A repentant sinner? - by Richard... Sunday, June 19, 2011

A repentant sinner? - by Richard... Sunday, June 19, 2011

I've never really gone with this Luke 15-7stuff. Why should the "repentant sinner" get all the glory, when the ninety-nine "righteous men" got it right first time?

So it is with the applause for the new "hero" on the street, the wandering fool otherwise known as Steve Hilton who, according to The Mail, is now backing Tory calls for Britain to pull out of the European Union.

The Downing Street "director of strategy" is said to have swung behind moves for the UK to go it alone after "being shocked to discover how much sovereignty has switched from Westminster to Brussels".

We also learn that his "growing frustration" with the EU is one of the reasons he has been involved in heated exchanges in No 10 which have fuelled reports that he may walk out in protest at the government's failure to press ahead with radical reforms to the NHS, Whitehall and other institutions.

Here, one really does have to ask what sort of a "director of strategy" for a political party is "shocked" by the degree of penetration by the EU into the affairs of the UK. If he wasn't already aware of that, then he's been taking money under false pretences.

But there is an interesting point here. We often assume that the bubble-dwellers are pushing the EU agenda knowingly, with malice of forethought. It is difficult to appreciate quite how pig-ignorant these people really are. Now, though, we have what appears to be a graphic confirmation – the idiot child is "shocked" after finding out something he should already have known.

Before we get over-excited about this "repentant sinner" therefore, one needs to step back and look at what the Hilton is said to be shocked about – namely "how much sovereignty has switched from Westminster to Brussels". Now, thirty-five years ago, we would have rejoiced in such a convert to the cause. More than three decades on, though, the thinking and understanding has moved on.

As with the great discovery that "Soylent Green is people!", we have learned that the European Union is an integral part of the British government, and the British government is an integral part of the EU. So much are they one and the same thing that one is provoked into crying: "The EU is our government".

On that basis, no more can a British government pull out of the EU than can Cameron extract his brain from his own cranium, assuming that is where he keeps it. The EU and the UK government are one and the same, indivisible parts of the one. The issue therefore – as we have long recognised – is no longer that we should seek to withdraw from the EU. We can no longer do this. One might say, you can take Britain out of the EU, but you cannot take the EU out of Britain.

Thus, the real objective is one of regime change. We have to take down the current government, revisit the constitutional settlement and rebuild an entirely new one. And yes, we are talking revolution. The only question is whether it is going to be peaceful or violent. But it is going to happen - simply because it has to.

Little dimwits like Hilton, though, are so far behind the curve that they are not even in the game. From his position at the centre of the bubble, doubtless he feels he is "the man", but he knows nothing. And that is why, whenever there is fundamental change in progress, it comes from outside. The bubble-dwellers will be the last to know. Give Hilton another thirty-five years, and he might just have caught up. But, by then, the game will be over.

He and his likes won't even have seen it coming.

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It would be a mercy - by Richard...

There's only one suicide I would cheerfully assist, writes Peter Hitchens. If the Tory Party wants to go to Zurich and end it all, I will accompany it, hold its hand, help it swallow a cocktail of poison, refuse its pleas for water at the last moment (for its own good, of course) and listen to its death gurgles. It would be a mercy.

If he needs any assistance, he only has to ask.

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A threat to our security - by Richard...

If Carlsberg did a defence blog, this would be it ... currently narrating the latest in the tale of the Nimrod MR4, and how the slow, greasy Fox is lying through his rotting teeth. As one of his commenter puts it: "Here we have prima facia evidence that the biggest threat to the security of this country is our own Government and the MoD".

In my opening epigram in Ministry of Defeat, I use the apocryphal tale of the officer walking down Whitehall and asking for directions to the MoD. He knows roughly where it is, so when he hails a passer-by, he simply asks: "Which side is the Ministry of Defence on?" The reply comes: "Ours, I hope".

In the book, I remark that, in southern Iraq in 2003, that hope was not fulfilled. But it would have been surprising is it was ... or ever was. We win wars and defend our territories in spite of, and not because of, the politico-military establishment represented by the MoD.

But it is not so much that they are on the "other" side, as their own. This sub-set of the wider "establishment" is primarily on its own side ... its primary concern being Selznik's famous beast, "self maintenance". And, as the Friedmans once observed, you would be foolish to expect anything else.

But we see that reality, naked in tooth and claw when another commenter observes that, "if every word spoken about Nimrod by the government was complete horse crap, then so what?" At worst for the government, he says, this (the Nimrod debacle) would end up as a ten minute segment onNewsnight. He concludes: "The general public doesn't care, and has been largely unaware of Nimrod in any form - no electoral damage, no problem".

Therein lies our problem. The ideal constitutional settlement would comprise a system where the institutional self-maintenance needs of the government would coincide with those of its electorate. Thus, in order to survive, it would have to respond its needs. Where – as is the case, so aptly pointed out by Wittering for Witney – there is a divergence, the needs (and concerns) of the electorate must be ignored.

The Nimrod saga illustrates this in spades. In the days to come therefore, perhaps whimsically, the Nimrod MR4 might become a symbol of the UK resistance movement, the one that is taking its first, faltering steps towards emergence.

It will have to join the queue though. I have in my possession a tie, embroidered on which is the silhouette of a Sunderland – another maritime surveillance aircraft (pictured). Representing the home town of the Metric Martyrs, wearing that tie is a small, subtle gesture of defiance. And that is where the road to freedom starts – one small step ...

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