Why catching crooks is NOT the police's most important job

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday column

After more than 40 years as a journalist at home and abroad, often experiencing history at first hand, I am certain of only one thing – that most people in power are completely clueless about what they are doing.

They seldom, if ever, think. They know no history. They are fiercely resistant to any facts that might upset their opinions. They take no trouble to find out what is actually happening.

Here is an example. Ian Austin MP, a member of Parliament’s Home Affairs Committee, last week extruded the following opinion: ‘The police’s number one job is to catch criminals so they can be convicted.’ He was objecting to a scheme that gave priority to contact with the public. 

I am pretty sure the same dim view is shared across Parliament, in every police HQ and in most media outlets in the country. Yet it is utterly, totally mistaken. Every arrest and prosecution is, in fact, a failure by the police. It’s necessary, but it’s also secondary.

Their job, the reason we hired them in 1829, was to prevent crime and disorder. That’s what the constable’s oath says, and they successfully did prevent huge amounts of crime and disorder for more than a century, by patrolling on foot.

And so it continued until the country went mad 50 years ago in the first heady years of the Age of Mistakes in which we continue to live – the era of instant mashed potato, Jimmy Savile, Watney’s Red Barrel, tower blocks, comprehensive schools, votes for teenagers, inner ring roads, the Common Market and Dr Beeching’s railway massacre.

What use is a police officer after a crime has been committed, unless he can do first aid?

Most of those errors were made in public view, cheered on, as usual, by the political and commentating classes who invariably mistake novelty for progress. 

But the decision to abolish police foot patrols went unnoticed at the time. It was only afterwards that British people of a certain age wondered where the police – once visible everywhere – vanished to.

For the decision was taken in secret, by an unknown body called the Home Office Police Advisory Board, on December 7, 1966. It was adopted by new, unwieldy and unresponsive merged police forces that were created soon afterwards. 

Since then, the police do not prevent crime or disorder. They wait for it to happen, and then come rushing along to the scene of their failure, accompanied by loud electronic screams and wails and flashing lights.

What use is a police officer after a crime has been committed, unless he can do first aid? He cannot unstab, unshoot, unburgle, unmug or unrape the victim. 

Nothing he does can bring back what has been lost. The chances are that he cannot find or catch the culprit – and if he does, the miscreant will get off anyway, and skip, laughing, down the steps of the courthouse, as two did last week.

If you wait for people to commit crimes before you do anything, you will never, ever be able to build enough prisons to hold them.

It’s obvious if you think about it. It’s not obvious if you don’t.

Proof the Tories stand for nothing

I suppose if a Left-wing political party sought cash from pornographers, it would make a kind of sense. 

The Left, after all, cheered on the liberation of pornography by ripping up the obscenity laws and deriding poor old Lord Longford when he tried to warn against this. 

But if a party that calls itself ‘Conservative’ readily seeks the money and friendship of such people, it robs itself of its right to use this name. 

If conservatism doesn’t stand for faithful marriage, unselfish love, constancy and modesty, then what does it stand for? Anyone who still deludes himself that the Cameron Tories offer any hope to the country will deserve what he gets. 

We should pick our 'friends' with a bit more care

Here is a Chinese billionaire, Liu Han, being hauled away by the police. He looks terrified, and with reason. He is now dead, having been executed a few days ago. He may be shouting: ‘I’ve been framed!’ He certainly did so during his sentencing hearing.

Because China has no independent courts, no juries, no presumption of innocence, and because its press is not just unfree but chained to the state, I have no idea if he is guilty of the charges of gangsterism laid against him.

This is interesting because this country and its leaders have good and close relations with China, whose government famously massacred its ‘own people’ in Tiananmen Square in 1989, and got away with it. It seems we send a trade delegation there every week, begging for business and stifling misgivings about the appalling lack of freedom. 

In the same way, we are still on good terms with Saudi Arabia, a heavily armed and secretive despotism which bans the practice of Christianity, stages public beheadings and sentences polite and cautious dissidents to murderous floggings. Yet we snarl and snap with righteous moral outrage at Vladimir Putin’s Russia, supposedly a unique demon among nations.

This is silly, and if we do not grow out of it we may find ourselves in a futile and dangerous war in Ukraine, no affair of ours anyway, under the delusion that it is some sort of crusade.

I should point out here that Ukraine is no angel. To say it is corrupt is like saying that the Atlantic is a bit damp. Its leader, Petro Poroshenko, threatened to impose martial law last week. A Ukrainian journalist, Ruslan Kotsaba, was detained last week for protesting against highly unpopular (and widely ignored) efforts to impose conscription, which have led to a temporary ban on foreign travel for men of military age.

Poroshenko is not in full control of the piratical ultra-nationalist militias which are doing much of the ‘pro-Western’ fighting in and around Donetsk. 

In fact, I suspect he fears to make peace on sensible terms in case these people violently overthrow him – as they did to his predecessor Viktor Yanukovych.

To those who persist in making out that this is a simple conflict between good and bad, I can only say: Grow up.

There's a serious gap in the regulation of charities. What are we to do when worrying questions are asked about the running of much loved charities that do a great deal of good? 

We want to be sure our money is being effectively spent. Last week, The Spectator magazine raised questions about Kids Company, run by Camila Batmanghelidjh. 

The Charities Commission, which most people assume keeps an eye on such things, has limited powers and is reluctant to use them. 

The best solution, for charities and the public, would surely be a new body with the power to conduct a wholly independent audit of any charity.

Now that the baseless campaign against cream and butter has at last been exposed as the rubbish it was, can we please see the end of the tyranny of skimmed and semi-skimmed milk, horrible in tea or coffee, and probably bad for you. 

Amazingly, many coffee shops don’t even stock or use whole milk. Boycott them till they end this stupid policy.

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Some Thoughts on Political Party Funding

The political parties use some pretty unappealing ways to raise money. The power of the unions over Labour is obvious and undeniable, though there’s nothing in principle wrong with the trades unions having a political party that speaks for them.  A lot of conservatives seem to have forgotten that trade unions are perfectly legitimate part of any free society, and that a country that suppresses them cannot be free. They should always recall that it was trade unionism – in the form of Polish Solidarity – that struck the first truly damaging blow at the Communist monolith back in 1980.

 

Anyway,  the alternative – stacks of cash from millionaire donors during the Blair years – wasn’t any better.  New Labour ruined the country in ways never imagined by Michael Foot.

 

The less said about Liberal Democrat funding, the better.  As for the Tories, well, the ‘Black and White Ball’ and the efforts made to keep details of its donors out of the public eye say more than I ever could.

 

I really can’t see how a socially conservative party could take money from pornographers, for instance. Pornography takes the human body, made in the image of God, and uses it as a commodity.  It takes physical love, an expression of the deepest feelings we have for each other, and turns it into a commercial performance between strangers.

 

Of course, if you don’t believe in God or in unselfish love of any kind, that won’t trouble you. But if you do, it will. I’m also not sure how such things relate to patriotism. For me, patriotism is a subsidiary of religion. That is not to say that one worships one’s country as one worships God, but that the country to which one belongs is the largest human society in which it is possible to be effectively unselfish. It is the place in which we can try to be Christians (or try to be any other kind of believer in practical, everyday unselfishness in the minute particulars of life).

 

Can a pornographer possibly be included in such a company? On the face of it, it seems unlikely. Pornography and unselfishness somehow don’t seem to go together.  Anybody can wave a flag, but we all know that love of country does not actually consist of waving flags. I would say that, in theory as well as in practice, they aren’t compatible. But others would perhaps say that my form of patriotism is outdated, and that I should rejoice at any activity which boosts the national balance sheet.  Let them say that. I just won’t join, support or vote for their political party, that’s all.  

 

Anyway, here we are with all the big parties in trouble over their funding, and the response of the elite is always the same – the best way to overcome this is state funding.

 

Actually, we already have state funding of *Opposition* Parties, the so-called ‘Short Money’ first paid in the 1970s , named after the Labour politician Ted Short,  and far from ‘short’ in fact. Based on the number of seats held, it currently nets Labour more than £5.4 million a year in taxpayers’ cash, and was worth roughly £1.7 million a year to the Liberal Democrats while they were last in Opposition. More taxpayers’ cash (‘Cranborne Money’) goes to Opposition parties in the House of Lords. The big parties, in Opposition, get about half a million pounds a year through this scheme.

 

Another indirect subsidy is provided by the Broadcasting Rules, and the party political broadcast system, which give the main parties guaranteed access to the airwaves in rough proportion to their levels of support

 

All these subsidies encourage political inertia, nationalising the existing parties and favouring them because of their previous levels of support. Thus, if they are in decline (and most of them are) the subsidies tend to delay and obstruct that decline and prevent the emergence of new, more representative parties. In my view, Labour and the Tories are dead, speaking for nobody. UKIP and the Greens (though themselves imperfect in many ways as vehicles of the new left and the new right) are each much better representatives of the real divide in our society. 

 

It is perfectly true that full nationalization of parties, with guaranteed state subsidies to all parties based on their existing support, would enable them to shake free of the trade unions and the pornographers and all the rest.

 

But why would this be a good thing? First, as I’ve said, such interests as unions and business, even pornographers, are entitled to spend money pursuing their aims in a free society, provided this is openly done.

 

It was once suggested (I wish I could remember by whom) that each session of the US Congress should begin and end with a  live televised ceremony, in which political donors, wearing large identifying labels, walked in procession into the chambers of the House and Senate and presented their chosen Congressmen and Senators with cheques or bags of cash, loudly stating the sums involved, for the record, as they did so.  The theory is that it will happen anyway, so we might as well know precisely who owns whom, and what price was paid and accepted.  And then it will truly be the case that we have ‘the best Parliament that Money can Buy’.

 

This would certainly be better than institutionalising the current dead or dying parties (who could barely raise the price of a Big Mac if they approached the general public directly for help), by putting them on the state payroll.

 

The alternative which I propose is this.  No state subsidy of any kind to any political party ,ever. All members of parliament to have a paid, trained and experienced staff for constituency business, research etc, forbidden to engage in partisan or electoral activities, hired and paid for by the taxpayer. Partisan and electoral work is to be done by their constituency offices, for which they or their party must pay, but such offices to be limited to a modest maximum expenditure in each constituency, to be strictly policed.   A ban on national political advertising, which has no place in a parliamentary election. The broadcasting rules to be amended so that reasonable airtime is given to parties which are not yet established but have plainly achieved a level of support in the opinion polls which merits it.

 

Trade unions and businesses to be allowed to contribute (but only locally, not nationally) to political parties only after open postal ballots of their members or shareholders, such ballots to be repeated every five years and to require a threshold of (I suggest) 40% of members or shareholders before they can be considered valid.

 

Individuals to be allowed to donate to the party of their choice, up to a maximum of £500 a head. No person who has contributed to a political party to be able to accept any honour, peerage or publicly salaried position until at least 10 years after his or her last donation.

 

Then let’s see how we get on. I think we might quite quickly get some new political parties.

So how long will it be before we invite the IS jihadis to a white-tie dinner?

This is Peter Hitchens’s Mail on Sunday column

While we rage and fret about the terrorist outrages of today, how quickly we forget the horrors of the recent past. 

I can’t see why. The grief, loss and pain don’t diminish as the years go by. For those who survive, they deepen.

And I admire Lord Tebbit for his unfashionable refusal to forgive the IRA murderers who tried to kill him and his wife, and who did them terrible harm (as well as slaying or maiming several others) in Brighton 30 years ago.

One of the grisly monsters responsible for this, Patrick Magee, now walks about in freedom, thanks to our surrender to the IRA, a national shame we bury in denial and pretend never happened, sometimes even kidding ourselves that we were the winners.

Well, if we won, how is it that Magee is free and apparently living a happy and contented life, while his victims lie in their graves or suffer daily pain and disability?

He was supposed to serve a minimum of 35 years and actually served 14. He still, disgustingly, claims that he had 'no choice' but to use the weapon of murder.

He has had the nerve to try to get his victims to 'understand a bit better what motivated me'.

Some of those victims have, in my view quite mistakenly, forgiven him. Lord Tebbit says with simple dignity: 'I am often asked if I can find it in my heart to forgive the creature, Patrick Magee, who planted the bomb.

'That is not possible, for Magee has never repented.'

Quite. I do not think the Christian religion instructs us to forgive the unrepentant. Nobody in any age but this could possibly imagine that we are supposed to forgive those who don’t seek our forgiveness. 

Forgiveness without repentance is like a door without a doorway, or a key without a lock. The one implies and demands the other.

This is something that also needs to be understood by the Blairite bag-carrier Jonathan Powell, who took an active part in the surrender talks with the IRA, and who has just written a book saying we will always have to talk to terrorists in the end.

Actually, this isn’t true. We always have done so, but that is not because we had no choice.

We did it because we are weak and have lost our will to survive as a civilisation and a culture. If they knew we would never talk, and that we would crush them utterly, we would have many fewer of them.

As it is, terrorists decide the destiny of much of the world. The more militantly our leaders condemn them now, the more you can be sure that they will be inviting them to a white-tie dinner at Windsor in a year or two.

Mrs Clooney is right: we have to lose our Marbles

I back Amal Clooney in her battle to get the Elgin Marbles sent back to their home in Athens.

We rescued them from the Ottomans. We’ve guarded them well. But now their home is safe again, and we have had them for long enough.

They are one of the glories of human civilisation, and that is exactly why it would be right and generous for us to let them go back to the place they were made in and for.

It is the civilised thing to do, without bargains or conditions.

I never really understood this until, in an American museum, I saw a sculpture that had once stood in Lincoln Cathedral.  

I was enraged. Why was it not still there, where it belonged? But it was nothing like as important as the Marbles.

There can be no rule or precedent about this. There is only one Parthenon and only one Acropolis.

That is why an act of selfless generosity is the best way of ending the quarrel.

Dave can’t stop deceiving – even after he’s caught

How funny the ‘Conservative’ Party has become. 

Not only are its would-be candidates for the Rochester by-election sternly asked in public if they, too, plan to defect. 

One end of it doesn't know what the other end is doing. Last week the Mayor of London, Al (‘Boris’) Johnson, said the 2010 Tory promise to limit immigration was a ‘big deception’. This is quite true.

David Cameron must have known perfectly well that he had no power to fulfil this pledge as long as Britain stayed in the EU.

After this Ratner moment, in which a very senior party member openly admitted his party had lied to win votes, you might expect a pause before they did it again. But no, Mr Cameron started raging about an ‘emergency brake’ on immigration. 

No details were given, because there weren’t any. Again, no such brake can be applied without leaving the EU. So Mr Cameron contrived to sound as if he was on the verge of favouring a British exit, when in real life he’s almost as Europhile as Jean-Claude Juncker.

Is it just me, or are people at last beginning to see through this amazingly transparent man, who resorts instinctively to dishonesty, as a weed in a dingy backyard climbs towards the light?

Let us hope that his attempt to drown the truth in money, in the Rochester by-election, fails. 

Voters might ask themselves why the oligarchs and sharks who wrote cheques to the Tories at their semi-secret ‘Black and White Ball’ should be so keen to see Ukip beaten. 

I don't think the Labour Party actually wants to win next May’s General Election. Given that government is far more enjoyable and better rewarded than opposition, why is this?

Some of Labour’s Blairites do actually prefer David Cameron to Ed Miliband. Mr Cameron boasts of being the ‘Heir to Blair’ and follows Blairite policies at home and abroad.

And the supposedly ineffectual Ed Miliband had the nerve to beat his Blairite brother in a fair fight, for which he will never be forgiven.

But I think it’s even deeper than that. Labour’s leadership can see there’s a huge economic crisis coming soon, and don’t want to be in office when it happens.

If they exert themselves, the polls show they could get a narrow majority.

If they don’t exert themselves, the Tories can’t get a majority (this is an arithmetical impossibility) but they might just be the largest party.

They’ll have little or no power, but they will take the blame for the coming crash.
It explains a lot, if I’m right.

At this time of year, how I long for the clocks to return to proper Greenwich time. 

The mornings are ridiculously dark. So-called ‘daylight saving time’ (which does nothing of the kind) must have been devised by people who get up late, to torment those of us who get up early. 

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Abolish the Lords! And lose all the creeps and dodgy donors

This is Peter Hitchens Mail On Sunday column

Let’s abolish the House of Lords. I never thought I’d say that, but when the facts change, I change my mind. And they have changed.

Before the Blair revolution, the Lords was full of independent minds, who owed nobody anything and could not be pushed around by Downing Street. There was no logic to  it, as there often isn’t in this country, but it worked.

It was such a good idea that even revolutionaries used to envy it. Until 1913, the US Senate was modelled on it – and so was not elected. I can’t see any signs that America has been better run since they started electing Senators. And I can  see plenty of signs that Britain has been worse run since the Blairites took over her.

Now it seems you can only  get into our Upper House after crawling to the big parties,  or after giving them piles of cash, or both at once. It’s just  a coincidence, of course, that crawlers and donors get peerages, but it’s so.

As a result it is now a worthless and rather shameful  relic, stuffed to the rafters  with exactly the sort of people who should have nothing to do with power.

 I hate it because I can remember what it once was. I can also recall the derision and mockery I received for warning that change would make it worse, and for defending the old hereditary system.

I am pretty sure that the  next Government will sweep it away and replace it with an elected senate. Unless we combine to thwart them with  a better idea, this will not be  an improvement.

Because such a senate will  be picked by the big parties, and guess what sort of people will be at the top of their lists  – why, donors and crawlers,  of course.

Just as in the House of Commons, you’ll be presented with bland, obedient pre-chosen candidates and invited to approve them in elections decided by big money and big media, in which independent minds won’t stand a chance.

They will then do what the Government tells them to do, in return for salaries and expenses that most people could never dream of. This is what we in this country call ‘democracy’.

The best thing would be to get the old hereditaries back, but our media and political classes are too stupid and malevolent to allow that.

So how about an elected British senate, but one utterly unlike the servile House  of Commons?

Here are a few suggestions: Anyone who has belonged to  or given money to any party within the past five years, to be absolutely disqualified. Any senator who later joins or gives money to a party, or receives any kind of pay, favour, title  or post from the Government,  to be automatically and instantly unseated.

I’d urge a minimum age of 50 and special allocations of seats to full-time mothers, war veterans, crime victims and pensioners, all despised and ignored by our existing Establishment.

But above all, we must destroy the tyranny of the three Zombie Parties, Labour, Liberal Democrat and Tory,  who speak for nobody but themselves and have wrecked the country.

Who'd want to be on a stamp with this lot?

Very odd postage stamps have just been launched, featuring strangely smooth Soviet-style airbrushed portraits of a very peculiar selection of Prime Ministers.

If I were the Monarch,  I’d ask for my head to be taken off these scraps of sticky paper from now on.

Who’d want to keep such company?

And I’m really not sure what’s Royal, or even British, about a former institution which has been forced into hectic privatisation by  the EU.

By rights our  stamps should feature the heads of Jacques Delors, Herman Van Rompuy and Mr Cameron’s high-fiving friend Jean-Claude Juncker.

Everyone will find someone to dislike in the gallery of Premiers provided. I’d be nervous about the fate of any letter with a Thatcher stamp on it – and it’s interesting that, despite immortalising Maggie, they decided not to risk a Blair stamp.

It’s not true that you have to be dead to be on a British stamp – several living footballers were honoured  in this way in February.

But it may well be that  Mr Blair has now become  the most unpopular living person in Britain.

And yet I remember when you couldn’t breathe a word against him.

Which of today’s admired figures face a similar reversal of fortune?

Most of them, I hope.

Strong borders save the world

Of course Sir John Major is right that immigrants generally come here to better themselves.

I have always admired the courage and determination of people who travel thousands  of often dangerous miles in search of a better life for themselves and their families.

But so what? The case against mass migration has nothing to do with the personal qualities  of migrants. It has to do with our desire to preserve our own culture, laws and language.  It also has something to do with our wish not to have wages forced down by a huge pool of cheap, easily exploited labour.

It’s also worth considering that the countries from which these people come suffer from the loss of their bravest and most enterprising young men and women.

Globalisation is all about wealth. It knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. Without borders the world will become – is visibly becoming – a howling desert of traffic fumes, plastic and concrete, where nowhere is home and the only language is money.

Didn’t we once say we had brought democracy to Iraq? Yet this week we combined with the Islamic Republic of Iran to support a silent coup against Nouri al-Maliki, that country’s democratically elected premier. The ‘democratic West’ also backed the overthrow by a mob  putsch of Ukraine’s elected President Yanukovych, and by a military coup (ssshh, we mustn’t call it that!) of Egypt’s elected President Morsi.

Meanwhile, Western media and politicians are full of praise for Turkey’s new and menacing President Erdogan, who is more repressive than Russia’s Putin and memorably once said: ‘Democracy is like a tram. You ride it until you arrive at your destination, then you step off.’ I think he’s nearly there.

I also think our rulers don’t really care about democracy, there or here. They just say they do.

My thanks to those of you who responded so kindly to my request to write to the Iranian President seeking the release of my friend  Jason Rezaian and his wife, still alas held in secret detention in Tehran since July 22. I will let you know of any developments.

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Would you be surprised to learn that I fund Labour? Well I do... and so do you

Peter Hitchens's Mail On Sunday column

What would happen if the Tories, Labour or the Lib Dems went out on to the streets with collection boxes?

I’d be surprised if they got more than a few washers and quite a lot of rude expressions they hadn’t heard before.

Nobody likes them. Nobody wants them. They speak for no one and they have helped wreck this country for 50 years.

So why do they survive at all? The world has just woken up to the secret tax on trade union members (the ‘political levy’) which keeps Labour going long after most reasonable people stopped being socialists.

Ed Miliband says he’s going to get rid of it, but I think seeing will be believing in this case as, if he does as he says, it’s  curtains for Labour.

But how many customers  and shareholders of various corporations know how much of their cash is being quietly siphoned off to keep the Tory corpse alive?

Much more important, we  keep them all going through taxation.

This is via the so-called ‘Short Money’ subsidy to Opposition parties, paid out since 1975.

Political leaders say they’re against state funding of parties. They’re lying. There is huge state funding.

While they privatised gas, power, telephones and the railways, and now Royal Mail, they were nationalising politics.

‘Short Money’ isn’t short. In 2009, Nick Clegg’s party got £1,749,385 a year and the Tories (in Opposition) nearly £5 million.

Labour is now receiving more than £6.5 million a year. From you. Were you asked? I don’t recall.

So, win an Election and you’re surrounded by dodgy millionaires pressing cheques on you, expecting something in return.

Lose and the taxpayer is robbed on your behalf by HM Revenue & Customs.

If you object to this, they say: ‘Why don’t you stand for Parliament yourself?’

To which I reply that MPs are not elected by votes but by money, and that as a result we have the best parliament money can buy.

This is going to continue and it will take a political earthquake of fury to change it. There’s no chance of that when you continue to vote for the very people who rob and despise you. Stop it.

The dark side of the Flower Pot Men - coming soon from Hollywood

When I leaf through my ancient Letts Schoolboy Diaries from the 1950s and early 1960s, I am appalled to see how much tripe my parents let me watch on television.

It rolled over me in a great wave of drivel as  I lolled, slack-jawed before the ‘miracle of TV’, as we then thought it was.

Just imagine, if I hadn’t suffered all that brain damage in my tender years, I might be an intellectual now and allowed to present programmes on the BBC.

I have some memory of the Lone Ranger, and Tonto, though I mainly recall the music and wondering crossly how that mask could possibly stop anyone recognising him.

Now, like Superman, Flash Gordon and Batman, this piffle has been taken up by Hollywood and turned into a portentous pseudo-mythical yawnerama ‘containing moderate violence and injury detail’, which certainly wasn’t allowed in my young day.

Tonto also now has a dead bird glued to his head, which makes him look like Kaiser Wilhelm II on a bad day. Next – Hollywood examines the dark side of The Flower Pot Men, with ‘moderate violence and injury detail’. 

'Tough' Theresa heroically tackles the wrong enemy

The Home Secretary,  Mrs Theresa May, has a tremendous spin doctor.

I know, I’ve met her, and she’s great at her job.

I’ve also met Mrs May. Oh dear. But the spin whirls on and on.

Last week she was garlanded for removing Abu Qatada from this country. That’s spin. She didn’t.

He agreed to go, voluntarily, once Jordan had changed its law to suit him.

And judging by the wolfish grin on his furry face as he arrived in Amman, he wasn’t that troubled by events.

Far from standing up for our interests, Mrs May also last week voluntarily submitted everyone in this country to the outrageous European Arrest Warrant, when she could have kept us out.

Its alleged advantages (most already available through ordinary extradition treaties) are not worth the price demanded – allowing foreign courts to order and enforce the arrest of British subjects.

So much for Mrs May’s triumph. I’d rather have Abu Qatada here and no European Arrest Warrant, given the choice.

But spin doctors are good at flagging up empty victories, and hiding substantial defeats.

They're right, jail is too cruel for murderers

The death penalty is far more humane than a long prison sentence. That is one of the best reasons for bringing it back.

I’m sorry to say that the Court of Human Rights is correct in condemning our policy of locking up heinous murderers without hope of release and for so long they forget what they have done.

It’s incredibly cruel.

My solution, of hanging them by the neck until dead, probably wouldn’t appeal to them either.

But penal liberals should study the appalling suicide figures in our horrible warehouse prisons, which are full of crime and dope and increasingly used to house those made insane by their own unchecked drug abuse.

In the last ten years 724 prisoners have taken their own lives, 90 of them serving life terms for murder.

In my view, these 90 were killed by penal liberals who didn’t have the guts to execute them but were happy to let them die of despair. Is that supposed to be civilised?

Optimists who reckon we are having an  economic recovery might like to consider this fact. Roughly half the containers leaving the port of  Felixstowe each year are empty.

Why? Because we have no solid exports to match the imports sucked in by the cheap credit that keeps Britain alive.

A significant share of those containers that are full contain scrap for recycling. So this country hopes to survive in a harsh world by exporting air and rubbish. Good luck with that.

I'm told it’s not true that if you boil a frog slowly it will sit there waiting for its doom.

But if you debauch and demoralise a country bit by bit, you can certainly persuade it to accept things against which it would once have revolted.

If Labour had said in 1964 they were planning to have 180,000 legal abortions a year – many of them repeat patients – and that their policies would mean half of all babies would be born out of wedlock within 60 years, would anyone have voted for them? 

Westminster Bubble versus British Reality

In the world of ‘political journalism’, the Tories are having a good week. The Prime Minister, speaking from atop a hill of banknotes supplied by millionaire donors, their sisters and their cousins and their aunts  (have a good laugh at the details revealed  here http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jul/08/party-funding-scandal-david-cameron-conservatives),

sneers at Labour for being in the pockets of the unions.

 

Once upon a time, when I myself fell into the partisan trap that grips Westminster reporters, I wouldn’t have been able to write the above sentence. If you work in Westminster reporting you have to join a gang as surely as if you grow up in one of fatherless desert estates of South London.  If you don’t, you may not be knifed or gunned down but you will face professional death. Contacts will not feed you stories. Newspapers will be baffled by your refusal to adopt to the standard storyline.

 

To explain part of this problem, a courageous and honest essay about the way in which ‘news’ gets in the way of truth, by the estimable Peter Oborne, is reproduced in my book ‘The Cameron Delusion’ , or you may read it here

 

http://www.spectator.co.uk/the-week/11244/there-are-echoes-everywhere-of-the-final-days-of-john-majors-government/

 

It is only part of the story. Traditionally, British newspapers have been partisan, and the more popular they are the more partisan they are. So that, even in the modern era, when the traditional Left long ago despaired of New Labour (being too thick to realise that New Labour is in fact a subtle and camouflaged fulfilment of their dreams) and the traditional right have just begun to realise that the Tory Party is not in fact conservative at all, a whiff of partisan conflict can quickly bring both sides back into line.

 

Thus. Theresa May’s supposed ‘triumph’ in ‘securing’ the deportation of Abu Qatada (whose lawyer announced in May that he would go voluntarily as soon as Jordan had complied with the ECHR ruling, and who arrived at Amman with a  whopping great grin on his bearded visage) the attack on Mr Miliband for his union funds,  which seemed to me to turn a bit sour on Mr Cameron during Prime Minister's Questions this week, and may well end in that horror of all horrors, state funding for political parties) and the laughable Tories-only vote for a ‘jam-tomorrow’ referendum on the EU , four years hence, are cited as reasons why the Tories have a ‘spring in their step’, in newspapers and of course on the BBC.

 

And then the decision by the European Human Rights Court to allow some heinous murders to petition for release before death is another opportunity for the Tories to rage against ‘Human Rights’ and ‘foreign courts’, as if they didn’t like them. Actually they do, but they also rejoice in the excuse they provide for enacting laws they know will be unpopular. It’s all the fault of those foreign judges! They made us do it! (Don’t mention the fact that we could, in a matter of minutes, end their jurisdiction over us)  NB, Mrs May also this week agreed to place us back under the jurisdiction of the European Arrest Warrant,  ultimately guaranteed by the other European Court, the Court of Justice in Luxembourg, an oppressive loss of sovereignty which means no British subject( as we are no longer) is safe from arrests ordered by foreign magistrates.  This announcement, in one of those lovely coincidences that make our political system such fun, was made on the same day of the Strasbourg judgement on murderers serving whole-life sentences.

 

The reason for this partisan, thoughtless stuff, in which bogeymen are slain and straw men hacked to pieces, is that the Tories’ right flank is crumbling , and that Mr Cameron and his press friends hope to shore it up by appealing to tribal instincts and blowing hard on every dog whistle that comes to hand.  The depth of the Tory crisis is great.  Small and non-prominent mention of the following survey could be found by assiduous readers of the press or listeners to the BBC. But because it wasn’t commissioned or spun by any party or newspaper, it was little-noticed.

 

It is a very large survey of Tory Party members conducted by some highly reputable academics. Its principal revelations are  that 42% of those members think their leaders do not respect them very much, that fewer than one in five believe their party can win the next election, and that a large number of Tory *members* are actively considering voting for UKIP at a general election. You can find the whole thing here :

 

http://yougov.co.uk/news/2013/07/08/conservative-member-survey-paints-rather-gloomy-pi/

 

The important thing to bear in mind here is that these rare actual party members, not voters. The very core of the Tory party’s supporters is seething with mutiny and mistrust. Are these people going to be convinced by Mr Cameron’s Doomsday referendum of Mrs May’s skilfully spun fake toughness? They’re certainly meant to be, and I suppose it’s possible, but I suspect not. On the old principle ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me’ these tough, excessively loyal old buzzards have had about enough of being strung along and they now know exactly where and how to take revenge. Watch out for the Euro elections.  But the body of men and women known to Kenneth Clarke as ‘Her Majesty’s Press’ simply has yet to adapt to this new world.

 

 

 

A good Week for Hypocrisy and Humbug -plus, How Margaret Thatcher saved the Labour Party

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column

 

This has been a great week for humbug and hypocrisy. First we had David Cameron in Kazakhstan, a corrupt despotism as weird as North Korea, but with oil and gas.

 

Mr Cameron was (quite reasonably) grovelling for trade deals and for a safe exit-route by which to extract our costly military equipment from Afghanistan.

 

But, as he sheepishly tagged along behind President Nazarbayev’s goose-stepping ceremonial guard, did it occur to him that he really ought to be calling for his host to be driven from power, as he does with Syria’s President Assad?

 

Nazarbayev, like Assad, ‘kills his own people’. In fact he shoots them in the back, most notably at Zhanaozen in December 2011, when armed police opened fire on unarmed strikers as they fled. At least 16 died.

 

He’s sensitive, too.  A dissident newspaper’s offices were mysteriously burned down in the night. The arsonists left a headless dog hanging at the scene, and a terse note with the message ‘You won’t get another warning’.

 

Mr Cameron is said to have sat drinking whisky with the President of this moral slum.  As I said, I don’t blame him. In our weakened, insolvent state, this is the sort of thing we have to do.

 

But can he please now cease trying to drag Britain into ‘ethical’ attacks on other countries? 

 

Some hope. These people don’t learn by experience. The comical collapse of the Egyptian experiment in democracy ought to teach all such idealists a simple lesson. But the left-liberal mind rejects all facts that won’t fit its dogma.

 

It was obvious to any educated person that democracy in Egypt would lead to an Islamist government and that we were better off with things as they were.

 

But our political and media elite went into spasms of uncritical joy over the ‘Arab Spring’, urging it on and undermining the old regime.

 

And now the same people find themselves greasily excusing an army putsch, which has put an end to this teenage nonsense.

 

I am called a cynic for pointing these things out. But isn’t it much more cynical to encourage delusions which then lead to tragedy?

 

***************

 

I think it is time for the Tories to stop being so hoity-toity about the trade union grip on Labour. The Tory Party has a whopping great skeleton its cupboard which I am now going to pull out and wave about.

 

I promised to keep quiet about it nearly 30 years ago, and I’m still not naming my source. But Mr Cameron’s self-righteous attack on Labour has persuaded me that it’s time to come clean.

 

The Tory manifesto in 1983 pledged to do something about one of the worst scandals in British politics, the ‘political levy’ by which the unions take money from their members to put into their political funds. These funds are then used to buy influence in the Labour Party.

 

If you belong to most British unions, you pay into this unless you opt out. Many don’t even know they’re contributing. Others are afraid of drawing attention to themselves by opting out. As a result, millions of people give money to Labour without wanting to, via union political funds. And so they maintain the union stranglehold on British politics.

 

It needn’t be so. Margaret Thatcher’s 1983 manifesto promised to end this disgrace. If the unions wouldn’t sort it out, it said, ‘The Government will be prepared to introduce measures to guarantee the free and effective right of choice.’

 

She won with a huge majority. It was a mandate. So what happened? The then general secretary of the Labour Party, the late Jim Mortimer, approached the Tories through a special back-channel. Word was sent to the late Margaret Thatcher that she would be unwise to act on this pledge.

 

If she did, Mortimer warned, she might well destroy Labour and so – unintentionally - ensure that the Tories were beaten at the next election by the SDP-Liberal Alliance. 

 

He added that if by any chance Labour survived, and came back to power, it would take a terrible revenge. It would pass laws to stop the Tories raising funds from business.

 

The ‘Iron Lady’ buckled and collapsed. For the sake of party advantage and short-term gain, the plan was dropped. A few feeble ballots were held instead, which hardly anyone noticed.

 

So Margaret Thatcher and her Tories actually saved the Labour Party from richly deserved oblivion. The disastrous 1997-2010 Blair-Brown government is their direct fault.

 

They also made sure that the unions would keep their thumb on the national windpipe for another 25 years and maybe much longer.

 

I am sorry if my source now feels betrayed, but I feel increasingly that the nation was betrayed, and that is far more important.

 

*************

 

Funny, isn’t it, how BBC bias always happened in the past but is never taking place now? A former director-general, Mark Thompson, recently conceded that the Corporation (itals pse) had (off itals) a ‘massive bias to the left’ 30 years ago. But not now. Oh no.

 

Now another BBC Commissar, Helen Boaden, says it was biased about immigration eight years ago. But not now. Oh no.  Ms Boaden’s remarks form part of an unintentionally hilarious report by Stuart Prebble, a nice, intelligent ‘liberal progressive’.

 

Mr Prebble invited me to come and tell him about BBC bias. I did. I told him that the problem was that the BBC could never understand that it was biased, just as a goldfish in a bowl does not know he is a goldfish, or that he is in a bowl.

 

This is because BBC people have no friends who disagree with them, and despise moral and social conservatives as morally evil people.

 

He listened politely, though I do wonder what he said about me after I’d gone. And then he produced a report saying the BBC wasn’t biased. It would be funny if it didn’t matter.

**********

How long have the police been accepting people with criminal records - sometimes quite severe records - as recruits?  My colleague Martin Beckford tried to find out.  Nobody official seems to know, but I am sure that it is a new development and would guess it happened under the Blair regime. Do any proper old-fashioned coppers know the answer?

 

***************

 

Not only are the government deliberately ensuring power cuts five years hence, by shutting down perfectly good coal-fired power stations and replacing them with useless windmills. Much of the electricity that’s left will be given free to illegal cannabis farmers.

 

Cultivating dope in the attic, using stolen power, is one of this country’s few growth industries, thanks to the covert legalisation of the drug. And the electricity companies apparently do far too little to detect this crime.

 

It sums everything up really, a stoned nation, intermittently powered by wind.

 

What sort of country has a hospital bed as a symbol of national pride? And how free is speech in Olympic Britain?

 

I reproduce below an article which I wrote on Saturday for this week’s Mail on Sunday. It was necessarily brief, so I couldn’t resist the temptation to say a little more on the subject of the Olympic opening ceremony, and on the curious treatment – and subsequent behaviour - of the rather unattractive Tory MP who dared to criticise the event. By the way, I am also responding, ever so slightly,  the small platoons of Twitter users who, on Friday night, seemed to be hoping for an attack on the ceremony from me. And I am reinforcing my point, made in my Sunday column, that there is something unpleasantly totalitarian about the near-unanimity on the wonderfulness of the Olympic Games. I don’t claim to represent a majority opinion. What polls exist seem to suggest that my view is a minority one. But I do think that many people are keeping quiet about their doubts, much as they did during the Diana frenzy. Also, I think the fear of having the ‘wrong’ opinion is at least as great as it has been in any period of peacetime, and that is the really serious matter. The range of opinion which it is permissible to hold, without the fear of ostracism and possibly career damage, is getting narrower.

Here’s my Sunday article: ‘It was a social worker’s history of Britain, a nation of simple peasants, crushed and besmirched by evil top-hatted capitalists, but rescued in the end by the NHS, immigration, the suffragettes and the egalitarian strains of pop music.

I half-expected the giant Voldemort to transform itself into a menacing Thatcher figure, trampling, slashing and cutting every nice nurse in sight, and tossing bedsteads out of the stadium with a callous sneer.

It is a strange sort of nation that can turn a hospital bed into a symbol of national pride, especially in an era when you can die of thirst in one. 

But most people under 40 have been taught not to have pride in their country, so the Health Service is all they’ve got left. They have been cheated of any real knowledge of history. I’m not talking here about the Armada or the Empire – it’s hard to trumpet military glory when you’ve scrapped the armed forces, and the Olympics might not be the place for that in any case.

It’s our dogged insistence on liberty of thought, speech and assembly, that needs to be celebrated, in a world where arbitrary power and censorship are stronger every day. It is our greatest gift to mankind and we don’t even know it’s ours.

I’m sure Danny Boyle could have found a way of portraying that great tradition of limited government and human freedom that grew out of Magna Carta and flows through our history, and that of the world, like a mighty stream.

But to do that, he might have needed a few more words and a bit less drumming, miming and dancing. It was strange how little use he made of that other great possession of ours, the English language. Where were Dickens or Wordsworth, Keats or Tennyson?

As for Shakespeare, I suppose it would now actually be subversive for such an occasion to include the thrilling words of John of Gaunt’s dying speech ‘This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England’, for ‘England’ and ‘English’ are words that social workers don’t like to hear.’

Before I go any further, can I respond to the people who kindly pointed out that I had put Haverhill in the wrong county, and apologise to them. I shall correct this, as one who cares a lot about the counties.

But I do urge them to search the film clip out on Youtube (Haverhill, Cyclist, and Olympic Torch will bring it up) and then see if they care all that much where it was. It is astonishing to me that this hasn’t attracted more attention and criticism. I don’t, for instance, think the boy has ever been found or interviewed. There is a Dalek-like police comment referring to a ‘male on a bicycle’, which rather misses the point.

Also, may I respond to the ‘why do you never say anything cheerful?’ and ‘lighten up’ comments? Because it’s not what I write about, because there are plenty of others who do, because I think I should use my limited space to say what is not being said elsewhere but what, in my opinion, is important. I am suspicious of those who get annoyed by critical writing. My suspicion is that they do not want to see *any* such writing. After all, they don’t have to read it. My page is only one among dozens in the MoS.  Attacking me for writing it is an odd response. They are, unwittingly, doing the work of the new soft totalitarianism., which has already succeeded in closing down large areas of debate, and in demoralising this country’s patriotic conservatives to such an extent that they have lost the will to pass on their opinions to the next generation. The purpose of propaganda, especially lying propaganda, is to demoralise opponents.

Now, to that Tory MP, Aidan Burley, whose name keeps escaping me. He’s obviously a bit of a ninny , as we know from his dressing-up antics. But his remarks about the opening ceremony on Twitter were perfectly within the compass of British conservative opinion, and legitimate. I didn’t agree with him. I don’t think the Olympics are the place for military display or warlike patriotism, and I think the Churchill cult has more or less had had its day. The Battle of Britain was 72 years ago. It really is time this country achieved something else. As for the Rolling Stones, the Tory Party’s inability to understand that Jaggerism (the new hedonist cult of the self) is not their friend is one of the main reasons they are finished.

But was he wrong to detect a leftist tone in it? How about this, from the Guardian website on Sunday:

‘Paul Flynn, MP for Newport West, praised Danny Boyle for highlighting the NHS, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the futility of war. "Wonderfully progressive socialist sentiments and ideas were smuggled into the opening romp," he wrote during a weekend that saw Prime Minister David Cameron and Tory loyalists distance themselves from a tweet by Tory MP Aidan Burley, who called the event "leftie multicultural ****".  

The Sunday Telegraph also reported that some Tory cabinet ministers, shown film of the opening ceremony rehearsals, expressed doubts about them at the time. This very interesting account is buried deep in the story, which is to be found here

Spin doctors have obviously been at work trying to make sure this one never got off the ground. Everyone is happy now. Or so they say.

Then there was Carl Sargeant, minister for local government and communities in the Welsh assembly government, who tweeted that the opening ceremony was "the best Labour party political broadcast I have seen in a while".

Mr Flynn, an independent-minded and thoughtful MP (with whom I disagree about much)  who has some very sensible things to say about antidepressants, and also about the route taken by the corteges of soldiers killed in Afghanistan, is no fool. He can see what I can see, and what Mr Burley can see. How can Mr Burley be citicised for pointing out a fact that it is obvious to lefties themselves?

But Mr Burley seems to have been got at  by some sort of Thought Police, surely a matter of interest for any who still harbour the pathetic belief that the Tory Party is in some way conservative. It is his membership of the Tory Party that has exposed Mr Burley to this pressure.  This is from the BBC website: ‘Speaking later to BBC WM Mr Burley re-iterated that he had not been having a go at multiculturalism.

"I agree it should be celebrated," he said.

"I wasn't having a go at multiculturalism itself, I was having a go at the rather trite way, frankly, it was represented in the opening ceremony."

He added his tweets might not have been the greatest thing for his career, but if it started a debate then it can only have been a good thing.

"We all love the NHS but really for all the people watching overseas, 20 minutes of children and nurses jumping on beds, that seems quite strange.

"And then we had all these rappers - that is what got me to the point about multiculturalism."

He said rap music was enjoyed by a relatively small section of society, young people mainly.

"Is that what we are most proud of culturally?"

This is all very odd. First he attacks multiculti. Then he says he's all in favour of it and that he celebrates it. I thought that multiculturalism as an idea had been disowned by the British establishment some time ago, in various major speeches, such as this.  Speaking in Munich in February 2011, a man called David Cameron said  : ‘Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream. We have failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong.We have even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values.’ As I recall, this was reported as an attack on multiculturalism, which usually means that the spin doctors have told the political journalists that this is what it is.

Yet Mr Burley is now celebrating it. I could go on, but is this a case of being at war with Eurasia this week, and Eastasia next week? Mr Burley must be confused. Many others are to, Multiculturalism has nothing to do with race. On the absolute contrary, opponents of multiculturalism reject the idea that race determines anything, and urge that the host country ensures that migrants, for everyone’s good, adopt the culture of the country they have chosen to live in. 

The crucial difference between meaningless  'race' and significant culture is explored by the excellent Dr Thomas Sowell in his book ‘Race and Culture’. It is also, interestingly, illustrated in modern cultural conflicts in Japan (where ethnic Japanese migrants from South America have had major cultural differences with neighbours raised in Japanese culture, and in Singapore where ( as recently reported in the impeccably liberal New York Times) mainland Chinese people are encountering hostility from Singaporean Chinese people, entirely because of cultural difference.

In both cases, culture is shown to be far more signoiicant than ethnic origin, and wholly separate from ethnic origin. Yet those who seek to preserve national monocuture as smeared as 'racist' bythe left. This is demonstrably false.

This is why many civilised people are increasingly wary of multiculturalism, which creates competing solitudes and undermines the essential national fellow feeling of national communities.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What is so Good about Democracy? What’s wrong with ‘Libertarianism’? And who has the right to review what?

Again and again, in articles and discussion programmes,  I hear the phrase ‘democratically-elected’ used as if it is a synonym for ‘automatically good’. Thus, whatever one might say about the Queen, a President would be ‘democratically-elected’. And so he would in some way be more legitimate than any other head of state.

Why do people believe this? What reason do they have to believe it? Has it proved to be reliable in human history?

Contrary to the beliefs of most, neither of the two great free civilisations in the world have any principled attachment to being mass (let alone universal) suffrage democracies. The original U.S. Constitution says very little indeed about voting, which was left to the individual states. The founding fathers of the USA would have been appalled by the idea of it. That is one reason why they built their capital (whose long prospects and wide avenues were I think designed to make it easy to put down revolution with grapeshot) in the remote swamps on the Potomac to avoid the dangers (which they much feared ) of mob rule.

In many parts of the early USA, the principle of ‘no representation without taxation” which is after all the corollary of “no taxation without representation”) meant only 70% of adult males qualified for the vote.  This proportion grew during the mid-19^th century , largely because political parties wanted to expand the market for their lies and promises. Secret ballots did not come to the USA till the late 19^th century.  As for the USA’s slave and freed slave population, largely black-skinned, we all know how recently they were allowed the vote in reality.

The US Senate was specifically designed to be protected from ‘the fury of democracy’, hence the fact that Senators have much longer terms in office than members of the House of Representatives. Until the passage of the 17^th Amendment in 1913, which faced strong and honourable opposition from several leading figures, U.S. Senators were not in any case elected by popular vote, but chosen by their state’s legislatures.

The USA of course has a third (wholly unelected) chamber of government, the Supreme Court, which is in many ways more powerful than either the House, the Senate or the Presidency. Many of the most radical changes in American life, notably the legalising of abortion, have been brought about by this body. I suspect that left-wingers would be alarmed at any suggestion that it should be democratically elected.

Britain’s reformers, likewise, were far from keen on the rule of the masses. Cromwell loathed (and executed ) the Levellers. The great factions of the 18^th and early 19^th centuries were not remotely democratic.  The freedom and order of this country were largely the result of an adversarial parliament (in both Houses), Jury trial, the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta and the Habeas Corpus Act (see my ‘Abolition of Liberty’ for details of this, unless you feel unable to ready my books, in which case, take my word for it).

Mass suffrage democracy, when it actually came about, was, to begin with anyway, an advantage for the Tory Party which – in the days before the dismantling of marriage – could rely on the women’s vote as being solidly socially conservative. This paradox has now come to an end, but it has always made me laugh.

Have we benefited from mass suffrage? In one very important way, we have suffered terribly from it. In what must be one of his most prophetic statements, Winston Churchill warned the House of Commons on 13^th May 1901 that ‘the wars of peoples will be more terrible than the wars of kings’ .

His prediction was borne out with great speed. Surely any thoughtful person must be struck with a cold feeling round the heart when he reads Aldous Huxley’s 1947 preface to ‘Brave New World’ and comes across this passage:  ‘But meanwhile we are in the first phase of what is perhaps the penultimate revolution. Its next phase may be atomic warfare, in which case we do not have to bother with prophecies about the future. But it is conceivable that we may have enough sense, if not to stop fighting altogether, at least to behave as rationally as did our eighteenth-century ancestors. The unimaginable horrors of the Thirty Years War actually taught men a lesson, and for more than a hundred years the politicians and generals of Europe consciously resisted the temptation to use their military resources to the limits of destructiveness or (in the majority of conflicts) to go on fighting until the enemy was totally annihilated. They were aggressors, of course, greedy for profit and glory; but they were also conservatives, determined at all costs to keep their world intact, as a going concern. For the last thirty years there have been no conservatives; there have been only nationalistic radicals of the right and nationalistic radicals of the left. The last conservative statesman was the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne; and when he wrote a letter to the Times, suggesting that the First World War should be concluded with a compromise, as most of the wars of the eighteenth century had been, the editor of that once conservative journal refused to print it. The nationalistic radicals had their way, with the consequences that we all know --Bolshevism, Fascism, inflation, depression, Hitler, the Second World War, the ruin of Europe and all but universal famine.’

The ‘nationalistic radicals’ were of course democrats, including Churchill himself.  They had made a popular, democratic case for war to stimulate recruitment and to permit the high taxation and general ruin and regimentation which the war involved. But they could not in the end control the 'democratic' patriotic monster they had created, and dared not end the war, even once it was clear that it would be a disaster to continue it.

Nuclear weapons, by promising a repeat of the 30 Years War with knobs on, restrained the warmongering populist tendency for a while. But when the Cold war ended they were quick to find new battlefields, as they strove to impose ‘democracy’ on the planet with fire and the sword. It is public opinion and 'democracy' which are being swayed, by 'democratic' TV reports into supporting the next war, an intervention in Syria.

Huxley’s statement (in 1947) that ‘for the last 30 years there have been no conservatives; there have been only nationalistic radicals of the right and nationalistic radicals of the left’  is even more prophetic than Churchill’s. How else could Margaret Thatcher or Ronald Reagan be regarded as conservatives? Theyb got away with it only because real conservatives had died out.

Personally, as I examine the record of ‘democratically-elected’ rulers across the world,  my Cromwellian head begins to be ruled by my Royalist heart, and I start to see the point of giving the headship of the state to the Lord’s Anointed, provided it can be combined with the rule of law, an adversarial parliament, the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, Jury Trial and Habeas Corpus (in short, the 1689 settlement rightly known as the Glorious Revolution).  

As for ‘democracy’, how is it morally reliable or creditable to grant the ultimate power to political parties? It is these that, in any democracy, actually control access to the legislature. They are controlled by the executive, bought by rich interests, impermeable to the public will. Don’t believe me? Try to become an MP and see what happens. Even primary elections, on the face of it a good idea, can now easily be purchased by millions (see the recent triumph of Mitt Romney, beloved by no-one but also outspent by nobody).

The trite conclusion, now a cliche,  is that democracy is the worst of all systems, except for the others. The implied suggestion is that we must have this disreputable fraud, or subject ourselves to Hitler, Mussolini, the Chinese Communist Party , Stalin or Ceausescu. But I don’t think that is really the choice at all.

I tend to think that the systems of government of Britain and the USA, before universal suffrage, were far better at delivering ordered liberty , peace and prosperity (the ultimate aims of any government) than their modern successors.

 

*****

 

Next, a word on why I always put ‘libertarian’ in inverted commas.  Most thinking humans, in our post-Christian world , yearn for a universal touchstone of goodness which will somehow substitute for the Christian faith. For some it is the market, for some it is ‘liberty’, for others it is equality.  It is easily demonstrable that the market sometimes, even often, lays waste valuable things, destroys customs and taboos, tosses aside human feelings. It is obvious to the slowest thinker that ( as Karl Marx pointed out) the freedom of all is impossible, as it will lead to conflicts between groups who wish to be free to do something which tramples on the freedom of another.  ‘No man fights freedom’, wrote the sage of Trier,  ’He fights at most the freedom of others’. Well,  exactly. The trouble with these ideas is that they simply lack the universal power over all humanity  of the Sermon on the Mount and the Commandments, and that they are based on a desire for power, rather than on Christianity’s preference for love, and its central suspicion of power and the mob, as so graphically set out in the story of the Passion. And sometimes I think a little light mockery is the best way to make people think. After all, one day they may realise that it is possible they are mistaken.

 

****

And finally a few thoughts on why someone who chooses to call my books ‘drivel’ (yet now admits he hasn’t even read one of them, because he found it too hard) can reasonably be asked if he has any work of his own which we can see, to see if he is qualified to say so. I didn’t stop him saying so, or censor or disallow his post. I allow all kinds of people to post the most astonishing rubbish about me here.  I just questioned his qualification.

Actually, had he made a TV programme, exhibited a painting or produced a play, or done any creative thing involving the public giving of himself, he would be qualified to have a view.  I tend to think, having written and presented four TV programmes and written five books (four published, one to come out in the autumn) that I have risked myself in the public square and can therefore pronounce on other people’s works. As it happens, I seldom write bad reviews of books (I make exceptions where their authors are self-serving political figures, who are not primarily authors).  If I am sent a book which I think is really bad, I generally decline to write a review at all.  My criticisms of films are essentially dissents from universal praise, and I believe that they are informed and thoughtful and that some readers have found them helpful.

 

What is the purpose of criticisms of such things, by the way? It varies. In the case of Philip Pullman’s children’s books, I wished to warn parents that the stories are propaganda. In the case of the recent film ‘The King’s Speech’, I wished to ensure that the film’s severe deviation from historical truth was placed on record, because of a fear that it would  (as historical fiction on film often does) become the accepted version of a historical incident. I thought the mangling of ‘Tinker Tailor’ in the Gary Oldman film (and the comparable mangling of ‘Goodbye Mr Chips’ in a recent TV version) illuminated our cultural decline and the working methods of the cultural revolution.

I like to think that I can tell the truth in plain English, even where it will get me disliked. But I think I would hesitate to come to a writer’s weblog, cloddishly and blatantly misrepresent his views, and - when patiently invited to discover what those views actually are - to dismiss his books as ‘drivel’  to his face, not having made any serious effort to read or understand those books. If I have done anything comparable here, I regret it. But I don’t think I have.

It took a wide boy with a tax-haven tan and a big mouth to tell us what’s really going on

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

Those of us who try to care about this country sink from distaste to disgust to revulsion, till in the end there is nothing left to do but laugh.

Every so often (it happened three times last week) someone says to me that I should find something cheerful to write about. They’ve come to the wrong shop. All the political parties employ battalions of professional liars who can provide you with all the happy falsehoods that you want.

And the power-worshippers and courtiers of political journalism proudly pass on this tripe as if it were their own work. Talk about having no shame.

Read them if you want that. What I write here is the sober truth, though during the past seven days it has not seemed that sober. Even in the fifth week of an alcohol-free Lent,  I felt intoxicated by the secretly filmed blabbering of the former Tory co-treasurer Peter Cruddas.

Here, thanks to the cunning behaviour of my wrongly reviled trade, was the real face of British politics – a crude wide boy with a flapping mouth and a tax-haven tan, fake mateyness wafting from every pore.

How I laughed. This person was the head waiter at Mr Slippery’s Secret Diner, holding out his fat hand for wads of £50 notes in return for Supper with Samantha. How very unlike the Clubland smoothness of Mr Slippery himself; but how very much more true.

Now, say you wanted to lobby Mr Slippery about the awful school your children have to go to, or the police-free streets of your town, or the mass immigration that has changed your city for ever, or the plans (they haven’t gone away, you know) to build over every hill and vale in sight.

Well, first, don’t bother. I’ve tried on your behalf (without paying, though it made no difference). Mr Slippery and his Cabinet view people like you and me as tiresome, boneheaded fascist nonentities, who have somehow failed to become as enlightened as them.

It’s easy to be enlightened in modern Britain if you are very rich. They ask, languidly: ‘What do you mean, crime? What do you mean, dirty hospitals? What do you mean, terrible schools? It doesn’t affect us. You’re having a Moral Panic. Now do go away.’

But it is harder for a poor and honest person to have his voice heard in the chambers of the powerful than it is for a JCB to pass through the eye of a needle.

Oh, no, I’m not against rich people as such. But I am against the current ghastly combination of wealth and self-righteous Left-wing opinions that is ruining this country more surely than any of its more honest and straightforward external enemies ever did.

What nobody seems to see about the Cruddas Crisis is this: our three elite political parties speak only for that elite, grossly undeservedly wealthy, morally tainted and happy to see the whole country the same way. It is only thanks to rules that guarantee them BBC airtime, thanks to the suborning of political journalism, and thanks to sacks of gold from dubious donors, that these parties even exist.

Left on their own, they would wither away unwanted, like a thousand other failed businesses that ignored their customers for too long. Donors (plus the BBC monopoly) suspend the rules of survival. It is as if British Leyland were still turning out Austin Maxis, and people were still buying them. The product is dreadful, but the advertising and the monopoly keep out any serious competition. You, of course, are partly to blame for this by continuing to buy the tatty, dishonest products pressed on you. When you stop, there might possibly be some hope. I’ll let you know if I see any signs of it.

Is Sam Cam taking us all for a ride?

I do wonder how those attractive pictures of Mrs Cameron riding her bike came to be taken in a week of embarrassment and fake panic over a fuel shortage that hasn’t even happened yet. So should you wonder.

Televise judges sentencing convicted criminals? Sure, if you also screen the hundreds of Crown Prosecution Service meetings at which so many criminals are let off before even being prosecuted.

I rather like George Galloway, not because I agree with him – I don’t – but because he says what he means and believes what he says. It is thanks to these qualities that he is a thrilling public speaker and devastating debater. I think that is what the people of Bradford liked about him, and what they never see in the official parties.

More pointless military deaths in Afghanistan mean more pious flannel from Mr Slippery – but no change in a futile policy. Why doesn’t he just admit he doesn’t care? Meanwhile, William Hague proposes to spend more of your money and mine stirring up trouble in Syria. People will die horribly because of this. Who does he think he is?

Locking up the wrong louts...

To avoid false accusations of ‘racism’ from the Thought Police, I have to make the following statement of the blindingly obvious: I think Liam Stacey, who made nasty comments about the collapse of a footballer, is a callous, foul-mouthed, drink-sodden moron. Is that clear?
Can I now go on to say that I don’t think much of a criminal justice system that sends him to prison for expressing his ‘views’ on the internet. The same system repeatedly leaves at liberty violent thieves and louts.

For example, Kazeem Kolawole, one of the gang who ruined the life of Thusha Kamaleswaran – the six-year-old girl shot in a shop in London – was free to do this evil only because he had been spared prison after  beating up a schoolgirl, and was on bail (of course) for carrying a knife. Now, if only Kolawole had made a racist remark he would have been safely locked up.

How many different things are wrong with  a country in which a little girl’s happy life is transformed in an instant into misery by a bullet flying through a suburban shop? How many of them are we even allowed to discuss in public without being howled down? Thusha’s ordeal has only just begun. As long as we have the sort of Government we now have, there will be more of these horrors.

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