Leader Board

Golf is not the oddest of games, but it inspires passion and derision like few other activities. From the relentless golf bore in the club bar who almost, nearly, mighta claimed a course record except for the double bogey on the seventeenth, to the quiet unassuming up and coming youngster, diligently bringing down his score, round by round. On the professional circuits the stakes are high and there is nowhere to hide; the vicar might get away with kicking his ball from the rough into the fairway when nobody is looking but the pro is followed by the cameras everywhere he goes.

Another game that scores high on the passion and derision stakes is, of course, politics and never more so than when a major prize is up for grabs. Like golf it rewards the steady hands, those who can stick to their technique and keep on chipping away at every hole. And like golf, politics does not deal kindly with the ingénues, brashly sporting their tartan plus-fours and pink tam o’shanters, hoping that the bling will divert attention from the divots. Prior preparation is a must; which is why even those golfers at the top of the game turn up hours before the match and practice their swing.

Both games are won and lost in the head as well as the hand. On Sunday Theresa May as Prime Minister, had no option but to make a speech decrying the terrorist attacks of Saturday night. She did so; she took one measured stroke, straight down the fairway and then respectfully retired from the scene as others sought to catch up. Jeremy Corbyn, seeing an opportunity, took a wild swing; he accused her of making political capital out of the situation, sliced his ball and then spent the rest of the day wildly flailing away in the rough, tweeting another twenty times on the same theme.

Calm heads, preparation, deep breaths and considered responses. Last night Diane Abbott, surely the least capable politician of recent years, but nonetheless still somehow clinging on to her job, came out from the woods to answer her critics and save the day for Labour. On Sky News she approached the ball, sitting high on a tee at an easy par three; trash the government record on national security, demonstrate how her steady hands would bring the Labour team back into contention, tap in for a par.

She took a practice swing and her club flew out of her hands, nearly taking out a bystander; on Monday, with the election on Thursday, unforced, in her opening statement, she declared that there were two days until the vote. With an apparent reference to the ‘village people’ instead of the British people she missed her first shot at the ball. Dermot Murnaghan then unfairly asked her about the recent Harris report on London’s safety and security. Diane flailed again at the ball, still sitting steadfastly on its tee and missed by a mile. Yes, she’d read it, of course she’d read it but mysteriously couldn’t remember a single thing about it.

As in golf, elections are generally won by those who have the most experience, have practised long and hard and are at the top of their game – as Gary Player said, the more I practise, the luckier I get – but even the best players go into decline. Diane Abbott may think of herself as Labour’s Tiger Woods in his prime. But in reality she has always been much more like Tiger Woods is today. It’s time to leave the field. So, with Labour in trouble and Jeremy Corbyn rolling up his trousers to paddle in the burn and take his tenth stroke at the eighteenth, all Theresa May needs is a straight and steady chip down the middle and two putts to win.

Debatable

Did you see the chimps’ tea party last night? The unedifying spectacle of seven party leaders and representatives squabbling over the sandwiches and general flinging their shit about? I believe it was billed as a debate, but as usual it was nothing more than Britain’s Not Got Talent for a bunch of deluded losers who all think they have something to offer. Hoot-panting as each spoke over the other, the IQ of the audience, already not the most gifted part of the ensemble, progressively lowered as the night went on.

Let’s talk about that audience. Balanced, the BBC said, rigorously selected to represent a true cross-section of the population. I assume then, that there were no more than a dozen deranged mentalists in there to mirror the support for Plaid Cymru, The Greens and  the SNP combined. Perhaps the same again for Ukip and the LimpDems, leaving the bulk to represent the Tories and Labour. Naturally the Conservative Party supporters would have sat back, listened and considered what was being said, while the others wore their colours more openly.

The repeated and often hysterical attacks launched at Amber Rudd and her calm response pretty much summed up the mood for me. It is hard to be in the government of such a benign realm as this. Notwithstanding Diane Abbott’s ridiculous assertion to the contrary this is one of the most tolerant countries in the world but the one part of society which is openly not tolerated by the baying mob for ‘social justice’, is the white, working, tax-paying, patriotic backbone of middle class England.

Welsh, Scottish and Irish accents seem to confer a sort of honorary BME status on even damned whitey, giving them a leeway not accorded the hated Tories. And herein lies the main curiosity of the whole shooting match; the quiet party, the getting-on-with-it, mustn’t-grumble, doing-our-bit party; the party which most represents the British national character, is constantly hectored and bullied by the ingrates they feed with their constant cries for more. The strident demands of those who do the least persistently drowns out the calls for a sober discussion of solutions.

Always with the problems, your leftists, always wagging the blame finger. Like arrogant teenagers, yet to make a meaningful contribution to family life they stamp their feet and clench their fists and spew out irrational hate for their parents and yet at the same time whine for more pocket money. The whole event was one of each in turn and often all together railing against the calm and reasoned voce of the only one there who has ever held high office. Amber Rudd stood up to her assailants with dignity.

The Coalition of Chaos convenes its first cabinet

But make no mistake, it was a mugging which Theresa May, for all the opprobrium she is getting for failing to show up, was wise to avoid. In any case, which other party could you possibly choose to run the country? The bullying communism of the Greens, the Charlie Drake party of Tim Farron with his knockabout quips about Bake Off, the insignificant Welsh and Scottish separatists, Paul ‘Hillsborough’ Nuttall, or the far left commissariat of the newly Marxist, not just old, but superannuated Labour Party? Give me Grey May any day.

No Words

There is nothing quite like a national tragedy to highlight the paucity of vocabulary that afflicts post-traumatic-state-disorder. It’s as if there is some laid down glossary of acceptable terms to which all public figures must adhere: Together we stand. We are united. They will not prevail. The litany goes on... and on... and on. We must not let hate win, they say, hate having won, decisively, on the day. We are not afraid, they say. But wait, it’s not the hatred that delivered the Manchester murders that is on trial here, but the natural fearful reaction of the bereaved.

You can do vigils, you can do candles, you can even do angry poetry but until the hysteria calms down and we strike back, in cold blood, nothing will ever change. The message being sent to the world? Bomb us, murder us, rape us and rob us for welfare and we will simply lie down and let you do it all again. Yes, we’ll look at you pleadingly and utter the mealy-mouthed borrowed phrases of political simpletons, but we will not lift a finger against you. Come, we are easy meat; our country is yours for the taking. No wonder Christians get persecuted in some countries – they practically beg for it.

Rather than actually fight we will cynically use that word to mean something different. We will fight to understand your pain, empathise with your plight, open up a ‘dialogue’ with your emotions and find a way to your heart. And it doesn’t matter how many of us you kill and how many times you actually tell us that our death is what your ideology demands, we will ignore the simple truth and continue to fight to discover a reassuring way of blaming your actions on ourselves. It must be my fault that daddy keeps hitting me; it must be. He does it because he loves me...

Of course, the authorities are fighting back. Oh yes. They are fighting against the backlash of islamophobia; they are policing imaginary hate crime; they are poised and ready to punish you for your horrified response to horrific events. Bomb a venue, kill 22 people and you need to be understood, but express revulsion at the act and post a social media message of antipathy and you must be sanctioned. Pre-meditated murder is bad, this says, but knee-jerk condemnation of it is worse.

How many more empty words?

‘Don’t let hate win. Embrace. Come together. Stand strong. My heart goes out. My thoughts are with. We pray for. Solidarity. The lost vocabulary of official responses finds its apotheosis in the hollow phrase ‘there are no words’. If that’s the case then tell me, why are we still just talking?

A conspiracy of incompetence?

I was going to write today about the issue of competence in government and the utter lack of it shown by the various parties contesting the election. I was going to explore how it is that with access to all the expertise of all the country’s thinkers and strategists and all the experience of reaction to former policy announcements, Theresa May managed to set her own trap and then u-turn straight into it. Didn’t she know that any move, whatsoever, to reduce the amount of free stuff, will be seized upon and dubbed a tax.

Over the years we’ve had Poll Tax, Pasty Tax, Bedroom Tax and now with the gift of the ‘Dementia Tax’, the mechanism for going into reverse once more grinds into gear. Andrew Neil also managed neatly to expose exactly why she would not participate in a televised debate. Fortunately for her, the Labour Party are in such disarray that she will recover from that mauling and the other parties are wedded to ideologies so barmy only a complete fruitcake could vote for them. Sadly, we do seem to have a few million of the permanently bewildered that they would even vote for the Greens; it’s little wonder they are so fixated with dementia

But why is it that our leaders and would-be leaders are always so unprepared? Could it be because in trying to appeal to everybody they appeal to nobody? In setting a course they imagine to be straight down the middle they end up veering wildly from bank to bank, churning up the river bed and frightening the wildlife? So frequent and so appalling are some of the gaffes that in the wilder regions of the press they mistake simple incompetence for grand conspiracy: there has to be a reason surely? They can’t be just... you know... stupid?

But suddenly, all this is irrelevant. Following the nothing-to-do-with-you-know-who attack in Manchester last night, all hands are on deck and the virtue signallers are out in force. “We must not make political capital out of tragedy!” goes the cry, as they all concoct soundbites to suggest greater compassion than the next. “My heart goes out”, “My thoughts are with”, “My prayers go out”... notice how they all start with ‘my’. Little, mini-pledges to show how much more they care than *insert main rival party name here*.

But after the platitudes we need something more. We need action. Not vigils, or silences; not pleas to ‘come together’, nor understand. We understand it fine; the west is under attack and whether or not we ‘learn lessons’ we want to see something being done. We want a highly visible armed response, resulting in arrests, detentions and deportations. We want recognition that our supposed leaders have the first idea how to combat this war on our on soil and most of all we want the source of the violence – islam itself – called to account, or called on to leave the west.

As it happens, this latest atrocity has the potential to become Theresa May’s finest hour. What leader, besieged by blunders over bungled policy announcements and embarrassing climb-downs on national television, wouldn’t welcome this very real test of true character? What a vote winner a Churchillian call to arms could be right now. How welcome might a public rejection of ‘islam is the religion of peace’ be to a population drowning in the ordure of electoral claptrap? This could be May’s Falklands War. I can already hear Guardian contributors queuing up to call it a conspiracy.

Spend, spend, spend!

I can see why supporters of the Labour Party are concerned about the level of funding for mental health issues. I’m concerned about the level of self-delusion they exhibit and I only hope they can keep it together until 8^th June because the fallout is going to be glorious. It’s supposed to be wrong to gloat but, come on, have you heard the stuff they believe in? I know that a positive attitude can be an advantage, but the Corbynistas positively believe they’re onto something. Why? Because when they told a bunch of students in Labour Central – Bradfordistan – that they would abolish tuition fees, the crowd went wild.

But away from the echo chamber of like-minded simpletons, most people are ambivalent about political colour, wanting only to be free to get on with their lives with the minimum of interference from authority. They are generally tolerant and hope that their neighbours return the sentiment. Most people don’t want to be a burden. They also don’t want to pay to look after other burdens, but will happily let themselves be moderately taxed to support a generally benevolent society. Most people have no absolute political allegiance and are often vague about which party best fits their views

A few people are sadists; this is not defined by their political allegiance. A few people are mentally deranged; this is not defined by their political allegiance. Some people are unwilling to confront uncomfortable truths about themselves; this is not defined by their political allegiance. Some people are saints; this is not defined by their political allegiance. And so on; who you are is not defined by your politics but by how you live your life. There is, however, a strong correlation between being self-reliant and voting Conservative and being dependent on others and voting Labour.

The perennial problem with the welfare state is the issue of who deserves help and who pays for it. This used to be simpler than it is now and when we inhabited a world in which morals were pretty uniform – we knew who the goodies and the baddies were, we knew how decent humans behaved. Yes there were those who fell through the cracks, but on the whole most of us realised that self-reliance was the ‘better’ way and relying on the charity of others was a last resort. But those needs and entitlements have been blurred now with so many defined as in some kind of need and welfare dressed up as tax credits which exceed the tax paid in the first place.

Labour wants to expand the welfare state. The Conservatives know this is not possible at current productivity levels. Labour insists, against the clear opinion of pretty much every non-idealised commentator, that it can raise the money. This is the principle battleground that they have chosen for the election. It’s okay repeating guff about a fairer society, social justice, compassion and decency, but the fact remains that somebody, all of us, have to dig into our pockets to cover their ‘fully costed’ manifesto. It seems that Labour has brought an expired credit card to a cash fight.

Manicfesto

Well, I’ve just about had enough of all this he-did, she-said, they-would, we-didn’t general electoral malarkey. Confirmation bias mixed with blood-curdling tales of the atrocities committed on both sides of the gulf of party politics makes for an unhappy propaganda cocktail. But how, as we sift through the mountain of ‘facts’, conveniently adapted memories, ‘accurately’ recalled accounts of closed-door meetings from decades ago and simple opportunistic hearsay, do we know that any of it is true?

Maybe we should only vote based on what we have directly experienced and know to be real. But what, then, of those staged muggings after which bystanders manage to give wildly varying accounts of what they just witnessed? The unreliability of eye witness testimony is a recognised phenomenon and is thought to be responsible for a significant number of wrongful convictions. If we can’t even rely on the evidence of our own eyes, is it any wonder that fallible memory, overlaid with folklore and peer pressure keeps the political divide wide open?  

We need to start again, from scratch, so let me build you a utopia based on what you seem to be telling me you want. It’s clear that you hate rich people, so we will discourage them from living here by ultra-punitive taxation. Hopefully, they will get the message that their filthy privilege isn’t wanted and they will take their divisive spending power to somewhere more suitable. Thus freed from envy, we will make far more friendly bedfellows and it will be easier to set a living wage; a wage that everybody will receive, regardless of circumstance, thus ending the stigma of unemployment overnight.

This wage will be inextricably linked to prices; as prices rise, so will the wage. Forecasts suggest we could be into double digit wage rises within months. This will be a tremendous boost to the economy and as everything will be provided by the state all the proceeds will flow back to government, making it a simple matter to double the NHS budget every few years. Likewise with education, energy and food, it is clear that allowing producers to earn profits from these necessities encourages the pursuit and hoarding of wealth, so in future all will be enshrined as human rights and provided via central planning; everybody will get what we decide they deserve.

And don’t imagine we take social justice lightly. We have been watching you closely - very closely – and it is apparent that the thing you dislike the most is difference. Psychologists tell us this is wired into the human psyche and it will be impossible to educate you to not recognise disparity. So when we are in power we will legislate to encourage uniformity by force of law. For your benefit, so that you don’t have to suffer the burden that choice brings, we will decide and then enforce conformity of appearance, ability and opinion; your lives will all become immeasurably more simple and satisfying.

The glorious uniformity of the future...

And finally, as you have also shown such a disdain for the political process, with campaigns bringing out the worst in vituperation and downright lies it is clear to us that partisan politics, especially at election time is a source of much unhappiness. We want you to be happy, by law, so on taking office we will immediately abolish all other ideological affiliations rendering future contests for power both unnecessary and no longer possible. You know it makes sense.

Why the EU will fail

David Cameron was okay. He looked quite good – big, shiny baby face aside - and he was easily likeable unless you were so cloaked in bitter tribal hatred that you could see no good because of the man’s political clothes. But, ultimately, he stood for nothing so much as his own epithet ‘heir to Blair’. When it came to the big decision to stay in or leave the European Union he was revealed as very much Brussels’ man. But at least he made some inroads into reining in the excesses of the previous administration and regaining our grip on reality.

Reality is a quality that doesn’t tend to trouble the policy-makers on the left which is why last week’s council elections looked like nothing so much as Labour dreamers waking from a deep and troubled sleep. A sleep in which humanity was reduced to equality; given the range of abilities and aspirations of mankind, the only true equality is in misery. But now they see those empty dreams for what they are; Corbyn is no redeemer and the lisping gaffe-magnet that is Diane Abbott has made such an idiot of herself, so many times, in full public view, that even the most deeply branded child of Labour can surely have no illusions that she has been promoted through competence, rather than tokenism.

But despite all the left-wing frenzy, the foaming fury of hatred and the repeated insistence that the Tories are some rapacious, multi-headed hound from hell, the truth is different; and it is boringly benign. During the Tory years the NHS has not failed, nobody was evicted directly because of ‘Tory cuts’, nobody who needed it was left short of care, any more than they were under Labour and no matter how hard they try to use the discredited statistics, people are not dying in their thousands ‘because’ they passed a fitness to work assessment. Of course, the system isn’t perfect, but it is barely different from what it was under Blair, Brown and Co.

The facts are simple; only so many people can be supported in idleness and you can only tax working people so far before they start to resist. Branding people as far-right when all they did was vote to end the crippling profligacy of socialism is a desperate tactic of a failing campaign. And that oft-quoted soundbite that debt has tripled under the Tories plays to a wilful ignorance of the difference between debt and deficit; it was Labour who left us with both. Even those living perpetually on welfare are beginning to see that the well has run dry and that the books need to be balanced; nobody believes the left can ever do that. In June, Britain will return to its centre-right norm.

EU: "We don't see what the fuss is about."

So the EU, trying to exploit a non-existent lack of direction in Brexit, has no chance. The direction is clear; away from the hated EU. And as we leave others will follow. The tiger’s teeth have been pulled, its claws clipped, its appetite curtailed by gastric band and its capacious maw wired shut. Whatever happens in the French elections today, France is slowly waking up to the same truths; you can’t keep taking out, the pot is not limitless and the EU dream is a great big lie. Watch those tottering dominoes topple... and smile.