Sunday 11 March 2012

Bald Toff Out In The Sun Too Long

If Maurice Glasman had agreed to write that column in The Sun on Sunday, then I'd have been a weekly purchaser. As it is, I have never bought a copy. Today, however, I did see one. Among the columnists is an idiotic bimbo, overexposed in more ways than one.

Thankfully, Toby Young's column is balanced by that of Katie Price. I am not joking. She is clearly one smart cookie. No less clearly, he isn't. His employment goes against everything for which most of the big names from the glory days of The Sun at least affected to stand. Kelvin MacKenzie, Garry Bushell, Richard Littlejohn: none of them really was a barrow boy, nor was MacKenzie even lower-middle-class made good; but they all made a certain statement by at least pretending to be. (Trevor Kavanagh just never bothered, like Princess Margaret.) Exactly the opposite statement is being made in this case.

Today, Young expresses himself in favour of same-sex "marriage" while more than hinting that he intends to vote for UKIP, which, it is true, has been statistically tied with the Lib Dems for well over a year. But UKIP is the only party of any note to have declared itself in favour of the traditional definition of marriage. I know that. You probably knew that. Yet Young (my mother's maiden name, although somehow I doubt that there is any connection) obviously does not know that.

He goes on to fantasise about a Conservative-UKIP Coalition after 2015, with Nigel Farage as Foreign Secretary, and he asserts that a Labour-UKIP Coalition would be impossible. Now, don't get me wrong. UKIP is a ramshackle operation which enjoys a completely undeserved free pass from the media. But at least half of its vote for the European Parliament must be Old Labour or, especially in the West Country, Old Liberal rather than Old Tory. Add together the Conservative and UKIP votes for Strasbourg in London, or the South West, or either Midland region, or any Northern region, or Wales. The result is far too high a figure for the number of "natural Tories" living there. Where are they the rest of the time?

At the last European Elections, UKIP topped the poll in places ranging from Hull, which has returned three Labour MPs out of three since time immemorial, to Cornwall, which returned no Conservatives at three successive General Elections until 2010 and where the Lib Dems were at that point the first past the post in every constituency. While I realise that the money in question is not only private but foreign, yet I feel bound to ask how much of it Young is being paid for this rubbish. Dare one add that The Honourable Toby is independently wealthy? Somehow, I doubt that his taking of the rate for the job is because, like many a very posh hack before him, he is a committed trade unionist. It never ceases to amuse me that his father satirically invented the word "meritocracy".

In point of fact, a coalition between UKIP and Ed Miliband's, or Maurice Glasman's, Labour Party would be perfectly plausible, even if UKIP would not necessarily be the ideal partner for what might politely be termed organisational reasons. Buy British, for example, could only be given effect within the fiercest Euroscepticism of any governing party since Harold Wilson's first occupancy of 10 Downing Street, which was before the United Kingdom had joined the Eurofederalist project. UKIP also has an honourable record of opposition to American domination and to the neoconservative war agenda. Its views on immigration or education could at least expect a hearing from Miliband, and to be taken on board to some extent in the formulation of an eventual policy. There is not the slightest hope of that from the Heir to Blair.

As I confidently suggest that anyone in UKIP would tell you. Or would have told Toby Young. If he could have been bothered to ask. That's called "research", dear. Plus "critical thought". The latter may be a bit beyond you. But you should at least try the former sometime.

7 comments:

  1. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/11/world/middleeast/exodus-from-north-signals-iraqi-christians-decline.html

    Just reporting for your attention. No need to include in comments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. As I confidently suggest that anyone in UKIP would tell you. Or would have told Toby Young. If he could have been bothered to ask. That's called "research", dear. Plus "critical thought". The latter may be a bit beyond you. But you should at least try the former sometime

    Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh the irony David, the irony...

    ReplyDelete
  3. A weekly newspaper or magazine featuring all five of Kammo's victims -- Glasman, Neil Clark, Phillip Blond, John Milbank and you -- would be very welcome indeed in the national debate. Alas that we shall never again read new material by your declared heroes -- Footie, Mr. Alan Watkins (as he himself would have put it), Bron Waugh and the man who wrote as Peter Simple. Imagine a Review written by the four of them and the five of you. Sadly, imagine is all that we can do. We must endure Cameron and we had to endure Blair. Neither of them would have survived six weeks if that publication had been in existence up against them.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Alas, the first four are all dead. But the second five are all very much alive, together with a good many associates...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Those five plus the signatories to the Lanchester Declaration: Rachel Banner, Adam Bartlett, Patrick Carr, Tim Collard, Ann Farmer, Peter Kilfoyle, Mark McNally, Martin Meenagh, Margaret Pattison, Robert Pelik, Richard Robinson.

    Plus the endorsers of Confessions of an Old Labour High Tory, especially Lord Stoddart, Bryan Gould and Mark Stricherz.

    Plus Lord Stoddart's Coalition for Marriage colleague, Lord Brennan.

    Plus Rod Liddle.

    Plus Rod Dreher, Matthew Franklin Cooper, John of Economics is for Donkeys fame, and a sprinkling of your old PostRight brothers.

    Plus one or two Australian heirs of Santamaria, and one or two Canadian Red Tories.

    It would be like Telegraph Blogs, which Farmer, Meenagh, Stricherz, Brennan and at least some of the Americans, with the Australians and maybe a Canadian or two, would all be on if Thompson were remotely what he pretends to be.

    It would be like Telegraph Blogs, except worth reading. Apart from Hannan, what is the point of it? Everyone could see the point of this, though.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Ed West is good. Tellingly, Peter Oborne is hardly ever allowed up. And several others are certainly worth reading. Several aren't, of course. But several are.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Andrew Cusack, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, your old PostRight editor Freddy Gray, his mentor Stuart Reid, Neil Clark's right-wing alter ego John Laughland.

    It's all a bit like Fantasy Football League. But imagine if it were real. Speccie/Staggers format, 20 or 30 columns a week, Red Tory and Blue Labour, paleocon and paleo-Labour, from three continents or more but with a firm focus on Britain. It would be electrifying.

    ReplyDelete