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Theresa May is a weak person who, like most weak people (such as Tsar Nicholas II, for example) is very stubborn. She came completely under the control of two advisers, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hall as Home Secretary and then as Prime Minister, until she lost her majority in the election they egged her on to call and was required by her MPs to fire them.
They were much more powerful than cabinet ministers, whom they addressed with four letter words. Referring to Theresa May's continual talk about eradicating slavery and looking at her and her two advisers Boris Johnson said "That's modern slavery right there."
They were doubly disastrous.
The election they had their boss call and the way in which she fought it was a catastrophe for her party and for the country's bargaining position in the Brexit negotiations.
But it would have been a yet greater disaster if their policies had been endorsed by an election victory with a majority of 90 MPs, as most people expected.
Nick Timothy symbolically shaved off his beard and irritatingly opines each week in the Telegraph without feeling any need for shame. Fiona Hill, unlike him a Remainer, had the sense of decorum to disappear but has now given this interview.
She is right that there is no thinking going on in the Tory party or the Labour party, but
wrong that thinking about policy happened in the Labour party when it was in opposition in the years before 1997. They thought only about how to win the election and came to power with no ideas.
But ideas are needed and the ones that seem useful come from the anti-globalists, people like John O' Sullivan, Douglas Murray and, on the left, Rod Liddle. It is telling that they are writers, not politicians.
Social democracy and liberalism seem to have little to say to people in Europe who want to preserve nation states, faced with loss of national identity.
Fiona Hill and Theresa May identified the importance of bringing immigration down to the tens of thousands, as promised in the 2010 election but they failed to bring the net immigration figure much below 300,000.
Net immigration figures (total numbers of immigrants minus emigrants) are in any case meaningless.
The total number of immigrants who come, minus immigrants who leave, is what matters. More important is the number of immigrants given leave to settle. This was 50,000 a year in the late 1960s and under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. It is now 60,000 and does not of course include EU people, who make up half of immigrants.
Immigration and how quickly (if at all) the British want it to transform their country is the big issue and is not discussed. Nor is how to encourage women to have more children (as they would mostly like to do).
As Fiona Hill says, Britain does not have a foreign policy and has not for years. I suggest one. Be friends with Donald Trump but reduce defence spending and keep out of all overseas engagements. Fight no more humanitarian wars. Use the threat of leaving NATO to get a good Brexit deal.
Genuine conservatism hardly exists in Parliament, now the right-wing backbenchers of yore have retired and the hereditary peers have gone. Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, is only conservative where his Catholicism requires him to be.
Genuine conservatism exists in the media to a very limited extent. Peter Hitchens is one example. But if it is largely absent compelling arguments to combat conservatism are also absent.
All political arguments are really theological. The most powerful opponents of genuine conservatism are, counter-intuitively, the Pope, the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, though the social conservatives are fighting to preserve Christian Europe.
They were much more powerful than cabinet ministers, whom they addressed with four letter words. Referring to Theresa May's continual talk about eradicating slavery and looking at her and her two advisers Boris Johnson said "That's modern slavery right there."
They were doubly disastrous.
The election they had their boss call and the way in which she fought it was a catastrophe for her party and for the country's bargaining position in the Brexit negotiations.
But it would have been a yet greater disaster if their policies had been endorsed by an election victory with a majority of 90 MPs, as most people expected.
Nick Timothy symbolically shaved off his beard and irritatingly opines each week in the Telegraph without feeling any need for shame. Fiona Hill, unlike him a Remainer, had the sense of decorum to disappear but has now given this interview.
She is right that there is no thinking going on in the Tory party or the Labour party, but
wrong that thinking about policy happened in the Labour party when it was in opposition in the years before 1997. They thought only about how to win the election and came to power with no ideas.
But ideas are needed and the ones that seem useful come from the anti-globalists, people like John O' Sullivan, Douglas Murray and, on the left, Rod Liddle. It is telling that they are writers, not politicians.
Social democracy and liberalism seem to have little to say to people in Europe who want to preserve nation states, faced with loss of national identity.
Fiona Hill and Theresa May identified the importance of bringing immigration down to the tens of thousands, as promised in the 2010 election but they failed to bring the net immigration figure much below 300,000.
Net immigration figures (total numbers of immigrants minus emigrants) are in any case meaningless.
The total number of immigrants who come, minus immigrants who leave, is what matters. More important is the number of immigrants given leave to settle. This was 50,000 a year in the late 1960s and under Margaret Thatcher and John Major. It is now 60,000 and does not of course include EU people, who make up half of immigrants.
Immigration and how quickly (if at all) the British want it to transform their country is the big issue and is not discussed. Nor is how to encourage women to have more children (as they would mostly like to do).
As Fiona Hill says, Britain does not have a foreign policy and has not for years. I suggest one. Be friends with Donald Trump but reduce defence spending and keep out of all overseas engagements. Fight no more humanitarian wars. Use the threat of leaving NATO to get a good Brexit deal.
Genuine conservatism hardly exists in Parliament, now the right-wing backbenchers of yore have retired and the hereditary peers have gone. Jacob Rees-Mogg, for example, is only conservative where his Catholicism requires him to be.
Genuine conservatism exists in the media to a very limited extent. Peter Hitchens is one example. But if it is largely absent compelling arguments to combat conservatism are also absent.
All political arguments are really theological. The most powerful opponents of genuine conservatism are, counter-intuitively, the Pope, the Catholic Church and the Protestant churches, though the social conservatives are fighting to preserve Christian Europe.
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