knows to be laughable piffle. There are no such savings. They do not exist. Alistair Darling pointed this out, but that could be discounted because it was in the way of business. The problem for Mr Osborne was that Vince Cable, who won the debate with ease, strongly supported the Chancellor on this.
What followed was a rescue operation by Tory HQ. Every businessman they could get their hands on was persuaded to sign a letter claiming that Labour's planned NI changes would kill the recovery. What, big businessmen support the Tory Party? Companies want to pay less tax? This was news equivalent to the revelation that the Atlantic Ocean is rather wet.
So on to the front page, and the top of every bulletin, it duly went. It entirely swamped the rather different point, plainly made in the debate, that the Tories have no idea how they propose to pay for the very expensive policy on which their whole campaign now depends. Our non-vigilant political press, tickle-minded as ever, have 'moved on', being wholly uninterested in politics and even less versed in economics than I am.
So the Tories are not being asked about it any more. BBC reporters, whose job it isn't to give umpire's decisions on such controversies, are proclaiming a Tory victory on this subject. And every other pundit is saying it was a terrific success for George Osborne, and a blow for Labour.
Well, maybe it was. I've yet to see any connection between this event and the polls (which in many cases show Labour dropping and the Tories either dropping too or staying the same, leading to a bigger 'Tory lead' without an increase in Tory support). I put the latest shift down much more to Vince Cable's good showing.
My guess is that quite a lot of Labour and Tory voters are thinking of voting Liberal Democrat, on the basis that a Hung Parliament's the only way they'll get Vince Cable into the Treasury (which is smart thinking). That's what's cutting the Labour vote at the moment, the Tory vote already being close to its irreducible minimum anyway.
People shouldn't underestimate the importance of Mr Cable in this election. A lot of voters like the look of him, both as a person and as a potential Chancellor, regardless of party, and they can see that an outright victory by the Tories (or Labour) would keep him out of office. Whereas a hung Parliament would make it quite possible that he would be part of a coalition. And there will be tactical voting aimed at achieving this, I would guess, which will hurt both big parties in the places where it is feasible.
Then came another problem for the Tories, one which would once have plunged them into a fiery furnace of controversy and interrogation. This problem is called Chris Grayling. Mr Grayling, the pleasant but somehow unimpressive Shadow Home Secretary, told a think tank gathering last week that he believed Christians who run bed and breakfasts should have 'the right to decide who does and who doesn't come into their own home'. He was commenting on controversy about a Christian couple who declined to accommodate a homosexual couple in their B&B.
I'm inclined to agree with what Mr Grayling told the think tank. The B&Bs I've stayed in have been people's homes, in which I have occupied a room, on much closer terms with the owners than I would ever be in a hotel. The owners would seem to me be entitled to take a rather more personal view of the behaviour of their guests than a hotel manager would.
There are still people, shocking though it may be to the staff of the BBC, who think that extramarital sex of all kinds is wrong. But that's by the way in this discussion. The important thing is that the law of this country, or rather the law of the EU, says different. The Sexual Orientation Regulations clearly forbid B&B owners to decline to accept homosexual couples as their guests. And, here's the clincher, the Tory Parliamentary Party voted for this law. And Mr Grayling was one of those who did.
What's more, he's now been compelled to grovel in public to the Pink Lobby, and has issued the following statement: 'Any suggestion that I am against gay rights is wholly wrong - it is a matter of record that I voted for civil partnerships. I also voted in favour of the legislation that prohibited bed and breakfast owners from discriminating against gay people. However, this is a difficult area and on Wednesday I made comments which reflected my view that we must be sensitive to the genuinely held principles of faith groups in this country. But the law is now clear on this issue, I am happy with it and would not wish to see it changed.'
The problem with this statement is that his attempt to claim the need for 'sensitivity' as his get-out for his taped remarks doesn't work. He now says that such sensitivity should be against the law. He knew that when he made his remarks, so what was he playing at?
It may be difficult, but as far as Mr Grayling is concerned, the law is clear. And he personally voted for the laws which banned such sensitivity. As a result, I can say with certainty that I have no idea what Mr Grayling actually believes about this subject. But I do know - with equal certainty - what he has done and will do about it. That is to say, he will act according to principles of 'Equality and Diversity', alias Political Correctness. And anyone who thinks that he, and the rest of the Tory Party, have a secret plan to escape from PC if they get into office is due for a big disappointment. Even if they wanted to, they couldn't, as these are EU rules (Equal Treatment Framework Directive, approved by Council of Ministers 2000 AD) and we are bound to impose them unless we leave, which of course the Tories won't do.
Now, this story is actually very difficult for the Tories and Mr Grayling, since it goes to the heart of what they are now about, as opposed to what they like to pretend to be to their conservative supporters. It also gives the left an opportunity to indulge their fantasy about how the Tories are deep down the same old Thatcherites as before. This is another version of the joint fantasy of stupid leftists and stupid Tories that Anthony Blair was 'right wing'. This folly was invincible precisely because it was idiotic, and those who believed it were so helplessly gullible that they weren't open to facts or reason.
Tory traditional voters would like Mr Grayling to stick to his guns (he won't, of course). Quite possibly, Mr Cameron hopes that some Tory voters will think Mr Grayling's words betoken a 'secret agenda' of real conservatism, the fantasy that keeps so many of them from deserting.
Stonewall and the rest of the sexual liberation lobby want Mr Grayling a) to abase himself in a permanent state of self-criticism lasting for the rest of the campaign, and b) be fired from the Shadow Cabinet after he has been sufficiently pelted with slime.
In any of the last four elections, this incident would have assumed huge proportions, especially on the BBC. But it hasn't. It has run in the left-wing press, and has been mentioned by the BBC. But it has not got above about 10,000 feet, and shows little sign( so far) of becoming an officially-sanctioned BBC controversy (unlike the non-controversy of business support for cutting NI, with which they dealt obsessively last week).
If you are really interested in politics, I advise you to watch out for more of this sort of thing. And I would urge those who haven't, to read 'The Cameron Delusion' so that they can see what's actually going on.
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