Where have they all gone?

The British political scene was once populated by serious men and women.  They were learned folk, from all walks of life, whether academia, journalism, finance, trade unionism, small business etc.  The House of Commons was the true democratic forum of the nation.  In 1947, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Hugh Dalton, resigned because of budget leaks to the press.  Now these leaks are part of the tradition of budget week.  Honourable men and women resigned on points of principle.  They never tried to exculpate themselves from the blame.  Margaret Thatcher’s Foreign Secretary, Peter Carrington, resigned after the invasion of the Falkland Islands because he felt he should take the blame for the mistakes of his civil servants.  Michael Heseltine resigned on a point of principle.  Today, we hear Ed Miliband was deeply opposed to the building of the third runway at Heathrow.  As much as I despise sanctimonious environmentalists who believe ribbon wearing makes them fuel efficient, many would have respected Miliband’s decision to resign had he chosen to do so.  It appears the trappings of office were to much of a drug for Miliband.  The much maligned British historian of the 18th century, Sir Lewis Namier, wrote that politics is not about ideological struggles but mere positioning.  Although I disagree with his main historical analysis, it is hard to argue that British politics has not entered a Namerite phase.

David Cameron abandoned conservatism in an attempt to get the Conservatives elected, by misdiagnosing a problem.  Blair, Mandelson, Brown and Gould were right when they believed they had been elected by a conservative country.  Britain may no longer be Conservative country, but it is a conservative country.  Cameron abandoned conservatism and achieved a pathetic vote share of 36.9%.  The middle class base of the Labour Party may be composed of social liberals and Hampstead intellectuals who preach the benefits of immigration from their comfortable Islington townhouses, but the working class base of the Labour Party believes in law and order, monarchy, and heterosexuality.  In 1979, Mrs Thatcher achieved a vote share of 44.9%.  This is astonishing when you consider the growth of three party politics from 1974 and the Liberal surge.  In England, she achieved 47.1% in 1979, 46% in 1983 and 46.1% in 1987.  In the South, she achieved 55% vote shares.  England was Conservative country in Mrs T’s day, because her message of strong social conservatism, strong foreign policy, a message of national sovereignity against EU encroachment and economic liberalism appealed, not only to Tories, but Labour voters and liberals.  When Labour adopted the conservative messages of ‘tough on crime tough on the causes of crime,’ free markets, national sovereignity  etc they won a landslide with 44.4% of the vote, again, an astonishing figure considering the growth of three party politics.  Blair however gave credence to the Namierite school of history.

But it wasn’t always so.  The Conservative Party and the Labour Party was a comfortable home for intellectuals.  The Tories had Enoch Powell, Sir Ian Gilmour, Rab Butler, Nigel Lawson, Bob Boothby, Quintin Hogg etc.  The Labour Party had Michael Foot, Denis Healey, Richard Crossman, Douglas Jay, Roy Jenkins and Gordon Brown.  Now we have pillocks like David Cameron, Theresa May and that supreme economic brain of George Osborne.  The Labour Party fares no better, as mosts of its talent lies on the backbenches e.g. the new backbencher economist Rachel Reeves and the newly anointed backbencher Gordon Brown. 

Michael Foot was a prolific author, publishing on matters as divergent as appeasement and Jonathan Swift.  He was perhaps the most knowledgeable MP on matters 18th century, though Sir Ian Gilmour was no slouch, publishing a masterly historical account of that most venal century, ”Riots, Risings and Revolutions.”  He also published biographical accounts of the early years of Byron and Shelley.  Politics is empty now because few of the members have what Denis Healey calls a ‘hinterland.’  Healey was a distinguished classicist and photographer.  Roy Jenkins was a historian, who published arguably the defintive account of William Gladstone.  Nigel Lawson was one of the most accomplished journalists of his generation before becoming politician.  Nowadays, politicians follow a cliched career path of university, think tank, special advisor, MP, minister and then Secretary of State.  The Labour leadership contest is exclusively composed of former Spads.  Cameron was a Spad, as was Clegg.  The real talent on the backbenches is not utilised because, as Peter Oborne remarks in his magisterial book ‘the Rise of the Political Class,’ whoever wins the general election, the political class is in power.  The next election looks set to be fought by David Miliband, David Cameron and Nick Clegg, who all look and sound alike.  These centrist politicians decry ideology as ‘outdated’ and ‘irrelevant.’  Everybody wants to occupy the ‘centre ground,’ which is usually defined by the Guardian and the BBC, and bears little resemblance to what Keith Joseph called ‘the Common Ground.’  This is why voter turnout has collapsed.  It is a sad indicment of modern politics that a turnout of 65% is considered a success.  The last election to be fought on traditional left/right grounds was 1992, when turnout reached 78%.  The ‘centre’ ground elections of 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2010 saw turnout at 71%, 59%, 61% and 65% respectively.  I will bet now that turnout will not be much greater the next time Her Majesty dissolves parliament. 

It is time to bring back the ideologues of British politics.  We must save our democracy

Respect aye!

How is it that rabid, Islamist, jidad apologists such as Salma Yaqoob are treated with respect by the BBC, but those who hold such radical opinions as not being a minority in your own country such as Geert Wilders are treated as right wing xenophobes who shouldn’t even be touched with a protected barge pole.

Double standards are awash within the BBC.  They support the appeasing ideological agenda of the Guardian reading establishment.  They do not wish to see the danger posed by global jihad because they fear offending minorities.  We are minorities in the Middle East, but we would be minorities in Britain if the global jihadists had their way.  Yet the Guardianstas do not seem to see this.  People like Yaqoob love to promote their ‘diversity’ supporting credentials, and their support for homosexuals etc.  They love to call themselves progressive.  Yet people like Yaqoob, Galloway, Livingstone, and also Ed Miliband and Harriet Harman, share the stage with Islamist militants who believe in the stoning to death of homosexuals and adulterers.  If George Osborne shared the stage with somebody who promoted the murder of homosexuals, the BBC and the Guardian would slaughter him.  Harriet Harman and boy Miliband did, and yet the BBC bigots were silent.  Not one mention of it on the news website.  No such headline as;

ED MILIBAND SHARES THE STAGE WAS TARIQ RAMADAN, WHO BELIEVES HOMOSEXUALS SHOULD BE STONED TO DEATH

The same applies to Israel.  The left wing Spanish journalist Pilar Rahola recently said;

Why don’t we see demonstrations against Islamic dictatorships in London, Paris, Barcelona? Or demonstrations against the Burmese dictatorship? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the enslavement of millions of women who live without any legal protection? Why aren’t there demonstrations against the use of children as human bombs where there is conflict with Islam? Why has there been no leadership in support of the victims of Islamic dictatorship in Sudan? Why is there never any outrage against the acts of terrorism committed against Israel? Why is there no outcry by the European left against Islamic fanaticism? Why don’t they defend Israel’s right to exist? Why confuse support of the Palestinian cause with the defense of Palestinian terrorism? An finally, the million dollar question: Why is the left in Europe and around the world obsessed with the two most solid democracies, the United States and Israel, and not with the worst dictatorships on the planet?

The international press does major damage when reporting on the question of the Israeli-Palestinian issue. On this topic they don’t inform, they propagandize. When reporting about Israel the majority of journalists forget the reporter code of ethics. And so, any Israeli act of self-defense becomes a massacre, and any confrontation, genocide. So many stupid things have been written about Israel, that there aren’t any accusations left to level against her. At the same time, this press never discusses Syrian and Iranian interference in propagating violence against Israel; the indoctrination of children and the corruption of the Palestinians. And when reporting about victims, every Palestinian casualty is reported as tragedy and every Israeli victim is camouflaged, hidden or reported about with disdain.

So true. 

Israel is one of the few democracies in the Middle East.  It suffers daily existential threats from the murderous thugs in Hamas.  Iran wants to blow it off the face of the earth.  The blockade on Gaza is necessary to protect the Jewish and Arab population of Israel from destruction.  To those like Ms Yaqoob who continue to propagate such nonsense, please fuck off from this country and go and live with your Jihadist warmonger allies and live like the typical subjugated Muslim woman instead of enjoying the historical English liberties you are lucky to have.  Just remember one thing, the Arabs in Jerusalem enjoy far more rights than the Arabs in the theocratic Arab states that surround Israel.

A short history of deficit reduction

The Labour Party’s naked opportunism is revolting to witness.  The party that bequeathed its successor the largest peacetime deficit in history has decided to exculpate itself from any responsibility.  Spending cuts seem inimical to this disgraceful party.  They are much more comfortable with taxing the productive, wealth-creating classes of this country, seemingly motivated out of spite rather than sound economic thinking.  Some very reputable economists such as Lord Eatwell, Lord Skidelsky, Lord Layard etc are warning against spending cuts this year.  I don’t know why.  Keynes once said that the master economist needs to be ‘part historian.’  If these economists are dedicated Keynesians, they should know the history of deficit reductions.  I will deal with the most favourite case of Keynesian economists, which is of course the Great Depression. 

In 1933, the last year of the disastrous presidency of Herbert Hoover, the budget deficit was 4.5% of GDP.  During the first 4 years of New Deal, the budget deficit averaged 5.1%.  This is a difference of 60 basis points.  This apparently meant the difference between depression and recovery.  And the move towards deficit reduction apparently caused a double dip in 1937.  However, if this is the case, then in 1945, the American economy should have fallen back into depression, when a deficit of 21.5% in 1945 was turned into a surplus of 1.9% in 1947.  This is a difference in basis points of 2,320!  If a 60 point swing measn the difference between depression and recovery, surely a 2,320 point swing would be catastrophic for the economy.  However, it wasn’t.  The post war recession lasted 8 months, compared to the decade long depression.  And unemployment peaked at 3.9%, whereas it never fell below 14% during the Great Depression. 

The figures of US budgets are available below:

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/data/budget.php

In Britain, Mrs Thatcher and Sir Geoffrey Howe implemented a fiscal reduction of 4% of GDP through tax rises and spending cuts.  364 economists unleashed opprobrium on the government.  However, the economy experienced rapid, above trend rate growth during the 1980′s.  Lamont and Clarke’s budget cuts and tax rises between 93-97 were accompanied by above trend rate growth.  The same was true with Denis Healey’s cuts in 1977, when capital expenditure was slashed. 

Japan implemented 10 fiscal stimulus programmes in the 1990′s, and yet the economy remained in the mire during that and the following decade.  ‘The lost decade’ is known to all economists. 

And as Tim Congdon recently wrote in Standpoint, David Cameron and the Conservative-Liberal government will prove that rapid deficit reduction can be accompanied by above trend rate growth. 

Down with the Keynesians!!!

Where is the running man of Kirkcaldy?

Where is Gordon Brown these days?  Not content with surreptitiously destroying the British economy by using the name of Maynard Keynes to justify wild fiscal expansionism, he has now been missing for several weeks, cleverly avoiding the autopsy of his government and the complete destruction of the myth that Brown was a good Chancellor.  Will he be seen again?  Will he be like John Major, making sporadic appearances in the House of Commons, or will he disappear within weeks like his immediate predecessor Tony Blair?  As Shakespeare remarked in Measure for Measure…

”Some rise by sin, and some by virtue fall.”

Blair was a good man.  An awful Prime Minister no doubt, but a good man who has unfailingly polite as Paul Johnson testifies.  But Brown was a beast, an unmitigated disaster as a human being and even worse as the Prime Minister of this country.

In defence of FPTP

After the second general election in a row where the ‘winning’ party achieved a pathetic 36% of the vote, I decided to switch my support from FPTP to PR.  I apologise for this amazing lack of judgement.  First Past the Post is a much maligned electoral system, but I was impressed by an article in the latest issue of Standpoint by William Norton, who skewers PR by using the example of the former MP for Wyre Forest, Dr Richard Taylor. 

Under a proportional system, Dr Richard Taylor would have stood no chance of being elected, because as Norton says, there would be nowhere enough voters concerned with Kidderminster Hospital.  However, under FPTP, he was the most representative of his constituents’ views.  The beauty of FPTP is the constituency link.  Parliament is composed of constituencies.  A parliamentarian is elected if he is the most representative of his constituents’ views.  The PR argument goes that if an MP gains around 45% of the vote, 55% voted against them.  This is patent nonsense.  We don’t vote ‘against’ we vote ‘for.’  Whoever gains the most votes is the most representative of the views of his constituents.  Also, PR gives power to the party that finishes first.  In Germany, the Free Democrats have had a virtual lock on the Foreign Office, despite achieving only 5% of the vote in most elections.  Why should a party that is one of the least representative of the views of the country have the chance to be part of the government. 

FPTP is not perfect.  The situation whereby winning parties only get 36% of the vote is unsustainable, and some reforms should be introduced to counter this.  We should have separate parliaments for each constituent nation of the United Kingdom.  Scotland always votes Labour, and it deserves the Labour government.  England has mostly always voted Conservative, and did so at this election, and yet Labour still had a chance to form the government in the 2010 election. 

Compulsory voting should be avoided, but in this day and age, there is surely some way of having an internet vote for those who prefer computers to polling stations.  Any governing party should have the support of at least 45% of the electorate.  In the 1980′s, the wonderful Mrs Thatcher achieved 47% vote shares in England, which is astonishing when one considers that from 1974, three party politics grew as more voters moved away from the duolopy of Labour and the Tories.  The Tories under MacMillan used to achieve 50% vote shares in England, but that was with a pathetic Liberal vote.  When the Alliance vote in 83 soared to 26% in England, Mrs Thatcher still achieved 47%, which is astonishing.  England is a conservative country, whereas Scotland and Wales are socialist countries.  Scotland shouldn’t have to put up with Conservative government, and we English shouldn’t have to suffer socialism because it is inimical to the English people. 

Perhaps second round voting could be introduced, where the party with the fewest votes is knocked out and the voters go to the polls again (all of them, so as to eliminate the unfairness of certain voters being allowed to vote more than once).  The election should be held over two weeks instead of one day, and the first party to achieve 45% will definately have a majority in the House.  This is reformed FPTP and it will work

On Israel

The world has directed its anger towards Israel once again.  Peter Oborne once said that an anti-Muslim attitude was ‘the last acceptable remaining form of bigotry in the United Kingdom.’  It appears Oborne was nearly right, only that he should have replaced anti-Muslim with anti-Jewish. 

Israel is a small nation state.  It is one of the few democratic nations in that troubled part of the world, and the Arabs who live in Israel enjoy much higher standards of living and political freedom than their Muslim cousins who populate the Islamist theocracies that make up the Middle East.  This does not stop the useful idiots like Tony Benn and George Galloway from protesting against Israeli ‘occupation’ of Gaza.  They say that anti-Jewish occupation is not the same as anti-semitism, but these clowns can barely disguise their glee at having the publicity to demonise a democratic nation state.  Israel has not occupied Gaza for three years.  But it maintains a blockade because Hamas has declared war on Israel.  The Hamas charter states that it desires to ‘drive Israel into the sea.’   It has launched over 10,000 rockets on Israel (particularly Ashkolom and Sderot) since 2004, and Israel ignored it, until she could do so no longer, and she launched operation Cast Lead.  It was an enormous success.  Of course there was unfortunate collateral damage, but most of the casualties were Hamas militants.  It is not the fault of the IDF that Hamas use women and children as human shields because they are too cowardly to face the responsibility for their actions. 

Israel is fighting a war that provides a direct challenge to its existence.  It is surrounded by a pincer movement.  The useful idiots who proclaim themselves humanitarians were carrying weapons!  Why would these ‘peaceniks’ need weapons?  Israel used paintball guns when they intercepted the ship, whereas the humanitarians used knives, iron bars etc.  They threw a soldier overboard.  These people aren’t looking to get aid into Gaza.  They are anti-Semities who despise the state of Israel.  The leaders of this vile movement come from the British Left.  The British Left used to oppose fascism and racial discrimination.  Now it implicity supports them in the name of ‘anti-war’ protesting.  Only a few brave souls dare to speak out against their comrades, such as the magnificent Nick Cohen, David Aaronovitch and Oliver Kamm.  These humanitarians are helping the Islamist militants to smuggle weapons into Gaza so they can wage holy war against the Jewish enemy. 

Israel has offered a two state solution on five occasions, and the Palestinian leaders have rejected each other.  Yasser Arafat was a corrupt bastard with a moral compass as haywire as our recently departed Prime Minister Brown.  Israel channels tens of thousands of tons of aid into Gaza each week.  Gaza is thriving at the moment.  Its markets are open and well stocked.  However, the Western media, specifically the BBC, refuses to report this, and it refuses to report that Hamas blew up a summer camp for children and one of Gaza’s restaurants.  Israel can only offer a separate state for the Palestinians if they support the right of Israel to exist.  If they don’t, and continue to launch rockets against this beautiful country, then they should prepare for the worst.

Israel is fighting an existential threat.  The Arabs didn’t complain too much when the Jews settled on their 1000′s of years old homeland, because it was a dry, arid and poor desert land.  They only complained when the Jewish people started becoming prosperous and free.  There are dozens of Muslim states in the Middle East.  Why do they focus on this small desert country when they already have 95% of the Middle East under their theocratic banner?  It is because they do not want the state of Israel to exist. 

The socialists may have abandoned an honourable tradition of representing the repressed and under-represented, but conservatives recognise the need for strong national defence and solidarity with fellow nations across the planet as we wage war against the Jihadists who want to usurp liberal Western civilisation and replace it with an Islamist theocracy where decent, moderate Muslims are grouped with atheists, secularists, Christians, Sikhs, Buddhists etc, to be ruled by a theocratic Caliphate.  It is time to fight back.  Neoconservatism may have a bad name, but that is because its left wing enemies are expert bastards who smear their opponents because they do not have the intellectual ammunition to have a respectful civilised debate.

Our doubts are traitors, and make us lose the good we oft might win by fearing to attempt.

Welcome

This is the blog of a radical libertarian conservative. Of course, conservatism never used to be radical, but the revolution launched in the 1960′s by a collection of Gramscian students and sociology lecturers created a new status quo. A liberal left establishment was created, dedicated to changing the nature and fabric of the United Kingdom through mass immigration and multiculturalism. They disregarded traditions that had developed over centuries, inflicting a relativist experiment on society that has deprived its people of a moral code. Opponents of European Union integration are derided as xenophobes. Opponents of mass immigration as labelled racists. Opponents of state intervention in the economy are often accused of wanting to sacrifice the poor to capitalist demon Gods. And most disgustlingly of all… they adopted a ‘progressive’ moniker. They called themselves the ‘progressives’ and all who diverged from their definition were to be the subject of a great deal of criticism and opprobrium. It is rather ironic that the relativists have created a rigid moral code of their own.

Traditional conservative values of family, stoicism, individualism, prudence, sound money and activist foreign policy are now derided. Those who wish to maintain the nation state against unaccountable, internationalist forces need to read the first chapter in Roger Scruton’s book on conservatism, where he mounts a very credible and perspicacious defence of the nation state. The new generation of conservatives need to re-establish conservatism as a suitable creed for the modern age. I aim to play my part through this blog