Brexit. It’s hard

The bonkers game that sees the Conservative Party try to match Labour’s fantasy football league of politics is breaking sinister new ground with Philip Hammond’s mooting of a generational tax divide; tax the old to bribe the young. While Labour can shift its stance daily – Brexit sunny-side-up, Brexit over-easy, hard-boiled Brexit – and hardly anybody cares, the government is like a flailing toddler trying to land a punch on a six-foot adversary whose hand is on its forehead. It looks foolish and useless.

I honestly believe that not even Labour voters now actually believe in Labour’s policies, for two main reasons. One, they have no firm, plausible, agreed and deliverable policies whatsoever. And two, they have no need to worry about anything so boring as how the debts get paid as long as the man in the top job keeps handing out the Werther’s Originals. Oh, Jeremy Corbyn, they sing, united in their mass delusion that Old Man Marxism is the answer.

But here’s the odd thing. Across Europe it is the right-wing, populist, nationalist movements which are making progress, shaking things up and giving the big-state, socialist rulers bloody noses. Whereas here in the country whose traditional national character is the very embodiment of Conservatism it is to the left that chunks of the electorate are turning. Because, to those who haven’t seen it in action, socialism sounds so... nice.

History will remember Tony Blair for one thing and it won’t be the war that all the left-wingers keep berating him for; it will be the bringing about of the very character change that is fuelling their rise. The left should be worshipping him. When he said he wanted to rub the right’s nose in diversity he wasn’t kidding. He took that puppy by the scruff of the neck and shoved its snout right into the great big pile of stinking multiculturalism he had deposited on the hearth rug.

So, at a time when Mrs May and her entourage should be circling the wagons and digging in for battle, they are distracted by leaks and leadership challenges and self-destruct suggestions like ‘let’s hike up the taxes on our most loyal supporters’. The EU team are laughing down their sleeves at us and frankly taking ‘le piss’, shrugging their shoulders and saying ‘non’ at every turn. And in this they are aided and abetted by a Labour Party willing to simply acquiesce and submit entirely to the EU’s demands.

Submission is quite a handy stance, too, when it comes to Labour’s love affair with islam. Under a Labour administration many more muslims will hold positions of power, the borders will be as porous as surgical gauze and the economy will be entirely controlled by Brussels. Corbyn won’t need any policies of his own as he will willingly accept whatever the EU caliphate dictates.

Stop asking the electorate and start leading them!

So what’s to be done? Aping Labour policies has never served the Tories well; they should immediately refrain from going down that track. Trying to buy off the student vote is pointless anyway because young people will always hate to hear the truth especially from the Tories. Instead Mrs May should take a leaf out of Europe’s book. Not the EU, but the people of Europe. Take a right turn, resurrect your Conservatism and give us a ballsy, what-the-people-voted-for, outright rejection of everything the EU stands for. 

Syllo-jizm

I’ve been taking a break from daily blogging; it can be such a chore. But sometimes you come across useful idiocy of such quality you just can’t ignore it. Twitter is a target-rich environment in that regard in any case, but Carlos was a particular treasure. Repeatedly citing a letter in an obscure journal as objective proof of his thesis he took on all-comers like a short, ginger-bearded Scotsman on speed.

His thesis, you ask? That capitalism is a voracious killing machine. Putting aside the fact that businesses would fail quickly indeed if they set about executing their work forces, the man’s entire argument revolved around his cast-iron faith in, I guess, the kinder, gentler politics espoused by Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell. So, to sum up: capitalists are murderers, because I say so. And then, to add some texture to this bland offering; therefore they must also be sociopaths and cowards, to boot.

A syllogism is a perfectly valid form of reasoning in which a conclusion is drawn from two given or assumed premises. For example, Aristotle’s "Barbara" syllogism has the major premise that ‘All men are mortal.’ The minor premise is ‘Socrates is a man.’ The conclusion being, ‘Socrates is mortal’. But not all syllogisms are equal and the form is often used to draw a pre-determined and often derogatory conclusion, to wit: Racists are stupid, stupid people voted for Brexit, therefore Brexit is racist.

Carlos’s reasoning was both simple and wrong, but he wouldn’t be shifted from his indefensible position and he kept coming back, all whirling claymore and thrashing sporran, again and again. We all feared for his sanity. You can read the thread here if you have the stomach for it. Feel free to join in:[Link] 

Tyrants do not provide welfare for the masses. Tories wish to keep the UK welfare state affordable. Therefore Tories are tyrants... and by extension, so is anybody who expresses agreement with a single Tory policy. This is the key to leftists thinking – begin with the conclusion that Tories are evil, then work backwards by any means necessary to assemble your proof. On no account should you challenge your beliefs and in particular you must never critically examine what alternatives Saint Jeremy offers the faithful

Labour repeats, over and over, that they will fix our economy, our society, for the many, not the few. They run this mantra past the flock on a daily basis. They say they will somehow fund hundreds of billions of pounds of public spending from tackling tax evasion, entirely missing the point that tax evaders do so because they can. They tell the wicked witch story of a rich class of cruel fat cats exploiting the workers without ever wondering where the workers will find employment without the employers. They talk of public ownership of infrastructure and utilities with no mention of how they will buy back these assets. In short, they lie.

Now that's what you call logic!

So here we are at our conclusions. People like to hear nice things | The Labour Party says nice things | The Labour Party must be nice. Conversely: The truth is often hard to bear | The Tories are trying to work within economic realities | The Tories must be cruel, heartless sociopathic bastards. Pick your pill – the ultimate irony being that it is the blue one which sends you back to serfdom.

Shrink to fit

We have a housing crisis, by all accounts. And that’s not meant as a dismissive phrase; there are too many people here and too few dwellings to accommodate them. We will build more houses, cry politicians of all colours; then quietly forget they ever promised any such thing. Pledges to ease the squeeze all end up forgotten when the knee-jerk response later turns into an ‘ambition’, or an ‘aspiration’. Nothing changes, except the scale of the problem. And yet it is all so simple, at heart.

Too much demand, too little supply. If we can’t build more houses where people want to live, that they can afford to live in – and the evidence of decades seems to be that we can’t – then we need to turn this problem on its head. If we had fewer people we would need fewer houses; it really is that simple. The trouble comes in persuading people that our Ponzi economy is all wrong. We don’t need millions of grunts working at sub-minimum wage, propped up by the few truly productive. We need real jobs with real purpose and none of the bollocks. (You know who I’m looking, you there, in the offence-taking industries.)

Brexit may very well be a start. Maybe we do need to become a bit more prickly towards foreigners; dissuade the low-skilled from coming here, insist on payment for services consumed and repatriate immediately on conviction or unemployment. Britons-first really would have an effect and we should apply it to all areas: jobs, access to benefits, positions of authority, education, etc, etc. We should genuinely consider shrinking the population and actually become a littler Britain; our survival may depend on it.

Ponzi, you say? Yes. Ever increasing expansion of GDP comes at a high price – see today’s productivity figures - because you need ever upwards expansion and ever more public spending, so let’s do the reverse. Let’s actually put our own interests as occupants of an island of finite size at the very forefront of politics. Not individual happiness and fulfilment – that’s your problem to solve – but what works. Small state, a highly educated population, quality work, skilled, trained, productive and competitive. And we should aim to live within our means, as self-sufficiently as possible.

And if that means we have a little less variety, that we have to pay what it actually costs to produce food, that we need to take more individual responsibility for our welfare, well, you can take a commitment to diversity and variety and ‘equality’ too far. And I believe we have. If Britain becomes a much harder place to sponge off we will quickly become less attractive to those who would do so. If foreign investment pulls out then, fair enough; how bad would it be if we really did stand on our own two feet?

Too few houses? Or too many people?

If this means a smidgeon of xenophobia and a tendency to dissuade reproduction by the uneducated, so be it. If this means we regain a reputation as an aloof, unemotional, pragmatic nation of tacit, cold-blooded queue formers, fair enough. If we demand a fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay, a fair go for the little fella, help only for the genuinely needy and the meagrest of dole for the idle, what is so wrong with that? When you think about it, all we need to do to solve so many of our issues is to become more British about it.

Shaking it up..

It’s a mixed-up muddle-up shook-up world. They are talking of cutting defence spending when the security and safety of our realm hasn’t seemed so perilous in a generation. The NHS caters for a wider and wider variety of ever more exotic ailments, administering expensive treatment to all and sundry while pensioners freeze for want of care and attention. Cut-rate migrants work for a pittance, pay no tax and in return are treated with suspicion, while perfectly able Britons languish on welfare which is too generous to turn down.

The government spends fortunes on an army of advisory roles which tell us the many ways in which we can usefully hate ourselves: the diversity, equality and human rights industry doesn’t miss a beat in berating our values. Using the multiple clubs of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, national identity and a myriad other metaphorical pointy sticks they encourage us to beat ourselves up for being undeserving of any of our successes due to our imaginary ‘white privilege’.

Despite the numerous noisy campaigns, various ‘pride’ movements and the many concessions we ‘normals’ have been forced to concede to the – and let’s not be coy - ‘abnormals’. I see little evidence that any of it has made any significant contribution to the sum total of national happiness, productivity, usefulness, etc... It appears to be, much like communism, a zero sum game. Give and take always appears to operate in one direction; any increase in one person’s happiness coming at the cost of a corresponding reduction in another’s.

Take the Tory Party. No babies were barbecued at conference, no elderly care patients were sacrificed and at no point did the faithful don robes and hoods and chant at a black mass. The awful, unacceptable [to some] truth is that Tories are humans too. The difference between them and certain other parties is that they actually want to confront reality and while dreaming of a better future, they understand that we have to consult the nightmares of the present. What a shame then, that the court of public opinion has sentenced them to ape the largesse of the left, but water down the offerings to a few feeble sops which will satisfy nobody.

It’s time for a paradigm shift in society. We have too many people in the country, so the answer is to import more? We have a housing crisis, so we need immigrants to come to pay to build more? The NHS is overburdened? Solution – yep, bring in more people, their families and their dependents, to paper over the cracks. And all the time we are told there is an impending employment crisis... the robots are coming!

No party dare grasp the nettle, but it’s time for some radical change. Get the utterly useless diversity consultants out in the fields. Make the costly management consultants do a decent day’s work in the factories... for once their worth could actually be measured. Force Human Resources to provide an actual resource. Stop student Marxists from becoming educator/indoctrinators and impose some real rigour in schools Slash the numbers of university places in half and then in half again. Children who haven’t achieved some academic success by 15 should be working; everybody tells us how much more mature they are than kids of half a century ago – let them prove it.

And what’s so wrong with people starting at the bottom? - The people in those low-paid jobs don’t all stay there forever and a huge number of the low paid are hard-working youngsters on a conveyor belt of improvement. Today’s potato pickers are tomorrow’s foremen. Today’s burger flippers are tomorrow franchisees and today’s factory production line drones are tomorrow’s captains of industry. And some people are perfectly happy to stay on the bottom rung forever; let them.

If a real leader had the balls to stand up in front of the electorate and declare that the era of freeloading is well and truly over, they would almost certainly be out of office in hours. But somebody has to tell the truth and somebody has to break the spell of socialism. Theresa May had that platform and if she’d gone in hard, she would have been backed. But no, she had to go and promise to give people other people’s money. The shake-up will have to wait.

Party Piece

The party’s over, or should that be The Party is over? The Conservative conference has opened in Manchester and delegates have been welcomed to the city by banners suggesting they be hanged by the neck until dead, with effigies swaying in the breeze to hammer home the point. So much more detail than mere indiscriminate spitting; now we can be in no doubt that the spirit of revolution is in the air. And how.

The problem for No.10 and the Tory Party is that the revolution is not in their ranks. Shuffling, backstabbing, bickering dissent, yes – ‘twas ever thus - but no Conservative reformation, no firebrand, back to basics barnstorming... no vision. And a vision, if not a miracle, is what we need. Where is the confidence? Where is the spring in the step? Mrs May’s hunchback, drop-shouldered, palsied mouthed posture sits in stark contrast with the sharp-elbowed, gleaming-eyed predator we had in the last truly Conservative Prime Minister.

Where is the zeal? Wither the spunk? Who do we have to lead? Jeremy Corbyn is riding high on a delirious tide of juvenile adulation. Labour supporters, especially young Labour supporters, smell victory in the air and the more unsophisticated their political awareness the more fervent their support. Indoctrinated simpletons, yes, but indoctrinated simpletons with fire in their bellies.

In Catalonia the Spanish police have been wading into thousands of people only trying to make their voices heard. Right or wrong, legal or no, the voters were mostly peaceful, but the state responded with a level of force that would have been applauded to the rafters had it been applied to the islamic invasion of Europe. Ironic, isn’t it, that when the people ask to be protected the guardians lay down their arms and when the people demand to be heard they take up cudgels.

What is happening everywhere – France’s Front National, Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland isn’t ‘the rise of the right’. Nationalistic, patriotic, proud citizens craving independence isn’t ‘the return of fascism’. People trying to have their fears recognised isn’t anything sinister, it is the opposite; it is the two-way conversation that modern democracies are supposed to thrive on.

Jeremy Corbyn hasn’t cleverly captured the zeitgeist; he has, by an accident of the incompetence of the Labour Party over the last few years, become the only figurehead who appears to care for the dispossessed. That his policies, his entire politics are an unworkable mish-mash of simplistic populism is irrelevant. In an ocean of cold mediocrity, Corbyn is a transitory upwelling puddle of lukewarm relief and everybody is leaping into his warm, moist embrace for a few minutes of feeling... well, feeling there is something other than the cold.

The Tories are screwed right now. Theresa May is undoubtedly a woman of commitment and has paid her dues, but she can’t connect with the public. Boris Johnson can undoubtedly connect, but not with the grown-ups and he is not to be trusted. Phil Hammond is a snake. And all the rest are tainted by the ridiculous internecine squabbling of the last two years. There is no ‘right wing’ in British politics; all parties have been, wrongly, trying to occupy the centre ground and the Tories are still trying.

It doesn’t work. The wets have the centre, Corbyn has the left, so the Conservatives need to rediscover their roots; if the opposition insist the government is right wing, then to the right it should, unashamedly, go. And when it gets there it needs to fly the flag for honest, unabashed Conservatism. Don’t apologise for capitalism, cheer it. Don’t cringingly pray at the NHS altar, insist it ups its game. Don’t dole out benefits at the drop of a hat, make them the exception, rather than the rule.

Shy Tories? What is there to be open about?

If Mrs May’s motley crew really want to steer the UK through the Brexit negotiations; if they really want to be the party of working people; if they genuinely wish to hold onto power in order to see through their reforms they need to stand up straight, reassert discipline and bloody well say so.  Jeremy Corbyn preaches hope for a better future, based on a gloomy fantasy of never-ending government largesse; it’s about time the Tories also brought hope, based on the optimistic and achievable reality of self-reliance.