The Protocols of New Labour

My recent observation that I thought the Labour Party a conspiracy against the people of this country caused a minor ripple on Twitter.  I’m inspired, inspired to make the indictment even heavier by reviving a piece I wrote a couple of years ago. 

What follows is an imaginary document (it is, isn’t it?), an agenda for Britain by the Labour Party, based, of course, on The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another infamous forgery about a supposed conspiracy. The difference is that the elements, the substantive elements, are all drawn from real history, past happenings and, from the date of the document, coming events. What about the conspiracy element? Well, I leave that for you to decide. :-)

Dismantling Britain

London, sometime in the winter of 1996.

Comrades, let me summarise the main points of our discussion and the elements of our agreed strategy. There has to be an election in the coming year, so we must be ready with the most effective programme possible. Also, comrades, none of this will go into our published manifesto. Let me remind you that you are all pledged to absolute secrecy.

Past Achievements

1.1 Ever since it was founded at the beginning of this century our Labour Party has been pledged to the destruction of Britain and the British way of life. We have approached this task in various ways. Before the Second World War our governments were too weak, too dependent on the good will of the then Liberal Party, to do any real damage. Something might possibly have come out from the partial victory of 1929 if it had not been for the treason of Ramsay Macdonald, joining in the National Government with the terrible Tories. For the nation is something we hate. The pacifism we supported certainly went a long way towards ensuring the country was not ready for war in 1939, but not nearly far enough.

1.2 We had a great victory in 1945 and made much of it under the guidance of Comrades Atlee and Bevan. The best way to ensure that the country would be ill-prepared for the future, for competition with the other capitalist states, was to start spending money it did not have on welfare programmes that it could not afford. How stupid our enemies were not to recognise how clever we were in building a Welfare State in a bankrupt country! How much more we could have achieved if Comrade Atlee had not lost his nerve and went for a general election in 1951. The Tories managed to reverse some of our damage, though we still made real gains on the road to ruin, massive public spending based on an economy that depended in a large part on dying and antiquated industries. Our comrades in the Trade Unions offered us valuable support here.

1.3 Our next period in office from 1964 to 1970 also saw positive achievements. Some comrades made useful and lasting contacts with the comrade communists in the Soviet Union as part of our secret foreign policy programme. Information was exchanged and deals done. Comrade Jack Jones of the Transport and General Workers Union performed some valuable services here, both as a paid-up agent of the KGB and as a sponsor of new MPs in trade union rotten boroughs. Comrades Blair and Brown were eventually to benefit from this union sponsorship. Comrade Wilson, our Prime Minister, pretended to be renewing the economy and reforming ‘outmoded’ trade union practices; but the economy just got weaker and the unions stronger.

1.4. More good work was done in our next period of government from 1974 to 1979, especially in the creation of ruinous levels of inflation, helped along by deals with the trade union dons. But things were still not moving fast enough; Britain was proving more resilient than we expected. Then came the disaster of 1979; then came Margaret Thatcher, the devil incarnate, who set about ruing all of our best achievements. We came close, but not close enough. We have to try harder, accelerate our programme in such a way that no future Thatcher will be able to reverse our work.

Future Strategy

We are now prepared for government, for victory in the election of 1997. These are the chief elements we must work on.

a. Devolution. Scotland and Wales must be given a parliament, in the case of the former, and an assembly, in the case of the latter. It was a mistake, comrades, to oppose devolution in the past, for this is the best way of beginning the end of Britain and the best way of isolating England. Don’t worry, comrades; in the short term we will still have the support of the bloc Labour vote from Scotland and Wales at Westminster, though English Tories will have no input into the affairs of these nations. A brilliant tactic. In the long term it will not matter what happens in England or what the English think for, you see, there will be no more England, which leads on to the second main feature of our master plan.

b. Europe. We shall accelerate the death of Parliament in England by giving away more and more powers to the European Union. We shall pretend to be opposed to any major political changes in Europe, changes of a constitutional nature, while advancing these as fast as we can. One element here is to pretend to allow the people to have a say in such matters and then, when our goals are within reach, change our minds. This approach might be used just prior to a future election. Westminster shall become increasingly irrelevant in peoples lives; England shall become increasingly irrelevant. Indeed, our third major strategy will make it difficult for people in future even to define Englishness.

c. Mass Immigration. We will open the doors. We will allow everyone in, whether there is economic cause or not, diluting the native English stock in a new multi-cultural utopia. We shall denounce all words of caution as racist, thus silencing debate. When we are finished it will be impossible to reverse the trend. This may very well lead to new forms of extremism in our old heartlands, as voters feel more and more alienated, a danger, yes, but such a process will help us forward by leading to the further fragmentation of England.

d. The Economy. Comrade Brown, whom Comrade Blair intends to appoint as Chancellor of the Exchequer, has excellent plans for laying the foundations of economic ruin by deregulating the banking sector - killing capitalism by its own devices - and by building a credit-fuelled boom, which will take the nation deeper and deeper into unsupportable levels of debt, public debt and private debt.

Summary

It is our earnest hope comrades that we win not just the coming election but the election after that and the election after that. It is our hope that we win and win. After twelve years or so people will no longer recognise this country, recognise it for what it once was. But I repeat, comrades, secrecy must be maintained. Only by that will the Elders of Labour emerge triumphant. Triumphant indeed.

The Mad Colonel and the Gay Lord

The more the previous government of this country, that once headed by the vile Tony Blair, slips into history the more venal, the more corrupt, it seems, the more mired in the deepest forms of turpitude and hypocrisy. It makes it worse that Blair continues to tour the world, touting his tawdry credentials as a latter day saint, rather than sink into the oblivion he deserves.

Meanwhile Peter Mandelson, if possible even more morally debased than his master, recently came to the defence of the beleaguered Gaddafis, saying that he and Blair were absolutely right to make friends with these people.

It’s certainly true that we live in a world with some fairly unpleasant leaders, people like Colonel Gaddafi and Hashim Thaçi, the Prime Minister of Kosovo, another of Blair’s pals, who stands accused of the worst kind of butchery during the Balkan wars. One has to be practical; it’s not always possible to take the moral high ground in international diplomacy. But there is being practical and there is being cosy, and, my, oh, my, how cosy Blair and Mandelson were with the Mad Colonel and Saif, his nauseating playboy son.

I’m sure most of the people who read this will have seen the recent news footage from Libya, also know as Colonel & Son, where the chief executives are doing all they can to ensure they do not go out of business…permanently. What you may not know is that Saif is battling for democracy; at least he is according to his Lordship. There is nostalgia at work here, a loyalty between chums, created, I suppose, when Saif spent a jolly good time with the gay peer on Corfu, as guests at Nat Rothschild’s villa. The Gay Lord, the Muslim Playboy and the Jewish Financier; is there a joke in this, I wonder?

There is a joke, certainly, a joke in Mandelson’s way of looking at events, one unfortunately without a great deal of humour. Never mind the Colonel’s rambling and half-mad statements on TV, never mind Saif’s determination, to use his words, to fight to the last man and the last bullet, he recognises, says Mandy, that Libya has to go on a different course, a transition towards political pluralism.

Quite right, my lord, just as the release of the Lockerbie bomber had nothing to do with shady deals over oil and cosy relations with playboys. Yes, one has to be realistic about international affairs; one has to remember to play the Machiavellian game. But there is realpolitik and there is Mandy Blair politick, enough to disgust even the most cynical realist. That the British people could ever have been taken in by these criminal hucksters is something that will never cease to perplex me.

The worst political memoir ever

I loath Tony Blair. There you are; I’ve said it; I simply can’t be objective here. I believe that American people are surprised by just how disliked he is on this side of the Pond, as he remains a popular figure in the States. I really could go on at length about this but I think it sufficient to say that his government served my country so ill a foreign occupier could not have inflicted much more damage. As a student of political history, casting my eye all the way back to the eighteenth century, to the point where the British parliamentary system began to emerge in its modern form, I can think of no worse ministry than that of New Labour, no worst prime minister than Tony Blair.

I make these comments in the light of the publication last week of A Journey, Blair’s political memoir. I had no intention of buying this book, a decision that was – temporarily – weakened by its reception on one of the late evening news bulletins. The reporter said that it was a “good read” and then proceeded to demonstrate how good it was with selective quotations. I assume the passages in question are among the ‘gems’, the usual practice, which made the whole thing all the more shocking, because they were downbeat, shallow, self-pitying and stunningly banal.

“That’s it”, I thought, “I will have to buy it and review it if this is the kind of thing one is to expect.” I no longer have to; the kind of assessment I would have written has been penned by Bruce Anderson of The Spectator. Even Bagehot in The Economist, generally appreciative, has pointed to what he refers to the “weirdly rootless” prose, references by Blair to his press aide’s “clanking great balls”, to one of his ministers as “fully simpatico with the direction of change.” But it is Anderson who delivers the killer under the heading The worst-written memoir by a serious politician. Here it is in its entirety;

It is bizarre. As he often demonstrated in the House of Commons, Tony Blair knows how to use words. He could also have mobilised a team to help him write his memoirs. Instead, it is all his own work, and the words mutinied. This book is not just badly written, it is atrociously written. For almost 700 pages, Tony Blair stumbles between mawkishness and banality.

Prime ministers send soldiers into combat. Some of those soldiers are killed. That is a subject which would lead the least sensitive of men to reach into their souls and craft language out of emotional depth. This is Mr Blair's version. "The anguish remains. The principal part of that is not selfish. Some of it is, to be sure. Do they really suppose I don't care, don't feel, don't regret with every fibre of my being the loss of those who died?' Yes, they do. They know that the "every fibre" line is a thoughtless cliché. Many, many of the fibres of his being were otherwise engaged.

This is not just a pedantic point. If Tony Blair was to write on this topic, he was obliged to write sincerely. The passage continues: "And not just British soldiers but those of other nations...' He then proceeds to list them, as if anxious to leave no-one out. He concludes: "I am now beyond the mere expression of compassion. I feel words of condolence and sympathy to be entirely inadequate." There, we can agree. His words are not only inadequate. They are a pathetic, tin-mouthed babble, and anyone who can refer to a "mere expression of compassion" has a tin-mouthed soul.

This does not prevent him writing about religion. He tells us that for him, it has always been "a passion bigger than politics". Alastair Campbell once said "We don't do God". Judging by these pages, his wariness was justified. Mr Blair certainly cannot do passion. 'So that's my new life", he tells us at the book's end. "What makes me optimistic? People. Since leaving office, I have learned one thing above all: the people are the hope". You could not make it up.

It is as if Tony Blair set out to do the parodists' work for them. Apropos of the UK's Olympic bid, he tells us that: "We also put David Beckham into the mix. David is a complete pro - he did what he was asked to do with no messing about and generally sent Singapore into a twitter, which is exactly what was required'. Twitter is the word; reading this guff, one has to remind oneself that this man is trying to describe an important premiership. Instead, he has produced much the worst-written memoir ever twittered by a serious politician. It will inflict lasting and deserved damage upon his reputation.

What more needs to be said? The memoir is clearly in character, in character of this infantile, shallow man, disingenuously honest, sickeningly phoney. There is one other thing. Blair, I understand, is now a Catholic. He therefore, I assume, accepts the dogma of hell. Personally I hope that is where his journey ends, the hell to which he consigned so many others.

As a postscript to the above I’ve just discovered that a Facebook group has been formed, now with close on 4500 members, made up of people committed subversively to moving Blair’s memoirs to the crime section of book shops- www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=150746811621277. I would have preferred the comedy section, or placing it alongside such gems of romantic fiction as the Mills and Boon paperbacks of Barbra Cartland, but – what the hell – I’ve joined. I’ll do anything for a spot of fun, anything to make this man look ridiculous.

The Tale of Peter Slime

I’m sure you must have gone to movies after watching seductive trailers – I know I have – only to discover that everything worth seeing was packed into those few brief minutes, the rest being pure tedium!

This came to mind on reading The Third Man: Life at the Heart of New Labour, Peter Mandeson’s recently published ‘memoir’, extracts from which are presently appearing in The Times. I can only assume that they have chosen the ‘best bits’ which is rather alarming because the ‘best bits’ are really quite pedestrian, written in a dull, clichéd style! I suppose I should be grateful that it saves me the trouble of buying a tome that weighs in at over five hundred pages.

So, here we are – what? –some eight weeks from the general election and Mandelson, the former Business Secretary and all round fixer (oh, how I miss writing about him), has published a book. Even with his superhuman powers this exercise clearly had to be in preparation for some time, this exercise in self-justification and back-stabbing. I’m really not sure if political memoirs these days will be of much use to future historians, psychologists, perhaps, but not historians. It’s really a race to see who gets the boot in first, and Mandelson has made sure that it’s him.

The dear Lord tells us of the treachery in the last days of the New Labour Reich, an amusing confirmation of all those YouTube videos with Gordon Brown as Hitler. He also tells us that victory was impossible under Brown; that when Harriet Harman proposed an election campaign around the three Fs – future, family and fairness – he together with Alistair Darling and Douglas Alexander suggested their own version – Futile, Finished and Fucked.

Interesting, don’t you agree? I seem to remember that it was Mandelson who effectively rescued Der Fuhrer in the wake of the James Purnell resignation fiasco and in the wake of Geoff Hoon and Patricia Hewitt’s ‘January Plot’, presumably while this book was still being shaped. He was also responsible for Labour’s subsequent electoral campaign, the “I agree with Nick” campaign, possibly the most cack-handed in the party’s history. I wonder if there is some deeper message here about Labour politics and the role Mandelson played in the final days. After all, this is a government that might have been saved if Brown was ejected in sufficient time. But he was not, thanks to the dear Lord, making history as well as writing history.

There were lots of potential assassins, lots of people who wanted to follow in the steps of Cassius and Brutus, people like David Miliband and Jack Straw, who in the end had not the courage to make the unkindest cut of all. When I think of these people, this shabby and treacherous Labour shower, I’m minded of the comment once made about German generals and their failure to stand up to Hitler: that their heads were too close to their arses because they had absolutely no backbone.

As for the book, the Mandelson masterpiece, I’m minded of the words of Major Calloway to Holly Martin in the movie The Third Man –“That sounds like a cheap novelette.” Yes, in a way it does. Still, when I see him from now on the Harry Lime theme will go through my head. It certainly shall.

I, Accuse

In 1942 in the city of Riom in France the leaders of the pre-war Popular Front government, including Leon Blum, the former premier, were put on trial by the Vichy authorities. The aim was to prove that they had been responsible for France’s lack of preparedness that led to the debacle of 1940. It was a public relations disaster with the defendants easily rebutting the charges, earning the sympathy of the neutral press in the process.

At my own peril I would like to hold a British version of the Riom trial, though much more carefully focused, with much more plausible charges: I would like to arraign Tony Blair, Gordon Brown and the other members of the New Labour Popular Front. With what; what was their crime? I would really have to think about that. Perhaps they could be charged with fiscal irresponsibility; perhaps criminal mismanagement of public funds; perhaps warmongering or perhaps incompetence in high office. Let me just simplify matters – I personally would have them indicted on a charge of high treason.

You think I’m going too far, do you, that such a serious charge could not be levelled against members of the British government? All I will say here is that between 1997 and 2010 this country was changed out of all recognition, changed for the worse; that its interests were betrayed and its people deceived. There are now serious doubts if we can ever recover from the damage down in those years; or if we do, it may take decades.

The worst thing, perhaps, was the use of public money not in the interests of the nation as a whole but in a grand form of political gerrymandering. A national constituency of dependency was created, intended to entrench Labour in perpetuity. More and more money was spent on doles and welfare, on the creation of a sub-culture of bread and circuses or, better said, pizzas and telly. And while a British underclass was encouraged not to work the gap in the employment market was filled by immigration, mass immigration, deliberately intended, by the admission of former ministers, to alter the demographic character of this country.

There is Europe, of course, the surrender of more and more sovereignty to a foreign power, an alien power, one hostile to all of our historical and cultural traditions. That particular charge would weigh most heavy, as an act far more knavish than that of any other government in British history. I imagine if Blair and Brown had been directing affairs in the days of the first Elizabeth, rather than William Cecil and Francis Walsingham, the Spanish Armada would have been welcomed as European ‘partners.’

So the list goes on: misuse of public funds, the encouragement of irresponsible levels of mass immigration and the surrender of forms of sovereignty that the nation had jealously guarded for centuries. And then there are the foreign adventures, the wars and rumours of wars.

As I have said before, I believe the Second Gulf War to be one of the greatest strategic and political errors in this country’s history, far worse than the Suez fiasco. But set that to one side. The only way to fight a war, if wars have to be fought at all, is to win. And the only way to win is to ensure that the military have the tools sufficient for the task. But they did not. They were starved of resources in Iraq just as they were starved of resources in Afghanistan. In Iraq the army was so under-strength that latterly it could only maintain the pretence of control by entering into shameful bargains with the murderous Shiite militias. Our retreat from this country will count as among the most wretched in all of British military history.

Yes, for these reasons and more I would put the whole shabby Popular Front on trail. I would conduct the prosecution in person. Safely in my hands there would be no repetition of Riom, believe me, there would not. :-)

Mad Hattie on the Doorstep

Seemingly Peter Mandelson, Lord Rumba of Rio, gave Harriet Harman, nominally Labour’s deputy leader, a bit of a tongue lashing recently and she is not best pleased. Harriet, better known to her many friends and admirers as Mad Hattie Harperson, has rather been shoved to the margins of Labour’s electoral campaign, possibly as a major source of embarrassment, who can tell? But she has thrust her way back, insisting that she will not be ignored.

For me Hattie has always come across as the head girl that everyone at school is supposed to admire but secretly hates; all cold porridge and early morning hockey. Honestly is it possible not to hate her and everything she represents, all the hypocrisy and double-standards? There she is preaching equality and equal rights just as long as she is more equal than others. She sends her own children to good private schools while being part of a government that is attempting to use the Charities Commission as a weapon against the whole independent sector. She is the kind of person, moreover, who thought in her condescension that she had every right to drive away from the scene of an accident, announcing to observers that they would know where to find her.

I read an interview with her in the latest issue of The New Statesman in which she says she is out energising the troops; that she is to be ‘found on the doorstep’ more than on television and at press conferences. Gosh, what a thought: opening one’s front door to find Mad Hattie! This news could conceivably be a major boost to the manufacture of peep holes, which might help Gordon Brown’s economic recovery to leap from tiny to significant percentages. Perhaps there is a plan here?

Hattie has some aristocratic connections, being the niece by marriage to the late seventh earl of Longford. I had never heard of this person until I recently read a biography of Myra Hindley, the serial killer, with whom he was great chums, campaigning endlessly for her release from prison as early as the 1970s, before she had served any time at all. He seems to have been as woolly-minded as Hattie, so the two of them probably got on famously. But Longford thought that homosexuality was ‘nauseating’ and ‘utterly wrong’; so the government's equality legislation may very well have landed him in a spot of bother!

Hattie and Lord Rumba are what now passes for a Labour aristocracy in our cheapened and traduced age, people who have decided the fate of the nation from the frightful dinner tables of Islington among the pesto peasants. There they are on the one hand, with the vulgar John 'Two Jags' Prescott on the other, the ugly faces of the age. What did this nation do deserve such frightful phizogs? And as you ponder that question do please be careful who you open your door to. After all, one never knows who, or what, might be found there. :-)

Who needs a crystal ball?

Does history repeat itself? Yes, of course it does. Labour governments always end in exactly the same way, leaving the country in a complete financial mess. So it is with Gordon Brown; so it was with Jim Callaghan, whose disastrous administration was removed from office in the election of 1979.

Newly released documents reveal just how bad things were in the Callaghan days, uncovering close contemporary parallels. It was the perfect Labour storm: double digit inflation, spiralling debts and a sinking pound, all against a background of union militancy and inflationary wage settlements. It was so bad that the US administration of President Gerald Ford was forced to mount a rescue package, warning Callaghan’s government that it had to live within its means.

So, at that time Britain had an economy much like that of present-day Greece; at that time it had a minority Labour government propped up by the Liberals, the predecessor to the Liberal Democrats, a portent, perhaps, of things to come.

The American documents are quite damning. A senior official at the State Department told the President that “the UK still does not appreciate the gravity of its situation, or lacks the will to deal with it.” This mismanagement was even perceived as a threat to the whole of the international monetary system, one that demanded extraordinary measures. Alan Greenspan, presidential advisor and financial guru, drew comparisons with New York City, which was then on the threshold of bankruptcy.

The country was only kept solvent after a £1.9 billion loan was arranged through the IMF with American help. At today’s values that amounts to £11 billion. Oh, but how modest it seems, nothing at all compared with the ocean of debt that Blair and Brown have accumulated since 1997. It remains open to question if even the vaults of the IMF are deep enough to compensate for the criminal fiscal irresponsibility of the present Labour government. Look at Greece; look at the future of Lib-Lab Britain.

Comrades, read this

I like Private Eye, the satirical magazine edited by Ian Hislop and owned by Lord Gnome, a good friend and hunting companion of mine (it’s a joke; it’s a joke!), though I’m not a subscriber, merely an occasional reader.

Recently I’ve taken to buying it more consistently as issues appear. I do this for one reason and one reason only: I simply can’t get enough of the Prime Ministerial Decrees, those bolts of Zeus coming from the office of Comrade Gordon Brown, the Supreme Leader. They are wonderful, enlightening, inspiring, motivational…and jolly funny!

Recently the dear man has been telling us just how wonderful Comrade Darling was in delivering his budget, and promising that he will remain in post after the successful ‘General Plebiscite.’ This particular decree was accompanied with a picture of the dear comrades in uniform. It also comes with the Supreme Leader’s Five-Year Pledges, which I feel sure you are all very anxious to know about. Well here they are;

I solemnly pledge a better Britain for all our communities.

I solemnly pledge a fairer community for all our Britains.

I solemnly pledge a better community for all our Broadband British users.

I solemnly Broadband a fairer pledge for all our British furniture

I solemnly furniture a fairer Broadband for all our better British pledges.

Now, what more could you possibly want to affirm the Dear Leader in the coming General Plebiscite?

The latest decree, Number 68, carries a warning against the forces of Neo-Cameronite Reaction and Bullingdonian-Borisite-Feudalism. The Supreme Leader points us instead to bright horizons, sun-lit promised lands and futures fair for all. There is also a message appended to the decree by Comrade Lord Madelson. I think it worth drawing this to the attention of all comrades;

In my capacity as Supreme Commissar for Trade and Everything Else, I urge all comrades to rally to the support of the party in the forthcoming plebiscite. Whatever our feelings about the desirability of Comrade Brown continuing as Supreme Leader, it is vital that we all vote for him. No one has worked so hard for so long in the service of this great community.

It is not to be wondered that he looks so knackered and washed-up. And I would be the last to blame should he wish to step down shortly after his sensational victory and, rather than serve five years, chose to serve, say, five or six weeks. He could then hand on the baton to a worthy successor whom you might find much more attractive – someone, for example, whose address book contains the names of you all. (Not to mention your recent medical history and the increased statistical odds of you dying if you don’t vote for the Supreme Leader.)

So, comrades, consider yourself warned, and do not be seduced by counter-revolutionary blonde Tory bloggers, blond mayors and the general forces of Neo-Cameronite Bullingdon reaction. :-)

Bread without the Circuses- the Mad Economics of Labour

The mantra goes out from Gordon Brown, don’t rock the boat, don’t do anything to endanger our fragile economic recovery, don’t cut public expenditure, well, not too fast, at any rate. Recovery, I have to ask, what recovery? His administration has drowned this country in levels of unsupportable debt, debt that will undercut any sustained economic recovery. We are on the road to Athens or Dublin, it really does not matter; for the end result will be the same.

The supposed recovery is as much of a fraud as the debt-fuelled boom that he encouraged when he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, the most irresponsible ever to hold that high office. In a sane world this man would now be facing a major public inquiry into his conduct of affairs, instead of putting himself forward for a further period of office.

I would urge all of you, especially people who are considering voting Labour, to look behind Gordon Brown’s words; for nothing he says can be taken at face value. Just as he tried to mislead people on the realities of the immigration swamp, he has been deceitful or stupid, I honestly can’t tell which, when he talks about the economy. Last month, as The Spectator points out, he was boasting of the 2.5 million extra jobs that have been created since Labour came to power. Actually that point dovetails quite nicely with the great immigration deception; for these jobs have not been ‘created’, no; they’ve been imported.

The Spectator has obtained figures showing that an amazing 92% of new jobs since 1997 are accounted for by immigration. Remember that figure, 92%; Polish plumbers and Bulgarian window cleaners, as well as gangs of professional Roma beggars. Well, it’s a kind of job, I suppose!

Here we touch upon another socialist cancer, a New Labour cancer. This party has given us a kind of modern version of the Roman economy, an economy where the proles subsist on public doles while the work is done by foreigners. In other words we pay our people not to work. It’s the bread without the circus, just the view of life that one has from hopeless places like Tower Hamlets.

Of course there are political benefits here in that people living in Tower Hamlets, the slaves of a corrupt and degrading welfare system, vote Labour if they vote at all. These Labour rotten boroughs, to be found throughout the land, from London to Glasgow, are one of the chief supports of this rotten government. There is no real incentive for them to introduce serious welfare reforms when that is likely to have what is, from their point of view, an adverse political consequence.

Labour is not the party of the oppressed and the underprivileged; Labour is the party that needs people to be repressed and underprivileged. There is a natural lethargy in politics, something that keeps people in a kind of rut, something that turns them into voting fodder. No matter how hard I try I simply cannot understand Labour voters, I cannot understand people voting for the outlook from Tower Hamlets. The old Roman Empire was destroyed in part by its wasteful economic contradictions; the New Labour Empire will be destroyed by similar contradictions, taking us all down with it.

Now is the Spring of our Discontent

We in England are facing a new wave of union militancy and Old Labour shibboleths as this government shambles to its terminus. So, the time has come to blow the dust off your disused political lexicons, to look up the meanings of words and phrases like 'beer and sandwiches', 'our members' legitimate aspirations', 'one out, all out', 'mass meeting in local car-park', 'holding the country to ransom', and on and on and on. The trade union boss and his 'comb over' is surely set to reappear as a contemporary fashion statement.

One after the other the little chickens come home. Consider Unite, the super union, or the super political conspiracy, I can't make up my mind which, the force behind the attempt to destroy British Airways, the force that has the Labour Party in its pocket, the force that is helping to fund 148 Labour seats at the election, the force with 167 Labour MPs or candidates as members. Lord Ashcroft is nothing compared with the influence and financial clout this organisation wields, pouring £11 million into Labour coffers since 2007, and giving additional funds to over half the cabinet, including Gordon Brown and Ed Balls.

Isn't it just the thing; one has to wait an age for a strike when along come two at once! Just as Unite is attempting to stop BA, the Rail, Maritime and Transport Union (RMT) is promising the first national rail walk-out in sixteen years, hitting the network just after the Easter weekend holiday, the busiest time of the year. The usual cry will go up from the likes of Bob Crow, the RMT leader, as big a mouth as Red Len of Unite, that this is a defence of 'jobs n services' when it's nothing more than an attempt to 'disrupt n alienate' customers.

Then there is the Public and Commercial Services Union (PCSU), which also has a number of Labour MPs in its pocket, 'ordering' them to join a strike this coming Budget Day over the government's proposed curb on redundancy pay-offs, a clear attempt to interfere with the workings of Parliament. Conservative MP Mark Pritchard has rightly said that not content with closing Britain's airports and railways, union bosses are now colluding with Labour MPs to disrupt democracy itself.

The monster is back and things are set to get worse. William Rees-Mogg wrote an excellent piece in The Mail on Sunday Review lamenting its reappearance, lamenting the rise of a new Militant Tendency. There is a difference this time. Neil Kinnock, not a man of any great intelligence or strength of character, at least had sufficient residual wit to cast that particular lunacy from the door. Not so Mad Gordon. He is on the best of terms with Charlie Whelan, Unite's political director and his old spin-doctor, one of the principal forces and intriguers behind the new militancy. This man is so bad that even Colin Byrne, one-time Labour's Chief Press Officer, asked; "What is a strike-mongering politically discredited nutter like Charlie Whelan doing at the heart of Labour's Election campaign?"

Yes, what is he doing there? The answer presents no problems for me; the Labour government is made up of nutters of one kind or another, headed by Gordon Brown. Charlie is an old crony, the kind of person this desperately insecure man feels most secure with. This is the political equivalent, as Rees-Mogg hints, of Jim Callaghan appointing Arthur Scargill to a similar position, or, as I would say, Neil Kinnock entering into an alliance with the likes of Derek Hatton, the Militant Marxist mouth who once headed Liverpool Council.

Rees-Mogg, the dear old liberal leftie that he is, says that trade unionism is a valuable institution provided it is protecting the interests of workers. Really; is it? I begin to wonder; I begin to wonder if organisations like Unite, the RMT and the PCSU do not operate in the contrary direction, inimical to the interests both of their benighted members and the country at large. We are now seeing the first signs of the great battles to come, battles that have to be fought regardless of the outcome of the general election. The deficit will have to be reduced; the union barons will fight any such reduction in the name of 'jobs n services.'

David Cameron is alert to this, alert to the need to stand up to these politically-motivated and sectionally-minded bullies. He says he will emulate Margaret Thatcher in facing down such vested interests. Yes, there are two ways of going here - the Thatcher way and the Heath way. The latter should always be thought of as a warning. Industrial relations was one other thing that Heath got wrong, introducing a court that imprisoned militants and made martyrs. No, that's not the way to do it; the way to do it is to hit them where it hurts, in their inflated bank accounts.

I personally would have one simple solution for dealing with trade union militancy. I would revoke the wholly unfair immunity that these organisations enjoy in law, the right to breach a contract without suffering financial penalties. I would revoke, in other words, the Trades Disputes Act of 1906, introduced by the then Liberal government, which excused unions from being sued for the damages caused during strikes. I would return legislation in this area to that prevailing after the Taff Vale ruling, a landmark in common law, political freedom, and persoanl responsibility. By this trade unions were held liable under the law of tort for damages and loss of profits. It was an effective way of dealing with earlier militancy, most particularly in the railways. Oh, how it would make the likes of Bob Crow squeal. :-))

The Descent of New Labour

I have to admire the courage of Andrew Rawnsley, admire the courage of anyone who takes on the Labour spin machine, as vicious and as ugly as anything that flowed from the mouth of Joseph Goebbels. His revelations about Mad Gordon Brown brought forth the venom. There was lots of anonymous briefing about ‘malicious falsehoods,’ amongst other things. I suppose he can at least be grateful that his family wasn’t attacked, grateful that the vile Damian McBride is no longer part of the character-assassination team.

No, instead he had fat John Prescott, two jags himself, weighing in with “gutter journalism”. Rawnsley seems to me to be far above that but he is not beyond throwing a punch;

…John Prescott, a man whose infidelities include having sex with a junior civil servant in a hotel room while his long-suffering wife, Pauline, waited downstairs to have dinner with the treacherous and hypocritical toad. Her recent memoir describes how he slunk back to their home in Hull to confess to his adultery before it became public. His security staff preceded him to the house to dump a bag of his smalls for Pauline to wash. I know which of us is better acquainted with the gutter.
Ouch!

Rawnsley’s book The End of the Party: the Rise and Fall of New Labour, from which the Observer extracts were drawn, has now been published. At some eight hundred pages it’s a hefty read, though well worth the effort. If you are only interested in the revelations about the carpet-chewing madman who now lives in Downing Street you already know almost all there is to know, but there is so much more in this book about the way the country has been governed since Labour’s second election victory in 2001.

The sub text might very well be the descent of Tony Blair; about a man who visibly decayed in office, from the fresh-faced vision of 1997 to the grey-haired gloom of 2007. Margaret Thatcher seems to have flourished in power, notwithstanding all of the challenges she faced. Blair, in contrast, withered, demoralised by the consequences, amongst other things, of the invasion of Iraq.

Having this horror on his conscience he also had Mad Gordon muttering and plotting in the background, punctuated occasionally by hot flushes, shouts of “You’ve ruined my life.” This was an impossible relationship; a friendship soured by frustrated ambition, by the childish fury of a man who wanted to be at the top of the greasy pole, yet so obviously lacked the capacity, the judgement and the intellect for the position.

There are points, I suppose, when almost feels sorry for Blair, with Mad Gordon bursting in, like Mrs Rochester out of the attic, with the delightful forms of language much favoured by Labour- “You’ve stolen my fuckingg budget” or “When are you going to fuckingg go?” The Queen makes a late appearance, putting up with the insufferable Silvio Berlusconi at the G8. As another reviewer wrote, one almost expects her to burst into the room with a heartfelt “Give us a fucking break” :-))


Rawnsley also confirms something that I have long suspected: Blair, for all his persuasive ability, was essentially a weak man. Just as he could not control Mad Gordon he could not stand up to George Bush. Our intervention in Iraq is best seen in the context of a wider strategy in the Middle-East; it was intended to buy influence with America and commit Bush to a solution of the Palestinian problem. But the more Blair gave the more Bush took, offering next to nothing in return.


The book is a splendid insight into Labour, into a high-grade tragedy or a low-grade farce, I can’t really decide which. It’s all there, the lies, the plots, the betrayals and the back-stabbing, from things can only get better to could they conceivably get much worse.

If’t chance some cursed example poison’s near the head, Death and diseases through the whole land spread

Economists- the real Nowhere Men

I just had to laugh when I read the economists’ letter to the Financial Times in support of Alistair Darling, Chancellor of the Exchequer, saying that this is no time to introduce budget cuts. So, with a deficit now at eye-watering levels these clots are effectively telling the government to spend away; to mortgage your future, to mortgage my future, looking always to the ‘long run’. That reminds me of something. Oh, yes, wasn’t it an economist who once said that in the long run we are all dead?

Is there, I ask myself, anyone who beats economists in the stupidity stakes? OK, there are climate-change scientists, but economists are in a unique category of their own. Gorbachev, of all people, used to tell a joke which featured economists in the punch-line when he was meeting other heads of state or government. It went like this. President Regan has a hundred security advisors. One of them is a spy, but he does not know which. President Mitterrand has a hundred lovers. One of them has Aids but he does not know which. He –Gorbachev- has a hundred economic experts. One of them is intelligent but he does not know which.

Yes, quite. But let Dismal Gordon take temporary comfort from the practitioners of the Dismal Science who came to his aid, all sixty of the clots. Yes, now is not the time to introduce cuts which may endanger a ‘fragile’ recovery; now is the time to chase away investors alarmed by the horrific growth in debt and borrowing. I would honestly say that economists act as a reverse barometer; whatever they say, expect the opposite, do the opposite. Because when they get it wrong they get it spectacularly wrong.

In 1981, when Geoffrey Howe was Chancellor, he was faced with a kind of charge of the dismal brigade, when no less than 364 of them, virtually the whole profession, not a stupid 60, wrote to The Times criticising the Budget, saying that “there was no basis in economic theory or supporting evidence” for the policy the government was pursuing. They did not stop there, no; there were also the Cassandra-like warnings that the Budget threatened Britain’s social and political stability and that an alternative course must be sought.

But the Lady was not for turning; strict fiscal and monetary policy was introduced over the squeals and moans. Alas for them what followed was not judgement day only morning, excellent and fair. No sooner had their miserable missive been published than the economy began to recover. No sooner had it started its recovery than all of the inherited Keynesian orthodoxy looked stupid and outmoded.

No, there was no increased expenditure. Instead the Budget deficit was faced with simple honesty. Taxes were increased and government borrowing brought back on course. Lower government borrowing meant lower interest rates, taking the pressure off business. Investors started to regain confidence in the will-power of the Thatcher government, that it would pursue its declared goals to a conclusion, not collapse into indecision; not be panicked by the advice of the ‘experts’. So, money was freed up as people planned a future on the basis of lower interest rates, lower inflation and lower borrowing. Intelligence, clear thinking and good-sense prevailed. The economists were ignored; so should they always be, because most of them are the captives of yesterday’s idea. Most of them truly are nowhere men. :-)

They’re as blind as they can be,
Just see what they want to see,
Nowhere Men can you see me at all?

Nowhere Men, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
lends you a hand!

A New Tongue Twister in F

I wonder who devises Labour campaign slogans; possibly a secret Tory sympathiser? A Future Fair for All, is that not absolute scream? Repeat it, getting faster and faster as you go and see how it sticks the mouth like glue – an fff! It’s not likely to win an election but I’m convinced that it that fff will achieve a kind of immortality; that fff is set to take its place alongside such classic tongue twisters as Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers or She sells seashells by the seashore. One couldn’t make this up; well, one could, if one happened to be in the Labour Party propaganda machine.

I do think that it might just be possible to detect the heavy touch of Dismal Gordon here, that Fat, Fatuous Fraud. It has the overtones of the kind of class war he intends to fight, more closely defined by his determination to stand up for the many rather than the few, an oblique reference, of course, to those Terrible Tory Toffs. Dismal, with that insane grin on his face, wants us to have a “second look at Labour”? Why? The first one was bad enough.

Yes, by all means, do have a second look at thirteen years of mismanagement; do have a second look at repeated tax hikes, rising unemployment, aggressive warfare abroad, the surrender of sovereignty at home, mass immigration, appeasement of radical Islam and levels of public debt that would make Nero blanch. By all means have a second look just to remind yourself that if this country had been occupied, and a Quisling government put in place, we could not have fared any worse.

I simply find it impossible to conceive of any intelligent person, anyone with a sense of judgement, anyone able to face simple and unpalatable truths, voting for this criminally incompetent party, this party that has, so far as I am concerned, betrayed my country as thoroughly as Vidkun Quisling and his supporters betrayed Norway. But people vote for all sorts of reasons, less out of an understanding of the facts, more out of self-interest. Most Labour supporters are, I would hazard, dependant on state doles of one kind or another, on bread and circuses. By and large I think those who vote Labour do so largely as a kind of cultural reflex; that there are indeed places in this country that would elect Fred West if he wore a red rosette.

Rod Liddle argues in the latest issue of The Spectator that a visceral dislike of one’s opponents is rooted in principle, an argument that arises from David Wright’s reference to the Tories as “scum-sucking pigs” on his Twitter page. Nasty stuff, yes, with echoes of Aneurin Bevan’s description of Tories as lower than vermin. Wright, being the sort of man he is, then backtracked, announcing that it was a fraud, a set-up. I’m not surprised. Do you know what his Tweet was? Well, it goes like this;

ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it's still a scum-sucking pig. And cos they would ruin Britain.

Yes, look again at Labour; look at a man in his mid-forties who could express himself like that, a government whip who could express himself like a chav on speed. I feel a new slogan coming on – New Labour; a Future Fraught with Folly and Filth. Off to Central Office it goes. :-))

The Worst Man for the Job

The internet guerrillas got it right; my, how they got it right: the use of the movie Downfall as an amusing comment on the decline of the Brown Reich was just so appropriate. There he is, the carpet-chewing, bullying, ranting Fuehrer, terrorising his staff with his unpredictable outbursts; paranoid, fearful, in a state of constant denial.

I don’t think I’ve ever read The Observer so thoroughly; there was just so much meat, so much to feast on. I’m really looking forward to reading Andrew Rawnsley’s The End of the Party, extracts from which, explosive extracts, appeared on Sunday. And explosive really is the operative word.

Yes, it is a personalisation of politics; it is an intense scrutiny on Brown’s capacity, incapacity, rather, for the leadership of this country. Did he not invite this scrutiny himself? I am the best man for the job, he said, this is no time for a novice; this is the time for me.

I suppose some of you read the extracts published yesterday, or picked up on the gist of them here, or from television reports. For those who have not they are altogether stunning. Our Prime Minister’s abusive conduct towards staff at all levels, including quite junior staff like typists, was so bad that he was effectively ‘reprimanded’ by Sir Gus O’Donnell, the cabinet secretary, who told him this was no way to get things done. I saw Brown with that mad misplaced grin being interviewed on television news last night, trying to deny the story, a story of missiles and moods, of effing and blinding and things that go bump in the night.

I’m not going to give a blow by blow account; a few examples will suffice. People were frightened of him because he was always shouting, constantly blaming others when things went wrong. Objects were thrown at people, anything from mobile phones to coke cans. One civil servant applying for a position in Number 10 was asked at the interview if he could cope with “extreme verbal abuse”. The poor man was so scared by the description of what working with Dismal Gordon was like that he simply withdrew his application.

While travelling in his official car Brown was told news that made in clench his fist and swing it back, The aid beside him cowered, fearing he was about to be hit in the face. Instead the fist crashed into the passenger seat in front. He hit the upholstery so regularly that sitting in front of him was considered one of the worst duties among the accompanying protection squad.

Add to this the kind of language favoured by the man then one begins to get a more fully rounded picture. In advance of a meeting of the European Council, Stewart Wood, a senior advisor and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, arranged a lunchtime reception for the ambassadors, to be held in Downing Street. When Wood tried to brief him Brown yelled, “Why have I got to meet these fucking people? Why are you making me meet these fucking people? I don’t want to meet these fucking people”. He then shoved the shaken Wood aside.

It goes on like this. There are also tales of plots and intrigues, including one involving Jack Straw, which would not have been out of place in the Byzantine court. Oh, they could plot and intrigue alright but not one of them had the courage to act in a way that might have saved themselves, their party and this benighted government.

Rawnsley has based his book on extensive research, on thousands of interviews with some of the principle figures of New Labour over the years. Some five hundred people contributed specifically to the book itself. But he has been careful not to let animosity and hatred-and there is so much of that- speak for itself. He only included incidents of abusive behaviour, he says in an accompanying article, once he had attained confirmation from impeccable sources. Some episodes, though carrying a high degree of verisimilitude, were excluded because the proof was not cast iron –“Only once I was satisfied by the veracity of the story did it go into the book. The sources are 24 carat.”

I’m not going to say that this is a shocking story because I am no longer shocked by anything that happens in British politics. Even so, it’s sad to see the senior political office in the land degenerate in such a way; for power to devolve on a man such as this, a man who has neither the capacity nor the temperament for leadership; a individual who is so clearly the worst man for the job.

How are the mighty fallen in the midst of the battle! O Jonathan, thou wast slain in thine high places

All Animals are Equal

It’s now clear that Labour is determined on a new class war, their last best hope, a lifebelt to the drowning. Harriet Harman, better known as Mad Hatty Harperson, has taken the tablets handed down by Dismal Gordon, declaring that social disadvantage is the ‘big issue’ in this country, that people only get on if the have ‘connections’ or if ‘their face fits.’

This is just so interesting. Now we have a second admission, following that of John Denholm, the Communities Secretary, that social disadvantage has actually grown, and that is after a dismal thirteen years of Labour government. To cover their incompetence Harperson and Brown have no better strategy than to diss David Cameron for being an old Etonian.

Inverted snobbery and petty spite, is their any better insight into the mentality of this government? What a message to pass on: that disadvantage arises from not having gone to Eton and not being a member of the Bullingdon Club, and this from the Marquise St. Evrémonde, who is herself an Old Paulina. I expect she is where she is because she has ‘connections’ and because her ‘face fits.’

The simple fact is, as I have said before, that Labour thrives on disadvantage; that it depends not on social mobility but exclusion; it feeds in a parasite-like fashion on urban ghettos where votes are weighed rather than counted, the new rotten boroughs of a complacent administration. It feeds on communities of dependence that allow shabby new aristocrats like Harperson to parade as Minister for Equality over a society that is, by her own admission, anything but equal. It is people like her that bring Orwell’s Animal Farm to mind for me, particularly the conclusion, when the animals in the barnyard catch site of their rulers;

No question now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

I would far rather Eton, Oxford and the Bullingdon Club than people like this, politically dishonest in every degree. The time comes when the snouts will be pulled from the trough.

Guilty Men

If the intention of the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War is to pin Blair like a butterfly in a case it’s not going to happen. Far less stupid that Alistair Campbell, his dog, I can predict exactly how he will perform: there will general expressions of contrition over dodgy dossiers and post-war Iraq, followed by a rapid occupation of the moral high ground- yes, removing Saddam was the ‘right thing’ to do, the sort of strategy that he pursued at the 2004 Labour Party Conference.

But we have another target that makes the exercise a little less threadbare. We have the Prime Minister, Dismal Gordon himself, who is scheduled to appear – joy of joys – before the General Election. It’s not Blair anymore; for me Brown is the real target. He is only appearing because he was taunted by Nick Clegg that he had something to hide. But now, anxious to prove the contrary, we will all be able to see - potential Labour voters will be able to see - that he does indeed have something to hide – himself.

We know from the evidence given by Campbell that Brown was closely involved in the decision to go to war, though this is a matter that he has never been confronted with in public. Jack Straw, in his shifty and self-regarding way, told the Inquiry that he could have ‘stopped the war’ by resigning as foreign secretary. It that was true of him then it was even truer of Brown, as Andrew Rawnsley said in The Observer. But he did something at the time that is entirely typical of his character and style of leadership: as a member of the cabinet he supported the war while having it put about by his toadies that he had ‘reservations.’ The key to this man, the key to our dear leader’s character is simple enough: when things get tough he gets lost.

If you opposed the war, then Brown is the man who wrote enough cheques that allowed it to happen. If you supported the war, but despaired of the aftermath, he was the man who did not write enough cheques; he was the man responsible for the fact that our army was under-resourced, not properly equipped for the task, the impossible task, which it faced. He is doubly culpable, therefore, an indictment that surely extends also to Afghanistan. Iraq may have been Blair’s War but it was Brown’s Disaster.

In the early years of the Second World War a book was published entitled Guilty Men under the pseudonym of ‘Cato.’ I’m sure some people will be familiar with this famous text but for those who are not it was an indictment of the policy of appeasement in which fifteen individuals are censured, from Neville Chamberlain downwards. It was a devastatingly effective polemic. We now have enough solid material for a new Guilty Men. Now, there’s a thought. :-))

Decline and Fall

The present manoeuvring in the Labour Party calls to mind an episode in the history of the Roman Empire known as the Crisis of the Third Century. There were a number of elements to this but an avaricious desire for the imperial purple was of singular importance.

You see, it was a time when just about any ambitious general thought he could do a better job than the incumbent emperor, and when to be emperor was to face ever multiplying plots and conspiracies. An example was set when one man succeeded to the throne by assassinating his predecessor, and so it went down a predictable and depressing path

So, there he is, the old tired emperor, Augustus Gordianus, having assumed the imperial diadem by disloyalty and plotting against his predecessor, Caesar Antoninus not so very Pius. He set the example; others now look to follow. How can he call for loyalty, when he has a commendable record of disloyalty? But there are so many likely successors, each more than anxious to steal a march over their rivals.

There is, of course, Ed Balls, no doubt the preferred choice for Gordianus, but with his record of disloyalty to the old regime and toadying to the new he is not exactly a welcome choice among the legions. It’s worth remembering, as The Spectator points out, that the trigger for the cabinet crisis last June was the old emperor’s attempt to crown darling Ed as Chancellor. That little storm was only headed off by Senator Mandelson. People may despair of Gordianus, but they clearly loath Balls.

Now, what about the praetorian prefects? Who among them can expect a loyal following, a crowning by acclimation? There is, of course, David ‘I’m no Heseltine’ Miliband, who rather like Claudius, hid not once but twice behind the curtain when the guard looked to dethrone the emperor. Not a man, one would have thought, with a tremendous amount of backbone. He is hungry for power, yes, but he prefers to wait for history rather than make history; he is the ‘come and get me man.’ In the end that curtain may never be pulled aside. There is Harriet Harperson, also noted for lukewarm loyalty and who probably rivals Balls as the least popular person in the parliamentary Labour Party.

When one thinks about it this is Gordianus’s great strength; this is what has kept him on his shaky throne through financial plagues and barbarian invasions: there really is no credible alternative; there is no Diocletian waiting in the wings. He is the destiny this wretched government cannot escape. Now a little bit of Waugh comes to mind, appropriately enough from Decline and Fall- “And the only interest about him arises from the unusual series of events of which his shadow was witness”

Barking Mad

The dog barked. Alistair Campbell appeared before the Chilcot Inquiry into the Iraq War defending his actions and the actions of his master. We should really be proud of the decision to go to war, he growled, a decision that cost the lives goodness knows how many innocent people, a decision that, in my estimation at lest, ranks high among the worst foreign policy disasters in this country’s history, far higher than the betrayal of Czechoslovakia at Munich.

But the dog barked; it did as it was expected, it performed as it was trained to perform. After all one does not expect any moral sense, any sense of guilt, from a dog, does one? The secrets and lies, the dodgy dossiers are all behind us now, a dog’s mess; it happened, people died; we should be proud.

I have a question. How could a man of Campbell’s calibre, a man who held no elected office, ever have been involved in the high counsels of this nation? How could he have been involved in one of the most important decisions of this century when even cabinet ministers and members of parliament were excluded? Even more important, why was the propaganda machine he operated allowed such licence, such scope and such wide-ranging influence? I have no ready answer other than to say it is another sign of the degeneration of government under this present Labour ministry. I wonder what Walter Bagehot, the classic commentator on the operation of the British constitution, would have made of the way the game is played now

We should be grateful, I suppose, for two small crumbs that came out during the dog’s ‘interrogation’: that Gordon Brown was closely involved in the war game, as much as he would now like to distance himself, and that Blair promised Bush that if the invasion went ahead that “Britain will definitely be there”, effectively usurping the powers of the monarch and parliament, taking upon himself forms of dictatorial authority. At no point after was the parliament or the nation informed of this shabby assurance, that its approval had simply been ‘assumed.’ The invasion of Iraq was like justice in the Old West: give the accused a fair trial and then string him up. There is no doubt at all in my mind that this war was, by all standards of morality and law, an illegal act of aggression, the consequences of which are likely to be felt for decades yet.

How politics and public life have been cheapened and traduced over the past dozen years by Labour, Labour of the Iraq War and Labour of the Expenses Scandal. How parlous now the legitimacy of our democratic process. The country can only take so much abuse, our democracy can only take so much abuse, and Labour has abused it beyond measure, with damage levels far greater now than they were in 1951, 1970 and 1979, the previous years when the country was liberated from the control of these incompetents.

I try to be optimistic about the future but I am not sure if the country fully understands just how badly governed we have been since things could only get better in 1997; it may take decades for a full realisation to mature. Meanwhile, will we ever again believe a prime minister who tells us that we face a ‘credible’ threat from a foreign power? If one is of a mind to tell a lie just make sure that it’s a big one, a piece of advice that Blondie Campbell might very well have taken from another national leader, another lover of dogs.

The Marquise

In Saturday’s Telegraph Simon Heffer wrote a piece headed We can’t actually hate Labour more. Sorry, Simon, we can, or at least I can! The Hoon-Howell debacle showed just how contemptible senior Labour politicians are; shows, as was once said of German generals, that their heads are far too close to their arses because they have absolutely no backbone.

That for me is a truism, not something in itself that deepened my hatred. No, it was Harriet Harman’s latest motoring escapade which demonstrates how utterly contemptible the shabby Labour aristocracy truly is, contemptible in its conceit and condemnable in its arrogance. You may recall the chapter in Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities where the coach of the Marquis of St. Evrémonde runs down and kills the son of the peasant Gaspard. The said Marquis does not even get out of the carriage, merely throwing a coin to the grieving father as he drives off.

Now Harperson did not actually kill anyone in driving without due care and attention, an offence for which she was convicted and fined on Friday of last week. But, my, what haughtiness to drive off from the scene of an accident, saying “I'm Harriet Harman; you know where you can get me.” Yes, I know, it’s not quite St. Evrémonde but perhaps it’s not too far removed. It seems to me the mentality, the casualness and the dismissive of it all, might indeed bear comparison. The time for the heads to fall approaches ever faster.

Extremism4UK

What follows was in part inspired by the editorial in the latest issue of The Spectator (A golden age for fascism) and in part by previous pieces I have written here, particularly The Resistible Rise of the BNP and All Votes Are Equal But Some Are More Equal Than Others.

I’m sure it is no revelation to most of you if I say that fascism and hate feed off fascism and hate. The rise of the British National Party, as The Spectator says, now owes little to the anti-coloured vote, rather a thing of the past, and everything to the equivalent rise of Islamofacism. Just as the Nazis needed the Communists in the days of the Weimar Republic, so, too, does the BNP need the likes of Islam4UK and the reaction this movement induces.

Nick Griffin and the equally vile Anjem Choudary are distilled from the same poison; they are brothers from the same womb. If we ever do have fascism in this country then it will be thanks to reactionary Islam, just as Hitler owed thanks to the German Communist Party. We will not ever have Islam4UK, but may we very well have Extermism4UK.

But there is something else; there is the shameful silence over mass immigration by the political class at Westminster; silence by Labour, which created the problem, and silence by the Tories, fearful of the accusation of racism. It’s against this silence that the BNP made its electoral strides, the most successful fascist party this country has ever seen. It was Margaret Thatcher who killed the last fascist wave, that of the National Front, by making fears over immigration mainstream, part of the Conservative agenda. My goodness; if people felt that they were being ‘swamped’ then they are being drowned now.

Still there is only silence from the political establishment as the fascists and the Islamofascists shout louder and louder. But although the Tories might be partially at fault here it is the Labour government that is by far the most culpable in the nurturing extremism, not just by allowing mass migration, but by new forms appeasement and old forms of neglect; appeasement of Islamic radicals and neglect of the Old Labour heartlands. Here is part of what I wrote in ‘The Resistible Rise of the BNP’;

…the ‘outcasts’, for want of a better term, are the traditional working class, once the backbone of Labour and the Labour movement. These are the people who have continually been taken for granted by the corrupt political oligarchy that controls England at the present; the New Labour establishment, created by the Tony Blair, and perpetuated by Gordon Brown; an establishment that concocted ‘marshmallow politics’ out of spin, sound bites, media manipulation and outright lies.

I have more still to add to this mix. Though not generally recognised contempt for certain sections of the lower classes has been a fairly constant feature of the Labour establishment, originating in the likes of such left-liberal icons as Sidney and Beatrice Webb and William Beveridge. One of the principle targets of the 2009 Welfare Reform Act was the ‘undeserving poor’ always to be separated out from those ‘hard working families’, another New Labour mantra. But there are huge areas, Labour areas, old, corrupt Labour rotten boroughs where this approach has induced high levels of insecurity and anxiety, a feeling of abandonment. Add to this the fears over mass emigration and Islamic extremists then a bad situation becomes positively lethal.

Labour is thus the godfather of the new-style of British fascism, however one chooses to define it. Their only refuge and defence is in silence.