Your questions answered...
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Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday
This week, the first since I asked e-mail correspondents to switch to the blog, I will devote all my space to replying to correspondence.
I can't do this every week, and won't, but I do hope to have a genuine dialogue whenever possible. Dealing with the UKIP complaints has helped me clear up a problem I had not properly considered before. What sort of relations can an opinionated columnist have with any political party?
This isn't a matter of carrying a membership card, though I don't any longer belong to any party. It's a matter of endorsing, showing favour - and of then becoming identified with that party, so that you have to defend it when it gets into trouble. There are many different ways of doing this.
You don't have to wear a badge or take out a subscription, though you will be forced to eat a lot of lunches and dinners. I think quite a lot of supposedly uncommitted columnists (mostly on the heavy papers) could be said to have given their allegiance to the Labour Party, and a far smaller number ( though this will grow) to the Tories.
That is, they write about them as if they shared their aims and as if their leaders or senior figures were friends. In some cases they actually are their friends, though whether such friendships would survive if both or either changed jobs, I'm not sure.
They make light of blunders by their chosen party or faction. They try to influence the people they write about and are flattered if they are recruited by them for covert propaganda exercises. And so they are. Occasionally - if you are observant - you may be surprised by a number of columnists suddenly writing about a new policy or idea.
Unsigned Leader (editorial) columns may fall victim to the same mysterious mental virus. Soon afterwards, it will be taken up by a politician. Before you know where you are, it's an Act of Parliament. Watch out for this. It will be part of an agreed plan to float an idea, probably decided at an unattributable lunch or dinner involving a politician and journalists.
If any of those present ever revealed that this had happened, they would be ostracised, denied scoops and gossip, and professionally finished. Among the Labour sympathisers, some are Brown loyalists. Others have been Blair followers for many years and now don't know quite what to do because their man has failed so completely to groom and create a successor to whom they can swear fealty.
It is the Blair followers who will now in many cases slither over to being Cameron groupies - and they will be most welcome when they turn up. Why shouldn't they be?
Most of these people are not interested in politics, if by politics you mean serious thought and concern about the future of the country. While, like almost everyone in my generation, they have the instincts and received opinions of the conformist Left, they are much more interested in the who's up, who's down, who's in, who's out gossip of Westminster.
After all, their ideas are more or less dominant anyway. Why should they seek radical change? That is why the empty 'centre ground' politics of the Tory leadership appeal so much to this class of commentator.
They are the standard-issue views of everyone who sees politics as a career in itself rather than as a means to an end. Obviously I'm not interested in this sort of thing, as I'm a supporter of radical change. And in any case, I've grown wary of political parties over the years. All the bright and interesting people in them tend to be kept away from the top jobs, which go to the dull careerists.
I don't want to be the creature of any party, and especially of a party whose members act as if I'm in some way obliged to be nice to their organisation, however ineffectual, bungling and embarrassing it may be, because we happen to agree on some policies.
H.L.Mencken said that the proper relationship between journalist and politician should be the same as that between dog and lamp-posts, and as I have more experience of politicians, I feel more and more that this is a high, if not always attainable ideal towards which we should all aspire.
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General Post
Once again, some interesting and lucid posts, some plain silly.
Steve Dalton's lucid and devastating contribution should be studied by all those complacent people who still pretend to themselves that we have a functioning state school system.
The problem is that these people are more interested in social engineering than they are in education, and are prepared to let the schools decay indefinitely until they have created the egalitarian society they wrongly imagine will be better than what we have now.
To Ian in Madrid, UKIP will remain small whatever I do. No new party will become significant until the Tories collapse and their tribal loyalists need a new home. The new party I propose would inherit many skills and much experience from the former Tory (and Labour) people who would join it if it existed. It will also have an obvious and immediate chance of gaining office, since the two existing parties will by then have lost monopoly control over the gates of Parliament.
Also, as an honest party, it wouldn't need the costly apparatus of organised lying that the Tory and Labour Parties require. It is simply not true that abstention preserves the status quo.
If the Tory vote collapses at the next general election, the Tory Party will implode ( and in my view, Labour not long afterwards). If both parties survive, the closed consensus of 'centre ground' liberal politics will remain undamaged. Abstention could therefore be immensely effective, if it is only big enough. The existing parties are not only huge obstacles to change.
They are corroded and crumbling, and it would take very little to bring them down. But to construct new parties before there is anywhere for them to exist is like building the roof before the foundations. This is, in sum, an argument about doing things in the correct order.
To another anonymous person: No, I don't drink Port, or eat Stilton, let alone do both things together. That fact that I don't like liberal wine-bar slop such as Chardonnay doesn't actually mean that I am at the opposite end of the conventional food spectrum, some kind of puce-faced clubman in a tweed waistcoat. My loathing of Blairism doesn't make me a Thatcherite.
My scorn for the Cameroons doesn't make me a socialist. My moral conservatism doesn't make me a supporter of railway privatisation. Isn't it strange that if you don't fit one prejudice, you're assumed to fit another - just as, when I denounce the Tories, I'm accused of being a Labour supporter, and when I denounce UKIP as a 'blazer and cravat' party, some people think it's an argument in response to say that this also describes the Tories - as it does.
But, you see, I don't like them either. If my critics began thinking independently, they would rapidly find that they, too, ceased to conform to the preconceptions of others about what goes together with what. But they get their opinions off the peg at the Cultural Marxist chainstore (Their motto: "It may look stupid, it may be stupid, but it's always in fashion.").
So they never have to think about whether they're any good, or consistent, or workable - or about what other people think of them.
Liberty is not a 'concept', as an anonymous person ( What is this fashion for anonymity on the net? Why can't you say who you are?) nonsensically claims, but an existing fact confirmed by law, tradition and practice.
You might as well say that air was a concept. In both cases, you'd realise pretty quickly that they weren't 'concepts' if they were suddenly removed. You might not be so quick to understand what was going on if they were gradually removed - which is what is happening to liberty.
Liberty also most certainly does have enemies - those who find it inconvenient to their ambitions. Idealist and self-righteous governments, who know they are right, are the worst danger - but silly, thoughtless governments in the grip of populism can blunder into tyranny by accident.
The repeated assaults on Habeas Corpus (i.e. a law that says the government cannot just lock you up because it feels like it) and jury trial, on the presumption of innocence and on free movement within the country, by governments of both parties are proof that - if we do not stop them - our rulers would take away our liberty.
By the way, the things I list above are the keystones of personal freedom, and once lost, will be very hard to regain.
If the government can lock up whomever it likes, when it likes, and if we need to seek the permission of gendarmes to move around the streets, or travel any distance from our homes, and if we can't defend ourselves or speak freely then we will be no better than serfs.
Paul Hayman wants 'constructive' comments about UKIP. This is another way of saying he wants public declarations of loyalty. If I ever decide to become a politician, then I'll become one, and I hope that if I do I'll be able to endure the taunts and sneers of journalists who don't like me - in fact I already get quite a bit of practice at that.
But I really don't think I could be a columnist at the same time. Do you, Mr Hayman? Paul in Bedfordshire (THAT narrows him down, it being such a small county) is fooled by the opinion polls. Paul, as I regularly point out on this site, the polls simply leave out one third of voters, who won't say how they will vote, won't vote or don't know.
There have never been so many of these. When the Tories are shown at "42%" , they're really at 28%. They also manipulate by questions expecting and encouraging certain answers.
Questions about a future contest between Brown as Premier and Cameron as Opposition leader are worthless, because nobody yet knows how the two will square up to each other. Also any fool can tell that the questioner wants them to say they don't like Brown as much as Blair.
I am by no means sure that, when Anthony has gone, people will feel the same way. Note that on the occasions when the Tory 'recovery' has been tested in practice - the Dunfermline and Bromley by-elections - it has turned out to be non-existent. Bromley, in fact, is the only instance of a mid-term voter revolt against the opposition.
The coming local elections will also give a distorted account of events, since the polling level is always low, and activists and enthusiasts can make a disproportionate amount of difference. The Tories may therefore do reasonably well in the South-East. Even so, watch out for the Midlands and North, where the story will probably be different.
Tony (but Tony WHO?) deserves applause for defying the fashionable myth that cannabis is a harmful drug. Not a week goes by without this poison (from whose name hashish, as all should know, the word 'assassin' derives) being implicated in horrible violence.
Not to mention the uncounted dead and injured, victims of people driving while doped. Jac Griffin purports to be baffled by my complaint that small parties fall prey to faction fights. Baffled? But it's obviously true.
Of course big parties have faction fights, but the real prospect of office restrains them from getting out of hand. Where there's no likelihood of power, there's no restraint - hence Henry Kissinger's jibe about academic quarrels being the bitterest 'because the stakes are so small'.
The Tory Party, which is so hopelessly split that its differing wings have nothing in common, has agreed to shut up until the next election in case the Cameron formula works. Labour, which is as harmonious as Yugoslavia, will have a rediscovery of unity once Blair has gone.
As for UKIP giving Kilroy 'short shrift', it looked like pretty long shrift to me, if you can have a long shrift. UKIP's inability to see Kilroy coming seems to me to be their biggest single misjudgement, and their most telling failure. Tim Lemon says I am wrong to say that David Cameron is a clone of Anthony Blair. I do not believe I have ever used this expression.
It is Mr Cameron who has said he is the heir to Blair, which is what he plainly hopes to be. But if Mr Lemon thinks that the Tory Party is immune from cultural Marxism, where has he been? What does he think the A-list is? The Tories have embraced all the rules of diversity, gender equality and egalitarianism. The whole point about cultural Marxism is that it infiltrates formerly conservative institutions and bodies, and changes them from within.
Yes, Labour is full of actual ex-Marxists. But the Tories have largely adopted the moral, cultural and social agenda of such people. Mr Lemon is also fooled by an opinion poll. Once again, polls are devices for influencing people, not measuring opinion.
They work only because people such as Mr Lemon fall for them. Ray asks what I will do if the Tories poll 40% and win a majority of 40 or 50. See above for why these figures are unlikely, but mainly, I shall be most surprised. Labour are finally going through a mid-term droop, for the first time in ten years. But don't imagine that they wouldn't fight hard in an actual election, or that they have forgotten how to do this.
But if there were to be a Tory victory next time, I should groan, because the country would have missed a chance of real change, and decided instead to have a change of face and voice, signifying nothing. This is the result I will do all in my power to prevent.
The worst thing that could possibly happen for Britain now would be a reflex revival of the Tories, the party largely responsible for our national decline. It's bad enough that the Tories saved Labour from an equally deserved natural death in late 1980s.
They did this by going back on plans to change the rules of the 'political levy', under which trades union members had to contract out of it if they didn't want to pay. If they'd introduced 'contracting in', Labour would probably have collapsed.
But, just as Labour now want to save the Tories, an opposition they know they can beat, they wanted to save Labour, rather than face the Alliance led by David Owen, which might well have beaten them. Mind you, if the Tories do win, the disappointment among those who wanted a change will rapidly become a major political force.
The Tories are going to collapse sooner or later, and so are Labour. the question is, how much more damage are they going to be allowed to do before they go? The longer we wait for this moment, the more emotional and pent-up the reaction will be, and the more chance such organisations as the BNP will have.
Guy Reid-Brown suggests that there is an inconsistency between my liking for Celia Johnson-type received pronunciation and other British characteristics from the past, and my dismissal of UKIP as a 'Dad's Army' or 'Blazer and Cravat' party. I don't agree.
It's certainly true that I think these accents and styles of dress symbolised ( and were part of) a praiseworthy, self-disciplined, humorous and dutiful way of life - now largely vanished. I defend them from those who mock them , for that reason, and find them rather moving when I see them, preserved on film.
After all, I can actually remember people like this, living in a Britain like that - a country defamed and misrepresented by many who never experienced it. But I am not a nostalgist. I know that's not coming back. The past is dead and will not return.
The task of moral and cultural conservatives is to identify the good things that have been needlessly lost or destroyed, and to find ways of restoring them. And perhaps also to devise and encourage the rebuilding of new ( and inevitably different) habits and customs which reinforce the morality and culture they wish to reconstruct.
Celia Johnson, Jack Hawkins and Kenneth More - and the characters they played - are from another age. They have no resonance for those who have grown up later. The problem with the Conservatives is that they understand that people don't like them, but they don't understand why. They think it's the superficial apparel, but it isn't.
Then they think it's the conservative policies which they affect to espouse - but never actually implement or defend. But it isn't that either.
The truth is that they are disliked because in government they are not conservative, or loyal, or patriotic, or reliable. Does anyone really think the Tories lost the last three elections because their policy on homosexuality wasn't PC enough?
I am accused of making cricket references. I don't think so.
Having always been hopeless at this violent, yet tedious game I have never been very keen on using it as a metaphor.
Mike Savell says it's ridiculous waiting for a new party - and then promptly recommends a new party headed by Ann Widdecombe. But poor Ann Widdecombe - who is indeed a person of courage and integrity - was deliberately destroyed by the Tory Party establishment after her speech urging the punishment of drug users.
Without a new party she will be forever trapped on the fringes of politics. Released from Tory bondage, on the other hand, she might well flourish. You're not thinking very hard, Mr Savell.
Peter Charnley quotes G.K.Chesterton, which is always worth doing. But the citation doesn't really help UKIP. I am not saying a new party would spring fully-formed from anyone's womb. Nor do I think that it will automatically come about. Once the Tories split and collapse, a lot of work will be needed to ensure this has the right outcome. It will be a sufficient condition, not a necessary one.
The new party is already forming in the minds of the British people. It is denied expression, however, in parliamentary politics or in most mainstream political journalism. The trick will be to find people prepared to give it that expression.
As I keep saying, UKIP does no harm, but it is absurd to imagine that it is the whole answer.
And if tried to become the whole answer, many people would be put off by its narrow base and by its much-discussed problems.
Andrew Platt claims that I suggest banning alcohol and legalising guns. Both claims are crude misrepresentations of what I actually said. So is his suggestion that I support relaxed gun laws 'on the basis' that the fictional Sherlock Holmes was a frequent gun user. Mr Platt, are you one of those people who simply cannot give a straight account - to yourself or anyone else - of an opponent's position?
Do you think this is a good thing, or a bad thing? I said I would favour a ban on alcohol if I thought it practicable. But I don't think it practicable, so I am against it. This was in answer to the false logic, often advanced by the pro-drug lobbies, that if we don't ban alcohol we have no moral basis for banning cannabis or cocaine.
The point is that the law could still stop drug abuse becoming widespread. It is too late to do so with alcohol. But the existence of one dangerous legal poison can never be advanced as an argument for the legalisation of two or three more such poisons. At least, not by an honest person.
As for guns, I repeatedly state that I do not wish to own one, nor do I want my neighbours to. But the logic advanced for legal gun control is empty, the practical effect on gun-crime non-existent.
And the free subject's right to own arms if he wishes is a protection against tyranny - which is why it is in both the British and American Bills of Rights. I mentioned Sherlock Holmes because Conan Doyle's stories are still widely read in this country, and yet - if our general view of ourselves and our history were true - the fictional detective's use of firearms would be shocking.
The reference was there to illustrate what I often find in this discussion - a widespread unwillingness to think, and an even more widespread ignorance of the historical facts. Steven Greenwell asks me about the UNICEF survey on Britain's young.
I have to say that - while I agree that young people in this country grow up in a horrible moral desert - I wouldn't necessarily take UNICEF's word for how bad things are. Its measures, obsessed with meaningless factors such as relative poverty, are not mine. Materially, the country has seldom been better off.
That's not the problem. The Netherlands, by the way, is not such a liberal state as many people imagine, especially outside the big cities. Its attitude towards motherhood outside marriage is not at all relaxed.
Its state education system has also not fallen into the hands of mad egalitarian saboteurs. Jeff Pollitt asks if I have discovered a sense of humour. Good heavens no, Mr Pollitt, it is well known that, like all moral conservatives, I had my sense of humour removed at birth, and a device simultaneously inserted which gives me that smug facial expression every likes so much. Those 1950s were such a golden age, as I always never say.
Paul Tew mentions that a Tory government introduced much of the recent legislation making it harder for law-abiding people to own guns, while criminal gun ownership continued to grow unabated. Yes indeed, Mr Tew. You are perfectly right.
The Conservative Party are just as stupid about this subject as are the Labour Party.
Did you think I was a supporter of the party I refer to as the Useless Tories? Where did I go wrong? Sometimes I wonder what more I have to do to get across my loathing for this party. He says that surely I must accept the need for some control to stop criminal and unbalanced people using them.
And I do. Will he support me in my campaign for the restoration of capital punishment, the best form of gun control ever invented? The best gun control, to stop criminal people using guns, is a sternly-applied death penalty for murder, and one which operates a 'common purpose' rule so that all members of a criminal gang involved in a murder will hang as accessories to that crime. When we had such a law, before 1957, we had virtually no gun crime at all.
It is the act that needs to be controlled, not the weapon. Unbalanced people are harder to deal with, because their actions are so unpredictable. But there would be many fewer of them if we had effective penal laws against narcotic drugs, the greatest cause of mental imbalance in our society.
By the way, we had no laws against drugs in Victorian times because they were virtually unknown.
There is no parallel between this and our gun laws of the time. Guns had been in common use in this country for centuries. As for Switzerland, can someone provide me with the up-to-date facts? I have searched the web and have as yet not found anything but tendentious propaganda on one side or the other.
My understanding is that crime in Switzerland - of all kinds - is extremely low despite (or in the case of burglary while the occupants are at home, perhaps because of ) the presence of guns and ammunition in almost every household.
What about the use of guns in the commission of crime? I think gun control advocates try to muddy the water by bringing in suicides and domestic killings, which are not the sort of crimes we are really discussing here.
If the use of a thing for suicide was a reason for banning it, then everything from bathtubs and paracetamol to carving knives and trains would have to be made illegal.
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