Gordon and Margaret take tea

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I hope to write more about this in the Mail on Sunday soon, but I think people are missing the point about the strange meeting between Gordon Brown and Lady Thatcher.
Again, it's necessary to stop thinking in the ready-made cliche of conventional wisdom.

If there is a continuity between Mr Brown and Lady Thatcher (and there is) does this mean that Gordon Brown is a Tory? Or does it mean that Mrs Thatcher's government was in fact in the post-war succession of social democratic administrations? The end of the Cold War, in which both Mr Brown and Mrs Thatcher formed their loyalties, allows both these intelligent people to understand that actually they have more in common than they thought.

Nationalisation has been replaced by regulation, and taxation switched from direct to indirect, but in terms of state centralisation, egalitarianism in education, the employment of millions directly or indirectly by the state, the undermining of family and conscience and its replacement by a strong state, we have had a single, continuous government from 1945 to today. Some would say it goes back even further. There never were any Thatcher 'cuts'. The NHS was safe in her hands.  So were comprehensive schools, sex education and easy divorce. Instead of nationalised coal, steel and railways, we now have nationalised health, schools, police, local government and childhood, plus a plethora of quangoes which allow the government to pretend not to be employing people when it actually is.  Why, they even agree about liberal interventionist wars, Lady Thatcher having been a keen supporter of the NATO interference in Yugoslavia. And of course they are united by their acceptance of British EU membership as an unquestioned good.

But I'm also by no means sure about the conventional wisdom that this meeting damages Mr Cameron and helps Mr Brown. I suspect Mr Cameron likes being snubbed by the Iron Lady, as it only emphasises his campaign to appear nicer than her. And I suspect a lot of Labour supporters feel faintly ill at the sight of this strange political canoodling. That's because politics in this country remains tribal and visceral, rather than thoughtful. Which is also the reason why a Tory collapse at the next election is the only way to bring home to Tory supporters that they must look elsewhere if they want to be represented. Argument will never do it.

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Still not a manifesto

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I'm grateful for all the contributions on this subject, but also a little disappointed. The idea was to provoke ideas about which subjects should form a unifying, effective, realistic manifesto which might gather a party round it, and steal support from New Labour as well as from the remnants of the Tories.  The point here is obviously that a frontal assault on the welfare state, an immediate major reduction in taxation and similar actions are not practical politics in a society run by social democrats for decades. Always assuming you could get a mandate for such actions, the difficulties of achieving them quickly would be huge. We need, in many ways, a reverse Fabianism in which conservative ideas seek to spread themselves into every corner of culture and society. That does not mean that a number of effective, popular, practical and affordable measures could not be taken, swiftly and decisively, to put the country on a different course.

I'm touched, too, for all the compliments for what was in fact very sketchy piece of work. They made a pleasant change from the obtuse interplanetary communications we suffered for some weeks from contributors who not only didn't understand the fundamental principles of this blog, but who seemed ignorant of much of the political debate that has been taking place in Britain for the past 20 years . But I would have preferred additions, or even subtractions from what I had provided. There was also a curious diversion, after somebody quite mistakenly concluded that I was suggesting major constitutional change. On the contrary, I am suspicious of constitutional change - usually down-and-dirty radical politics disguised as high-minded, disinterested improvement. We even saw calls for a 'Supreme Court' an unBritish idea that would destroy parliamentary sovereignty and which ignores the lessons we have already received from the US Supreme Court and the Strasbourg 'Human Rights' court. The legal profession, now and in the foreseeable future, is deeply infiltrated by elite liberals who have no shame in using their position to advance a radical agenda. Give them more power? Surely not.

Parliamentary term limits likewise seem to me to be highly dubious, and would prevent the appearance of disillusioned, highly-experienced backbenchers of the Tam Dalyell type, who can often do more to oppose incompetent or overbearing government than the official opposition. My liking for the old hereditary peers, by the way, is simply a statement of fact. It does not imply any special admiration for hereditary peers, who vary just like everyone else. However, people who owe nothing to the executive are better-placed to hold it to account then people who owe their position to the executive. We make a fetish of democracy in this country; assume it is a synonym for ‘goodness’. We also seem to assume that the absence of democracy is automatically bad. This is because, as with so many other subjects, we seldom think about it. But it is perfectly obvious that the executive plays a large role in the selection of parliamentary candidates for safe seats - and that it then becomes their employer and boss. This would also happen in an elected upper chamber. Therefore 'democracy' in the Lords means more executive control of parliament. I have never yet seen a coherent rebuttal of this simple point by any supporter of Lords reform.

Meanwhile, I still seem to be battling with those who think I should support UKIP, however many times I explain why I will not do so.  How often do I have to say that no party has any chance of success until the Tories are finished, and that I am not interested in linking myself to premature, factional organisations who -lacking any access to real power - are capable of weird, unpredictable and irresponsible tactical swerves? UKIP made a great fool of itself over Kilroy for this reason, and has trouble selecting serious candidates for this reason. The Kilroy incident would be a good enough justification for steering away from UKIP, all by itself. But it is the fundamental problem, revealed by the Kilroy flirtation that matters most to me. I'd also add that UKIP's base is so narrow that it positively puts off many people who are essential to any serious new movement - hence my mocking of it as a Dad's Army cravat-wearers party, whose MEPs make silly remarks about women cleaning behind the fridge. UKIP is exactly what my opponents would like me to be and pretty exactly what I am actually not. And its poll ratings are, as a result, appalling.

One correspondent says I make much of polls where the Tories are doing badly, but little of ones where they are doing well. On the contrary, you would have to turn to my Mail on Sunday column or to this blog to find any serious analysis of the polls where the Tories are supposedly doing well. I recently analysed the Populus poll which purportedly showed the Tories on 36 per cent to Labour's 37. This figure was only achieved by leaving out one third of the participants in the poll. My suspicion is that many of these excluded people will in fact vote. But they definitely won't vote Tory. If they were going to, they would have decided by now. They've had ten years now to learn that the Tories really are loveable, or to loathe the government so much that they'd be prepared to give them a try. But they still won't come round to it. If they still haven't come round, I doubt if they ever will. Mr Cameron is now trying to make politics out of the debt problem. But I think he has a confidence problem of his own. Would you feel much happier about the Northern Rock affair if that mature genius of public finance, Gideon (George) Osborne, were in charge of the Treasury, issuing squeaky reassurances? Do you sense that the Tories have any alternative to the debt-based economy?

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All right then, a manifesto of sorts

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I expect to be away for a few weeks and thought I should leave a substantial article to give contributors something to chew on during that time.  One correspondent recently suggested that I should draw up a manifesto for the non-existent party that I hope will arise when the Tories at last shuffle off their mortal coil and go wherever it is dead parties go.

I can't really do that, because no real party could be anyone's personal property, and because any manifesto would be greatly influenced by the times in which it was written.

But I thought I could set out here the principles on which it ought to be written, and on which it should be based. The idea would be to invite debate, which might help towards formulating the real thing - and help to make the point that there is in Britain and similar societies a coherent political programme which lacks a party to promote and implement it. This is the major constitutional crisis that we face.

This is a process of discovery, not dictation. What I set out below is tentative and incomplete. It will be heavier on the subjects I think I know something about, and lighter on those where I know for certain I know nothing, or very little. Perhaps others can correct the balance, or fill the gaps.  By its nature it will contain paradoxes and (apparent) inconsistencies, since no human institution can function without them given our inadequate understanding of how the world really works.

I offer it for criticism, discussion and stimulation. I'd only ask that those who object to the principles themselves should argue against those principles, and make it clear they are doing so and why.  As for everyone else, I think I must assume a measure of agreement about what the goals of political power should be.   The title is intentionally unambitious.

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What is wrong, and how to begin to put some of it right

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

Britain, though one of the freest countries in the world, and one of the most stable societies, with a long history of limited government and the rule of law, is not a happy, contented or particularly peaceful home for many of its inhabitants. Yet it is also uniquely prosperous, with material wealth unmatched in its history combined with enormous, generously funded public services and welfare systems for the less well-off.

Low-level disorder and misbehaviour are a grave and dispiriting feature of the lives of many. Authority seems unable or reluctant to act against either. Yet this weakness is coupled with an increasing amount of official, bureaucratic interference with the private and even personal lives of law-observing, productive, peaceful people.

A large part of the population is concentrated into the big cities and heavily-urbanised landscape of the South East. Many find the resulting congestion uncomfortable and are made anxious and bad-tempered by permanently thronged streets and almost unrelieved heavy road traffic. The high cost of housing means that many people are living in confined spaces, closer to their neighbours and more dependent on their goodwill than before.

Into this stressful and cramped society arrive increasing numbers of young people, who have been educated and raised in ways quite different from those common in the recent past. I am not talking about new migrants, but about the rising generation, especially among the poor. Households lack fathers, and in many cases any figure of authority at all. Old family and kinship networks, grandparents, aunts, uncles, friendly neighbours who keep an eye out for you, have virtually ceased to exist. Any adult who tries to discipline or even help a child to whom he is not related can be accused of 'paedophilia' or of assault.  The police, who have some powers to intervene, rarely do so and are in any case largely absent.  Home life, in homes without real families, is influenced by powerful outside forces - TV, advertising, computer games, rock music, even gangs - that challenge and deny the authority of parents when they try to exert it. Inevitably, these problems are worse in the areas where the poor live.

Schools, struggling to maintain discipline without the power to enforce it, and handicapped by some of the worst teaching methods and structures imaginable, can do little to overcome this. They are under competing pressures to expel pupils who will not behave (as the teachers and the pupils want) and to keep them in school (as the state wants). What were previously national habits of mind, based on a common understanding of the lore of the tribe gained through shared history, customs and traditions have lost their power because these things have simply ceased to be taught. People under 35 now often don't know them at all. The failure to teach good reading skills is also important, since these older forms of culture were often passed on through the written word and absorbed in the imagination - where moral questions are resolved. The more immediate influences of the rock, rap, drug, video-game culture enter the mind much more immediately, and bypass (and atrophy) the imagination.

In some of these areas, these problems are in fact sharpened by the presence of large numbers of recent immigrants, many of them not English speakers. In some cases, migrant groups bring with them nothing but good education and habits of hard work which put our own young people to shame. Many employers sadly complain that our own young, festooned with 'qualifications' lack basic knowledge, common sense or the ability to concentrate - whereas migrant workers make up for their poor English by having all these good qualities.

In some migrant groups, it is not always so. But in many cases, problems with such groups arise not when they first arrive, but when the second generation, born and raised here, confront the problems which arise from our society's failure to integrate their parents properly, sometimes worse than failure, since multiculturalism seems determined to keep them separate for ever. It would be absurd to deny that much of the social decay and chaos, in fact most of it, comes from indigenous British people who have been brought up without respect for law or authority. It would be equally absurd to deny that part of that problem also comes from migrants, or the British-born children of migrants, and the ridiculous policies which have been followed in settling them here.

There are many other social problems (we could go into these), many of them arising out of the ones I’ve named specifically. Many of them seem to stem from a dependency on various forms of welfare, and a belief that government action is the main solution for the problems of society. This is coupled with a change in the nature of virtue, with a strong, well-publicised social conscience being more highly regarded than a well-developed individual conscience. The result of this is a very high level of taxation, which is generally accepted as being necessary and right by those who pay for it - despite the inefficient and unfair delivery of the services paid for by this tax.

There is also a general acceptance of powerlessness, that nothing can be changed. No alternative is offered to this form of society except some version or other of Thatcherism, which in office failed to deal with many of these problems and made several of them worse..  Political, social and moral conservatism, a spurned alternative, has been excised from the programmes of all major parties. A dominant and intolerant ideology smears anyone who approaches this position as a hopeless nostalgist, obsessed with recovering a non-existent 'golden age' or as a racial bigot, unhinged fruitcake, extreme nationalist or closet Nazi. Worse, the transfer of power to the European Union means that a large amount of supposedly British regulation and legislation, from rubbish collection and Home Information Packs to data protection and safety legislation, is in fact not British at all, but originates from the European Commission, and is beyond the power of the electorate, or of the House of Commons.

This arrangement has certainly not led to widespread contentment. People are simultaneously materially well-off and yet full of dissatisfaction and concern for the future. But nor, at present, has it led to organised or focused discontent. That is partly because of low interest rates and generous welfare provisions, plus the huge number of jobs now provided by the state. But it is also partly because the only major vehicle for discontent accepts the status quo.

The Conservative Party is not opposed to the moral revolution, is not opposed to multiculturalism or the rewriting of the rules of family life, is not opposed to the level of welfarism or public employment, largely accepts the left-liberal view of national history and penology and - perhaps above all - is wedded to this country's continuing membership of the European Union.

 

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How to address this? The proper conservative has to be modest about what can be done, how fast it can be done, and remember that there are strong limits on a lawful government.  Many of these problems are so deep, and excite such strong feelings, that he must also be careful not to create passions which get out of control and which he cannot satisfy. Much of the problem lies in the consciences of individuals and will not be fixed until and unless a new John Wesley appears, who can find some way of remoralising a population that is at least as demoralised as it was in the 18th century. (One rather alarming possibility is that such a figure will appear, and he will be a Muslim, which should concentrate our minds).

But a lot of what is necessary is the removal of obstacles which prevent people from living as they would like to, and as they ought. This must, in my view, begin with the reassertion of national legal independence, the right to make and enforce our own laws for ourselves. That means an unequivocal commitment to negotiate, as swiftly as possible, an amicable departure from the European Union. In my view, the majority of the population oppose EU rule over this country in practice - that is, they are angered and frustrated by their individual encounters with it. But they often do not realise that it is the EU that is responsible. The existence of a large and obviously responsible and coherent political party which advocates EU withdrawal would make that connection. One of the main reasons for a reluctance to favour departure is that voters see the leaders of the major parties united in favour of EU membership, and assume that they know something we don't. Not since Hugh Gaitskell has any significant or credible party leader taken a position in favour of national independence. Had any done so, support for departure would be much higher than it is. Level headed, unhysterical leadership, untainted by fake Churchillian rhetoric and linked to a serious programme on other issues, could quite easily climb over this barrier. It must, in any case, if it is to achieve anything.

One possible method would be to set out a programme, on issues across the whole area where the EU decides our laws, and to pursue each issue to the European Court of Justice to demonstrate the powerlessness of a British parliament inside the EU. And to behave at all times as if we were independent, and to draw noisy attention to the barriers which prevent us from being so. This would certainly educate the public, but it might also frustrate them and use valuable time. I think it should be the keystone of the manifesto, and that it should be explained why it had to be.

The issue on which this is clearest is that of control of our own borders, our own right to decide who lives here. Nobody who claims to be serious can really argue that we should not have this right - though there can be much disagreement over how we should exercise it. There is no more fundamental or decisive security barrier against the threats we currently fear. There is no basis for a reconsideration of our immigration policy without an absolute control of our frontiers.  The restoration of a British passport, and of a British citizenship giving an absolute right of entry and residence, seems to me to be a simple and clear illustration of what independence means, what you cannot have without it, and what you can have if you regain it.

That is why both these issues should be prominent. Labour has long dreaded the existence of a party that could convincingly and respectably make this case, since large numbers of its current (and former) voters feel very strongly about this matter.

For that reason, the rest of the initial manifesto should bear in mind that it is the less well-off, the people living in the abandoned cities of the industrial areas or in the marginal suburbs, who may well be the main supporters of social conservatism. The old Tory upper middle class of independent professionals, educated at traditional schools and universities, has largely ceased to exist. There are middle class conservatives, but my guess is that they are these days at least equalled in numbers by middle class liberals and left-wingers - protected by affluence from many of the social consequences of left-wing policies.

So the rest of the first programme should be aimed very clearly at helping the strivers, the responsible, the thrifty, the ones on the frontier.

That means a series of simple measures on crime. They include the immediate repeal of the laws which prevent the police from patrolling effectively on foot, especially PACE 1984, and measures -probably based on budget allocations - putting severe pressure on chief constables to put their officers on such patrols by day and night. Longer term measures, like the breaking up of unwieldy large forces into smaller, truly local ones, would have to wait until a reform of local government in general, central to a revival of proper civic life, but necessarily a second-rank issue.

The prison regime should also be reformed, and once again based on the old principle of 'due punishment of responsible persons', so that punishment, in the form of arduous labour, deprivation of luxuries and comforts etc, could once again take place in prison, with facilities such as TV sets and pool tables available only as a reward for long-term good behaviour. The legal position of prison officers would have to be altered, so that their authority, and ability to exercise it, is restored. Remission and early release should once again be dependent entirely on good behaviour, and never automatic.

Penal policy on drugs should concentrate on possession, not on supply. Possession should be dealt with by a caution for a first offence, and three months imprisonment for a second. Effectively enforced, such a law should sharply reduce drug use and the criminal activities linked with it.

Schools should all have their ability to discipline pupils restored. How far could we go in this? Personally I think corporal punishment would be hard to restore in the existing climate, but an absolute power of expulsion, probably to special schools with the power to detain unruly pupils at evenings and weekends, might be an effective alternative. In all such measures, we should seek for ingenuity and subtlety rather than crudity. A good example of this is Norman Tebbit's measures to control the trades unions. Rather than threats of prison, or stripping away privileges, the laws used a sort of judo. The unions' legal immunities were guaranteed - provided they introduced strike ballots and fair elections for their leaders, controlled unofficial strikes and ceased secondary pickets.

As for the schools themselves, education reform should concentrate on ensuring a good basic education for the children of those who cannot afford private fees or postcode selection - and should be presented as such. This means the return of selection by merit on the German model, and the establishment, for the moment only in areas now blighted by bad comprehensives, of a first generation of new grammar schools whose aim is unequivocally to benefit the poor. This would obviously require serious reforms of the feeder primary schools, and would necessarily the construction of new technical and vocational schools of high standard, for those who did not qualify for an academic secondary education.

No pledges, in my view, should be made for tax cuts at this stage. A society so heavily dependent on welfare needs to be weaned off it, and reformed so that it actually desires to come off it.

And gosh, is that the time? I have got almost nowhere and spent much of the day doing it. Imagine what it would be like getting even this modest programme through a sharply-divided Parliament in, say, four years. I hope for your interested criticisms and contributions.

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