So I shan't be joining Amanda in voting for Mr Cameron's party. And if I can persuade her to change her mind in the next few hours, I will. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. Finally, I still see people writing that they hope David Cameron is lying, and that he'll rip his liberal vestments off and become a real conservative once he's safely in. Can anyone give me one tiny piece of evidence to suggest that this is likely? No, nor can I. It's a baseless fantasy, and those who treasure it are asking for bitter, bitter disappointment. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down. 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". If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
Saying 'Sorry' is so easy to do
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03 May 2010 4:41 PM
Who made a fool of whom?
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TV damages young children - the evidence is overwhelming
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Who do we vote for? Our grandchildren
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A Times blogger (who's pro-PC) says I'm right about the Tories embrace of PC
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How long until Christians are blackmailed for daring to speak?
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01 May 2010 11:41 PM
The Charge Sheet against the Tories
Thursday, 6 May 2010
My congratulations to my old friend Amanda Platell, who has secured, for the Daily Mail, what seems to me to be the most interesting interview that David Cameron has ever given.
I may be flattering myself here, but I can't help wondering if Mr Cameron's willingness to talk to Amanda on Monday had anything to do with a Tory desire to rebut - in a conservative sister newspaper - my attack on the Cameron project in the Mail on Sunday. Amanda has been quite waspish about the Tory leader, though she is of course much nicer to meet than I am.
Mr Cameron, seeking to win round Amanda and the many like her who have been put off by his open scorn for traditional conservatives, adopts a penitent posture in this encounter. But is he really sorry for what he did? I don't think so. He's only prepared to be regretful about the way he did it. And no wonder. His high-handed, aggressive liberalism was aimed at winning him millions of Lib Dem voters who have now chosen Cleggomania instead. It undoubtedly cost him lots of votes he would now very gladly have back. In my view, he was showing his true colours, and those votes shouldn't return just because he's now belatedly prepared to turn the charm beacon in a rightward direction.
Here are some examples of this 'sorry for the way I said it - but not sorry for what I did' attitude.
Grammar schools:
‘I will accept that I got it wrong in the row on grammar schools. They are excellent schools, all 164 of them, and under the Conservative Party they will prosper and flourish.
'I do accept that in the language I used I didn't show enough sensitivity to people who'd been to grammar schools, who liked grammar schools, who thought they were great agents of social mobility.
'I was trying to make sure we got on to the next target, which is: how do we have good schools right across the country?’
PH comments: This sounds good, but it wasn't the *existing* grammar schools that were (and are) the problem. The enemies of education hope to pick them off quietly in time, they are hopelessly besieged and oversubscribed by parents trying to take advantage of them, and they are irrelevant to most people, who have no hope of getting their children into them. What was at issue was the possibility of creating many more new ones in areas where they are badly needed and where they don't exist. Tory policy, of keeping those that exist, and allowing one or two more in selective areas, doesn't answer this need at all. Mr Cameron's party, under his leadership, voted in early 2006 for a Labour measure which made new grammar schools illegal (Mr Cameron himself was absent from the vote, I'm not sure why). So they cannot now do this without a major u-turn, as Labour and the Lib Dems would undoubtedly point out if they tried.
It wasn't his rudeness (he called grammar school supporters 'deluded') so much as his anti-grammar dogma that was - and is - the problem. His fabled new Swedish-style schools will all have to be comprehensives, for instance, if any of them ever gets built. So what good will that do?
Amanda rightly put the 'deluded' quotation to him: ‘By branding them “deluded” wasn't he guilty of gesture politics at its worst - betraying a core Tory belief to pander to the Left?
‘Cameron erupts again. “No! Absolutely not. No, no, no. And I'll tell you why. I am passionate about good education. My children are at a state school, and I want them to go to a great state secondary school.” ’
PH comments: I'd mention here that Mr Cameron's children (by virtue of Mr and Mrs Cameron's commitment to a certain London church, itself interesting given that they maintain a large weekend house, which we have all helped to pay for, 70 miles from London) are at a wholly untypical, heavily-oversubscribed Church of England primary school. Most of us have no access to such schools for our children. Mr Cameron could perfectly well afford fees for private schools for his children.
By sending them to this state school, he is quite possibly depriving families less well off than him of their only chance of a good primary education.
Why is this supposed to be virtuous? We all know (thanks to the actions of New Labour) that the children of the powerful can be wangled into one of the very few good state secondary schools in London. As a non-Roman Catholic, and a non-resident of the tiny catchment areas of Camden School for Girls, or William Ellis School, this will be much harder for Mr Cameron than it was for the New Labour elite. But once again, the religious or postcode route is closed to most of the rest of us, across the whole country. So why is it supposed to be praiseworthy? I do not think Mr Cameron is planning to send his children to the sorts of bog-standard comprehensive available to the great majority of voters. But in that case, does he really believe his plans have much to offer those voters?
Mr Cameron told Amanda: 'I want discipline and well-ordered classrooms and a head teacher who knows my children's names.’
PH comments: Well, so do I, and so do all of us, but the problem is always 'How do we get this to happen?', and many people - me among them - believe that selection is the way, plus legislation to return authority (including corporal punishment) to teachers. How is he going to achieve this in schools, called ‘Good’ by OFSTED, in which teachers are persecuted by unruly pupils?
But there is an apology. Does it matter? I don't think so.
Mr Cameron: 'But over grammar schools, did I use the right language? No. Did I upset people in a way I shouldn't? Yes.’
PH comments: Mr Cameron is on the penitent stool here for his style, not for his substance. He's 'sorry' he was rude. Not sorry for his ruthless crushing of an important hope.
Mr Cameron added: 'But we tried for two elections to win the argument on grammar school selection, and we failed. I don't want to waste time on an argument we're not going to win. We have to move on, and we're going to have really great schools for all kids.’
PH comments: Really? I don't remember the Tories ever, ever trying to make the case for selection at an election or at any other time. They were divided over it even in the 1960s, when Sir Edward Boyle, their Education Minister, was keen on comprehensives. They massacred grammars under Ted Heath (whose Education Secretary was Margaret Thatcher) and - though John Major made vague noises about 'a grammar school in every town' - nothing ever came of them.
The Tories have never really tried to argue in a principled fashion in favour of academic selection, though they have, in a few local authorities, sometimes preserved it. The principled argument was left to people such as Eric James, High master of Manchester Grammar (then a direct-grant school open to bright children from poor homes, now a private school), later Lord James of Rusholme. In my view, it has now been decisively won, by the pro-grammar school side, thanks to the dreadful results of comprehensive education now visible all round us (see the education chapter in my book 'The Cameron Delusion' for full details).
But in general, as a party in power, the Tories helped to destroy academic selection and failed to revive it when they had the chance So what is he talking about here when he speaks of 'failing' and 'wasting time'? They never even tried. You can't win an argument you haven't the guts, or the inclination, to make. And when you 'lose' a fight you wouldn't have, don't then pretend that anyone's to blame but you, for failing to try.
As for 'we have to move on', I have seldom seen a more perfect example of New Labour Speak issue from Mr Cameron's mouth. What does this nasty expression mean? It means 'We have the power and you don't - so stop arguing and accept what you're given'. That's what it means.
Political Correctness
Then, in this important section, Mr Cameron seeks to excuse his drive for Political Correctness. Amanda writes: ‘I can't quite shake off the nagging sense of disappointment I felt in his early years as leader. All those photo opportunities with huskies on arctic glaciers and “hug-a-hoodie” pledges seemed to me a triumph of style over substance.
‘Cameron visibly bristles when I tell him as much. “I know it upset strong Conservatives like you, but I did what I thought was necessary, and that was to get the Conservative Party back into contention again.
“We weren't being listened to. We could have stood naked on the building tops and shouted, but no one was listening.
“Because the Conservative Party had got outdated, it became too narrow in its focus. It wasn't in touch with the society it wanted to govern and to change. It needed to be modernised, and that meant a lot of things that were unpopular to some people.” ‘
Oddly enough, I'm with Mr Cameron there about how nobody was listening. But I concluded seven years ago that the Tory Party was a busted brand that wasn't worth saving, and that a new conservative grouping would have to shake off the legacy of the Thatcher years, which meant a new organisation able to appeal to ex-Labour-voting social conservatives, sick of crime, mass immigration and bad schools, which would have a different name and different origins.
Mr Cameron again: ‘This was not selling out Conservative principles, it was just updating and modernising our message for the modern world. We were hopelessly under-representing women. We were saying to people who were gay and to people from lots of different backgrounds and faiths that they weren't welcome.”
PH comments: This is a deliberate blurring of an important question, on which Mr Cameron has radically changed the policies of the Tory Party, mainly to win the favour of the BBC. If Conservative principles are Burkeian ones, based upon a genuinely conservative and Christian attitude towards social questions then it was certainly a betrayal of them. Though there is an argument that the Tories never had any principles anyway.
But what Mr Cameron calls 'updating and modernising' is in fact a deep and significant change of position, which - as usual, has gone unnoticed by most political journalists. There's a book to be written on the curious use of the word 'modernising' in politics. It's intended to convey the impression of non-political repair and renovation, when actually meaning a full-scale adoption of PC fundamentalism.
Take Theresa May, who once said (as most Conservative women politicians would also have said ): ‘I’m totally opposed to Labour’s idea of all-women shortlists and I think they are an insult to women. I’ve competed equally with men in my career, and I have been happy to do so in politics too.’ Then, a few months ago, Mrs May (to a total absence of hoots of derision from a vigilant media, apart from me) declared in a friendly interview with 'The Guardian' (of course) that she now favours all-women shortlists. The Guardian, perhaps unaware of her past position, did not bother to ask how she had undergone such a total change of mind.
I might also remind readers of Mrs May's response last year to Harriet Harman's latest wild anti-male schemes for 'equality'. Mrs May, Harriet's supposed Tory opponent, said: ‘I look forward to working constructively with them [the government] on ensuring that we have workable and practical legislation to provide for a fair society.’
Ms Harman thanked her for her ‘broad welcome for the package’.
Tories like to go on about how awful they think Mrs Harman is. But under David Cameron they snigger at Harriet Harman while simultaneously embracing Harriet Harman's beliefs - that 'equality' between men and women, who are fundamentally different - especially in the ability to bear children - can be enforced by legislation. This is a legitimate point of view worthy of debate, and with much support in the media and elsewhere. But it is not a settled truth. And it is not a conservative point of view. Conservatives might be expected to see the virtues in full-time motherhood, a 'career choice' wholly derided by modern politics.
Homosexuals were always perfectly welcome in the Tory Party, which contained a large number of homosexual individuals in significant positions. But the revolutionary leftist *idea* that homosexual relationships were equivalent to heterosexual marriage was not welcome. Mr Cameron (this is typical of PC apologists) deliberately blurs the issue of personal kindness, generosity and tolerance with the wholly different idea that, to be kind, generous and tolerant one must accept a radical political agenda of sexual revolution.
Mr Cameron then argues: 'And to change an organisation, you have to give it quite a shake. But if you look at the programme I've outlined, it's based on very serious Conservative values - the family, enterprise, belief in the importance of our nation, the importance of community.’
I think these commitments are so vague that they could just as easily be uttered by Gordon Brown or Nicholas Clegg, and probably have been. The difficulties arise when you begin to argue about what a family is, how much freedom you're prepared to give enterprise, from regulation and tax, at what point a nation gives up so much sovereignty that it ceases to be one – and as for 'community', it must be a finalist in the Olympic contest for most meaningless word ever uttered.
I've dealt elsewhere with the empty, gimmicky nature of Mr Cameron's supposed commitment to marriage, and won't repeat that point.
Amanda also wins another concession from Mr Cameron: ‘I tell him that his comment at a private dinner in 2005 that he was the natural “heir to Blair” felt like a smack in the face to those who could see the corrosive influence Blair had had on Britain. Cameron winces. “If I used that phrase, I regret that. The point I was trying to make was this: that if you are going to succeed in changing your country for the better, you have to know where it's come from.” ’
I'll bet he regrets it (and by the way, as Amanda and I and all Fleet Street well know, he most certainly did say it). It has cost him quite dear. But the point is (and his justification shows this) he does not regret copying the Blair rulebook in seeking to take over and refashion his party - though for a very different purpose.
Blair wanted to make Labour into the Liberal Democrats because old-style Labour socialism was finished. Mr Cameron wanted to make the Tories over into the Liberal Democrats because old-style conservatism *wasn't* finished, and was in danger of developing into a serious political force, and he wanted to ensure that didn't happen (see my book 'The Cameron Delusion', especially the section on the fall of Iain Duncan Smith).
Most readers won't have seen the TV transmission of last week's rare press conference outing by Mr Cameron (it is astonishing how few such occasions there have been, in comparison to past campaigns), on the morning of the 26th April. I haven't seen it myself. If anyone knows where it can be viewed, I'd be interested. But a number of Mr Cameron's supporters have said that Mr Cameron 'made a fool of me' on this occasion. This is not my recollection.
There was a bit of banter at the beginning which went (as far as I've been able to piece together):
David Cameron (after I'd had my hand up since the start of questions): ‘Let's take the Peter Hitchens memorial question.’
PH: ‘Will there be only one?’
DC: ‘No, we'll be happy to take lots of questions from you - actually that was the first lie of the campaign.’ (Laughter)
PH: ‘Would you say you were politically closer to Norman Tebbit or Nick Clegg?’ (Laughter, but more nervous)
DC: (summarised) ‘Blah blah, Norman's written a great cookery book, very much like Norman Tebbit, blah blah, Nick Clegg always changing his position, blah blah blah.’
PH: (summarised, trying to hang on to microphone while DC hopes to move to another question) ‘But you change your position - notably on the Lisbon Treaty - and you haven't answered the question.’
DC: ‘I thought I answered it very well.’
I don't rate this as my greatest triumph, though (given the general impossibility of getting a straight answer out of any of these people) I thought it quite a neatly-crafted, hard-to-answer question underlining my point that Mr Cameron has captured his party for the left. And I think it's sometimes necessary to point out that people have failed to answer questions - because by the time they've bored on and on, listeners may well have forgotten what it was all about. Patchy, brief, not exactly a torpedo below the waterline, the one we all hope to score. But 'made a fool of'? How, exactly?
We have so many health scares, some more important than others, that it always amazes me that we never have one about the dire effect of TV on young children. I have said for years that you would be better off giving your children neat gin than letting them watch TV when they are very young, or ever to watch it unsupervised (and believe me, for those who miss the point of this statement - as some always do - I wouldn't advise the gin either).
Now, as with the poison cannabis (falsely promoted as 'soft' and harmless by evil and stupid people), the science is piling up on my side - though it is still quite socially acceptable to bung small infants in front of the TV as a 'third parent' and there is a whole BBC channel apparently devoted to providing programmes for tiny children who shouldn't, in my view, be watching at all.
Research from Quebec in Canada, published in 'Archives of Paediatrics and Adolescent Medicine' deals with 1,314 children born in 1997 and 1998.
Parents recorded how much TV their children watched between the ages of 29 and 53 months. (On average, the two-year-olds watched 8.8 hours a week, and the four-year-olds 14.8 hours.) Teachers then evaluated their academic, psycho-social and health habits at the age of 10.
The study found that for every extra hour of TV a week that the two-year-olds watched, there was a 6 per cent decrease in maths achievement, a 7 per cent decrease in classroom engagement and a 10 per cent increase in 'victimisation' (eg teasing, rejection and assault) by their peers. Each extra hour also corresponded with 9 per cent less exercise, consumption of 10 per cent more snacks and a 5 per cent rise in Body-Mass Index.
Dr Linda Pagani, of Montreal University, said: ‘Our findings make a compelling public-health argument against excessive viewing in early childhood.’
The American Academy of Paediatrics already advises no TV at all for children under two.
A past study in New Zealand, which followed its subjects up to the age of 26, showed that childhood TV viewing was 'significantly associated' with leaving school without qualifications. And before you draw the obvious sceptical conclusion, the link was apparently clear regardless of early problems or socio-economic status.
Dr Aric Sigman, a British psychologist, points out that modern TV has faster editing, louder sounds and more intense colours than that of the 1960s and 1970s, and is so more likely to affect young minds.
I'm grateful to a story by Martin Hickman in Monday's 'Independent' for these details. These facts are known. They were guessed at by T.S. Eliot at the dawn of the TV age 60 years ago. Why aren't they acted upon?
Q. Who do we vote for, then?
A. For your grandchildren, not for your own self-indulgence.
Even when I go to great lengths to explain that there is nobody to vote *for* now who offers any practical hope, that the key is to create the conditions in which such a party can be founded, and that the only thing to do is *not* vote for the Tories, I still get asked this question.
Two immediate responses. Read, if you are really interested, my long original explanations of my position - 'The Tories are Still useless' and 'Please stop trying to get me to endorse UKIP'.
And one further point. The important thing at this election is not your selfish desire to feel good for a few seconds, by 'getting Gordon Brown out' or some such stuff. The important thing is 'What kind of Britain will your grandchildren grow up in'. If the Tories win, it will be a PC-dominated province of the EU, crushed by welfare and rendered ignorantly chaotic by comprehensive education and the total collapse of the married family. If you want to prevent that, you have to make the break now.
The Times blogger Oliver Kamm (some of you may be familiar with his interesting position, mixing radical domestic views with neo-conservative foreign policy, more or less the opposite of my view ) has written the following, which actually reassures a PC correspondent that the Tories have moved towards her.
'Gaby Charing, one of my regular correspondents, appended a comment to my post on why I'm voting Labour. She feels I was too generous to the Tories. Among other things, "if the 'modernisation' of the Tory party means acknowledging at long last that lesbian and gay people are not second-class citizens, then I can only reply that acknowledging this is a precondition for being regarded as a democratic party". '
Mr Kamm goes on:'Well, I agree that a modern, democratic party must acknowledge homosexual rights and the validity of same-sex relationships. But let me point Gaby to the voting advice of Peter Hitchens of the Mail on Sunday [He then quotes from my argument]:
"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."
Mr Kamm adds:'I take issue with the terms Hitchens uses, but he's essentially right. The Conservative Party doesn't represent the sentiments that it once did, and the change is attributable to David Cameron's leadership. Hitchens's views would once have been mainstream Conservatism...'
He then goes on to try to corral such views in the narrow pastures of UKIP, a fate I don't want then to suffer. But I think the recognition, by a PC supporter, that David Cameron has moved his party in this direction is very important.
Revolutions do not always involve guillotines or mobs storming palaces. Sometimes they are made by middle-aged gentlemen in wigs, sitting in somnolent chambers of the High Court.
Sometimes they are made by police officers and bureaucrats deciding they have powers nobody knew they had, or meant them to have.
And Britain is undergoing such a revolution – quiet, step-by-step, but destined to have a mighty effect on the lives and future of us all.
The Public Order Act of 1986 was not meant to permit the arrest of Christian preachers in English towns for quoting from the Bible. But it has. The Civil Partnerships Act 2004 was not meant to force public servants to approve of homosexuality. But it has.
The Sexual Offences Act of 1967 was not meant to lead to a state of affairs where it is increasingly dangerous to say anything critical about homosexuality. But it did.
And the laws of Britain, being entirely based upon the Christian Bible, were not meant to be used by a sneering judge to declare that Christianity had no higher status in this ancient Christian civilisation than Islam, Buddhism or Hinduism.
But it has come to that this week.
How did it happen that in the course of less than 50 years we moved so rapidly from one wrong to another?
Until 1967, homosexuals could be – and were – arrested and prosecuted for their private, consenting, adult acts.
This was a cruel, bad law that should never have been made. It led to blackmail and misery of all kinds.
Those who repealed it did so out of humanity and an acceptance that we need to live in peace alongside others whose views and habits we do not share. No such generous tolerance is available from the sexual revolutionaries.
Now, as the case of Dale McAlpine shows, we are close to the point where a person can be prosecuted for saying in public that homosexual acts are wrong.
And officers of the law, once required to stay out of all controversy, get keen official endorsement when they take part in open political demonstrations in favour of homosexual equality.
We have travelled in almost no time from repression, through a brief moment of mutual tolerance, to a new repression. And at the same time, the freedom of Christians to follow their beliefs in workplaces is under aggressive attack.
Small and harmless actions, offers of prayer, the wearing of crucifixes, requests to withdraw from duties, are met with official rage and threats of dismissal, out
of all proportion.
How long before Christians are being blackmailed by work colleagues, for daring to speak their illegal views openly?
Daily the confidence of the new regime grows. The astonishing judgment of Lord Justice Laws last week, in which he pointedly snubbed Lord Carey, a former Archbishop of Canterbury, and mocked the idea that Christianity had any special place in our society, is a warning that this process has gone very deep and very far.
The frightening thing is that it has not stopped, nor is it slowing down. What cannot be said in a Workington street will soon be unsayable anywhere.
And if Christianity has officially ceased to be the basis of our law and the source of our state’s authority (a view which makes nonsense of the Coronation Service) who, and what – apart from the brute power of the manipulated mob – is to decide in future what is right, and what is not, and what can be said, and what cannot?
This process, if not halted, will lead in the end to the Thought Police and the naked rule of power.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down.
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.
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.
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