No, of course no one ever asks John Bercow about his Hang Mandela days.
Just as they never ask John Reid or Peter Mandelson about the Communist Party, in those days the paid agents of an enemy power. Just as they never ask Alistair Darling about the International Marxist Group. Just as they never ask Stephen Byers or Alan “Haze of Dope” Milburn about Trotskyism. Just as they never ask Charles Clarke about Labour’s Soviet fellow-travelling faction and its control of the NUS not only during his presidency, but also during (among other people’s) Jack Straw’s. Just as they never ask Harriet Harman about the Paedophile Information Exchange and Paedophile Action for Liberation.
And so on, and on, and on.
The “moderate”, “mainstream”, “Centre Left” New Labour was, and is, riddled with this sort of thing, entirely unrecanted, and with only the tactics (if anything) changed.
Likewise, the “moderate”, “mainstream”, “Centre Right” Cameroons are riddled with old cheerleaders for, and fund-takers from, the Boer Republic set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown. Circles in which it was also de rigeur to demand the dismantlement of the public services, the forced abortion and sterilisation of ethnic minorities and the working class, the legalisation of all drugs, and the abolition of marriage, public holidays, any minimum age of consent, and much else besides.
(Quite what would have happened to them if they had ever moved to South Africa or, say, Chile with views like that? This rather amusing question can also be asked of the enemies of uniformed, row-seated, teacher-led, rigorously examined schooling: what would have happened to you if you had ever moved to the Soviet Union?)
Once again, entirely unrecanted.
And once again, with only the tactics (if anything) changed.
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I'm especially surprised that Peter Hitchens never seems to raise this issue - you'd have thought that mocking politicians' earlier Trotskyite delusions would be meat and drink to him.
ReplyDeleteAs he has explained many times in his column and on his blog, and as he explains at some length in his latest book, he never misses an opportunity to say sorry and no one can be in any doubt that he has changed his mind, whereas they have never taken any opportunity to say sorry and no one can be in any doubt that their views have not changed in the least.
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