Conservative activists are out campaigning for the local elections. In a few weeks, they may well be campaigning for the European elections. One Conservative MP recently admitted privately that these activists faced an impossible task: how, he wondered, could the party expect them to sell ‘this pile of shit’ on the doorstep. It is a very good question.
I found our local activist sympathetic and when I informed him that, as a conservative, I felt unable to support the Conservative Party. As I reeled off the reasons, beginning with Mrs May, he smiled and nodded his head knowingly. I asked him whether he was getting similar reactions to mine on other door steps and he admitted that he was. I commiserated. He was a nice guy and he had a conscience. He wondered if I might like to talk to the candidate.
Unfortunately, the candidate did not seem to be aware there was any public relations problem, and he contented himself with peddling the party line. Instead of listening to my litany of complaints, he interrupted, as if I were some ill-informed geezer down the pub. He blamed the problems with Brexit on the Conservatives being a minority government. I suggested that the Conservatives themselves were split down the middle. He countered that it was Labour who were split and that ‘ninety per cent’ of Conservative MPs voted for Mrs May’s deal which would have delivered Brexit last time round. I suggested to him that Mrs May’s deal was the equivalent of ‘a pile of shit’. We moved on to immigration, and he suggested the Conservatives had it ‘under control’. I reminded him that the last figures for non-EU immigration, which is under our control, were a new record. And so on. His parting sally was that if I didn’t vote Conservative, Corbyn would get in. Did I want that? I told him that if this was the best argument the Party could muster, they didn’t deserve anyone’s vote.
Apparently, there is only one UKIP candidate standing in our area and I must choose three candidates. I will therefore be forced to vote for two liberals as well – they are decent enough people, and it is only a local election. Anybody but a bloody Conservative.
Let the massacre commence!
If you wonder why are the Left gaining so much ground consider this military analogy: conservatism is all about defending what you have gained. Left wing activism is concerned with taking territory.
Many conservative writers have declared themselves appalled by the unfair treatment Roger Scruton has received at the hands of young Left wing hacks. They deplore the lack of basic decency. We should understand that the Left are just not impressed by that kind of condemnation. They have used their weapon of choice, moral bullying, to have a conservative removed from a position of influence by other conservatives. More doors will now be closed to those who fail to adhere to the Left’s politically correct dogma. Another big win and another big slice of public life goes to them.
Conservatives must learn to fight fire with fire.
“Conservatives must learn to fight fire with fire.”
I vehemently disagree, and I trust that Sit Roger would be on my side of this equation.
How does one conserve the good, true and beautiful by combating depravity, iconoclasm and fascism with more depravity, iconoclasm and fascism?
Vehemently disagree if you will, M. Raspail, but does it not occur to you that the Left have always portrayed themselves as morally superior in every way to conservatives? In the world view of the Left’s social justice warriors conservatives enjoy more than their fair share of “the good, the true and the beautiful” and must be held to account.
Know your enemy. He is taking your territory against little effective resistence. As I have already said, you may deplore his lack of basic decency but he doesn’t care. He just wants conservatives removed from public life.
Dirty tricks from enemy hacks still in their infancy are to be expected. Respect for evidence and justice are to be expected from HMG – especially a Conservative one with a Conservative philosopher. The merest acquaintance with his writings would have prevented Brokenshire’s shameful stupidity. The blame for this lies with him.
As it happens the NS editor, Mr Cowley, is a more decent individual and has already suspended Eaton.
If I may say so, Michael McManus, your comment is astonishingly complacent. I would be surprised if the suspension of Eaton is anything more than a token gesture to be rescinded once the fuss dies down.
If respect for evidence and justice play no part in a decision taken by a Conservative government to dismiss a widely respected Conservative philosopher from public office then that government has a craven fear of defying the left’s politically correct, youth oriented, agenda.
I don’t believe that the “merest acquaintance” with Roger Scruton’s writings would have made any difference at all. The government were more concerned with reaction in the wider media which, as I have already said, is stuffed with left of centre journalists always eager to display their non-islamophobic, non-homophobic, non-racist, non-sexist credentials.
I’m putting my faith in a correction and apology from Jason Cowley, probably this Friday in the NS. If you turn out to be correct in your pessimism, I’ll be dismayed.
Another thought. It is not in the interests of any publication to employ someone who has proven himself untrustworthy, and in this case opened the NS to a libel action. Who could rely on any report of anything from the writer in this case? Who would be so stupid as to imagine he could get away with lies when a tape exists? His career is over.
many people including me wrote the editor about this. I suggested, in view of the ‘islamophbobia’ nonsense, that they express their contrition by making a donation to The Council of Ex-Muslims of Britain – which protects apostates from being murdered by their own families
Heartfelt complaints are one thing, action on them another. I wonder if Tories will really vote in a way that gets the Nazi Labour party into power.
Who is Nick Phillips?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Phillips%2C_Baron_Phillips_of_Worth_Matravers
Thank you. If he really said what it attributed to him, he’s lucky that British law does not come down hard with the same lash or axe that sharia does on people who challenge the ruling view in such rats’ nest as the middle east.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2242340/Muslims-in-Britain-should-be-able-to-live-under-Sharia-law-says-top-judge.html
Strictly speaking, Nick Phillips was backing the Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams’ comment that the adoption of sharia law in the UK was “inevitable” by saying that there should be no obstacle or objection to using it for mediation. He was effectively preparing you Brits to be resigned to its wider use. He made no attempt to defend the principle of one law for all, and he also, on another occasion, argued strongly for community service instead of custodial sentences. If you are wondering why the UK is becoming so alarmingly destabilized, you need not look any further for the answer than the UK’s own former top judge’s influential role in dismantling a once-great nation.
Being a descendant of Sephardic Jews, he probably feels under more threat than the majority of you and has anticipated the worst accordingly.
Sheila: ‘Nick Phillips tells the British that they should resign themselves to the spread of sharia law in the UK.’
That recalls Major Khan’s recent observation that the threat of terrorism is now part of life in the modern British city.
Only a new leader with the charisma to galvanise despondent Conservatives will work, and then convince the educated youth that the alternative is ruination of our country. Why the prospect of Corbyn, Abbott, McDonnell and Len McCluskey doesn’t terrify them is a mystery.
But not Boris. Gove is the best, but he keeps putting his foot in his mouth, and the latest pandering to Greta Thunberg was the last straw. Does anyone in government read this Review – or Private Eye!
The Conservatives do not represent moderates and conservatives any more, and Labour does not represent the working class any more. The “House of Lords” is now stuffed with (champagne) socialists and (limousine) liberals; Nick Phillips tells the British that they should resign themselves to the spread of sharia law in the UK. White privileged libs are the true enemy of the people. You cannot blame us migrants for your problems.
What you Brits need is a Nueva Reconquista (this time without the Inquisition), the re-establishment of Enlightenment values and the rule of law.
Excellent analysis of our circumstances and a way forward……thanks……
Here’s an insight from the front line of British crime prevention of how influential liberal UK thought leaders such as Phillips have contributed to inducing the spiral dive of an advanced civilization into a socialist dystopia within the space of a couple of generations –
“I’m sure lots of you, like me, are kept awake at night by the idea that some of our prisons are overcrowded. It’s certainly been worrying Lord Chief Justice Phillips of Worth Matravers lately.
Recently, his Lordship suggested that offenders should only be sent to jail ‘as a last resort’ and that they should really be rehabilitated in the community.
I think that they should be rehabilitated chez Phillips, where Lady Phillips can keep an eye on the family silver and Lord Phillips can develop a better understanding of what persistent acquisitive criminals are really like…community service doesn’t work…despite what LCJ Phillips thinks, [it’s a fact] that jailing an eighteen year old for six to twelve years for his third burglary…would ensure that the public were protected from literally hundreds of offences…
I’ve no idea where the LCJ’s houses are (he’s probably got several), or what they’re like, but I’ll hazard a guess. They will be nice, big pads in low crime areas. They will have walls around them and plenty of open ground that burglars have to cross before they get to the alarmed and well-made windows. He’ll probably have a dog or two, and possibly a live-in housekeeper. The local nick will know exactly where he is and they will be on tenterhooks in case they get a call to get out there…His neighbours will be charming people with diverse interests, large cars and lots of antique furniture…He won’t be offered out in the back garden of the King’s Head, after drinking nine pints of Stella, because he brushed someone’s arm.
Now ask yourself: when it comes to deciding on how criminals should be dealt with, is Lord Chief Justice of Worth Matravers a chap you can trusts?”
(from “Wasting Police Time”, PC David Copperfield, Monday Books 2006)
A local election is probably the only time you will see a candidate on your doorstep in spite of the fact that MPs are fond of talking about the strength of feeling they have found on the doorsteps in their constituency.
For the modern media savvy politician (is there any other kind?) democracy does not involve a dialogue with “the people”. It involves a dialogue with the broadcast media. The broadcast media, of course, are stuffed with left of centre journalists who like to think of themselves as the voice of informed public opinion as well as the moral compass of the nation.
A typical “important” TV interview will involve one of our political hacks engaged in defending the party’s record while insisting that the opposite side have made or will make a mess of things. Meanwhile the interviewer will be trying to catch out the politician with usual crafty cross-questioning. This verbal fencing match is supposed to impress us, the simple minded viewers, with the penetrating insights supposedly revealed. It certainly seems to impress other journalists who have (inexplicably) bestowed the status of national treasure on the likes of Andrew Marr, Jeremy Paxman and John Humphrys and many others.
A brilliant and highly amusing summary of modern politics……