Thirty years ago, this country had a noisy Hard
Left, including a very noisy Loony Left. That was given acres of media space
from which to promote policies far outside the mainstream, often including
submission to the dominating influence of a foreign power, which may or may not
have had any real desire to dominate the United Kingdom, but that is not quite
the point.
Today, this country has a noisy Hard Right,
including a very noisy Loony Right. That is given acres of media space from
which to promote policies far outside the mainstream, such as the dismantlement
of all public provision and the repeal of all social protection, and including
submission to the dominating influence of foreign powers, or arguably of a
single foreign power based on two continents.
The Soviet Union no longer exists. Even overt
Maoists cannot, on their own principles, advocate domination by China as she is
now. Or by Juchist North Korea, even had she the slightest aspiration to such a
thing. Similarly, Cuba, or the present regime in Venezuela, or whatever, has no
interest in controlling anything in Britain. By very stark contrast indeed, the
American and Israeli Far Rights are threats of the utmost gravity, far in
excess of any that the USSR ever posed, as Enoch Powell pointed out.
The American end of that operation is not even in
government in its own country. The whole thing is closely allied to all manner
of unsavoury regimes in the Gulf, in Central Asia, in Sri Lanka and elsewhere,
as well as to violent Hindu nationalism in India. One of its most frightening
features is its manifest promiscuity, its inherent moral indifference.
Yet these opinions are routinely broadcast as if
they were uncontentious and commonsensical. As are the other views held by
those same ubiquitous people: the abolition of the minimum wage, the
dismantlement of the National Health Service, and so on. That latter is
currently being pursued by the Coalition, with dangerous signs that Blairite
influence might still be preventing Labour from opposing it properly, a very
good indication of the need for a permanent body of friendly but critical MPs
from within the Labour Movement but outside the Labour Party.
Only in England is the NHS being dismantled. On
this as on so many issues, people in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are
still permitted to live in a recognisably British country. Given the option, so
would people in England. What is happening to our Health Service was not in the
Conservative or the Liberal Democrat manifesto in 2010. Had it been in the
Conservative one, then there would have been a Labour overall majority.
Therefore, Labour ought to demand an
England-wide, England-only referendum on the Coalition’s plans for the NHS. Not
in 2017, but this year, and as early as possible this year. This is, in point
of fact, about the constitutional status and the fundamental identity of
England as a British country.
The easily predictable result would properly
banish once and for all the Loony Right. With its immediate access to both
parts of the present Government. And with its highly favoured access to Any
Questions, Question Time, Newsnight, the Today
programme, The Daily Politics, and so on.
Those might then have to give space to some authentically
British voices, of One Nation politics, with an equal emphasis on the One and
on the Nation, and which not only understood that the two were inseparable (the
Loony Right fully understands that, just as the Loony Left did), but celebrated
each precisely by reference to its inseparability from the other.
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