Monday, July 02, 2007

Hitchens ...

On top form, describing why the survival of the Tories is so important to Labour.

Mentioning that he (Peter Kellner - LT) had himself been a Labour Party member for 33 years, he said: "I think it's really important that the Conservative Party does survive as a substantial brand, because there will always be a need for a centre-right party."

Oh, really, I wondered as he spoke. What might that need be, and who felt it? Mr Kellner read my mind and continued:" If the Conservatives were to go the way that Peter expects (and I think possibly would relish) I am frightened as to what kind of right-of-centre politics would then spring up...

"One of the great virtues of British politics...is that we have not had a substantial far-right nationalist xenophobic party in Britain. A substantial Conservative Party is our best bulwark against the kind of politics that I think could become very nasty".

The scary language about 'far-right', 'xenophobic' and 'nationalist' is just the jargon that Labour Party people like Mr Kellner use to describe those who want to leave the European Union, those who don't want mass immigration and those who think that criminals should be punished. As for things turning nasty, I think myself that this would be far more likely as long as there continues to be no mainstream party to speak for the people of Britain on such issues.

He is absolutely correct to see the Tory Party as the Left's best line of defence against the development of a party that was properly pro-British and socially conservative - and the Cameroon Tory MP Ed Vaizey, who was sitting on the same platform, did not leap in to disavow Mr Kellner's endorsement.


He has a point. The BBC believe that it was Rock Against Racism which saw off the National Front. I thinkit was more likely to be Margaret 'Swamped' Thatcher.

The most famous use (of 'swamp') was by Margaret Thatcher way back in 1979, when the immigrant communities in Britain were half their current size. She spoke of people’s fears about being ‘swamped by people of a different culture’ and was roundly assailed for this by people who pointed out that ‘ethnic minorities’ only made up a few percent of the British population. With hindsight, some on the left have acknowledged that this speech, so condemned at the time, cut the ground from under the feet of the anti-immigration far right, who disappeared off the political map for twenty years.

In the light of the above, I blogged on the Tory choices regarding the minority vote and multicultural Britain here.


There are therefore three choices open to the Tories.

a) embrace multiculturalism in a half-hearted fashion as done currently, with the conspicuous success described above, in the hope that the wheels will come off Gordon Brown's bus in spectacular fashion.

b) embrace it and really mean it - go beyond Teresa May's wildest dreams. Major on self-help and education (thank you Hindu voters) and family values (add the Muslim vote). Problems ? Most competent potential Indian/Hindu leaders are too busy making money to bother with politics, Muslim leaders care about politics, but it's intimately linked with religion. The other great risk is that you'll shed party members like autumn leaves, some of whom, perfectly decent people, will find a home in the BNP.

c) accept the fact that these votes are unattainable and all that springs therefrom. Become the political voice of the Native Brits, grab what remains of the white working class vote, campaign strongly against further immmigration while retaining a strictly One Nation approach (i.e. no discrimination of any kind, judging on content of character rather than skin colour etc) to those immigrants already here and their descendants. Risk - a sad farewell to the Letwins and Camerons of this world. Plus no prospect of power for the foreseeable. On the plus side, the BNP will wither away like the State in an ideal Socialist society.


Hitchens view of the Tories ?

The Tories are an unleadable party based on a hopeless, seething coalition of people who hate each other and have nothing in common to enforce unity in their ranks. Some want to leave the EU, some love the EU. Some want homosexual marriage.

Others want heterosexual marriage to have unique privileges. Some want more grammar schools. Some hate grammar schools. These are not positions over which it is possible to compromise. Were he the Archangel Gabriel, and he is not, David Cameron could not turn this rabble into an election-winning force. Nor, if he did so, could he govern the country with any conviction. He would be in office, but not in power.

This means that the urgent task is to replace the Tories with a movement that can beat New Labour and which believes in something, and to do this we must bulldoze the wreckage of the Tories out of the way.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

How low would the turnout in a General Election have to be before our political system loses it's legitimacy?

ba ba said...

Interesting.

Anonymous said...

How low would the turnout in a General Election have to be before our political system loses it's legitimacy? 0%

Peter Kellner's wife, Lady Ashton...Leader of Lords

shows how far the disability and human rights hobby-horse can carry you. Then again with Baroness Uddin boasting a Diploma in Social Work from North London Polytechnic one can see why the old fogeys in The Lords with their Oxbridge educations had to give way to "modernity"

The Conservative Party is dead and selected an aristocrat to help put it to sleep. His wife's stepfather hails from a family made rich by slum landlordism in New York which gave The Cliveden Set its base and this seems to be how the Con Party will end....a mix between Cliveden parties and the stench of putrefaction.

The British economy was a soggy moribund case in 1978 revitalised by the annuity of oil revenues to boost living standards and credit.....as Harold Wilson said - whichever party was in power when North Sea Oil came on stream would be in power for a generation.....the loss of North Sea Oil and the need to import energy for heating and lighting is the weak link for Britain and EU both....and China may not want to share.

In 1973 we saw the physical rationing of oil by OPEC....today there is an assumption we can consume ad infinitum if we pay.....that is the generational switch, from being careful to husband a finite resource to acting as if it was an inexhaustible supply to feed ever bigger energies and ever more appliances.

The Tories talk green but do not propose to restore their 1997 plans to impose 17.5% VAT on energy.....yet consistency demands they should egage in such a stupid policy.

Steve Hilton has taken the Tories up a blind alley - but he is another of these figures of first-generation British who seem to dictate policy in our political parties nowadays....those whoe understanding of the nation is more than superficial have been cast aside in favour of advertising schmooze and blithe ignorance.


The Tories are dead and once that party fragments Labour can prepare to split too....PR in local government is the key to destroying the activist base and fracturing these political parties which have as Cameron admits over grammar schools, preached one thing while doing the opposite in power.

That is why Cameron's re-shuffle is so funny - unimportant - trivial - inconsequential. His party is simply pointless - he has no traction in the North and faces a fight in the South......it is a regional party not a national one, a Southern lifestyle party not a political party. It is over.

Anonymous said...

Quite the biggest load of bollocks about the Tory party I have ever read.

You have not the slightest idea of where Cameron will take the party anymore than I have. It is obvious that he is playing a game with the pro-Left BBC and the left-wing papers, in much the same way as NuLabour chatted up the Daily Mail and the Sun. Most Tories understand this. Is Cameron Green? Or does he just realise that by picking on certain trandy issues supported by those that have voted for a Labour party that has not delivered on Green issues he can pick up their votes? He knows we are forced to deliver anyway since our balance of trade figures won't permit us to continue to import ever more energy.

You don't like Cameron?

Well that's because he is smarter than you are....

Anonymous said...

So anonymous, you believe Cameron is playing the same game as Blair and New Labour, yet you think that means we should trust him.

Some people learn nothing do they?

Anonymous said...

Well we DEFINITELY can't trust Labour so it seems we are forced to consider putting our trust in the Tories. Of course you could vote for UKIP or the BNP if you have lost grip of your senses, in which case you will get more Labour. But then the BNP and UKIP both have tendencies to split into factions united only by shared hatreds.

Anonymous said...

Well that's because he is smarter than you are....

9:14 AM


He most certainly is not...in fact he is of extraordinarily limited experience and intelligence

DJ said...

It's amazing how behind the times the Tory modernisers are. 90% of all Liberal arguments devolve down to them calling you - and everyone else - FICK. The Cameroonatics are so smart, they can't even come up with their own talking points.

Anonymous said...

Forget the Tories, after reading this on Melanie Phillips; Chamberlain’s heirs the Tories will betray us worse than Nu Labour have done.

What we need is a decent Independent party, with some of the BNP immigration policies! And of course, someone to pull us all OUT of Europe.