Britannia Radio

01 May 2010 11:41 PM

The Charge Sheet against the Tories

Many people believe that the Conservative Party is significantly different from the Labour and Liberal Democratic Parties. This is no longer true. It has, especially under Mr Cameron, become a copy of those parties on all the issues about which its own voters care most. I go into this in far more detail than is possible here, in my new book 'The Cameron Delusion' ( This is a revised paperback edition of 'The Broken Compass') . I recommend this to any readers who wish to follow these arguments further. But here, for everyone, is a concise guide to the reasons why proper patriotic conservatives should not support the Tory Party at this election. I don't and won't offer any advice on how else they should vote -except to urge them not to vote for the BNP . I would also stress that there is no duty to vote when you are offered an insulting lack of choice. In fact, I would stress that there is an important right not to vote, which sometimes needs to be used against politicians who treat us with contempt. I will not be voting in this election. What follows is a short summary of the main reasons why the Tory party has forfeited the trust - and ought to forfeit the votes - of its traditional supporters.

1. The original sin - the Tories and the EU

It is important to remember that the Tory Party took Britain into the EU in 1972, having first tried to do so 10 years before. Also that it backed a 'Yes' vote in the 1975 referendum on staying in the then Common Market, that it supported huge extensions of EU power such as the Single European Act and the Maastricht Treaty, not to mention the disastrous Exchange Rate Mechanism which virtually destroyed the last Tory government. But you must also remember that Margaret Thatcher was removed as Prime Minister and party leader in a Tory internal putsch - precisely because she had - having previously not really understood what was going on - finally discovered the threat which the EU posed. It was after her speech saying "No! No! No!" to EU rule that Geoffrey Howe and Michael Heseltine began their manoeuvres against her.

Since then the party has taken a position it calls 'Euroscepticism' which can be crudely summed up as 'pretending to dislike the EU whilst actually accepting it".

David Cameron's first political job, in his gap year, was as researcher to a family friend, his Godfather, the dripping wet Tory MP, the late Tim Rathbone, who espoused fashionably left-wing causes of all kinds, had 'advanced' (ie liberal) views on drugs and who was so pro-EU that he was eventually expelled from the Tory Party by William Hague in 1997, for supporting a strange body called 'The Pro-Euro Conservative Party'.

(Much of Mr Cameron's work for Mr Rathbone was on the matter of drugs. This has always been an important subject for the Tory leader.Mr Cameron, as well as refusing to answer questions on his past use of illegal drugs, endorsed a Home Affairs Committee report calling for the weakening of the drug laws. This was his only politically significant act as an MP before becoming Tory leader. He did not have to do this. It was a matter of choice. One of his Tory colleagues on the same committee, Angela Watkinson MP, refused to sign this nasty document.)

Mr Cameron himself has repeatedly stated that he favours continued British membership of the EU. As Christopher Booker explains in his book 'The Great Deception', such membership is not a static position. Members are under unending pressure to achieve the 'ever-closer union' which is the stated purpose of the EU, in the original Treaty of Rome. The Lisbon Treaty itself, by turning the EU into a shadow state with embassies, a President, a Foreign Minister and a 'legal personality' takes this process much further.

So does the steady salami-slicing of the United Kingdom's power of veto, which means that this country can now increasingly be outvoted, and forced to adopt measures which do not suit it. It is all very well saying that Britain will 'never' join the Euro or adopt Continental style criminal justice procedures (Eg, no juries, long pre-trial detention, examining magistrates, effective abolition of Habeas Corpus and presumption of innocence, national police force, Identity Cards) , or abolish passport controls with other EU countries ( as almost all EU members have now done under the revolutionary Schengen Agreement). But it is impossible for any country in the EU to be sure that these changes will not be required during future negotiations, as the price for hanging on to (say) what remains of our famous rebate.

Already the EU's role in our government is huge, but camouflaged and often denied by the authorities. Some examples: the current nightmare over rubbish collection is caused almost entirely by the EU's Landfill Directive. This has a uniquely bad effect on Britain, which had successfully used landfill for the disposal of garbage for many years. It odes not affect other EU countries, which didn't make such large use of landfill. Now we face huge fines if we continue to do so. This is the reason for the multiple bins and fortnightly collections which everyone hates. And as long as we stay in the EU, nothing can be done about it.

The closure of smaller Post Offices could be halted by increased state subsidies to keep them going. But EU competition rules forbid us to do this.

The panic over BSE in beef was made far worse by EU bans in exports, and by absurd EU safety regulations which destroyed many smaller slaughterhouses. Once again, our own government had no control over this at all.

Our real Supreme Court is now the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg, which can overrule Acts of Parliament. Mostly it will not, because an estimated 80% of British legislation is in fact EU directives, rewritten as Acts of Parliament or Statutory Instruments, and rammed through by the government whips because they cannot be substantially amended (let alone rejected) anyway.

We are frequently dragged into needless trade wars with the USA, one of our main trading partners, because the EU now negotiates with the USA 'on our behalf', and our concerns are overridden by those of Germany and France.

Perhaps most crucially of all, we no longer control migration from EU countries, which means that Tory promises to limit immigration are dishonest and hollow. Observant travellers returning from abroad will have noticed that for many years there has been no special entry queue for British subjects. This is because there is no such thing as a British Passport. That bilious passbook you carry is an EU passport, and you have no more right to enter our country than does (for instance) a retired Lithuanian KGB colonel. It would actually be illegal, under EU rules, for us to give priority entry to British subjects. That is how bad it is, and how much sovereignty we have lost. Mr Cameron has no plans to get it back.

The Tory response to this problem was twofold. The first move (designed to lull 'sceptical' Tory MPs into supporting Mr Cameron) was for the Tory Party to withdraw its Euro MPs from one political alliance, and put them in another, supposedly 'Eurosceptic' (there are no real Eurosceptics anywhere else in the EU, where most countries have in recent years been invaded by Germany, or have been dictatorships on their own account, and so regard the EU as the lesser of two evils, so this has led to various embarrassing problems) .

The second was....

2. The Pledge on Lisbon

This is an instance when Mr Cameron posed as a critic of the EU's expansion. Then he collapsed in a matter of days, as I believe he would do if he were Prime Minister confronted with the power of the EU at a Brussels summit. They might (as they sometimes do with defeated British premiers, to soothe their bruises and their pride) provide him with some sop that he could spin as a 'triumph' to a Euro-ignorant British media. But he would be beaten because the only real options are a) leave or b) stay in and be absorbed.

My view, and I think it is borne out by the facts, is that Mr Cameron - an undoubtedly intelligent man, well-educated in the ways of politics - knew from the start that his pledge to hold a referendum on Lisbon was worthless, unless he meant by it that he would hold a referendum even *after* the treaty had been ratified. He also knew that a post-ratification referendum would have been the thing the British establishment greatly fears - a vote on Britain's continued membership of the EU.See what you think:

I'm grateful to Channel Four News's fact-checking unit FactCheck for many of the facts that follow.

Here's what the Tory leader said on 4th November 2009, when he abandoned his pledge at a press conference in Westminster which I attended, and at which Mr Cameron and his aides looked worried and shifty, and at which the political Press Corps, normally deferential and friendly to the Tory leader, treated him with some scepticism:

"I said we would have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and if it hadn't been ratified we would have had that referendum.

"But I did not promise a referendum come what may because once the Lisbon Treaty is the law, there's nothing anyone can do about it and I'm not going to treat people like fools and offer a referendum that has no effect."

he then came up with various empty threats to be tougher in future, which have been largely forgotten since , because they were so absurd and impracticable, something Mr Cameron also must have known when he set them out.

Mr Cameron had earlier been pretty stringent towards Gordon Brown in Parliament, over his (Brown's) failure to hold referendum on this matter "The truth is that all of us in the House promised a referendum. We have the courage of our convictions and are sticking to that promise. The Prime Minister has lost his courage..." (5 March 2008)

["Gordon Brown] does not believe in giving people genuine choice and control over their lives. If he did, he would give the country a referendum on the EU constitution." (14 May 2008) .

Now, by the time these statements were made it was pretty obvious ( even if it hadn't been before) that the Lisbon Treaty was on course for ratification well before any likely general election. In my view, this was plain from the moment Mr Cameron made his pledge, and see below, there is a suggestion that the Tories knew this too.

And, as FactCheck point out :"In February 2008 during Prime Minister's questions, Brown repeatedly asked Cameron what he would do. Cameron didn't reply, pressing Brown instead about TV debates - although admittedly, this took place at Prime Minister's, rather than Opposition Leader's question time. (This is a joke. There is no Opposition Leader's Question Time, though in my view it wouldn't be a bad idea).

Cameron had also said that if the Treaty was ratified he "wouldn't let it rest". he told Andrew Marr last summer that: "What I've said is if it goes through and it's ratified by everybody and implemented we won't let matters rest there."

And then, what was originally said? : In a noisy article for the Murdoch daily, the Sun, he invoked Winston Churchill :

"On Monday The Sun's image of Gordon Brown sticking two fingers up to the British public was provocative. But it was right.

What a difference to Churchill. When he made that salute, it inspired this country to wipe the scourge of fascism from Europe...

"...Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations."

Pretty unequivocal, no? And certainly, in my view, intended to be read as such. There was , however, a little extra, which Mr Cameron's PR Squealers have used as an escape clause . He went on:"No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum."

There, you see. That word 'ratified' might possibly be taken to mean that, once it is ratified ( as of course it was, and in my view he knew perfectly well it would be) it was too late. Well, in that case,. what was the guarantee worth in the first place? Was it intended to mislead? The words may well have been inserted as an escape clause. But were they meant to be read , especially by readers of the 'Sun' as such? I don't think so. I don't think Mr Cameron thought so either. He reaped an advantage from appearing to be tougher than he was. He does this all the time. He shouldn't get away with it.

3. Education

Mr Cameron's most significant act on education has been to abandon the Tory Party's lingering pretence that it might one day bring back selection in the state school system. Why is this so important?

The battle isn't really about education but about the socialist desire to make us all equal. There is not the slightest evidence that comprehensive schools provide better education than a selective system of grammars, secondary moderns and technical schools. All the evidence, in fact, points the other way. Grammar schools are better for those who go to them, and in selective systems pupils at Secondary Modern schools do no worse than ( and sometimes better than) those in comprehensives.

The battle is about politics. Comprehensive schools, (the term and the idea were invented by a civil servant called Graham Savage) were always intended to be egalitarian. Communist countries invariably have comprehensive education (though there are certain schools, available only to the elite, which are secretly selective, much as there are here now). Savage admitted pretty much from the start that there would be a loss of educational quality in return for the increased 'equality'. The only question was, how much of a loss? The likely damage was always underestimated by the comprehensive fanatics, who had little idea of what they were launching or of how badly it would work in British cities.

That is why Anthony Crosland thought that the abolition of the grammar schools would be a great advance for socialism, far more potent, by the late 1950s, than the washed-up idea of nationalisation.

Even so, the Tories, already going soft on egalitarianism, failed to fight it. Too many of them used the private schools, and didn't care. Margaret Thatcher famously closed even more grammar schools, during the Heath Government, than Crosland had closed under Wilson.

But it wasn't until the arrival of the super-liberal David Cameron (who makes a point of saying that he wants to send his children to state schools, normally a left-wing politician's boast. So why does he make it?) that the Tory Party officially and finally turned its back on the idea that grammar schools might be brought back. The row caused the resignation from the front bench of Graham Brady MP, who said :"Grammar schools in selective areas are exactly the motor that does drive social mobility more effectively than comprehensive areas."

He praised the results from schools in his constituency of Altrincham & Sale West.

"And that's delivered by a wholly selective education system - it's one that educated me and it's something I've been fighting for all of my life and something I've campaigned consistently for, for 10 years in Parliament.

"Over the last couple of weeks, very sadly I've come to the conclusion that if I'm going to be free to continue to speak out in favour of selective education and grammar schools then I have to leave the front bench so that I'm not bound by collective responsibility," .

He was reprimanded by the Conservative Party's chief whip and told to stick to his Europe brief.

Mr Cameron declared that the party could not continue to debate whether to introduce more grammar schools.

He wrote: "The reason for this is to allow us to focus on the real issues in our secondary schools - namely, giving head teachers the power to ensure discipline, the need to encourage more new, good schools, the importance of setting by ability, and saving our special schools.

"These are issues which affect the children who go to the thousands of secondary schools up and down the country. They are also issues where we have clear differences with Labour."

He added that it had never been Conservative policy to undermine existing grammar schools. But since there are so few of them, and most parts of the country have none, that made little difference to the many thousands of parents who would like to see grammar schools near them.

Mr Brady was reprimanded after he supplied data to the Times which indicated that in areas with no selective education fewer pupils get five or more GCSEs at grade A*-C including English and maths. .

Mr Cameron's MPs voted under his leadership for the Labour Party's 2006 Education and Inspections Act, in which Section 39 bans the extension of selection by ability in state schools. This makes it very hard for the Tory Party to return to support for selection in future. Do not expect them to do so.

4. Hug a Hoodie

Is Mr Cameron soft on crime? Yes. He never actually said we should hug hoodies. But what he actually did say shows that he views crime not as wickedness but as the result of social conditions - the standard liberal elite position which has led, year by year, to the weakening of the police,, the courts and the prisons - and the growth of crime and disorder. The headline wasn't unjust. He really did say "I believe that inside those boundaries we have to show a lot more love. We have to think about the emotional quality of the work we do with young people."

Here's the speech. Read it yourself and see if it looks to you like the words of a man determined to re-establish the rule of law on the streets with authority and decision. True, there are bits that look tough. But the core of it is all for 'understanding' and excuse-making. :

"One of the worst aspects of social injustice that people face is the fear and suffering caused by crime and disorder.In many communities, it's doing more to wreck the sense of general well-being than just about anything else.Everywhere I go, it seems to be the same story.People frightened to go out for a drink on a Friday or Saturday night because town centres turn into war zones.Neighbourhoods wrecked by vandalism, graffiti and a less tangible, but perhaps more damaging, sense of menace in the air.The complaints are identical.Young people are out of control.There's nothing for them to do.Why can't their parents do their job properly?

Today I want to talk about how we solve these problems for the long term.Too often, the debate is about short-term solutions: ASBOs, curfews and criminal justice.Of course, we need these things to protect the public from anti-social behaviour today.But my aim is a society where we need them less and less.The long-term answer to anti-social behaviour is a pro-social society where we really do get to grips with the causes of crime.Family breakdown, drugs, children in care, educational underachievement - these provide the backdrop to too many lives and can become the seed bed of crime.

Let me start by saying something about a part of the world I know well.You heard earlier from Femi, the star of Kidulthood.That film is set in my own neighbourhood in London - North Kensington, Ladbroke Grove, Harrow Road.It's a very different Notting Hill from the one you see in Richard Curtis films.The film gives a disturbing insight into the pressures that teenagers round there are under.The fact is, it's frightening for a man in a suit to walk down certain streets at night.But think how much more frightening it must be for a child.Kidulthood is not really about bad kids.Even the villain is clearly suffering from neglect and the absence of love. The characters are simply children in circumstances none of us would want to grow up in.

Their reaction to those circumstances is not good.But it is natural.Crime, drugs, underage sex - this behaviour is wrong, but simply blaming the kids who get involved in it doesn't really get us much further.It is what the culture around them encourages.Imagine a housing estate with a little park next to it. The estate has "no ballgames" and "no skateboarding" notices all over it. The park is just an empty space. And then imagine you are 14 years old, and you live in a flat four storeys up. It's the summer holidays and you don't have any pocket money.That's your life. What will you get up to today?Take in a concert, perhaps? Go to a football game? Go to the seaside?No - you're talking £30 or £50 to do any of that. You can't kick a ball around on your own doorstep.So what do you do?You hang around in the streets, and you are bored, bored, bored.And you look around you. Who isn't bored? Who isn't hanging around because they don't have any money? Who has the cars, the clothes, the power?

As Femi's character in the film found, even if you're not interested in crime, it's difficult to avoid the culture.Of course, not everyone who grows up in a deprived neighbourhood turns to crime - just as not everyone who grows up in a rich neighbourhood stays on the straight and narrow.Individuals are responsible for their actions - and every individual has the choice between doing right and doing wrong.But there are connections between circumstances and behaviour.It's easy to feel pessimistic when you see that film.But I think that's the wrong response.We can't just give up in despair.We've got to believe we can do something about the terrible problems of youth crime and disorder.We've got be optimistic about young people, otherwise we'll forever be dealing with the short-term symptoms instead of the long-term causes.And I think there are three things that are vital if we're to make all our communities safe and give every young person the chance they deserve.

The first thing is to recognise that we'll never get the answers right unless we understand what's gone wrong.Understanding the background, the reasons, the causes.It doesn't mean excusing crime but it will help us tackle it.In that context I want to say something about what is, for some, a vivid symbol of what has gone wrong with young people in Britain today: hoodies. In May last year, hoodies became political.The Bluewater shopping centre banned them, and the Prime Minister said he backed the ban. I actually think it's quite right for politicians to debate these matters.But debating the symptoms rather than the causes won't get us very far.Because the fact is that the hoodie is a response to a problem, not a problem in itself.

We - the people in suits - often see hoodies as aggressive, the uniform of a rebel army of young gangsters.But, for young people, hoodies are often more defensive than offensive.They're a way to stay invisible in the street.In a dangerous environment the best thing to do is keep your head down, blend in, don't stand out.For some, the hoodie represents all that's wrong about youth culture in Britain today.For me, adult society's response to the hoodie shows how far we are from finding the long-term answers to put things right. Camila Bhatmanghelidj, of the visionary social enterprise, Kids Company, understands.In her new book, Shattered Lives, there is an account of a girl whose pastime it was to "steal smiles", as she put it.To viciously hurt people in the street who she saw smiling. It's the only thing that would give her pleasure.Of course we should condemn her behaviour. But that's the easy part.Because if you knew that that girl had suffered years of abuse and neglect from her family, and years of institutional indifference from the social services……you would begin to understand that there is more to life on the streets than simple crime and simple punishment.

That girl is getting better now, thanks to the deep understanding and patient work of Kids Company. She still struggles - Kids Company don't do miracles. But she's not offending any more and she's just completed a course with the Prince's Trust.So when you see a child walking down the road, hoodie up, head down, moody, swaggering, dominating the pavement - think what has brought that child to that moment.If the first thing we have to do is understand what's gone wrong, the second thing is to realise that putting things right is not just about law enforcement.It's about the quality of the work we do with young people.It's about relationships. It's about trust.Above all, it's about emotion and emotional development.

Of course we should never excuse teenage crime, or tolerate the police ignoring it.We need tough sanctions, protection and punishment.And if the phrase "social justice" is to be meaningful, it has to be about justice, as well as compassion and kindness. It has to involve a sense of cause and consequence - of just rewards and just deserts.One of the most important things we can teach our children is a sense of justice.Too many young people have no understanding of consequences - of the idea that actions have effects.This is bad enough for us - wider society, who have to suffer the crime and cost of delinquency. But it is truly disastrous for them - the children themselves. Young criminals became older criminals, and they end up with wrecked lives, wrecked relationships, in prison, on drugs - either dead or with such a bad start in life they never really recover.So we have to have justice - we have to fight crime firmly and completely.Justice is about setting boundaries, and stepping over those boundaries should have painful consequences.But that's not the whole answer.To build a safe and civilised society for the long term, we have to look at what goes on inside the boundaries.If the consequence of stepping over the line should be painful, then staying within the bounds of good behaviour should be pleasant.

And I believe that inside those boundaries we have to show a lot more love.We have to think about the emotional quality of the work we do with young people.That's where you, the social entrepreneurs, the voluntary organisations - the people doing the patient, painstaking work on the ground with young people - come in. If the police and criminal justice system guard the boundaries of acceptable behaviour - patrolling the territory beyond the pale - then community groups populate the interior.If the police stand for sanctions and penalties, you stand for love.And not a soppy love! I don't see anyone soppy here.But it is about relationships.It is about emotional security.It is about love. It seems sometimes that when it comes to these difficult social issues, we're obsessed with measuring the quantity of inputs.How much money.How many more staff.Whether targets are met.But if we're really serious about the issues, we should be measuring quality as well as quantity.What is the quality of the care and support we give young people?We sometimes see young people described as "feral", as if they have turned wild. But no child is ever really feral. No child is beyond recovery, beyond civilisation. That girl who stole smiles, who suffered so much, and who made others suffer so much, is getting better now. It is an achievement that the police, or prison, or government itself rarely manages.

The brilliance of Kids Company, or the East Side Young Leaders Academy, or the other fantastic charities and social enterprises like them is that they can provide the love that is needed to begin to restore a young person to health and happiness.And that brings me to the third point I wanted to make today.To tackle youth crime and disorder for the long term, we will have to place real trust in the hands of the people and organisations that understand the challenges young people face, and can offer the quality of care and emotional support they need. We've heard a lot over the past few years about a partnership between government and the voluntary sector.Too often, the reality is that for "partnership" you can read "takeover."If we're serious about the social sector doing more, then government and the public sector has to learn to let go.To let the social sector and social entrepreneurs take wings and soar. It has to say to the youth club teaching kids excluded from school……the drug rehab with the best record of helping young people get clean and stay clean……or the faith-based charity bringing discipline and purpose to the chaotic lives of parents who've lost control...Our record is lousy; yours is great - so you should be in charge.Over the past few years, we've seen the opposite - a massive expansion in the state sector.That's especially true in the Home Office.In the end, it comes down to a question of values.There are two values at the heart of modern Conservatism.Trusting people, and sharing responsibility.And it's the intersection of those values that provides the right way forward.We want to share responsibility for tackling youth crime and anti-social behaviour because we believe that we're all in this together.That we'll never get to grips with the problem if we leave it all to the police and the criminal justice system.

But sharing responsibility doesn't mean a fuzzy compromise where no-one is really accountable.It means really handing over power.Because we also believe in trusting people, we want to let them get on with what they do best. It's exactly the approach I've taken in developing an idea I put forward nearly a year ago…the idea of a national school leaver programme.I'm passionate about its potential to bring our country together and give every young person in Britain a sense of purpose, optimism and belonging.But I didn't sit down in my office and write a blueprint for how it would work.I brought together the real experts, leaders in youth work from over twenty different voluntary organisations.We discussed my proposal. They gave their views.And now they're in the driving seat.A new charity has been set up, called the Young Adult Trust.It has adapted my initial suggestions.And a pilot programme will soon be underway.I've played my part, helping to secure funding and bringing the right people together.But I'm not pretending I've got the answers.My job is to give a lead, not to take control.

So today I don't just want to encourage you personally in the fantastic work that you do.I want you to know that a government I lead will give you the freedom to do it.Your work in the community, among the most difficult and the most marginalised of our children, is a central component of improving our society's sense of general well-being.Of course we need to be tough on crime and tough on youth offending.But we must also follow the three principles I've set out today.Understanding what's gone wrong in order to put things right…Giving priority to the emotional quality of the work we do with young people…And giving real power to the real experts who can make the biggest difference...If we follow these principles, if we approach this challenge with a sense of optimism and hope...I know we can make our country a safe and civilised place for everyone to live."

I might add that the Tory Party is responsible for some of the worst damage to the police - the Police and Criminal Evidence Act of 1984, whose liberal codes of practice are the source of so much of the famous paperwork which now takes up so much police time, and the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, which introduced the idea of deliberately dishonest sentences (the criminal only actually serves about half of the sentence pronounced by the judge). They have never regretted either of these laws, nor do they propose to scrap them. They are rooted in a fundamentally wrong attitude to crime, which proper conservatives view as wrongdoing in need of deterrence and punishment. Those, like me, who believe that the death penalty represents the best deterrent of severe violence, can hope for nothing from the Tories, who view such a penalty with liberal horror.

5. The Alleged 'War' on Single Mothers , and the real war on married parents

A bit like the war on drugs, a fantasy of pro-drug campaigners, , this so-called war on single mothers never took place. In fact, the British state has for nearly 50 years been waging a merciless war against marriage, and those who want to make a go of it. The 1968 Divorce Law Reform Act, passed by the Wilson Labour government, made a marriage easier to break up than a hire purchase agreement.

One party could from then on simply refuse to abide by the vows he or she had made. If the other party wanted to keep the marriage going, the 'irretrievable breakdown' rule meant that he or she could be over-ridden after a certain amount of time had elapsed. And if that party tried to stay in the family home, he or she could be dragged out by the force of the state - backed by the threat of prison. The effect of this was no-fault divorce on demand.

This enormous revolution - a huge increase in the power of the state, a huge blow to private life - was followed (this is detailed in my book 'The Abolition of Britain' ) by a series of court judgements in which the concept of 'fault' was wholly removed from decisions on what then happened to the family home and to the children. It is amazing, given what can happen to his assets and to his children if the marriage goes wrong, that any man or woman ( and it is usually the men who lose in these legal battles) still embarks on marriage at all.

Actually, many don't. Marriage is in steep decline in this country, and huge numbers of children either don't have two married parents in the first place, or are the victims of divorce. The effects on the rising generation, though never properly researched, are plainly disastrous, especially on young boys. Together with illegal drugs and drink, the absence of fathers from the lives of boys is probably one of the main forces driving crime disorder in schools and on the streets. Any serious conservative party would address this by re-examining the divorce laws.

Mr Cameron wouldn't dare address this and does two other things instead.. First there is the usual gimmick , designed to fool those who want to believe the is really a conservative (similar gimmicks are his departure from the European People's Party, a useless symbolic gesture which has no effect on the power of the EU over Britain; another is the 'Free Schools' scheme, where instead of building new grammar schools, he tells parents to build and staff their own new schools, which - once they have spent years of their lives finding buildings, hiring teachers, getting planning permission, battling with health and safety rules etc - are forbidden to be academically selective).

In this case the gimmick takes the form of Mr Cameron (very reluctantly) proposing a small tax-break for married couples (and, to be PC, civil partners too) . Nobody believes this will have any effect on behaviour. Meanwhile, he chose a meeting organised by a left-wing pressure group called the National Family and Parenting Institute to make a declaration that the alleged Tory 'war on single mothers' was over and its weapons 'put beyond use'.

This is the real Cameron, anxious to please the Left and win their friendship. In fact, there never was such a war. The 'war' was always a fantasy of the far left, which actively dislikes marriage and is happy to see it replaced by fatherless households, and which spent years trying to make unmarried motherhood more socially acceptable for that reason. Tory politicians may once have used a little rhetoric to criticise single motherhood - though now this is one of those things that cannot be criticised.

But they never attacked the payments and housing subsidies which have since the 1960s encouraged huge numbers of young women to set up fatherless households. Who can blame these young women? I don't. If the state will pay for this arrangement, why not accept it? And who could now withdraw those payments, on which so many households are wholly dependent? But what exactly would be wrong with admitting that this policy had been a mistake, and saying that, nine months hence, while existing payments would be honoured until the children were grown up, no more such households would be subsidised in future?

6. Political Correctness

There is a lot of political correctness - a fundamentalist left-wing campaign against Christian and conservative morals and ideas - in the Cameron Tory Party. No doubt there are a lot of people in Britain who favour PC, and want to see more of it. But they have the Labour party and the Liberal Democrats to speak for them. What of the people who dislike and mistrust PC? If the Tories will not speak for them, in what way are they a conservative party?

PC hates patriotism, despises Christian sexual morality, portrays as 'phobias' and bigotry the views of millions, classifies as 'discrimination' the conservative moral choices of others. Why should it then have the sympathy of the Tory Party? Yet it does.

This is a revolution largely of Mr Cameron's personal making. The issue of the famous Clause 28, which banned the teaching in schools of the idea that homosexual relationships were equal to marriage, is most interesting. Once, this was Tory policy. Under Mr Cameron it is not merely not policy. It is forbidden to continue to support it. Last week, the Tory parliamentary candidate for North Ayrshire and Arran, was abruptly dropped . You may not be aware of this because a largely Cameron-supporting media have not given it any prominence (Imagine if Gordon Brown dumped a candidate in this fashion) . Why was Mr Lardner dumped? (You might also ask by what authority, but that would raise another interesting question of how much real freedom MPs and candidates now have under our law).

Here are Mr Lardner's offending words:" "I will always support the rights of homosexuals to be treated within concepts of (common-sense) equality and respect, and defend their rights to choose to live the way they want in private, but I will not accept that their behaviour is 'normal' or encourage children to indulge in it."

Mr Lardner said that he had agreed with the decision by Margaret Thatcher's Government to outlaw the promotion of homosexuality under Section 28 of the Local Government Act 1986 — one of the most controversial legislative measures in recent years.

He went on: "Why should Christian churches be forced by the Government to employ homosexuals as 'ministers' against all that the Bible teaches? They are being forced by the Government to betray their mission — would the Equality and Human Rights Commission be fined for refusing a job to Nick Griffin?

"Christians (and most of the population) believe homosexuality to be somewhere between 'unfortunate' and simply 'wrong' and they should not be penalised for politely saying so — good manners count too, of course. The current 'law' is wrong and must be overturned in the interests of freedom as well as Christian values."

The Tory chairman in Scotland, Andrew Fulton, said :" “The views expressed by Philip Lardner, the candidate for North Ayrshire and Arran, are deeply offensive and unacceptable and as a result he has been suspended as a member of the Conservative party. We therefore do not support Mr Lardner’s candidacy in the North Ayrshire and Arran constituency. These views have no place in the modern Conservative party.”

To his great credit, the Tory blogger Tim Montgomerie has objected to the treatment of Mr Lardner, saying:"I see no evidence for hatefulness in Mr Lardner's remarks, even though I disagree with his choice of words. Although he's probably wrong to say "most of the population" share his views, they are shared by many conservative Christians and people of other faiths. His suspension by the Scottish Conservative Party seems a disproportionate response."

Mr Cameron has said nothing personally about this that I can find. But I am sure Mr Lardner's removal meets with his approval. If you doubt it, read his exchange on the subject of sex education in church schools with Jeremy Paxman in an interview on 23rd April:

Jeremy Paxman: "You're in favour of faith schools being able to teach sex education as they like".

David Cameron :"Not as they like. That's not right. What we voted for was what the government suggested in the end, which is proper sex education..."

Jeremy Paxman: "Should they be free to teach that homosexuality is wrong, abortion is wrong, contraception is wrong?"

David Cameron: "No, and the government and us discussed this and came up with a good idea , which is to say that we wanted a clearer path of sexual education across all schools, but faith schools were not given any exemption but they were able to reflect some of their own faith in the way that this was taught

But no , you must teach proper lessons in terms of gay equality and also combat homophobic bullying in schools, I think that's extremely important."

Note the despotic use of the word 'must' . Why 'must' they? This is supposedly a free society, and if schools don't want to teach a certain moral view, why should they be forced to?. And also note the contention (which I personally think is based on nothing) that 'homophobic bullying' which (like all bullying) I deplore and wish to stop, is in any way combated by teaching lessons in 'gay equality'. How would that work? Yet Mr Cameron swallows the homosexual lobby's view without question.

7. Mr Cameron's expenses

Why does David Cameron escape criticism for his huge claims for expenses? Partly because, when he held a constituency meeting to discuss the matter. packed with his supporters, it took place at lunchtime when people with jobs could not go, and also because the national media for the most part did not know it was going on. (I did know, as I live nearby, and was there, which is how I know) .

For years he claimed roughly £20,000 a year, close to the maximum, for mortgage interest on a very large property in a village in his Oxfordshire constituency. Mr Cameron is not, to put it mildly, a poor or badly-paid man. He doesn't even pay school fees, as he has got his children into an oversubscribed and unusually good Church of England primary near (but not that near) his London home. Thus he can say he sends his children to state schools (to please the Left) while not actually subjecting them to the sort of schools most parents are offered by the state. Remind you of anyone?

That substantial home is only 70 miles from his Witney seat. Many of his constituents commute from there to London. If he really needs a base in Witney, why does it have to be a spacious detached house in a pretty hamlet, worth around £1 million? What was wrong with a small rented flat? And why do we have to help him pay for it, when most of us have only one home of our own, and are less wealthy than he? Mr Cameron, stern with so many Tory MPs he didn't much like anyway, was much less stern with himself. And the liberal-dominated media's love affair with him( itself very significant) meant he got away with it, or has so far. Was this a good thing?

8. What are my motives?

Since I began this campaign for real conservatism, a number of silly stories have been spread about me, intended to damage me. I don't exactly know who spread them, but I have traced one of them to a Tory MP who is a keen supporter of Mr Cameron. I have written to him about this, but he has not replied. The first is that I am somehow still a Marxist ( a position I abandoned in 1975, when Mr Cameron was eight years old, and have repudiated with particular force since my experience of living in the USSR in the early 1990s) ; that I am motivated by disappointed spite because I was not selected for the Tory seat of Kensington and Chelsea in 1999. I did formally apply for this nomination. But I never intended or expected to be selected, and was hoping only to criticise Michael Portillo, the ultra-liberal who I knew was certain to win the nomination; that I am motivated by personal dislike for Mr Cameron. Not so. When I've met him in private I have found him likeable and charming. I just disagree strongly with him about what this country needs. Only one senior Tory has been concerned enough to meet me and discuss my criticisms frankly - the Shadow Education Secretary Michael Gove, whom I have known for many years and for whom I have much respect even though we disagree on many matters. Friendship can transcend disagreement, and disagreement doesn't have to be personal. Please don't listen to these silly smears. Read the arguments and see if they make sense. That's all I ask.

Conclusions

There are many other issues on which I could write here - especially the Tories' slavish support for Labour's idealistic and foolish foreign wars. Is it because they are so embarrassed that they supported abject surrender to a real terror threat in Northern Ireland, or because they know they have sold the country to the EU, that they thoughtlessly back each of these dishonest and doomed adventures in the hope of seeming patriotic? I don't know, but when an opposition was needed to Iraq and Afghanistan, they were not it.

But there's no time to say it all, and those who want the full indictment are asked to turn to my books 'The Abolition of Britain', 'The Abolition of Liberty' and 'The Cameron Delusion', in which over more than ten years I have analysed the way in which left-wing ideas have undermined and demolished so much that was good about this country. It is possible to repair it, and that is what I want us to do (in response to the silly people who claim I have no 'positive' ideas). The battle to restore what has been destroyed is not necessarily lost. But it will be lost for many years to come, if Mr Cameron manages to succeed in his project, of destroying the only remaining conservative force in British politics. His success will be complete if he wins this election.

Well, who should I vote for, then? You never say

I never say because it doesn't make much difference, and I'm happy to leave it to you. Voting's not compulsory anyway - yet. No serious party is on offer, which supports conservative ideas. The key thing to recognise about this election is that you cannot sack the government. Whoever wins, you will get the same thing. But you can sack the Opposition. Thanks to Labour's meltdown, we are in one of the most exciting and fluid moments of modern British history. The two old parties, which have for so long betrayed their supporters, are held together only by string, chewing-gum and millionaire or union donations. Labour are likely to be replaced, quite soon, by the Liberal Democrats, much more open than Labour about their anti-British, pro-EU and politically correct ideas.

Why shouldn't we then take the chance to replace the Tories with a proper pro-British, politically incorrect, genuinely conservative party, and at last put before the electorate - at the next election - the great issues on which voters have been denied a choice for so long:

National independence, versus absorption in a European superstate

The reintroduction of punishment, versus the continuing appeasement of disorder, drugs, drunkenness and crime

Real welfare reform to help the deserving, versus profligate vote-buying and the subsidising of sloth

Ordered schools that teach knowledge, versus disorderly schools that preach left-wing dogma and sexual licence

Properly-controlled borders and rational, limited immigration, versus an unending uncontrolled flow of migrants

Liberty under the law and free speech, versus fake anti-terror laws and PC censorship

That contest can only happen if we decisively reject the Cameron Tories, who selfishly occupy the space that ought to belong to a real conservative party. If the Tory Party loses another election, there is a real possibility that it will break up, freeing many people now trapped in it to help start something new and exciting, and enthusing many who now stay aloof from a political process that is sordid and empty. Much of the Clegg surge comes from people who are against the old parties, rather than from people who actually support the Lib Dems.

Such a new conservative force, by appealing not only to disillusioned ex-Tories but also to many ex-Labour voters, patriotic, Christian, crime-hating, wanting good schools for their children, could surely beat the miserable discredited left - and begin the long work of putting our broken country back together again. Please, please, please help create this great opportunity. Please, please, please do not vote Tory.

May 1, 2010 | Permalink | Comments (0)

This is the most important article I’ve ever written – and loyal Conservative voters will hate me for it

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Many of you are going to hate me for what I am about to say. I regret this. Perhaps the fact that I am going to do it anyway will convince some of you that I am deadly serious, and prefer unpopularity to doing the wrong thing.

It is one of the most important and urgent tasks I have ever undertaken. I warned, 13 years ago, against New Labour. I warned, seven years ago, against the Iraq War. I was right (as I usually am – full list on application). But in those cases I might as well have tried to halt a tsunami with a feather duster. The country had gone into a sort of craze, and believed what it wanted to believe.

This time, I think and hope that what I say might actually have some effect on an unusually close Election. And it is this. Please do not vote Tory. It will have the opposite result to the one you intend. I don’t care who else you vote for (apart from the BNP, which no decent person can support). But I beg and plead with you not to fall for the shimmering, greasy, cynical fraud which is the Cameron project. You will hate yourself for it in time if you do.

The obvious thing is not necessarily the right one. A little knowledge can save us from making bad mistakes. If you feed a big meal to a starving man, which might seem the kind thing to do, you are likely to kill him. Aeroplanes take off into the wind, not, as might seem more sen sible, with the wind behind them. If your car engine overheats, you should turn the heater up, not down.

It’s the same here. You may want to ‘Get Gordon Brown out’. So do I. And he’s done for anyway. But do you really want to put in a man who agrees with Gordon Brown on almost every major issue, and is so confident of his liberalism that he doesn’t even try to keep it secret? No muttered remarks in the car about ‘bigotry’ for him. He has said openly that he regards the conservative-minded people of this country as ‘fruitcakes and closet racists’ – and nobody made him apologise for it afterwards. If you now endorse the Cameron Tory Party, you will destroy all real hope of change for the better.

I assume here that my readers mostly agree with me about what this country needs. It needs its independence back, so it can make its own laws and control its own coasts and territorial seas, its armed forces, its foreign policy – like a proper nation.

It needs to regain control of its borders and end the mass immigration which is neither necessary nor good. It needs to stop the destruction of the married family and the undermining of adult authority. It needs to use the law to restrain the grotesque abuse of alcohol and the dangerous spread of drugs. It needs to restore the idea that crime and disorder should be prevented by a police force patrolling on foot – and where that fails, the criminals should be punished in austere and disciplined prisons. It needs schools which teach proper subjects in orderly and peaceful classrooms. It needs to shrink and reform a grotesque, unjust welfare state which rewards sloth and neglects the truly poor.

It needs – urgently – to defeat the politically correct fundamentalist zealots, who sneer ‘Bigot!’ at anyone who dares defend the reasonable beliefs and opinions which were normal a generation ago. Some of you may also agree with me that it needs to reassert its debt and its allegiance to the Christian religion, on which our unique civilisation of orderly freedom is based.

David Cameron pretends skilfully to agree with these positions because he knows that is what you think. But he does not really agree with you or me. He is himself deeply politically correct (he has just sacked a parliamentary candidate for having the ‘wrong’ opinions about homo sexuality, a fact a grovelling media have not publicised).

His supposed ‘Euroscepticism’ is bluster which collapses when it comes into contact with reality, as over the Lisbon Treaty. On Thursday night he ‘guaranteed’ he wouldn’t enter the Euro. He once also ‘guaranteed’ a referendum on Lisbon, a commitment he slithered out of as soon as it became difficult. These ‘guarantees’ fly from his lips whenever he needs to please a crowd, but they are less valuable than Greek Junk Bonds.

His alleged support for marriage (dragged out of him under pressure) is a token and a gimmick, as convincing and genuine as a supermarket price-cut. His pose as the foe of immigration is profoundly dishonest. He knows that, as long as we stay inside the EU, much immigration to this country is beyond his power to control.

Readers of this column over the past few years will have seen the many detailed instances of Mr Cameron’s duplicity that I have provided. And, because there is not space for them all here, I have compiled a full charge sheet against Mr Cameron and his party, in which I show his true aims and opinions, and those of his colleagues. It can be found above. He is truly what he once said he was – the Heir to Blair.

If he wins, he will – as the first Tory leader to win an Election in 18 years – have the power to crush all his critics in the Tory Party. He will be able to say that political correctness, green zealotry, a pro-EU position and a willingness to spend as much as Labour on the NHS have won the day. He will claim (falsely) that ‘Right-wing’ policies lost the last three Elections. Those Tory MPs who agree with you and me will be cowed and silenced for good. The power will lie with the A-list smart set, modish, rich metropolitan liberals hungry for office at all costs who would have been (and who in the case of one of the older ones actually was) in New Labour 13 years ago.

And then where will you have to turn for help as the PC, pro-EU bulldozer trundles across our landscape destroying what is good and familiar and replacing it with a country whose inhabi tants increasingly cannot recognise it as their own? The Liberal Democrats? They agree with David. The Labour Party under exciting, new, Blairite Mr Miliband, heir to a Marxist dynasty?

He agrees with David, too. You will look from bench to bench in the House of Commons and see nothing but the people whose ideas have wrecked a great country in half a century, and who still won’t admit they’re wrong. This system is only propped up by state funding and dodgy millionaires. The surge to the Liberal Democrats – because of who they are not rather than because of what they are – shows a great hunger for something genuinely different. The expenses scandal has broken many old allegiances for good. That process would actually be ended by the election of a Tory government, committed to the policies of New Labour and headed by a man who happens to be one of the greediest expense claimers of all, and who made you pay the mortgage interest on a large country house he didn’t really need.

We have the power to cast aside the discredited parties and politicians who have so utterly let us down and to make new ones which actually speak for us, and which do not despise us as fruitcakes or bigots. Five years from now we could throw the liberal elite into the sea, if we tried. But the first stage in that rebellion must be the failure of David Cameron to rescue the wretched anti-British Blair project and wrap it in a blue dress.

28 April 2010 5:25 PM

Benedict Condoms

I am amazed at the weird obtuseness of those contributors who cannot see that the document about the Pope's visit was more than just a bit of fun or a private joke, and their contention that it isn't symptomatic of an (undoubted) hostility to principled Christianity in the new British establishment.

Leave aside the pathetic feebleness of the supposed humour, which would not have survived for a second among properly educated and responsible diplomats. It was circulated far too widely, and at far too high a level, for it to be dismissed as a little game by some unimportant juniors.

The Foreign Office has at least had the sense to realise this, and to apologise accordingly. I am reminded that I asked, in a posting on 21st February 2009, why Gordon Brown's anti-Christian government had invited the Pope in the first place. And I said (was I wrong?):

‘The country’s sick, and mainly sick at the top. Millions of honest, hardworking citizens do what they can to be good, to stay out of debt and pay their way, but are dumped into bankruptcy by a ruling elite that laughs at these good old notions of right and wrong.

‘Here’s a thought. You’ll have noticed that openly Christian citizens are the ones who increasingly get the rough end of this society. The cultural elite jeers at them, militant atheists denounce religious education as a form of child abuse, people are threatened for doing or saying Christian things.

‘I think there’s a reason for this. The types who run our country and its culture actively hate the idea that there’s an absolute right and wrong because it gets in their way. They think they are so good that they can do what they like. They loathe the thought that there’s a law above them, however high they get. And here, in our post-Christian, post-democratic society, we begin to see what this means in detail.’

Borne out? Or not.

April 28, 2010 |

The Tories

Among other strange things, W. Smith tells me: ’Peter Hitchens has an immense and baffling faith in the Conservative Party's strategists to draw the right conclusion and act upon it.‘

I cannot conceive of a more total misunderstanding of my view. My view (stated here not above one million times) is that nothing can, or should, save the Tory Party, that it cannot be reformed and must be replaced by a new and genuinely pro-British Party; that this will not happen until the Tories split and collapse; that, if the Tories fail to win this election, the Tory party will split and collapse. Therefore, as a necessary (but not sufficient) condition for this to happen, I hope and work for the collapse and splitting of the Tory Party.

I have no faith whatever in the Tory Party's strategists. I do not know how anyone could think that I have, unless (like the ignorant, spiteful and nasty comments on me on the Guardian website, in a discussion there about my book launched by blogger Mark Vernon) they are among that large group which thinks that it knows what I think, knows it doesn't like it (or me) and so doesn't think it necessary to read what I actually say.

Let me repeat that I made all the informal efforts I could to persuade and engage those senior Tories to whom I had access. It was in the course of doing so that I grasped that they were not just slightly less militant versions of me but were (and are increasingly) actively opposed to what I believed in, and were (and are) in fact of the left. The common idea that the Tory Party will at least win us half the loaf is simply wrong. You might as well try to run a computer off the gas, as expect the Tory Party to pursue conservative policies.

If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.

• k

PACE, versus Gene Hunt

A few things about the police, jury trial and the presumption of innocence. The formal criminal justice system never sees - or never saw - most of the work that the police do (or used to do) to keep crime and disorder under control. One of the reasons that it is now breaking down is that every encounter between authority and disorder has to be recorded and dealt with formally. Jury trial was never intended to protect burglars, shoplifters or violent louts from the fist of the law. It was meant to ensure that the state couldn't persecute the innocent through abuse of the criminal courts.

Let us please not be sentimental, or go seeking after a Toytown perfection. The police (usually large cynical men who had grown up and gone to school alongside those they policed) were given a great deal of licence to be rough with criminals.

I use the word criminals quite deliberately (see below). They left the rest of us almost entirely alone, and would not have dreamt of behaving towards the law-abiding as they do now. In fact it is largely because they have become the over-mighty bureaucratised servants of the left-wing state that they have ceased to harry criminals (which is what we all want them to do), and begun to trouble the innocent.

Criminals (and they wouldn't have disputed the use of this word) accepted the old arrangement (as did almost everyone else except a small coven of leftist lawyers). In those days, most crime and disorder were the work of stupid failures or hopeless drunks. The police knew who was doing it because, among these failures, they had large numbers of informers who would trade denunciations for favours or small cash rewards. They also patrolled the city streets on foot, and country districts (where they lived) on bicycles. They knew what was going on, and they knew who was doing what. And they were licensed to administer quite a lot of informal justice, so that potential wrongdoers were afraid of them. Hence the absence of vandalism, 'graffiti' and low-level mischief. That is one of the many reasons why they had to be organised in small local forces, responsible to local figures of authority. A national force with such powers, responsible to the government, would have been a potential menace.

Among those who were criminally inclined, this system acted as a powerful deterrent. Behind it stood the prison system, in those days austere, disciplined and run by the authorities. And behind that stood the gallows, for anyone foolish enough to kill in pursuit of crime, or to join a gang which did this. Many of those defences have been dismantled (I must yet again beg my critics to read my 'Brief History of Crime', the only book to have troubled to research and set out the history of these changes). One of them is the ability of individual police officers to act independently. PACE's purpose only becomes clear when you read its codes of practice, and when you study its origins.

These lie in an opportunistic liberal frenzy about the Maxwell Confait case - look it up - in which police bungling in an individual case, inevitable in any society, was somehow utilised to assist a general attack on police autonomy, through the setting up of a Royal Commission, the passing of PACE (which was bipartisan, like so many other bad things) and the establishment of the equally disastrous Crown Prosecution Service.

The thing by itself is bad enough. Combined with the abolition of foot patrolling, the abolition of the principle of punishment in prisons, the abolition of the death penalty, the absurd bail rules which grant bail to almost anyone, the merging of small local forces into big, distant bureaucratic ones, the creation of Bramshill Police College and its command course, British society's once-strong defences against lawlessness have been almost entirely dismantled by militant sociologists, and the Criminal Justice system turned into an overloaded bureaucratic joke, transforming Britain into an enormous college of crime, where those who wish to do wicked things face no serious deterrent.

That is why the prisons are overcrowded. Because a system which used to deter large numbers of criminally-inclined people from crime now no longer does so, and each year that goes by, it fails more completely. (The sociologists' solution to this is to empty the prisons through fake sentences and early release, which Labour and the Tories have been doing for years, since 1991.) That does not mean that imprisonment in itself is a failure. It means that imprisonment as the feeble last resort of a feeble system is a failure. Our first line of defence used to be people more or less like Gene Hunt in 'Life on Mars' and 'Ashes to Ashes'. Yes, they did rough up criminals (or 'suspects' if you must). They got away with it because they almost always roughed up the right ones. And the Confait case was shocking because it was untypical, not because it was typical.

Everyone laughs about Gene Hunt when they see his behaviour on TV. But many would like him back. The trouble is, he would be suspended within days if he acted like that now, and probably in prison himself within a month or two. And it is largely because of PACE (and the CPS) that this is so.

April 28, 2010

How to admit you're wrong

A word of advice to Mr Bumstead. When someone has been shown to be wrong, the right thing for him to do is to say, ‘I'm sorry. I was wrong’, without qualification or excuse. It is no good changing the subject, or saying that the error served some higher truth. If he was wrong, he should admit it. This particularly applies when he has made severe and confident allegations against individuals and an institution, allegations not in any way qualified or cautious, which have turned out to be incorrect.

Let him imagine for a moment how he would feel if someone (for example) wrote inaccurately that he was 'in hiding' or that he was 'wanted'. Or blamed him personally for actions or failures - especially if they in some way laid the blame on him for acts of child abuse - with which he had nothing whatever to do. He would be hot for apology and restitution, and rightly so. Well then.

One thing he definitely should not do is to make silly, sulky counter-accusations against others to draw attention away from his own actions. I could try to compel him to admit his error by giving him a time limit by which he must do so, or be excluded from making future contributions here.

But I shall not do so. I'm not convinced he will get the point. So I will treat him as a silly person (which I think he is) rather than as a deliberately dishonest one (which I don't think he is). If Mr Bumstead will not provide a simple, unqualified declaration that he understands that he made several untrue statements here, and that he regrets them, I shall simply ignore his future contributions and statements, and advise others to do so, until he either admits his fault or goes away. And I am very patient. There is, quite simply, no point in debating with someone who behaves in this way. I shall certainly not dredge through the libraries and archives of the world trying to find out if his future claims are true. I shall assume that they are faulty until I have evidence that they are not.

Everyone makes mistakes. This is how we learn. But we do not learn from our mistakes if we will not frankly admit that we have made them, all the more so when we have made them in the course of traducing other people.

I've made a long and patient effort to demonstrate that he is wrong, and how he is wrong, which involved me in many hours of research. I don't think any impartial observer could deny that he is wrong. Let him please say so himself.

26 April 2010 5:30 PM

The Lisbon scandal - and other Cameron matters

I've been challenged to justify my statement that the Tory Party tells lies (my other statements, such as that the Tory Party is useless for the purpose for which it allegedly exists or that it engages in smears, are plainly true and don't have the same specific character). The most glaring instance of direct untruth is the behaviour of David Cameron over the Lisbon Treaty.

I'm grateful to Channel Four News's fact-checking unit FactCheck for many of the facts that follow.

Here's what the Tory leader said on 4th November 2009:

"I said we would have a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and if it hadn't been ratified we would have had that referendum.

"But I did not promise a referendum come what may because once the Lisbon Treaty is the law, there's nothing anyone can do about it and I'm not going to treat people like fools and offer a referendum that has no effect."

Mr Cameron had earlier been pretty stringent towards Gordon Brown in Parliament, over his (Brown's) failure to hold referendum on this matter"The truth is that all of us in the House promised a referendum. We have the courage of our convictions and are sticking to that promise. The Prime Minister has lost his courage..." (5 March 2008)

["Gordon Brown] does not believe in giving people genuine choice and control over their lives. If he did, he would give the country a referendum on the EU constitution." (14 May 2008) .

Now, by the time these statements were made it was pretty obvious ( even if it hadn't been before) that the Lisbon Treaty was on course for ratification well before any likely general election. In my view, this was plain from the moment Mr Cameron made his pledge, and see below, there is a suggestion that the Tories knew this too.

And, as FactCheck point out :"In February 2008 during Prime Minister's questions, Brown repeatedly asked Cameron what he would do. Cameron didn't reply, pressing Brown instead about TV debates - although admittedly, this took place at Prime Minister's, rather than Opposition Leader's question time. (This is a joke. There is no Opposition Leader's Question Time, though in my view it wouldn't be a bad idea).

Cameron had also said that if the Treaty was ratified he "wouldn't let it rest", he told Andrew Marr last summer that: "What I've said is if it goes through and it's ratified by everybody and implemented we won't let matters rest there."

And then, what was originally said?: In a noisy article for the Murdoch daily, he invoked Winston Churchill : "On Monday The Sun's image of Gordon Brown sticking two fingers up to the British public was provocative. But it was right.

What a difference to Churchill. When he made that salute, it inspired this country to wipe the scourge of fascism from Europe...

"...Today, I will give this cast-iron guarantee: if I become PM a Conservative government will hold a referendum on any EU treaty that emerges from these negotiations."

Pretty unequivocal, no? And certainly, in my view, intended to be read as such. There was , however, a little extra, which Mr Cameron's PR Squealers have used as an escape clause . He went on:"No treaty should be ratified without consulting the British people in a referendum."

There, you see. That word 'ratified' might possibly be taken to mean that, once it is ratified ( as of course it was, and a in my view he knew perfectly well it would be) it was too late. Well, in that case,. what was the guarantee worth in the first place? Was it intended to mislead? The words may well have been inserted as an escape clause. But were they meant to be read , especially by readers of the 'Sun' as such? I don't think so. I don't think Mr Cameron thought so either. He reaped an advantage from appearing to be tougher than he was.

Talking of Mr Cameron, I went to his press conference on Monday morning. This was the first party press conference I have managed to attend since this election began - and that is not for lack of trying - though I admit I just can't get up early enough to get to the Liberal Democrat events at 7.30. I live so far from London that I'd have to rise at 4.00 am, which doesn't seem to me to be worth it. It's bad enough setting the alarm for 5.00 for the Tories. The Labour Party doesn't tell me when or whether it is holding them (I don't know if this is deliberate or accidental), and wouldn't even give me a pass to begin with. In fact, they don't hold them daily -as they used to - and the last Tory one I tried to attend was cancelled because a Shadow Cabinet member had been burgled and couldn't come. I have a suspicion that they are quietly being abolished, as being too unpredictable.

What struck me about Monday morning's event was how empty it was, rows and rows of vacant seats despite coffee, croissants and bacon rolls given away free, and it not being a very big room. Also I thought that David Cameron and his Shadow Cabinet line-up looked jaded, tired and deflated, hag-ridden by the fear that they may lose.

As Mr Cameron kept not answering repeated questions about whether he would agree to introduce PR in return for a coalition with Nick Clegg, I put my hand up, and eventually Mr Cameron chose me (he had previously given me the conspiratorial smile, full of fake delight, that he generally provides on these occasions, but I was beginning to wonder if this hadn't been designed to fool me into thinking he'd allow me to speak).

The exchange went something like this . It's almost impossible to take notes while holding a microphone, so I don't claim verbatim accuracy here. "DC:"Oh, let's have the Peter Hitchens memorial question". Me "You mean there'll only be one? "C . DC " No, I'm really looking forward to it ..actually that's the first lie of the election campaign" (laughter) Me : "Are you politically closer to Nick Clegg or Norman Tebbit?" ( rather less laughter, but a bit) .

Mr Cameron then went on about how he liked Norman Tebbit's cookery book, and what a good job he's done with the trade unions in the 1980s, and how could he like the Lib Dems when they changed their position so often (as if he doesn't change his , see above). But he didn't answer the question, because the answer is obviously that he's much closer to Nick than he is to Norman.

Why did I ask it? To make that point. I'm beginning to ponder the details of what a Clegg-Cameron co-operation could be like if it happens ( I still think a Clegg-Labour arrangement is more likely if Labour comes second in vote-share, which I think is still possible. Having initially under-stated the LibDem vote, I suspect the polls are now over-stating it) I suspect that the only questions that get full answers at these occasions are planted or sympathetic ones, asked to give the speaker an opportunity to slip out a policy statement he wanted to make anyway. Truth only emerges from seeing what they won't answer (as above, on PR), or by pointing out ( as the Tebbit question did) what the truth actually is. Like so much in life, it's a form of street theatre.

My original plans for questions feel a bit derailed by the LibDem surge, which has done the thing I had hoped to help along - namely let the air out of the certainty that the Tories would win. That certainty, some readers will remember, was for years the principal argument of those who rejected my argument that the Tories should be replaced by something better.

Remember, when I first made this case (nearly seven years ago in October 2003), I said this :"No power on earth can sustain an idea whose time has gone. Can we all please stop pretending that the Conservative Party is worth saving or keeping, or that it can ever win another Election? This delusion is an obstacle to the creation of a proper pro-British movement, neither bigoted nor politically correct, which is the only hope of ending the present one-party State.

The continued existence of the Tory Party as a bogeyman with which to frighten dissenters is one of the few things that holds together the equally bankrupt Labour Party."

I added ( and was I right?) "Tory division and decay also feed the growth of the Liberal Democrats, whose votes grow daily not because of what they are but because of what they are not. The Tories are an impossible coalition of irreconcilables. No coherent government programme could ever unite them. Euro-enthusiast and Euro-sceptic cannot compromise without betraying their deepest beliefs. Supporters of marriage and supporters of the sexual revolution have no common ground."

Talking of that, how many saw the Jeremy Paxman interview with David Cameron on Friday, in which he was asked about sex education in Christian schools. Mr Cameron's supporters like to say he 's a 'liberal Tory'. Well, he's not liberal about the sexual revolution. He's autocratic and dictatorial, and very close to New Labour. For example, this passage, right at the end:

Paxman: "You're in favour of faith schools being able to teach sex education as they like". Cameron:"Not as they like. That's not right. What we voted for was what the government suggested in the end, which is proper sex education..."

Paxman: "Should they be free to teach that homosexuality is wrong, abortion is wrong, contraception is wrong?"

"No, and the government discussed this and came up with a good idea , which is to say that we wanted a clearer path of sexual education across all schools, but faith schools were not given any exemption but they were able to reflect some of their own faith in the way that this was taught.

But no, you must teach proper lessons in terms of gay equality and also combat homophobic bullying in schools, I think that's extremely important."

Note the link made (without any evidence I've ever seen to back it up) that teaching 'Gay' equality in schools reduces the bullying of homosexual individuals. Why should it? Bullying results from general disorder and the collapse of teachers' authority (another trend backed by the 'Modern Conservative Party'.

I mention this passage because it doesn't seem to have got any attention anywhere else, and because it so effectively undermines the constant pretence that David Cameron is conservative on such matters not to mention his iron intolerance, now considered normal and not needing any justification, of the teaching of conservative positions on sexual morality. It also illustrates just how closely the Tories and New labour are on such issues, which have been removed from contention by the 'centre-left/centre-right' truce.

A few quick ripostes

Once again I'm told I should have stayed in the Tory Party and tried to pull it to 'the right'. Those who argue this need to explain to me what the mechanism is by which this can be done. The main thing I found when i was in the Tory Party ( and I now possess a copy of the constitution which conforms this) is that there is no method by which an individual can make any impact on party policy.

The Mail on Sunday, meanwhile, rightly publishes many articles and indeed a weekly column (that of Lord (William Rees-Mogg) that are favourable to the Conservative Party. It is also to its credit that it publishes a column by a conservative who is not friendly to that party, since there are many people in Britain who would think of themselves in this way.

For the information of Mr 'R', I have read the 'Ashenden' stories, though not for some years (my favourite being the cruel heart-freezing one where the traitor is lured back from Switzerland to London to be shot, and the way his dog howls in the Post Office when his wife realises what has happened) but I am jiggered if I can remember a character called 'R', so I'd be glad to be spared the snotty remarks. Does Mr 'R' remember every character's name from every story he's ever read? I doubt it.

As for his peremptory questions, my preferred result in the election is that the Tories do not win it. I have never asked for anything else, and the exact form of their failure doesn't interest me, as long as all the people who shouted at me that they were 'bound to win' now queue up to apologise. As for local government, I would insofar as practicable restore the boundaries abolished in 1974, abolish the title of 'Chief Executive' and reintroduce the title of 'Town Clerk' ( and a salary commensurate with that title for the person who holds it). His statement about films is a platitude. What can I possibly say? That's enough questions from him, the man of mystery.

I object to PACE 1984 because its codes of practice ( and its whole inception, the work of left-liberal lawyers) assume that police officers cannot be trusted to handle criminals. I do not think the liberty of the law-abiding is in any serious way threatened by giving the police the freedom to be reasonably rough with low-lifes. Whereas the liberty of us all is threatened when feeble policing leads to chaos, and chaos leads to demands for a strong state, as is visibly happening. It's a choice. We chose the wrong path. See my book 'The Abolition of Liberty' for an explanation of the vital connection between strong enforcement of criminal law and the freedom of the law-abiding.

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