Cry Racist!

I don’t know about you, but there are few things I enjoy more than being roundly castigated for my racist recent past. I ought to be thoroughly ashamed for the part I played in the trans-Atlantic slave trade and trust me I have worked on this, but try as I might I just can’t remember what I was doing on the night I question. I know with a little help I could be assisted to recall my evil wrongdoing and obviously I am grateful for the daily input of David Lammy who, as the young child of a captive slave from the Ivory Coast had to grow up on poverty on a Jamaican sugar plantation, beaten daily for the simple crime of having the wrong skin colour.

Apparently, every single one of my ancestors owned slaves and every single ancestor of people like David _{[property-of]} Lammy were themselves slaves. I know this because I have been educated, as must we all, to be thoroughly ashamed of our direct involvement in this crime against humanity. Some of you disgusting white people may try to claim that slavery was rife amongst the darker-hued races long before your forebears muscled in on the act, but we now know this to be fake history. All crimes against liberty have only ever been committed by pale-faced invaders. If only my memory hadn’t been ‘whitewashed’ by evil, specifically English, indoctrinators.

So it is just as well – and not before time – that the saintly Jeremy Corbyn intends (when he is Prime Minister by Christmas, which will also be banned) to introduce a comprehensive programme of education for the very young. He wants to catch them while their minds are at the pinnacle of incisive reasoning, so that he can imbue then with the truth. And the truth is that white skin is shameful… and that it is wrong to judge people by the colour of their skin. Oh and that massive reparations must be made to all the billions of current and past slaves, who, in the spirit of the age will simply have to self-declare their ownership to be eligible.

For the record and to claim my place as first in the queue for the coming show trials, I wish to unburden myself. If you want evidence of my crimes I confess I possess the full set – old, male, pale and getting staler by the day – so I have no excuse; bang to rights, guv. Every sin that ever there was may be laid at my door and I have no remedy in law for I have white privilege, a privilege which, even if I fail to recognise it, future generations will line up to condemn.

This is, of course, utter tosh. In the woke world there is no sin other than white sin and no virtue other than what the noble non-whites bring. In the bubbles of academe, the media and government, diversity is only ever a force for good. But ask those on whom it is imposed, because in the formerly white inner city estates diversity only ever means the replacement of the indigenous by a dominant new monoculture, which tolerates no others.

Naturally, should anybody ever point this out, the instant accusation is that they must be racists. Your kids are being beaten by black gangs? You racist pig. You’re not allowed to walk your dog past the mosque? Then even your dog is racist. The ‘R’ word has been weaponised but it has also been overused to the point of ridicule. So, racists of the world unite; you have nothing to fear but the misinterpretation of your  fear. And in the end it may well be that racism is the one instinct that saves the world's white minority. No wonder they are so keen to drum it out of us.

An Act of Faith

Who remembers the Ronco advertisements from the nineteen seventies and beyond? Miracle gadgets at giveway prices that invariably didn’t work anything like as claimed and were quickly relegated to the shed or the loft, icons of an age of innocence and naivety. You can almost imagine future archaeologists trying to decode these symbols from a time of false hope, just as they have done with the totems of ancient religious beliefs.

If Ronco were to return today the denizens of the internet would be taken for rides every bit as precarious as those of yesteryear. Social media would be awash with tales of disaster visited on the gullible, swiftly followed by merciless mockery. “Who would fall for that?” would go the cry, only to fall silent when the mocker was, in turn, taken in by another, different-yet-still-the-same scam. YouTube would have a ball.

Even when you knew that the chances were your Ronco all-in-one jar-opener, dishwasher and personal groomer was bound to fail you still parted with your hard-earned in an act of faith that this time it would be different. And much like the holy church of Ronco, religions require the wilful abandonment of rational thought; logic and learned experience go out of the window as, with beatific smiles, we open the packaging to reveal the next disappointment, yet keep the fixed smile beaming as we vigorously defend our choice against all the evidence.

Perhaps a moment of quiet reflection before hitting the ‘buy’ button would be prudent, a short examination of reality. Why do I want this, and will it really do what it says it will do? Much better in the long run to stick with what you know, but the promise of something better, more miraculous, more satisfying urges you to suspend your critical thinking skills and buy yet another potato peeler that just doesn’t peel potatoes.

So, what makes more sense; a belief that government should have as little impact on your everyday life as possible, should leave you to make your own decisions while protecting you from the worst excesses of egregious humanity, or a government which will intervene in every nook and cranny of your existence in return for fanciful promises of riches in the afterlife? Because to believe in capitalism requires only to accept that the world does not owe you a living, while to believe in socialism requires an enormous act of blind faith.

Just as with all religions, with all cults, with all outlandish fictions, in order to accept socialism as a viable system you have to suspend disbelief and reject the evidence to embrace a narrative so convoluted, so contradictory, so hypocritical that it would require the abandonment of all reason to adopt. Were the current Labour Party a Netflix box set most viewers would have ditched it after season one.  Those who continued to watch, who bought the tee shirts, who dressed up to attend conventions would be labelled as dangerous extremists and placed on various lists.

What seems most likely?

Once again, William of Ockham comes to the rescue. Ask yourself what seems most likely; that government is powerless to oversee every aspect of your life and it is up to you to make the best of it. Or that there is an all-seeing, omnipotent, Magic Granddad in the sky who can make the heavens rain money and bring freedom and happiness and prosperity to all… if only you will bend your knee at his altar. Marx said that religion was the opiate of the people. Between you and me, I reckon he was on drugs.

Pocket Full of Kryptonite

The spin doctors are weaving their webs everywhere. As fast as one side of the political contest magics up some miracle offering the other (for there are, really, only two) hauls out the green kryptonite to render it powerless. More money for the NHS? Pah, this barely goes to redress the balance following years of Tory cuts! Making society work for everybody? Yes, but it works best for Labour officials. Raising the National Insurance threshold to help the poorest? How will that help those who are too poor to even pay it?

Like every election before it we are – now the manifesti are finally published – engaged in a battle for supremacy between a motley collection of sub-heroes whose powers are nullified when the searing searchlight of truth is shone on them. Every utterance, every pledge, every ‘ambition’ withers under the light of inquiry, to be revealed as yet another false promise. Why do they do it? They can no more resist it than Superman can decline to save the planet. And everywhere the opposition’s Lex Luthers lie in wait ready to humiliate them.

Ian Lavery was banging on this morning, in ‘that’ accent, about re-ordering society to benefit the workers, but every such endeavour has previously failed because Labour believe in a zero sum game where in order to enrich poor people we have to ‘enpoor’ rich people. The trouble is the rich have their own personal supplies of kryptonite and deploy it at will to render impotent the powers of Taxman. Meanwhile the workers, who formerly gravitated towards Labour instinctively realise that their natural ally is any administration which will just let them work.

Let’s get the nation back to prosperity without the negative influence of the morass of confected workers’ rights which, once you have dealt with sick pay, holidays, a bit of maternity allowance and the right not to be exploited are as comprehensive as they need to be. Let’s ditch the ever-expanding suite of legislation that seeks to govern how we think and let’s stop giving every tiny voice a megaphone. Let’s recognise difference, accept it, accommodate it, work with it, but reserve the right to mock it, not endow it with super powers that prevent all criticism.

Let’s stop spinning every drawback as an opportunity and every entrepreneur as an evil exploiter of human capital. Let’s, usher in an age of honesty where the ordinary voter has a real choice between candidates who have been genuinely clear (not a politician’s ‘I have been clear’) about what they stand for and would be mortified if found out in a lie. Let’s, um, call a spade a spade and elect representatives who will do likewise. And let them stand on their honour or fall on their swords.

There are no super heroes here...

As it is, the disgraceful, dishonourable architects of Britain’s crooked, broken society are busily concocting illusions of smoke and mirrors to entice, but also to obfuscate and deceive. The artifice of representative democracy has been shown to be a villain’s charter, allowing MPs to be elected on one agenda, but serve another, to be of the people but for another people entirely. This festival of duplicity, this fête of fraud is not the open democracy which was so hard fought for. Under Westminster a humming noise is heard. it is Cromwell spinning in his unmarked grave.

It's Debatable

I didn’t watch the leaders’ ‘debate’ last night because I’ve already seen far more than I want to see of spin-doctored, spruced-up talking heads spouting garbage written by party apparatchiks and tutored by image consultants in how to avoid the pitfalls of the hit-and-miss pseudoscience of body language. A dismal platoon of ‘experts’ will be on parade during the day to earn their fees by regurgitating sixth form psychology about gestures, smiles, turns to camera and handshakes. None of it is at all relevant to the everyday politics that actually affects us.

I want to hear far more from candidates such as Lee Anderson, a former Labour councillor now standing for the Conservatives in Ashfield. I want to hear how Momentum so repulsed this former miner that he switched from tribal Labour to the hated Tories. I also want to hear more about his outspoken views on dealing with nuisance tenants. And I want to know how his views go down, not among the cognoscenti in Parliament, but among the beleaguered people who have to live alongside those tenants.

Because these issues, real issues that intrude on people’s actual lives, are repeatedly ducked by governments. Or, if solutions are proposed, they are attacked by the soft-bellied opposition parties banging on about human-bloody-rights. Already, Mr Anderson’s remarks have been condemned as ‘targeting the vulnerable’, entrenching division and showing a lack of empathy towards those he seeks to represent. Really? Has anybody asked them? I would suggest that were the voices of those he wants to represent ever heard they would be raised in a cheer for common sense.

There are some very real, very pressing issues driving a wedge through what I hesitate to call our society. We have violent crime, rampant disorder, a disrespect for the law and an arrogance in some that borders on insurrection. We have become uncivil, suspicious, cynical and angry at the toothless measures deployed. Ordinary working people, the vast majority of the population, don’t want to ‘reach out’ or understand, or show empathy for those who refuse to fit in. We want correction and punishment, swift and effective justice.

Instead we are lectured by amateur sociologists and social philosophers about what a wonderful, vibrant country we live in and if only we could all just embrace diversity and rejoice in difference, we would somehow evolve into the egalitarian society the chattering classes imagine we all want. Well, we all don’t. Unlike the indoctrinated drones of the parliamentary echo chamber we don’t hear reassuring voices about how throwing money at ‘studies’ will somehow reveal solutions. We simply experience the misery those 'solutions' inevitably create,

He lies? Don't they all?

The people already know the remedies, but the politician don’t have the guts for them. The people know that equality is a crock, but it is a holy grail to western leaders, hungry for the adoration of their own kind. The people want leadership, not a cosy consensus for yet more pandering to difference. The people know that diversity is often a weakness, not a strength as touted by those with the most to gain from the non-jobs it produces. The people want some honest, down-and-dirty, get-it-done politics. Not pretend fucking debates which just make us hate politicians even more.

Politics as usual

Even as the poll ratings tumble, supporters of the Brexit Party are bravely clinging to the flotsam of their mantra: ‘change politics for good’. It’s a great idea, it is sorely needed. And it is never going to happen. The contest, such as it is, is between the two parties which have alternately held power throughout my lifetime. Two parties which currently seem to be trying their best to not get elected. Every manifesto announcement is palpably false; every pledge, every commitment undeliverable.

This is because politics as it has become is a centrist mêlée in which neither side can gain the upper hand and the country always loses. The pundits are saying different, that we have a choice between quite-right and extreme-left, but the reality is that all parties are courting a populist mandate and fighting for the votes of a people long cowed by the spectre of political correctness and afraid of offending. The few dissenting votes cast will go the likes of the Brexit Party and under the first-past-the-post system are likely to fall on fallow ground.

In years gone by we genuinely did have a choice between a socialist, Labour administration whose authoritarian ideals meant they would provide so long as we behaved ourselves and paid our taxes and a more laisse faire Conservatism where we would provide and the government would behave itself.. as long as we paid our taxes. The Liberals, later to morph into the Liberal Democrats would, as is their lot, be the natural repository for the lost votes of those without such strong tribal convictions.

Those who saw themselves bold and different would pledge for the BNP, Cornish separatists or the Monster Raving Loony Party and other fringe rebellions in the certain knowledge that they would never form a government and never influence government policy. But then came UKIP. Nigel Farage, a political force of nature, took a protest movement and brought it national credibility against a barrage of pretty foul play from the establishment to a position where it promised to challenge ‘politics as usual’. And had one elected MP.

This is now, I believe, the fate of The Brexit Party. As much as I and millions of others want to change our politics, we have no model of what that change looks like. For every couch rebel there is also a tribal Labour voter who will return to the socialist fold under Jeremy Corbyn. For every disenfranchised ex-Tory, like me, there will be two who will breathe a sigh of relief that Boris gives them hope of getting their party back.

So, my prediction, for all that it is worth, is a workable Conservative majority under a single elected term Prime Minister, which will muddle through with a form of Brexit that satisfies nobody and then oversee a slow economic recovery just enough to steady the ship. Shortly thereafter, business as usual will see the long knives out again, the EU will come back to savage the Tories and a watered down, post-Corbyn opposition will be all set to let go of the purse strings once more. And so the circle of British political life turns.

Viva la Revolución!

Nigel Farage deserves a peerage, a knighthood at least; what he has done is the closest anybody has ever done in my lifetime to change things. But the disunited might of the entrenched order has done what it always does. The establishment does not tolerate outsiders and one of the ways it quietens their voice is to bring them inside. A Lord Farage would be rendered toothless and regarded as a sell-out, so such an honour would be a poisoned chalice. So what would YOU do? And as for that single Brexit Party MP, it’s going to a cold, lonely few years.