PETER HITCHENS: This isn’t a revolution – it’s New Labour in a blue frock
This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column
British politics has finally vanished up its own pretensions. The old signposts and measurements have all been removed. We have no idea who stands for what or where we are going. Who would have thought to see a Tory conference applauding a Prime Minister for vowing to raise more tax and weaken employers’ rights? Surely that’s the job of the other lot?
In fact most of Chairman May’s speech could have equally well been written and delivered at a Labour conference. She may have derided Jeremy Corbyn personally but she has noticed quite a lot of his ideas are rather popular, especially with the young, and stolen them.
Who can blame her? She faces nothing but uncertainty and danger. The Labour Party is very nearly dead but her own Tories seethe with intrigue, rivalry and suppressed dissent.
The landscape before her is like one of those lakes covered in bright green water weed that looks – at a first glance – like a smooth lawn. In fact it conceals slimy depths. Only a fool would try to walk on it.
Her inexplicable breezy confidence about leaving the EU makes me shudder, and I am a veteran campaigner for national independence.
I wouldn’t dream of activating Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the two-year clock for our exit, because it places all the negotiating power in the hands of our continental rivals. And they, especially Germany, hope to scare all the other EU nations into staying in. The last thing they want to do is to make an exit easy for us.
I’d insist on getting all the talking done before taking this dangerous step. As for her Great Repeal Bill, it is nothing of the sort. Until we actually get out, it just confirms 40 years of EU laws and regulations.
Already her Cabinet is openly divided about keeping access to the Single Market.
And if anyone thinks that the Bad Losers’ Party has given up its dream of rerunning the referendum, just wait and see. They will fight this in the courts, in the Commons, in the Lords, in the civil service and in the BBC.
Given all these perils, it is only wise of Mrs May to blow kisses in the general direction of Labour voters, while also trying to persuade refugees from Ukip to come back to mummy. The 2020 Election seems far away, but its result will probably be decided during the next two years.
You may not like any of this. I certainly don’t. But it comes, as so many bad things do, from taking short cuts and trying to bodge complicated bits of carpentry with a few swift strokes of the hammer.
Millions of voters thought they could have a policy without a government to implement it. They thought they could leave the nation’s fate to the political class rather than taking a hand in it themselves.
They fell for David Cameron’s promise of a referendum, which he never expected to keep because he intended to continue the Coalition with the Lib Dems until 2020.
They thought they could rely on the Tory Party to take them out of the EU, even though it had let them down on so many other things.
So, deep down, they changed nothing. A few toyed with the Dad’s Army party of Ukip, now once again enjoying ripping itself to pieces, its main activity. But they wouldn’t see that the Tories had become a blue-tinged version of New Labour.Now there’s a new collective delusion, that Theresa May is the new Margaret Thatcher. Actually she’s the new Harriet Harman. I’ve charted her embrace of political correctness here over many years.
Even her increasingly vague promise to maybe, just possibly, open one or two new grammar schools, provided the middle class cannot get into them, will probably trickle away into the damp sands of compromise where truly good ideas end up in our system.
*****
I know I’m not going to like Netflix’s The Crown, the new drama about the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh. In fact I think it should not have been made, and should not be made for another 20 or 30 years when the actual facts are known and the papers available.
Even then, it would probably be nearly as bad. Like all such productions, it exploits the real people it pretends to portray. If it were about fictional royal figures, and did not claim to be their real lives, nobody would watch it.
But it cannot possibly be true. Above all, like the misleading, over-rated film The King’s Speech, it tries to see people through the distorting lens of present-day prejudice. My parents and their friends were more or less of the same generation as the Queen and Prince Philip, and my father was a naval officer.
And it seems to me that even the faces of Claire Foy, who plays the Queen, and Matt Smith, who plays the Duke of Edinburgh, are wrong. They lack the depth and grief and sense of duty carved into the faces of that generation by their stern upbringing, and by the war. They are too knowing about trivial things, and too innocent of important ones.
Their attempts at the accents of the time sound as if they have been laboriously taught them and they long to burst out laughing, not as if they think it normal to speak like that, as such people really did.
And the odd thing is that they spoke like that while enduring danger, pain and fear and, in a way, saving the world. There wasn’t anything funny about it
I am told King George VI, that improbably decent monarch, is shown using the c-word. I doubt he did. Naval man though he was, and so familiar with the whole range of filthy language, I think he would have regarded it as impossibly crude.
And if they can get that wrong, it is like a clock striking 13. All that went before, and all that comes afterwards, is in doubt as well.
*****
I am not sure that the alleged comedian David Baddiel was trying to be nice when he urged the BBC to give me a ‘Right-Wing Hour’ on Radio 4.
The last time we met, on a TV review programme, I said that I was pleased and relieved when his dreary film, The Infidel, came to an end. He may not have forgotten.
But even so he now joins many other BBC types, from Andrew Marr to Mark Thompson, in admitting ‘there is generally a centre-Left, liberal bias to its output’.
And this is getting worse. As this newspaper revealed last Sunday, diversity commissars are culling BBC performers on the grounds of race and sex. This is a mad outcome.
When I was a Leftist in the 1960s, we at least believed that discrimination of all kinds was wrong. To this day I write ‘human’ when asked for my ethnic details by some busybody.
Even an hour a week in which such wicked ideas could be attacked and mocked would be better than nothing.
*****
One of the saddest sights in the university town where I live is ‘Freshers’ Week’, which means nightly pathetic processions of bewildered teens, clad in uniform joke T-shirts, being led off to bars to be taught how to get drunk. I really hope that the Headmasters’ and Headmistresses’ Conference was right when it said today’s sixth formers are sick of the Olympic boozing that has become so universal.
It is the drinking, of course, that also leads to so many of the rapes and alleged rapes that cause so much misery of so many kinds. I wonder why we treat this sad business as a joke.
If you want to comment on Peter Hitchens, click on Comments and scroll down
Gordon Kerr,
The is bent on more and more integration until it becomes a quasi-superstate. It always has been since the days of Monnet and Spaak. I would sympathise with your position more if you acknowledged that. If you are willing to say you will tirelessly drag Britain back to the EU as it is actually is - the EU of the Monnet method, then that would be okay. The problem is British Europhiles are rarely open about their ultimate hostility to the nation state.
Of course, to a British patriot, the nature of the EU is all argument that us needed for not treating dogged determination to get us out as the same to take is back in.
Posted by: John | 13 October 2016 at 11:50 AM
"Even an hour a week in which such wicked ideas could be attacked and mocked would be better than nothing."
Why not set up a Podcast?
Posted by: Pericles | 12 October 2016 at 02:24 AM
The popular notion that the Labour party has been taken over by people who are content to be little more than a student-type protest movement with no credible prospect of being in power is a naive and dangerous one. Conservatives who crow about having seen off all opposition for a generation may come to regret their complacency, particularly those who smugly boast that they helped install Corbyn in the Labour leadership. No one who has heard John McDonnell being interviewed could possibly imagine that here is some sort of political ingénue and that there's no method behind what is being foolishly dismissed as Labour's madness. There has to be a plan for power of some kind. Clearly Labour currently have little hope of beating the Tories in a head-on electoral confrontation. For that Labour would have to re-occupy the centre ground, a return to Blairism which is ideologically unacceptable to the current hard left leadership. Something much more machiavellian is required and here's one possibility:
Rid the party, by any means necessary, of all remaining traces of Blairite moderates to create a party brand politically correct in every detail. In a world grown weary of politicians' apparent lack of principles this alone will have real value, especially to an electorate which doesn't care to look too far beneath the surface. The central task is to invent Jeremy Corbyn as an incorruptibly honest politician. Make no mistake, Corbyn's personal brand identity is being created and managed with the same care and attention to detail as for any other product in today's marketplace. The summer 'coup' was successfully stage managed by the leadership to help create an image of Corbyn's persecution by his own MPs (portrayed as the Pharisees who betrayed Jesus). His emergence from this media-driven Calvary, victorious in the face of betrayal is the perfect outcome for the spin doctors. Even his call for 'unity' (code for obedience) was misrepresented as an act of conciliation. The BBC is enthusiastically playing its part in this resurrection myth, their focus on Corbyn's problems with the disloyalty of his MPs, far from being negative coverage, fits the narrative perfectly.
The problem for the Tories is that, with the false sense of security that they have no credible enemies, they will become careless and accident-prone. The media's incessant campaign to undermine the government re. Brexit will be useful here. But Labour can't rely on this alone and that's where the unions and Momentum come in. A combination of strikes and increasingly extreme direct action and demonstrations can make any government look bad and out of touch. In order to succeed in politics, it is necessary for others to be seen to fail. With UKIP imploded, enter the only alternative - Jeremy Corbyn, as an honest broker rising from the chaos as a saviour. Much as the opportunistic Lenin did in October 1917, having taken care to dispose of his more moderate Menshevik rivals a few years earlier.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 11 October 2016 at 10:26 PM
I think that the ultimate deal thrashed out between the EU and the UK will depend on whether or not the UK is a net contributor to the EU.
Perhaps somebody could provide a clear answer to what ought to be a simple question: Does the UK currently put more money into the EU than it gets out?
Posted by: John Main | 11 October 2016 at 05:54 PM
The sad thing is that one of the original ideals of the EU in its early days was to move on from each country seeking to protect only its own interests, and pooling this with others. With Brexit in the offing, both the attitude of the UK and EU in seeking to get a deal reflecting their own best interests shows how the original ideal seems to have disappeared from view. Ugly and alarming attitudes all round.
Posted by: Ken B | 10 October 2016 at 09:55 AM
I think you're confusing the so called "original ideals of the EU" with the obfuscatory PR smokescreen that has always been an essential part of the EU project. The reality of the EU from the outset has been an scheme to create an undemocratic continent-wide political dictatorship, ruled from Brussels, with a faux-democratic façade staged in a grand film set style parliament in Strasbourg. Meanwhile the displays of vindictiveness from an assorted menagerie of EU politicians and commissioners, when they have to come to terms with a genuinely democratic decision by the British electorate, reveals the true shallowness of this sanctimonious mask. Ugly and alarming indeed.
Posted by: Brian Meredith | 11 October 2016 at 02:14 PM
The collapse of the pound is the start of what might be termed economic sanctions against Britain of the sort being used against Russia.A targeting of the UK currency and financial sector combined with a Judicial /Parliamentary coup by the majority of Judges and MPs oposed to Brexit.This may well lead to its abandonement.Enoch Powell once predicted that economic sanctions would be used aginst Britain if it tried to leave Europe or abandon the American alliance.Britains last independent foreign policy stand over Suez in 1956 lead to American sanctions against Sterling.This led directly to Britains first attempt to join the Common Market..It seems that all this was forgotten by the Brexit campaign.and by Cameron when he called the referendum in the first place.George Soros and other speculators will no doubt keep up their campaign against the pound which is already leading to visible rising prices both in the shops and petrol stations.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 11 October 2016 at 08:57 AM
I was never a naval man. Oddly, despite this I am also fully conversant with the whole range of filthy language. (I learned most of it, incidentally, at grammar school). Whatever, we can be certain that King George VI was a thoroughly decent man, and the c-word never once passed his lips. Well, it wouldn't, would it? Cos he was Thoroughly Decent and above all, British (with a slightly plosive "B"), and Mr Hitchens can see inside his brain and has told us so. Ergo: Netflix's "The Crown" is rubbish. Q.E.D. More incisive journalism from PH.
Posted by: Banjopicker | 10 October 2016 at 09:03 PM
Mike B | 10 October 2016 at 10:48 AM :
*** Do you believe that Russia has remained "unpillaged" since the early 90s, under Yeltsin and Putin? ***
Not at all ... but Putin and Medvedev do seem to have put a stop to (or at least a brake on) the very worst carpet-bagging excesses of the Yeltsin period.
Nowhere near enough, though.
Interesting how the US-led West didn't want Russia in either NATO or the EU -- potentially easier to loot a defeated 'enemy' than one of their own members ... so much for their ceaseless lies about wanting "peace" and "security".
*** I fundamentally agree with you on the malevolence of globalisation, but globalisation does not just affect the West. The clue's in the name. ***
Indeed so -- it may well enrich the corrupt elite in third-world States, but heavily orientating production towards the export market would appear to usually involve dispossession or exploitation of the non-rich.
Not that politically correct Western 'liberal' types would really care, since below the facade all that matters to them is people like themselves, poser-worthy globalist ideological justifications for the above, or highly remunerated executive posts for them and their cronies in big business organisations claiming to be "charities".
Posted by: C. Morrison | 10 October 2016 at 07:03 PM
@Andrew Todd | 09 October 2016 at 11:27 AM
I agree with your comments on Have I Got News for You. Ian Hislop is particularly smug and irritating. A member of the Establishment pretending to be anti-Establishment. No wonder Private Eye is a shadow of its former self.
Posted by: Thomas Moon | 10 October 2016 at 03:56 PM
***PH writes: My position is 'bizarre' because of the circumstances in which we find ourselves, a government opposed to Britain leaving the EU, theoretically in charge of arranging our departure from the EU. I argued for many years for actions which would have avoided this, principally the destruction of the Tory Party and its replacement by a formation which would represent what turned out to be the majority of voters in June 2016. This was jeered at and rejected by those who could have brought it about. These days one of my main pleasures is in telling such people that I told them so. This will end badly. I told you so. Any serious change in this country requires the destruction of the Tory Party. Shy away from that task, and you will get nowhere. ***
Thanks for replying. I'm no huge fan of the Tories as it happens. Maybe their demise would be a good thing? I can't see who or what else could realistically replace them on the centre right of British politics though. As for the "told you so", well, we'll see. I have to say, Mr Hitchens, that you have been wrong about a couple of important things recently, in particular the Conservative election victory with a majority, and the referendum result. We all need to take heed lest pride goeth before a fall :-)
***PH notes. I do not 'want' this. But I recognise that any other course would be disastrous for us economically, in the short to medium term. Has he heard of tactics? Sometimes one has to postpone one's ultimate objective for the sake of attaining it.***
I understand the point. But it does strain my credulity to suppose that a political establishment which has been so enamoured of the EU for the last 4 decades would give even an inch (or perhaps I should say 2.4cm?) towards further independence after the forthcoming settlement (whatever it is) is reached. The whole direction of travel has been towards European integration. So many people of power and influence remain signed up to this. It is true that Brexiteers are currently in the political ascendency, but will this still be the case in 5 or 10 years? It seems to me that remaining half inside the EU is the option favoured by many Europhiles precisely because they see it as being relatively easy to reverse when the time would be expedient for them to do so.
Of course I also appreciate that so called "hard Brexit" is likely to come at a considerable cost. But what price sovereignty? I myself voted for Brexit in the full expectation that it would create an immediate recession - something which has fortunately so far not come to pass.
Posted by: JonB | 10 October 2016 at 12:37 PM
@ C Morrison
Sorry, Mr Morrison (I am assuming it's Mr).
The first sentence of my penultimate paragraph should have referred to "pro- Russian and pro-Western groups".
Posted by: Mike B | 10 October 2016 at 12:27 PM
@ C Morrison 9th October @1:43PM
I like your posts and look forward to reading them. The same goes for the above - until the final paragraph.
Do you believe that Russia has remained "unpillaged" since the early 90s, under Yeltsin and Putin? Do you think that financiers, regardless of whether or not they are American, including the major banks, accountancy firms and the "Magic Circle" of law firms based in the City of London have not contrived, through the creation of shell companies and other abstruse financial devices, to shift money which rightly belongs to the Russian people, abroad, on behalf of the absurdly rich classes which the post- Soviet regimes have created, at the expense of the vast majority of Russians ? Do you imagine that Putin himself, surrounded by the ill-gotten wealth which he has helped to create, struggles by on a few roubles a year, as he claims?
There appears to be a group of people who wish to divide those opposed to financial corruption into pro Russian and anti-Western groups; only to the benefit of the crooks on either side of the divide. "Divide et impera", indeed.
I fundamentally agree with you on the malevolence of globalisation, but globalisation does not just affect the West. The clue's in the name.
Posted by: Mike B | 10 October 2016 at 10:48 AM
I wonder if Putin's Russia could be asked to arbitrate in the forthcoming negotiations between Britain and the rest of the EU? An honest broker. (Well, no less dishonest than Johnson or Verhofstadt or any other load of politicians on both sides of the English Channel.)
The sad thing is that one of the original ideals of the EU in its early days was to move on from each country seeking to protect only its own interests, and pooling this with others. With Brexit in the offing, both the attitude of the UK and EU in seeking to get a deal reflecting their own best interests shows how the original ideal seems to have disappeared from view. Ugly and alarming attitudes all round.
Posted by: Ken B | 10 October 2016 at 09:55 AM
C.Morrison: 9 October 2016 at O1:43 PM: Very well said.
Posted by: Colm J | 09 October 2016 at 09:42 PM
The same sycophants who are now puffing Theresa May were doing the same for Cameron and Osborne only a year ago .They were both political geniuses for winning the 2015 Election and Osborne was going to be a shoo in when Cameron went.Now Theresa May is supposed to dominate British politics for the next ten years.In truth these political commentators know nothing as we have seen over the last 18 months.In fact if they predict something you can be sure that the opposite will happen.
Posted by: Roy Robinson | 09 October 2016 at 08:57 PM
Mr. Hitchens - Sure, I get why it's too early to film "the Crown" but I think we're missing the advantages of it and "The King's Speech". We need an alternative standard bearer for the West given the recent falters of the US in Iraq, the global economy, maintenance of the current politica order. One co-equal branch of the US gov. will NOT do its job - thereby the US is in a constitutional crisis and it's politics at speed. The Commonwealth is the alternative and people need a larger context of their civilization. Hstorically, that has been the Crown. Please take a step back.
Posted by: YAJ | 09 October 2016 at 08:14 PM
I've noticed Chairman May (kudos to Mr. Hitchens for her moniker, following in the amusing footsteps of Mr. Slippery) has started copying Mrs. Thatcher's speech patterns. I wonder if May realises that the former Prime Minister had lessons to calm down her shrill tone and also spoke with an equally plastic voice.
Incidentally, Mr. Hitchens, I'm sure you're aware the Sentencing Council has proposed that young knife criminals should face tougher punishments if they film their offences to post on social media. I'd love to know your thoughts on this. My personal feeling is the law will organically expand into arresting anyone pointing a smart-phone at the police under a public disorder offence.
Posted by: Darren W | 09 October 2016 at 08:08 PM
I think we should have invoked Article 50 immediately the result of the referendum was confirmed. That is because I don't trust our politicians to honour the referendum. Better to get a poor deal from Germany than be betrayed by the Quislings at home.
I also wonder whether the fall in the pound has anything to do with announcement of the March deadline. Perhaps it is instead a response to the abandonment of any pretence to deal with the deficit?
Posted by: Martin Snow | 09 October 2016 at 06:25 PM
Jack | 09 October 2016 at 10:23 AM
*** Watch any gangster film, what exercises the capo is his need for respect. Those with attitude...are feared, and with that fear comes respect. ***
Exactly right. A superb example of this sort of thing was Sir Francis Drake's legendary game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe, as the Spanish Armada approached. Never mind that the legend has more holes than a colander, it illustrates superbly the principle of contemptuous disdain for a huge enemy.
(For those who are wondering what those holes might be, bowls was not invented until centuries later, so the game would have been boule - petanque if you prefer. And there was no point in the English - not British - fleet putting to sea immediately: in battles between sailing ships the imperative was to be upwind of the enemy, so Drake had to wait for the Armada to get past Plymouth. He made an inspired virtue out of necessity.)
Posted by: Bill | 09 October 2016 at 05:23 PM
If people had followed Peter Hitchens advice in 2015 and not voted for Cameron and the Conservative Party in 2015 there would have been no referendum on the EU.
***PH notes: If they had followed my advice in *2010* and not voted for the Conservative Party there would have been no coalition, the Tories would have collapsed and we would be well on the way to creating a political party representing the wishes of the majority which voted to leave the EU last June. The referendum may turn out to be the opposite of what it appears to be, a final destruction of our chance of leaving. If , as I suspect, the government fails to implement that vote in fact,while claiming to have done so, the last chance will have gone***
EU rules are any member state which wants to leave has to apply to leave. Its much like a 12 year contract with a cable provider at the end they continue taking money from your bank account unless you inform them we no longer want it.
***Not exactly. Once you activate Article 50, you will exit in two years on whatever terms are decided by the remaining EU countries , in your absence.***
The fear of many, including myself previously posted here,is that May would use delay tactics until some new deal and vote on could be set up. The longer we delay departing the longer and greater the Globalist pro- EU forces have to try and reverse the departure.
Posted by: david brown | 09 October 2016 at 05:13 PM
I'm not sure that the UK could ever gain a negotiating lever by delaying or refusing to invoke Art. 50 ...its us that wants to go so we more or less have to make the first move to initiate the divorce process from the EU - which Art 50 is - its not the negotiation for the future UK:EU trade relationship which is clearly up in the air....in that we can only trust in the EU not being insane enough to start a trade war with their largest and most proximate trade partner whose economy is currently employing milions of their own citizens....
Posted by: Mark, Middlesex | 09 October 2016 at 02:46 PM
The Con/lib/lab party were unilaterally pro EU how else could we get any political leverage Mr " I am a veteran campaigner for national independence",than to use UKIP to force a referendum. "We" now have the democratic highground and if "we" are subverted then Soft "Brexit" is soft totalitarianism which as history tells us soon turns into hard totalitarianism if we don't do as we a collectively TOLD. PS I'm a ex labour voter (using UKIP) and leaving the EU was more about sovereignty than any other issue our traditional system though always unfair and caste ridden was never totalitarian. Totalitarianism has no LEFT or RIGHT and neither do the Con/lib/lab party, the dictatorial "centre" who da thunk it. PPS I'm slighly left leaning and for national independence as Peter puts it.
Posted by: Plebeian | 09 October 2016 at 01:49 PM
Colm J | 09 October 2016 at 11:59 AM :
*** The Telegraph is currently running a series of articles entitled "The Brexit Dividend". Tellingly the articles dwell, not on the opportunity Brexit theoretically affords for clipping the wings of the PC industry, but rather on its potential for freeing the British government to give even greater support to the fracking industry, big banks and Big Pharma. ***
Both official "remainers" and "brexiteers" have been careful not to mention the TTIP and similar treaties. No surprise, since they seem to generally agree with each other on what you've cited above. GM crops could be added to the list.
If those who administer the EU on behalf of its trans-Atlantic masters were genuinely opposed to any of these things, they'd never have been negotiating TTIP in the first place ... but -- as ever -- they seek to attain by furtiveness, semantics and lies whatever they'd be unlikely get past the somnambulized sheeple via honest politics.
Consider the alleged Presidential election in the USA. Where's any serious debate on Neocon directed mass-murder, looting and imperialism ... the massively corrupt financial system .... or even poverty and increasing wealth-divide within an ever more automated future?
Nowhere. And that's how a socio-economically 'converged' EU will end up -- like some Guardian scribblers' convention, pimping out BBC style "nudges" towards ever greater political correctness; all enforced through a "grass thy neighbour" regime of thought-policing.
Not to mention hysterical hate-hours against Russia no matter what it does, unless that country allows US multinationals and financiers to pillage its resources.
Posted by: C. Morrison | 09 October 2016 at 01:43 PM
"Her inexplicable breezy confidence about leaving the EU makes me shudder" All breezy confience about leaving the EU makes me shudder.
"I wouldn’t dream of activating Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which starts the two-year clock for our exit, because it places all the negotiating power in the hands of our continental rivals." Then how else will we leave? I thought that was the only officlal way in which it is possible.
"And they, especially Germany, hope to scare all the other EU nations into staying in. The last thing they want to do is to make an exit easy for us." Of course. Maybe Mr Hitchens will yet become a Remainer when he sees that leaving can only mean financial disaster for Britain..
Posted by: Gadjo Dilo | 09 October 2016 at 12:30 PM
As a proud remainer I'm sick of being labelled a "bad loser" etc and we should all pull together now we're leaving. Well you can't have it both ways. For 60 years the anti-EU lot have been harping on for all that time, bringing down numerous Tory leaders. Did they accept the result? No they didn't, so why should we? The fact that we see nothing but disaster in the forthcoming negotiations with the Three Brexiteers in charge all shouting hard brexit even more stringently as the dreaded date in March gets closer. The fact that the pound is hurtling towards parity with the Dollar and the Euro, Nissan are warning of future investment and The City could lose Passporting seems only to excite them even more.
It's important that we get another referendum based on the negotiations as we could end up on the wrong end of a financial and economic kicking.
Posted by: Gordon Kerr | 09 October 2016 at 12:05 PM