Three of Britain's four biggest parties Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the Scottish Nationalists launch their European election campaigns today, which is bizarre because there only a fortnight to go until polling day.
The Conservative Party, on the other hand, will have no launch event and no manifesto. The Daily Mail's Jason Groves says a Tory official shrugged and asked the reasonable question,
“What would we put in it?”
Almost no Tory activists will be canvassing. The Tories would have done better not to stand at all.
What will be interesting is how big the win by the Brexit party is and how very badly the Tories do.
What will be interesting is how big the win by the Brexit party is and how very badly the Tories do.
I am very sorry that the CUKs or CHUKs or ChangeUK look to do badly, not because they deserve to do well but because I had hoped they might destroy Labour's chances of winning the next general election.
Instead the question is can the Tories prevent a Labour-Scottish Nationalist coalition without allying with the Brexit Party?
Part of me even wonders if, despite the first-past-the-post electoral system, the Brexit Party might come to power at the next election transfigured into a real conservative party, something that the UK has lacked since Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister.
Could Nigel Farage replace the Tories and be a British Trump or a British De Gaulle?
To understand how unconservative the Conservatives are, read this comment by the famous philosopher Sir Roger Scruton. He lost his unpaid job as Chairman of the British government's Building Better, Building Beautiful commission because of a disgraceful deliberate misuse of quotations from an interview he gave with the New Statesman. They included the completely false and disgraceful suggestion that he is an anti-Semite.
Exactly.
Taki today in The Spectator praises Nigel Farage as Britain's only honest politician and Sir Roger Scruton for being a conservative and having a beautiful wife, which are two admirable qualities. Taki says, with much truth,
Instead the question is can the Tories prevent a Labour-Scottish Nationalist coalition without allying with the Brexit Party?
Part of me even wonders if, despite the first-past-the-post electoral system, the Brexit Party might come to power at the next election transfigured into a real conservative party, something that the UK has lacked since Harold Macmillan became Prime Minister.
Could Nigel Farage replace the Tories and be a British Trump or a British De Gaulle?
To understand how unconservative the Conservatives are, read this comment by the famous philosopher Sir Roger Scruton. He lost his unpaid job as Chairman of the British government's Building Better, Building Beautiful commission because of a disgraceful deliberate misuse of quotations from an interview he gave with the New Statesman. They included the completely false and disgraceful suggestion that he is an anti-Semite.
I am a conservative thinker, well known as such. Outspoken, but reasonable in my view. There has been throughout this country. and throughout Europe really, an attempt to silence the conservative voice. We get identified, caricatured, demonised, and made to look as though we are some kind of sinister fascist racist kind of people.
And as soon as the Conservative Party sees one of us being demonised in this way they rush to disassociate themselves from us.
Exactly.
Taki today in The Spectator praises Nigel Farage as Britain's only honest politician and Sir Roger Scruton for being a conservative and having a beautiful wife, which are two admirable qualities. Taki says, with much truth,
Sir Roger should have known what young Taki knew a very long time ago: the left will lie, cheat and go to any lengths to discredit good people who do not adhere to the foulest ideologies ever, and that includes Wahhabism.
I am not sure what he means about defending Wahhabism, but the left are very economical with the actualité. You see this every day, over and over again especially in universities.
Look at what the American press does with the Republicans. I gave up reading the American press talking about Donald Trump during the 2016 election. The continual lies about immigration. The distortions about climate change.
The left lies unceasingly. But why?
It's because they are in a way Calvinists. They think they are the elect. They think the masses are unsaved, are stupid and might easily be taken in by conservatives, whom they consider by definition wicked. The left consider lies as being like the pious forgeries committed by mediaeval monks to help aid belief.
For the left journalism is activism and they follow Karl Marx in thinking that the task is not to understand the world but to change it.
Look at what the American press does with the Republicans. I gave up reading the American press talking about Donald Trump during the 2016 election. The continual lies about immigration. The distortions about climate change.
The left lies unceasingly. But why?
It's because they are in a way Calvinists. They think they are the elect. They think the masses are unsaved, are stupid and might easily be taken in by conservatives, whom they consider by definition wicked. The left consider lies as being like the pious forgeries committed by mediaeval monks to help aid belief.
For the left journalism is activism and they follow Karl Marx in thinking that the task is not to understand the world but to change it.
Could Nigel Farage replace the Tories and be a British Trump or a British De Gaulle?
ReplyDeleteThe Brexit Party might do well but the big problem as far as Brexit is concerned is that the Liberal Democrats might do very well also. If that happens the media could, and almost certainly will, spin the result as a massive anti-Brexit backlash.
This could be a very big problem indeed if the Liberal Democrats do better than the Brexit Party. Which could happen - they could pick up a huge swag of Tory and Labour Remainer votes.
Even if the Brexit Party does well in the European elections when it comes to the general election I expect a re-run of 2015 - after a good result in the previous European elections UKIP performed disastrously in the general election.
The idea of having the Tories replaced by an actually conservative party is seductive but it can't happen until the Tories are utterly destroyed. That means they need to suffer a crushing general election defeat. So looking at it from the point of view of the country's long-term survival the least worst outcome in the next general election would be a Labour landslide victory. That might make possible the emergence of a viable new party.
Interesting. You might be right but the remedy might be worse than the disease.
ReplyDeleteThe worst thing that can happen to the country is always a Labour government and a Corbyn one would be truly disastrous but in many ways Mr Blair's was worse because it stayed in power ten years and made huge changes to the country.
England has always been a mildly conservative country, unlike Scotland which is collectivistic and left of centre. The problem is that mildly conservative now means a lot of things that were left-wing or far left. Can England become more conservative?
A hard one to answer. The young are very progressive. I think immigration will make the English much more conservative, but I do not know how long it will take.
The Scots do not care about immigration since they have received few immigrants.
The worst thing that can happen to the country is always a Labour government
DeleteIf the Tories are not destroyed then you'll never get an alternative right-wing party off the ground. And that means you'll have bad government permanently since the Tories are no better than Labour and in some ways worse.
Five years of Corbyn might be the price that has to be paid to change the political landscape in a meaningful way.
Plus at least with Corbyn Britain might have a sane foreign policy, for the first time since the late 19th century.
Could Nigel Farage replace the Tories
ReplyDeleteIs Nigel Farage a conservative though? He doesn't strike me as being the least bit conservative. He's obviously saner and more honest than any Tory PM in living memory but that's not saying much.
And can he be trusted on immigration? Or will he be like Trump? The big danger of Brexit is that it will lead to a massive increase in Third World immigration. You have to get cheap labour from somewhere otherwise businesses would face the nightmare of having to pay decent wages. Nothing matters more than keeping wages as low as possible.
I wish I knew more about him. A friend of mine, now dead, Helen Szamuely, brought him into UKIP but found that she could not stand him and left the fledgling party because of him. She refused to give him any credit for the referendum being held or for anything else. She was a very sound Tory and British patriot despite being the great niece of the murderous Hungarian Bolshevik Tibor Szamuely.
DeleteHe is a Thatcherite which in her day I was certainly not. Now, I think much of her free market reforms was good and she cowed the trade unions albeit through high unemployment. She did get rid of incomes policies and inflation. So being a Thatcherite is Tory rather than classical liberal and the Thatcherites, while not social conservatives were at least not social liberals.
I suspect that anti-immigration parties will take power throughout Western Europe sooner or later but that they will not end the mass immigration from outside Europe.
But who can know?
Helen was a great British patriot despite being born in and spending her early years in Moscow, the daughter of a Hungarian and a Russian. Like many of the fiercest British opponents of the EU that I know she was Jewish.
DeleteHe is a Thatcherite
DeleteYeah. That's my fear with Farage. You wouldn't actually want him as prime minister. He could potentially be much more disastrous than Corbyn as PM. In government his party could turn out to be an even nastier version of the Tories.
I generally think that a hung parliament is the best result. Given that all the parties are terrible and all would deliver bad government. If you're going to have a bad government it's safest to have a weak government.
A hung parliament would either be what we have now, the excellent DUP as kingmakers, or a disastrous Trotskyite - Scottish Nationalist coalition.
DeleteA hung parliament would either be what we have now, the excellent DUP as kingmakers, or a disastrous Trotskyite - Scottish Nationalist coalition.
DeleteBut the point is that whether you have a hung parliament or not you're going to get a horrible government. There aren't any good choices. The Tories are every bit as committed to the cultural marxist agenda as Labour.
Even if a miracle occurred and Nigel Farage became PM I suspect he would also embrace that same catastrophic social agenda.
Even if the major parties get smashed I'm not convinced you'll get a better alternative. One of the problems with the "far right" is that they're supportive of the entire liberal social agenda. They are not a genuine alternative. They just don't like Muslims and they seem to care more about Israel than Europe.
Whatever happens you'll have a terrible government. Corbyn might at least be less enthusiastic about getting Britain involved in more senseless wars, and be less enthusiastic about disastrous meddling in the Middle East.
What would Churchill have thought of Farage? Churchill was keen on a united Europe from 1945 but did not see this involving England, as he called the UK. When senile he was in favour of joining the EEC when Supermac tried, so he told his party constituency association chairman. He was ardently opposed to non white immigration.
ReplyDeleteWhat would Churchill have thought of Farage? Churchill was keen on a united Europe from 1945 but did not see this involving England, as he called the UK. When senile he was in favour of joining the EEC when Supermac tried, so he told his party constituency association chairman. He was ardently opposed to non white immigration.
ReplyDelete'Interestingly, Brexit voters have deserted the Tories to such an extent that the Conservatives actually have a higher share of the European vote among Remainers (12%) than among Leavers (11%).'
ReplyDeleteMeanwhile, voting intentions for the Westminster elections show the Brexit Party would also be snapping at the Tories' heels in a general election.
Labour is out in front with 28% support, followed by the Tories on 22%, the survey shows, but the Brexit Party is just behind on 21%.
Mr Drummond said it was 'remarkable' the new party could be on the cusp of overtaking the party of government.
Adam Drummond, head of political polling at Opinium
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7018477/Poll-Brexit-Party-win-votes-Labour-Conservatives-COMBINED-European-elections.html
Labour is out in front with 28% support, followed by the Tories on 22%, the survey shows, but the Brexit Party is just behind on 21%.
DeleteWhen a general election is still a relatively distant prospect smaller parties do well in opinion polls. Their support tends to diminish considerably the closer the election looms.
And as a general election looms closer the media will conduct the scare campaign to end all scare campaigns, labelling the Brexit Party as extremist racist Nazis. That won't work on everyone but it will scare some voters off.
I still expect the Brexit Party to win at most a tiny handful of seats in the general election, and possibly none at all.
The LibDems are the wild card. They could do a lot better than anyone expects.
Conservatives lie. Why? They consider themselves the lawgivers, the upholders of rectitude, and the last line of defense against silly flibbertigibbets who destroy society by making their own reproductive choices or refusing to be aghast/affronted at any form of social change.
ReplyDeleteNigel Lawson said that if there were no criminals there would be no need for the police and if there were no socialists or liberals there would be no need for conservatives.
Delete"In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines."
DeleteDisraeli
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/theresa-may-abortion-conservatives-dup/
Delete"In a progressive country change is constant; and the great question is not whether you should resist change which is inevitable, but whether that change should be carried out in deference to the manners, the customs, the laws and the traditions of a people, or whether it should be carried out in deference to abstract principles, and arbitrary and general doctrines."
DeleteDisraeli
This is why conservatism is useless. They start off by surrendering to liberal ideology, accepting notions like "progressive" and "change is inevitable" and once they've done that they might as well just admit that they're liberals. They just want to destroy society slightly more slowly. It's a fatalistic approach. They're accepting that liberalism is good and inevitable.
It's like arguing that the car is heading for a cliff at 60 mph so we should lightly tap the brakes so we only go over the cliff at 50 mph.
The 2D world of Roger Scruton.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.unz.com/article/a-flat-gray-silent-world/
“A great philosopher should be someone who can transcend his own times and proclaim truths that others don’t see or refuse to mention. The truth in the Scruton affair is that he was sacked on Jewish orders in accordance with Jewish ideology. Scruton himself won’t admit this. Nor will he admit that Jews like Lord Finkelstein and the Board of Deputies actually approve of innocent people being condemned and punished for “anti-Semitism.”
'change is constant'
ReplyDeleteIt is not necessary to change. Survival is not mandatory.
W. Edwards Deming