Thursday 3 December 2009

The Return Of Class War?

The Tories only won Crewe & Nantwich (as the SNP only won Glasgow East) because of Catholic anger at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill. Cameron has not exactly shored up that electorate since.

Bevan rejected class war, calling instead for "a platform broad enough for all to stand upon" which "makes war upon a system, not upon a class". But Blair and Thatcher were class warriors, obsessively hostile both to proper toffs and to the lower orders.

And it is Cameron who is a class war politician today, regularly making snide remarks on the subject and packing safe seats with people whose only qualification (if it can be so described) is that they share his background, the interest in which his tax policy is also explicitly organised.

23 comments:

  1. "The Tories only won Crewe & Nantwich (as the SNP only won Glasgow East) because of Catholic anger at the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill."

    Interesting claim. Don't you think the row over the 10p tax rate might have had something to do with it, along with the government's general unpopularity at that point?

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  2. No. It was this, and this alone. Look at where it happened, and where it didn't.

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  3. Keep telling yourselves that.

    You have already lost this Election. You may as well lose it properly.

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  4. Consett Catholic3 December 2009 at 13:52

    Don't be silly David, there are no social conservatives in Britain and there is no Catholic vote.

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  5. Well, of course not...

    The Tories would rather lose (including lose Crewe & Nantwich) than win with such votes. So let them.

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  6. They are going to see exactly what that vote can do when the result comes in from here in NW Durham.

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  7. Proper theologian3 December 2009 at 15:53

    "No. It was this, and this alone. Look at where it happened, and where it didn't"

    Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc

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  8. How silly of me. Nothing causes election results. Perish the thought.

    It is fascinating how many very, er, "angry" comments I have had to reject on this one. You really, really, REALLY don't want this to be the case. And people only get like that when they know that it is.

    But if this is the case - and it is - then you can kiss goodbye, certainly to an overall majority, and probably even to being the largest party in the coming hung Parliament, under a Leader whom it is now too late to ditch.

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  9. Veteran Lindsay-Watcher3 December 2009 at 16:04

    In the last 24 hours you have posted comments saying this on several of the most important right wing blogs, and also saying that support for the City is neither conservative nor popular. Both resonate with the people who read them rather than the people who write them. No wonder the Tory Boys have noticed and no wonder they are angry. Like many proper Tories, I am rooting for you in North West Durham. You are the last hope of getting one of us into the Commons. Deep down we always knew that the rescue mission would have to come out of the Labour movement. Now it has and it's name is David Lindsay.

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  10. Newer Lindsay-Watcher3 December 2009 at 16:16

    He has form. His Old Right critique of Thatcherism has become a blogosphere commonplace and several MSM contributors have shown clear signs of its influence.

    Part of the phrasing of Peter Hitchens's lament in The Broken Compass for the old Labour right wing, which he had never before put into print in exactly those terms, is vintage Lindsay, specifically the stuff about Catholic Labour MPs who opposed abortion and divorce.

    The idea that half of Ukip's vote is Labour or Liberal not Tory is gaining currency. So is the one that the BNP's votes comes only from the Tories, but the ones in Labour areas who think of themselves as better than their neighbours. Not ,ong ago at all, only Lindsay was saying these things. But he was saying them all over the place, over and over again. Persistence pays.

    Lindsay blogs a hell of a lot on a hell of a lot of sites. He has certain themes and he propagates them remorselessly. If he wants to put it out there that the Tories only won Crewe thank to conservative Catholics and will lose the Election without them then he will, and before you know it people will be repeating it all over the Internet if not elsewhere. So it will become a sort of truth even if it has no basis in fact.

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  11. There was going to be a hing Parliament anyawy but the stupid media have been predicting a Cameron landslide. David and the rest of the Catholic Boys' Club are going to blame the non-landslide on social liberalism and not appealing to Catholics in the North and the Midlands. David has a prticular scorn even by his own standards for George Osborne. Expect his support for keeping the present abortion limit and giving lesbian couples the right to be named on birth certificates to be used a lot by David and friends after the Election: "without him, you'd have won the Election."

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  12. Most socially conservative Catholics are economic Leftists and practical pacifists. It's all part of the plan. Lindsay is a mate of Phillip Blond's you know. It's all part of the plan.

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  13. I'm not asure whether I'm more distrubed by the fact that David is posting some of this guff under different people's names on this thread (hello veteran Lindsay watcher and newer Lindsay watcher - good to know your admiration of David extends to writing just like him too) or that there are actually people out there who believe this and are serious about posting it.

    Of course, there is a third alternative - that people are just winding David up. To which I say, bravo.

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  14. I know exactly who those two both are, and I can assure you that they are entirely in earnest. Not sure about the two Anonymouses, though. Could be anyone.

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  15. Bloody hell Anon and Anon, you're right. The Tories may win the Midlands but they'll stall in the North West. Full of Catholics, blah, blah, blah. If they want to win next time then they'll have to become anti-choice, anti-gay Socialist pacifists who give large amounts of taxapayers' money to Catholic schools, blah, blah, blah. So will Labour if they want to keep the Tories out, blah, blah, blah. The stalling here would have happened anyway and the likes of Lindsay have seen their chance.

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  16. Principles and policies in line with those of the electorate? Imagine!

    Still, nice to see people cottoning on: First Past The Post gives clout to areas where there are lots of economically social democratic, morally and socially conservative foreign policy realists. Who should use it.

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  17. I thought you didn't approve of FPTP?

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  18. But while it's there.

    Yes, I'd rather have a system in which real clout could be guaranteed to those who always stood explicitly as our people.

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  19. Who are "our people"? Catholics?

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  20. Not necessarily at all.

    But Catholics - serious, orthodox Catyholics - would certainly be included. Not something that can be said about any of three at the moment.

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  21. Oh its all coming out now. Like your mates the Catholic paleocons and conservative Dems, the Bob Santamaria flame keepers in Australia, and the anti-Lisbon types from Bavaria to the Vendee, you are all for national sovereignty except when you are all for rule by a foreign power, the Pope.

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  22. If the Pope's aspiration is to rule America, Australia, France (even the Vendee) or Germany (even Bavaria, where he is anything but foreign), then he is not making much of an effort to realise it.

    He is, however, making a great deal of effort to convey the pro-life, pro-family, pro-worker and anti-war position in all its catholicity.

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