Sunday 17 May 2009

People’s Parties: Freeing The Fatherland

The Tories have not left the European People’s Party. They are not going to. Other than Dan Hannan, who is already out of it, every Tory elected on 4th June will retain membership and at least implicitly tell David Cameron where to go. Not that he will be going anywhere, because the whole thing was always a lie. David Cameron is Michael Heseltine’s Vicar on Earth, his mini-me. Of course he has never had the slightest intention of leaving the EPP. Don’t be silly.

Perhaps in order to remind us all that he did not in fact die a year or so ago, although he might as well have done, David Miliband has been popping up (today in front of trade union banners – I haven’t laughed so much for ages, and I am certain that he hadn’t the faintest idea what they were) to wring his hands over the sorts of people with whom the Tories are planning to associate.

But I would like to know what either he or David Cameron has in common with the EPP’s Gaullists (not Sarkozy, but Gaullists properly so called) or Christian Democrats (not Merkel, but Christian Democrats properly so called). Nothing. More is the pity both economically and in terms of sheer patriotism in the Gaullist case. And more is the pity both economically and socially in the Christian Democratic case.

Like much of the French Socialist Party these days, plenty of Gaullists are Eurosceptical. Deep down, plenty of Christian Democrats and Social Democrats alike probably are, although they may not yet realise it. That trend will become more and more important as the need endlessly to be apologising for the War finally and necessarily ceases to be felt, just when the full negative consequences both of the Euro and of effectively unrestricted immigration become the really big issues in Germany. Furthermore, the EU has always been an eventual threat to the power of the Länder. And politicians do not like threats to their powerbases. They do not like such threats at all.

By contrast, the likes of Latvian SS nostalgists (we approve of SS nostalgists in Bosnia and Kosovo, yet strangely not in Latvia) have no hope of influencing anything except through the EU but every guarantee of doing so under the that aegis, just as Sinn Féin has no hope of influencing anything except pursuant to the Good Friday Agreement or through the EU but every guarantee of doing so under that dual aegis.

Sinn Féin can really imagine nothing worse than a United Ireland, except perhaps the implementation of its own officially Eurosceptical position. And the likes of Latvian SS nostalgists can really imagine nothing worse than the restored “Freedom” of their “Fatherland”.

Making them the perfect partners for the Tories. Or for New Labour, come to that. They can really imagine nothing worse than the restored freedom of our Fatherland, either. Deep down, and indeed not so very deep down, they know that they have no hope of influencing anything, at least in any profound way or for any length of time, except through the EU.

The EU stops Gaullists and French Socialists from being proper Gaullists or proper French Socialists. It stops Christian Democrats and Social Democrats from being proper Christian Democrats or proper Social Democrats. And thus, it stops the people of Britain from asking why we, too, cannot have proper parties like those.

Instead, we have the interchangeable “Centre Left” and “Centre Right”, both of them the same rancid brew of Sixties-to-Eighties poisons: campus Trotskyism at the middle-aged peak of its powers, but with no sign of going away because the Baby Boom is just so enormous.

So, in today’s Observer, we have Nick Cohen, the Curate’s Egg’s Curate’s Egg, berating the Tories for possibly finding themselves on the same benches as former members of the League of Polish Families. They are wrong about the capital punishment enthusiastically favoured by Cohen’s neoconservative heroes (though not by the late, great Polish Pope any more than by his successor), and about their quite charmingly naïve idea that homosexuality can be cured by sending its practitioners to prison of all places.

But Cohen mentions neither of these. They really attract his ire for their belief in Poland as a Catholic country. Obviously the sentiment of those with whom the Tories cannot fraternise in the least, says Cohen. Well, quite. For that sentiment issues in ardent support for welfare provision and for workers’ right, and (ah, here’s the rub) in no less ardent opposition to the Iraq War.

Cohen also concludes by likening David Cameron’s desire to stay out of European affairs with what he says was George W Bush’s initial desire to keep America free of international entanglements. Is that why he had Dick “PNAC” Cheney on his ticket, Nick? Is that why he appointed Donald “PNAC” Rumsfeld to any position at all, never mind the one in question? The neocon lie machine is still spewing it out thick and fast.

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