PETER HITCHENS: Get rid of the guns, cars and Tasers and we might just end up with real policemen

This is Peter Hitchens's Mail on Sunday Column

What use are the police these days? We know they have a pretty ambiguous attitude towards us, the public, avoiding us where possible by staying indoors or racing about in cars, and seldom going out alone in case one of  us actually approaches them.

They’re busy doing something else, as one of them recently explained to me in an irritable voice, when I asked him to act against a driver who’d driven through a red light at a pedestrian crossing 20ft from his nose.

That ‘something else’ often involves hanging about scowling, with sub-machine guns, supposedly saving us from an exaggerated terrorist menace.

But now it turns out that all those haughty squads of armed militia who supposedly protect the great and the powerful don’t even know who it is they are meant to be guarding. Prince Andrew was quite right to be angry when two armed officers treated him like a suspect as  he strolled in broad daylight in his mother’s garden.

How typical. First, they failed to detect or halt an intruder into Buckingham Palace, surrounded by high walls and fences and an obvious terror target (and nutcase target) if ever there was one.

Next, they failed to recognise one of the best-known people in Britain, who was also one of the very few people who had an absolute right to be there, and whose features should be imprinted on their minds since they are being paid to protect him.

It is ridiculous to accuse the Duke of York of having a self-important ‘Don’t you know who I am?’ moment or of being insufferable or pompous. The officers were paid to know who he was.

It wasn’t as if his presence was unlikely or unexpected or out of context. It’s his childhood home. He was right to be livid, and we should be livid on his behalf. And there’s more.

How did news of this event reach the media? It is now almost a year since the then Chief Whip, Andrew Mitchell, was falsely said to have called police officers ‘plebs’.

This happened after an overzealous and inflexible officer refused to open a gate to let him ride his bike out of Downing Street.

Mr Standfast, our warlike, missile-rattling Prime Minister, quickly dumped Mr Mitchell from his job when he realised  it might endanger his poll ratings. And Mr Mitchell remains sacked, despite the unravelling of the claims made against him.

Meanwhile, there’s still no sign of any action against those who leaked the original falsehood, despite an investigation almost as big as the one into the late Jimmy Savile.

Call them all back in. Take away their guns and their Tasers and their stab vests, sell their helicopters and their fast cars with the go-faster stripes.

Give them proper British police uniforms, which mark them out as the people’s servants, not their masters.

And send them out on solitary foot patrol, yes, even in the rain, where they might once more meet those they are supposed to serve.

If London’s really so dangerous it needs armed guards, then deploy the Army.

They’re better at it, they don’t look down on us, they’re nicer and more polite than the police, and would be most unlikely to threaten a member of the Royal Family or fabricate lies against a Minister.

 

Downton’s Lady Mary will NEVER be a ‘single mum’

A newspaper puff for the TV snob opera Downton Abbey says that the character Lady Mary, whose ‘husband’ was killed off in the Christmas episode, will be ‘coming to terms with her role as a 'single mother’ in the new series.

See how language is twisted to hide the truth?

The correct expression is ‘widow’, which you may have noticed we don’t hear so much any more.

Lady Mary, played by Michelle Dockery, did not have a child outside wedlock.

She was married. This matters.

One of the great triumphs of the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s was to deny the importance of marriage.

The expression ‘unmarried mother’ was abolished, and replaced by ‘single mother’.

But a widowed or deserted wife’s position is and always will be utterly different from that of a woman who deliberately has a child outside marriage.

The difference is a moral one, and that’s what the revolutionaries want to abolish  – morality.

So we are to get horrible slithery plastic banknotes. I’ve used them in Australia and I can tell you, you won’t like them.

This is to stop them wearing out so fast. I don’t mind the tatty notes. I mind the way they lose their value so quickly. If they could find a way to stop that, I’d be keen.

 

Generation ‘gap’ is now a mighty gulf

Britain really is two nations now – the pre-1960s patriotic, Christian moral conservative one, and the post-1960s omnisexual, multicultural liberal one. The annual Social Attitudes survey does not show people changing their minds. Very few do, as it’s rather difficult.

It shows that younger people have completely different views from their elders on almost every major issue of life. So at some point – and this must be the first time this has happened in history – the older generation stopped being able to pass on their values to their own children. 

How was this done? Who was responsible? Was it an accident? My own view is that it was deliberate and sustained. Could it now be reversed? I rather doubt it.

Oh no, we’ve done what the voters want!

Our political class actively want to be out of step with public opinion, and are sorry they accurately represented it the other day.

A survey of Tory MPs revealed that many actually want to vote again on attacking Syria, so that they can authorise this lunacy, even if it is only an incredibly small pinprick with no discernible purpose.

And it’s not just the Tories. Ed Balls, the Shadow Chancellor, also wants Another Chance To Bomb.

He confided to an elite TV show: ‘Our jaws dropped when the Prime Minister suddenly took the  idea of military action right off the table.

I wasn’t expecting that, nor was Ed Miliband. If David Cameron is going to put that back on the table, we’ll look at that.’

Well, if they so fervently want not to represent us, I’ll say it again.

We don’t have to elect these people. I’ve reluctantly come round the view that we should bring in compulsory voting in this country – provided every ballot paper contains a slot at the top marked ‘None of the below’.

And if the numbers voting ‘None of the below’ exceed 30 per cent in any constituency, nobody is elected for that seat. Parliament would get a lot smaller. MPs would become a lot more interested in us and in what we think.

It was soft policing that killed this boy, not being too tough

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail On Sunday column

Suicide is a deep well of grief, reproach and guilt. But it is not an argument.

When someone kills himself, we offer our deepest sympathy to those left behind, as I do to the family of Edward Thornber, the Manchester schoolboy who ended his own life after being caught with cannabis.

But we must not blame ourselves. In the end, those who take this sad step are the only ones responsible for it.

I know that some will accuse me of harshness and cruelty, even for discussing this. Please believe me when I say that this accusation is mistaken.

It is important that we do discuss it, rather than letting the argument be overwhelmed by emotion, however keenly felt.

I am disturbed by the portrayal of this case.

The story, as told in the papers, is full of signposts telling us what we ought to think. We are told the amount of the drug was small. So what? This is a drug usually sold in small quantities.

The suggestion is strongly made – in reports of the inquest – that the young man took his life because the police enforced the law against him. There may be actual direct evidence of this, but I have not seen it reported anywhere.

But what if this is so? Are the authorities to be paralysed into ceasing to enforce the law, by the fear that those they prosecute will commit suicide?

If a person dreads punishment so much, why would he freely commit the crime that leads to it?

If we follow this rule, it will be impossible to prosecute anyone, for fear that the defendant will be so distressed that he takes his life when arrested and charged.

Whatever caused this tragedy, it was not the fault of the police, who caught him, or of the officials who processed the case.

It is the job of the police to enforce the law, and it is the sad truth that Edward Thornber had knowingly broken that law not once but twice.

He knew cannabis was against the law. He had been detected with it once. He should have known that a conviction would threaten his freedom to travel to the US.

It is not the fault of the police that he still chose to take this risk – twice.

Most of us would be prepared to treat a single first offence as a silly mistake. But two?

The only criticism I would make of the police applies to their politically correct, defeatist leadership.

This whole affair was made possible by their unpublicised, sneaky, unofficial decriminalisation of cannabis by shirking their legal duty and not enforcing the law against it.

This policy, never placed before Parliament, gives many young people the impression that our drugs law is wholly dead, when in fact it is only  half dead.

If the law had been strongly and consistently applied during the past 40 years, schoolboys would never take the terrible risk of toying with this dangerous, mind-bending substance, increasingly correlated with severe and irreversible mental illness.

And many lives, not just that of Edward Thornber and his family, would have been  spared tragedies of many different kinds.

Weakness is not the same thing as compassion.

A perfect chance to terminate the Tories

You have to say one thing for the Prime Minister. His strategy of driving away the Tory Party’s traditional supporters is a roaring success.

The other bit of the plan, in which thousands of Guardian readers and Labour voters would flock to Mr Slippery’s rainbow banner, hasn’t quite worked out. It never will.

The Tories are now (in my view rightly) loathed and despised by people from all political viewpoints and all walks of life.

What next? Well, if I may make one suggestion to any remaining Tory diehards who think that this party is worth sticking to, you’re wrong.

What the Eastleigh result shows is not that UKIP is on the way to office.

It shows that (as I have been trying to tell you for about seven years) the Tory Party isn’t. It will never again win a UK Election.

Even if you’re still deluded enough to believe that a Tory government would be any use to you, nothing that you do will change the outcome of the next Election. It’ll either be a Labour administration or a Lib-Lab one, which is the same thing.

This is your chance to sweep away a party whose time has gone, which long ago ceased to be what it claimed to be, which despises its own supporters, which has now added failure to fraud and treachery as its chief characteristics.

Don’t work or vote for it. If you feel for some odd reason that voting is a duty, vote for UKIP. Britain’s Left-wing elite truly fear the destruction of the Tory Party that would follow a thumping defeat of the kind it deserves.

They rightly see its existence as a barrier to the birth of a truly pro-British party, one that could sweep New Labour, the Liberal Democrats and all their works into the sea.

I’ll be amazed if we get another chance of escape as good as this.

Fancy meeting one of these in your garden?

You think urban foxes are a problem? I've been spending a few days in Moscow, Idaho, where huge Canadian timber wolves can be heard howling on snowy nights, and sometimes wander into the suburbs.

You can get into big trouble if you shoot these hungry monsters, madly reintroduced to the area by environmentalists.

I asked a friend what I should do if I met one as I walked down the street. 'Climb a tree and hope for the best,' he growled.

Plans for a full-scale replica of the Titanic, intended to cross the Atlantic all the way without sinking this time (and how can they be so sure?), made me wonder what other appalling disasters mankind has tried to re-enact.

I could only think of the John Major government, which we are now having for the second time around, only without all the good bits.

While we gibber and squawk about a supposed threat from Iran, we foolishly ignore the stealthy, ever-intensifying transformation of Nato member Turkey into a repressive Islamic republic.

Proposed new uniforms for Turkish Airlines female staff, including fez-style hats and vast, enveloping skirts, might alert the slowest mind to what is going on, even the Economist magazine.

Then again, they might not.

I cannot feel anger at Anthony Blair over the Iraq War which he still absurdly defends. I am quite sure he never understood what he was doing. Those who created him out of nothing, and those who were willingly fooled by him, are the ones to blame.

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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.

And They’re Off...

I’m sure my Ironside ancestors, not given to gambling, wouldn’t approve, but Ladbrokes on Monday were offering 33 to 1 on my becoming an MP before or during the next general election. My own odds would be rather longer, but I suppose that it’s nice that they care.

Their press statement wasn’t entirely flattering : ‘Jessica Bridge of Ladbrokes said: "George Galloway has shown recently that anything can happen in politics. Hitchens shouldn't be ruled out as a serious contender.” ’

Anything can happen, eh? Well perhaps not. Anyway, grateful as I am for the encouragement I’ve received from many readers, I’ll now go into a bit more detail.

One, this is not an attempt to found a new party. As I have said a thousand times, real political parties arise when there is a vacancy for them. There is, just now, no such vacancy.

Anything founded when there is no vacancy bears the same relation to a real party as a Hornby trainset does to the old Great Western Railway. You may call it a party, and make appropriate noises as you play with it on the sitting-room floor. But it will not be a party.

What I would hope, at this stage, is that concerned individuals would begin to think about forming small exploratory committees in existing constituencies, under the ‘Justice and Liberty’ motto. They should aim to find out if there is support for a candidate broadly in favour of the simple principles I set out. They should then look for a suitable person, preferably genuinely local prepared to put himself or herself forward, with all the time and commitment that this involves, and prepared to serve in Parliament if actually elected.

The first aim of such committees must be to undermine the duopoly of the dead parties, and to send a repeated signal to Parliament and the media that voters in sizeable numbers are no longer prepared to vote or work for MPs who ignore their most basic concerns.

Only if such a party begins to score sizeable votes, and eventually wins seats, will the next stage begin – the stage in which the duopoly is genuinely challenged.

Several possibilities occur. Here’s an example: If such a committee manages to set itself up, it might then raise funds to organise an open primary election (those involved will need to become experts in electoral law quite quickly, as the duopoly will certainly try to use that law to obstruct them) which would be bound to attract a great deal of publicity and would, if well-organised, help to create a local presence for the candidate eventually chosen, and a legitimacy much greater than that held by the candidates of the duopoly.

I should have thought that anyone interested should aim for a long, slow take-off. The duopoly parties (and the Liberal Democrats as well) must be holed below the waterline before and during the next election (which will probably produce a Lib-Lab coalition, at this rate), so that they can be properly sunk in the next five years or so.  

The main purpose in the early stages will be to attack them for their complacency and their rejection of common sense, as well as their obsession with elite preoccupations, and their scorn for the real difficulties of normal human beings. There will be time enough, once the duopoly have been badly damaged, to begin to formulate a detailed programme. For the moment, it will be simpler, and not dishonest, for a radical movement to define itself by what it is against.

Thanks to the ghastly Fixed-term Parliaments Act, there will be time to take advantage of the increasing problems of the Coalition (though it would be wise to be reasonably well-advanced by the time the Coalition stages its inevitable fake split, something it is likely to do around the end of next year).

As for me, personally, I shall not rush into the first by-election that comes up, but will consider carefully before putting myself forward. Genuinely local candidates with real connections and loyalties will often have a higher claim. I have no illusions about the limits of my appeal. But I think it possible that, despite that, there may now be enough voters who are detached from their old loyalties, and willing to listen to a thoughtful alternative.

I said I'd never stand as an MP... Well, I've changed my mind

This is Peter Hitchens' Mail on Sunday column

If George Galloway can get elected, should I too stand for Parliament? I have resisted the idea for years. I once worked at Westminster and saw the powerlessness of the individual MP against the thuggish pressure of the party whips.

I know that almost all elections in this country are rigged to suit the big parties. I am saddened by the way so many good people honestly imagine that they pick their own MPs at General Elections.

In fact, by clinging to habitual party loyalties, they just confirm the choices already made for them in secret by the party machines.

These machines are ruthlessly centralised nowadays, so that any independent or honest person is sifted out of the selection process. A few get through by accident, but you will have noticed that the experiment with open primaries has not been repeated. We can’t have actual voters playing any real part in picking candidates for safe seats. That would mean revolution.

Then there is the problem of party loyalty itself. I am endlessly baffled by the way in which the patriotic, honest, law-abiding people of this country vote for Labour and Tory candidates who loathe Britain and refuse to stand up for nation, law, liberty or justice. Yet they do. The millions of patriots who voted Tory at the last Election committed an act of self-harming idiocy. To support Mr Cameron’s openly declared Left-liberal project was as unreasonable as punching yourself repeatedly in the face, or burgling your own house.

Yet suddenly, in the past few weeks, I think we can hear the sound of mental chains snapping. The ridiculous and squalid performance of the Government on so many different subjects has – perhaps briefly – woken large numbers of people from their dreamlike doze of dangerous complacency.

They may have vaguely known that government was for sale. But the sight and sound of the unlovely Peter Cruddas openly selling the Prime Minister of this country (and his wife) to anyone with the money to pay suddenly brought home the truth in a way that thousands of words could not have done.

Mr Slippery’s attempt to get himself out of this was even more obviously the act of a fraud who has been found out and knows it. Caught in the searchlight, we saw a naked Public Relations Man, whose first and last resort is trickery and slickness, because that is what he prefers.

First we had a fake panic over petrol, then a fake pretence at being a man of the people by claiming to have stuffed his face with a fictitious Cornish pasty from a shop that had long ceased to exist. What a surprise, then, to find him last week claiming unconvincingly to have a lively Christian faith, while his Home Secretary gets on with snubbing and sidelining genuine Christians in the accursed name of ‘equality and diversity’ – Mr Slippery’s real religion, as we surely must now realise.

Those of us who have known this for ages, who have studied Mr Slippery’s bottomless  cynicism, grotesquely greedy expenses claims and instinctive Leftism on all major issues, have until now been stuck hopelessly at the edge of things, surrounded by deluded optimists who think that Mr Slippery is only held back by Nick Clegg, and is preparing to emerge as his true self at some vague point in the future, round about the same place as the one where parallel lines meet.

Surely this is now unsustainable. As for the other parties, they are the same. I think that is one of the reasons for George Galloway’s victory in Bradford West. The old loyalties are at last dying, the Coalition actually speaks for nobody, there is no proper opposition in Parliament and – instinctively, like a flower seeking light – the electorate is recognising that this has to be put right. Mr Galloway is not, of course, the solution. We must do better than that.

John Maynard Keynes once said: ‘When the facts change, I change my mind.’ And he asked those who criticised him: ‘What do you do, sir?’ Well, I too have changed my mind.

And I think several hundred other people should do the same. In each parliamentary seat, concerned and wise men and women should now turn their minds to finding a candidate who has independence of mind, who is neither bigoted nor politically correct, who loves this country and is proud of its independence and its ancient liberties, who hates crime and injustice, who supports the married family and the rule of law, who understands that education without authority is impossible.

Where by-elections arise, they should be ready to fight them, and when the next General Election comes they should be ready to fight that too, to bypass and overthrow the sordid, discredited tyranny of spivs, placemen and careerists that is now ruining what ought to be one of the greatest civilisations on Earth.

I urge them to do so, under the simple motto of Justice and Liberty, a name that nobody can copyright and a pledge that nobody can fake. And if they do, then I’ll seriously consider putting my name forward.

Palin: Ignorant but profoundly decent

There is an extraordinary new film about Sarah Palin, Game Change, in which that fine actress Julianne Moore – herself a PC Leftist – gives an Oscar-worthy performance as the luckless Vice-Presidential candidate, who was even more ignorant about politics than our own Anthony Blair.

Unintentionally, the makers of the film reveal that Mrs Palin, for all her failings, is in fact a profoundly good person.

The scenes of her meeting Down’s children on her campaign and treating them as they should be treated – as fully human, valuable people rather than as embarrassments who should have been aborted – are inexpressibly moving.
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This weekend thousands of returning British travellers will face appalling passport queues. When will people realise that this is because the EU bans us from having what every truly independent country has – special queues for our own subjects?
France can teach us nothing about 'human rights'

France can teach us nothing about 'human rights'

Beware of praising France’s fake-conservative President Sarkozy (never more fake, and never more conservative than during elections) for deporting Islamists in defiance of the Human Rights Charter.

France can do this because, for all its democratic trappings, it is utterly different from Britain. Like most of our continental neighbours, it has no real tradition of law being above power – the key to civilisation.

Britain by contrast, abides by the laws she makes and the treaties she signs, a principle going back to Magna Carta. That is why there is no compromise available.

If we are to regain our own laws and liberties, we must withdraw from the Human Rights Charter and leave the European Union too. Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights are a far better guarantee.

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Where I stand...

Read Peter Hitchens only in The Mail on Sunday

I am travelling this week and so not able to do a full-length blog, but here, instead of the usual posting, is an expanded question and answer explanation of some of the positions I take, which have attracted controversy.

Q. Why don't you support the Tories?

A. Two reasons. First, they are the Labour Party with one lung, having adopted most of Labour's policies on crime, education, tax, immigration and defence over the past 50 years. Those who doubt this must surely have been given pause for thought by the recent announcements of the Teenage Toffs who now run the party, on taxation (no change), the public sector (a good thing) and education (no grammar schools). Secondly, they are now so weak and decrepit that they are very unlikely to win a general election ever again. The polls are actually showing a very large defection from Labour, much of which will return when Anthony Blair is gone and the anger caused by the Iraq war has been soothed, and an astonishing number of people saying they do not intend to vote at all. The Tories remain pitifully weak in the North of England. Labour might well lose its majority in the next election, but a Tory victory is on the far side of unlikely. They are Labour's dream opposition. As long as they are Labour's main opponent, Labour can feel safe.

Q. But surely your attitude helps Labour stay in power?

A. Absolutely not. Have you noticed how the Tories barely fought the 1997 election and seemed glad to lose it? How they made the feeblest efforts in 2001 and 2005? If you want to accuse anyone of helping Labour in power, direct your attention elsewhere. The Tories, who are supposed to be our weapon against Labour, won't fight or can't fight. It's the people who keep the Useless Tories alive, by still voting for them, who keep Labour in power. I long to see Labour thrown out. In 1999, Andrew Marr, no less, called my book 'The Abolition of Britain', "The most sustained, internally logical and powerful attack on Tony Blair and all his works". I have been, from the start, an opponent and critic of Mr Blair, even when other Conservative commentators (they know who they are) were expressing admiration for him. I warned that New Labour was a menace to liberty and to the constitution long before almost any other commentator. Labour loathe me so much, and have done so for so long, that they sought to exclude me from the press conference at which they launched their 1997 manifesto, closing the doors in my face and claiming the room was 'full' when it manifestly wasn't. Their sustained attempts to prevent me from even questioning Mr Blair at this and other election campaigns are a matter of record. No partisan journalist (which I freely admit to being) has been more dedicated to the defeat and removal of New Labour. And I think you will find that, if you ask them, they will agree.

It is precisely because of this that, after long thought, I now call for the replacement of the Tories. They have failed three times to beat New Labour, mainly because they have no special urge to get rid of a government they broadly approve of, and they also clearly haven't a clue how to do it. This is mainly because they don't really disagree with Labour about anything important any more, and also because a lot of people just can't stand the sight of them. The central philosophy of the Tories is 'office at any price', which is why they so often end up in office, but not in power. They are hopelessly divided about almost everything important, and dare not risk any bold conservative moves in case they split. The most likely result of the next election is a Lib-Lab coalition. Do we really want to waste another four years after that, watching the Tories fail yet again? Labour's one serious electoral defeat since 1997 was in the North-East, its own heartland, when a non-Tory coalition campaigned against John Prescott's plans for a regional assembly. The plan was thrown into the sea. If the Tories had led the campaign against Prescott, Prescott would have won. I think this shows that a new coalition of voters, patriotic, anti-EU, determined to return to the punishment of criminals and to strict border controls, could be created from people currently abandoned by both Tory and Labour parties. It also shows that the Tory label, especially in the North of England, is a disaster. It is no good the Tories pretending not to be the Tories. They are disliked in the North because of their actual record. It would take a generation to overcome this, always assuming the Tories survived long enough to do so.

Q. Why don't you start a new party?

A. First, I'm not a multi-billionaire with money to burn, so I can no more 'start a party' than anyone else. Second, and more important, new parties in this country have only ever succeeded by taking over from failing old parties. If we're to have a proper pro-British party, the Tory Party must be seen to be finished first. All attempts to start one before this happens will fail, as Veritas and UKIP have failed. It is easy enough to set up something called a party, with a head office, a nice name, a manifesto and the rest. But it has no real existence unless it has a large block of seats at Westminster. The only real way of achieving this is to get MPs to defect in substantial numbers from existing parties, which have split or are falling apart. Without that essential Parliamentary muscle, 'new parties' will not get broadcasting time, and they will fall victim to the faction-fighting that always overcomes small organisations where the egos are big and the stakes are small. As can be seen.

Q. It's no use voting 'None of the Above'. It won't change anything.

A. How do you know? It has never been tried. If enough people do it, it could start a landslide that could end in the real reform of this misgoverned country. Has anything else worked since 1997? The truth is that the millions of people who loathe this government have no positive voice. If the Tories win the next election (most unlikely) or improve their current dire position so much that people believe they can recover (possible) then the chances of them ever gaining a positive voice will be much reduced. The left-liberal consensus will control all three major parties, and the possibility of a new alignment in British politics will be gone, probably for good. So the accusation "It won't change anything" would be much better directed against those who insist on continuing to vote for the Tories. It is now clear from Mr Cameron's public statements and actions what sort of party they are. In fact, in the last few weeks he has done a lot to confirm my long-held view of the Tories, to people who might have doubted it until now. Last weekend he even won the approval of Geoff Mulgan, one of Anthony Blair's (and Gordon Brown's) advisers and not in any way a conservative. If they came to office, what would change? They can't even extricate themselves from the pro-Superstate European People's Party. It is unimaginable that they would seek to leave the EU - the only way to end the EU's theft of power from the British Parliament and courts. Schools would stay comprehensive (except for Eton), immigration would stay uncontrolled, crime uncurbed, tax would stay high, public sector spending too. Political Correctness (see Mr Cameron's 'A' list of preferred candidates) would rule.

Q. Why don't you stand for Parliament yourself?

A. I’d love to, but it's an illusion to think you can just stand. Entry into Parliament is controlled by the major parties, not by the voters. The parties pick the candidates from pre-selected lists in closed meetings. We then obediently vote for them, even if they are Alsatians, or nearly Alsatians. We oughtn't to, but we do. In fact, it's the very people who say "If you put up an Alsatian round here with a red/blue rosette, it would win" who then go out and vote for the Alsatian? Except on very rare occasions, such as the Martin Bell episode where opposition parties stood down in his favour, a non-party candidate will get nowhere. And while I suspect my views are held by a fair number of voters, I am quite certain that none of the major parties would let me stand in a winnable seat, and equally certain that I wouldn't want to stand in their name. So I can't stand for Parliament until the existing party system is reformed - by us, voting 'None of the Above'.

Q. Is it true you are a distant admirer of Tony Blair?

A. I have included this question because a contributor to this site accused me of this last week. It just goes to show how people can get the wrong end of the stick. If I could be propelled 93 million miles away from Mr Blair, I would still not be able to admire him. I have nothing but contempt for his government, and believe him to be an empty person without any real opinions or principles. I should have thought that in the last ten years or so, during which I have written many thousands of words abusing, mocking, attacking and generally not being very nice to this man, that this message at least would have got through to everyone. But not, sadly, to all. A useful lesson.

Q.You are often rude about Margaret Thatcher. Surely she was a great Prime Minister?

A. I just don't accept this. Mrs Thatcher, towards the end of her time in office, had realised that the vital, overarching issue in British politics is the European Union. After all, if you don't have national independence, you can't run the country, any more than you can drive a car when someone else has his hands on the steering wheel. Her Bruges speech, and her famous "No! No! No!" outburst against European Union rule are greatly to her credit. They go some way to offsetting her keen support for the Common Market in the 1975 referendum, and her acceptance of the 'Single European Act' with its grave loss of British sovereignty. These public rebellions against the Europhile Tory mainstream also led to the plot to overthrow her, masterminded by the same shadowy Tory Mafia which is now firmly back in control of the Tory Party. She also deserves credit for standing up to the Warsaw Pact and for breaking the power of the unions, though as we now know both these foes were near to collapse anyway, and the Left had other plans for exerting its power in the free countries of the world.

But she failed to fight the Left on the equally important battlefields of education, the family, morality and culture, a terrible waste of a unique and unrepeatable opportunity. She spectacularly failed to reform the BBC in a way that would benefit the country. And she had a thoroughly unconservative contempt for institutions and traditions. She was also far too presidential, and some of her actions opened the way for Labour's much greater attack on the constitution. Her economic policies were far from perfect, and did much unintended damage to British manufacturing industry. And she allowed herself to be browbeaten into joining the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a surrender that did not save her.