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Richard Litteljohn says Britain needed a coalition of Brexiteers from all parties in 2016 including Kate Hoey and Nigel Farage.
Yes. Agreed. But she was dealt a terrible hand by history. Could someone else have done better?
Yes, had we had someone who reached out to form a coalition, who was unafraid of a hard Brexit and a hard border in Ireland. In other words a sceptic not an unimaginative, suspicious and secretive woman who needs to be told what to do by people with better brains.
A statesman is someone with commonplace opinions and uncommon abilities, said Bagehot. Her abilities are commonplace. Her opinions, like wanting to legislate to require more women on the boards of private companies and her wish that the Church of England should conduct single sex marriages, do not even have the great merit of being commonplace.
I could go on, but the important thing is that she doesn't.
As for Richard Littlejohn, I usually am allergic to him. For one thing he is faux right wing. I don't like faux people. And he is not as fun as his namesake in Robin Hood. But an old school friend, who I'm sure is a Tory, recently told me that Mr Farage and Ukip are vile racists. I was interested that Richard Littlejohn disagrees.
"Who would you rather have speaking for Britain in Brussels – Farage or May? Contrast his magnificent public putdown of the EU’s Herman Van Rompuy – “You have the charisma of a damp rag”, etc – with May’s pitiful, supine, grovelling, on-all-fours crawling to Barnier and Drunker. She approached the talks with all the dignity of a beggar sitting outside Westminster Tube station, yet still seems bewildered as to why they treated her with such overt disdain.
‘In the process, she has repelled millions of traditional Tory voters, brought her own party to the brink of electoral extinction, and put Britain’s fate in the hands of nonentities such as Pixie Balls-Cooper and that pipsqueak poison dwarf Jean-Claude Bercow."
Yes. Agreed. But she was dealt a terrible hand by history. Could someone else have done better?
Yes, had we had someone who reached out to form a coalition, who was unafraid of a hard Brexit and a hard border in Ireland. In other words a sceptic not an unimaginative, suspicious and secretive woman who needs to be told what to do by people with better brains.
A statesman is someone with commonplace opinions and uncommon abilities, said Bagehot. Her abilities are commonplace. Her opinions, like wanting to legislate to require more women on the boards of private companies and her wish that the Church of England should conduct single sex marriages, do not even have the great merit of being commonplace.
I could go on, but the important thing is that she doesn't.
As for Richard Littlejohn, I usually am allergic to him. For one thing he is faux right wing. I don't like faux people. And he is not as fun as his namesake in Robin Hood. But an old school friend, who I'm sure is a Tory, recently told me that Mr Farage and Ukip are vile racists. I was interested that Richard Littlejohn disagrees.
Recording of full interview Roger Scruton and George Eaton:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WCYqhfc1wn4
Never mind, it was taken down... Wonder why?
DeleteScruton later asked for the tape of the interview that got him sacked to be released, so everyone could hear what he said (or did not say). Many others then joined this call, but Mr Eaton went very quiet. Having acquired a copy of the recording of the interview, I know why.
ReplyDeleteThe Scruton tapes: an anatomy of a modern hit job
How a character assassination unfolded on Twitter
Douglas Murray
https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/04/the-scruton-tapes-an-anatomy-of-a-modern-hit-job/
New Statesman and Spectator in dirty tricks row over Scruton tape
ReplyDeleteThis week’s cover story in the rightwing Spectator, headlined “Anatomy of a modern hit job”, quotes at length from a full recording of the interview obtained by the story’s author, Douglas Murray, prompting serious concerns at the New Statesman office over how its rival obtained the tape.
The only known recording of the interview was made on a dictaphone in the possession of Eaton, who later uploaded the file to his computer and forwarded it to the publication’s lawyer. Scruton is not thought to have made his own recording of the conversation.
Murray, who is an associate director at the Henry Jackson Society, did not respond to a request for comment. He had spent weeks urging Eaton and the New Statesman editor, Jason Cowley, to share the recording using the hashtag #ReleaseTheTape. On Wednesday night, he tweeted: “To all those people wondering why I stopped asking @georgeeaton to #ReleaseTheTape. It’s because I got the tape …”
The Spectator editor, Fraser Nelson, said he would not be revealing his magazine’s sources and said he could not remember a similar situation where an interview tape had been leaked.
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/apr/25/new-statesman-investigates-how-rival-spectator-obtained-interview-tape
It is heart breaking and we shall never forgive the Tory MPs who called for Sir Roger's sacking.
Delete