Sunday 28 April 2013

The Smear Test

From James Delingpole to the National Secular Society, the cry is that the economy in general and the organisation of banking in particular are none of the Archbishop of Canterbury's business. But he is a Member of Parliament and of the Privy Council, unless Delingpole would like that to change, or even if he would.

And if the churches are not going to create things like regional banking, or alternatives to usury, or financial institutions in which retail and investment banking are strictly separated while only provenly prudent persons are allowed anywhere near either, then no one else will. No one else ever has. How, where, when, why and by whom does anyone think that mutual building societies, credit unions, mutual guarantee societies and trustee savings banks were ever founded?

If the national consolidation of that last is to be revived, then I propose that the trustees be appointed by four bodies that recently issued an excoriating collective denunciation of the present Government's un-Christian persecution of the poor: the Church of Scotland (a minister of which founded the first ever trustee savings bank), the Methodist Church, the United Reformed Church, and the Baptist Union.

It never occurs to someone like Delingpole that it was the Conservative Party, and not the Church of England, that moved and changed, destroying the alliance that he recalls as such an unquestioned constant of his childhood and youth. Like so many people, he has managed to convince himself that anarcho-capitalism is Toryism, and to convince himself of that within an inherited intellectual and emotional paradigm in which Toryism is Christianity, or at least C of E Christianity.

In reality, that economic system has no Tory roots whatever, and has a long, continuing history of opposition to any religious involvement, as such, in public policy. An opposition which Delingpole is now voicing as fiercely as, say, Nick Cohen, who needs to answer the questions asked above.

Anarcho-capitalism has an infinitesimal following, actual or potential, in this country. That following is made up only of people at the odder end of the spectrum, to put matters at their very politest. But the Conservative Party no longer has the rather un-Friedmanite monopoly even on that. Another UKIP scandal, or at least embarrassment, now presents itself whichever political website one visits, and on each occasion that one visits any of them.

There is no point crying about "smears". This is called politics, and the UKIP lot wanted it. If they really would rather talk about policy, then they might like to talk about how, on this week's Question Time, Nigel Farage gave up the flat tax, one of the very, very few policies that his party had. Yet again today, Godfrey Bloom took to the airwaves to say that women of child-bearing age ought to be refused employment simply on that basis.

There will be more. There is evermore, and more, and more, and more, and more.

8 comments:

  1. The issue-which Delingpole, like Hitchens, is right about-is that Church is meant to provide leadership, first and foremost, on moral issues not economic or political issues (like the organisation of banks).

    Yet they, and the Archbishop of Canterbury, are soppy, wet liberals with nothing whatsoever to say on abortion, the collapse of marriage, fatherless families.

    Yet they get involved in partisan propaganda about bankers when they know next to nothing about economics (John Redwood should take time to explain to these people how economics works, someday).

    As for UKIP-crying? Au contraire-we're enjoying this. It shows Labour and the Tories regard us as a threat. Otherwise, why send out the attack dogs?

    Its particularly gratifying to see Labour joining in through Duggan today-it shows they think we're as much of a threat as the Tories.

    None of this will work.

    The smear merchants forget that normal people (who've long since deserted their parties for us, and are doing so in bigger numbers each week) don't inhabit the world of Tory spin-doctors, policy wonks, Facebook comments, and Westminster games.

    They care about real issues.

    The Tories are so amateurish they left CCHQ headings on the releases. That was rather funny.

    Who is falling for this?

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  2. The issue-which Delingpole, like Hitchens, is right about-is that Church is meant to provide leadership, first and foremost, on moral issues not economic or political issues

    And there, anyone knows anything about the subject will have stopped reading. Including Peter Hitchens, into whose mouth you are putting words.

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  3. Further to this, the BBC Newspaper Review today says Labour and the Tories combined attacks show how dangerous UKIP has become for both.

    After all, if UKIP were no threeat to Labour, it would not be in their interest to join in the smear campaign-since UKIP would merely help them by leeching votes from the Tories.

    But Labour's decision to send Michael Dugher to help the Tory spin-machine against UKIP today shows they are running scared, because we're stealing their votes, too.

    But Guardian today reports the Tories are in disarray about how to respond to UKIP and Labour want us kept out of debates.

    This is enjoyable-we've got the rats on the run.

    They're getting jittery, as they know nobody likes them any more.

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  4. We shall see very soon. Your only media defence so far is from Nile Gardiner, who proved last year that he knew nothing about his adopted country, and who has been proving for years that he knows nothing about the country that he left.

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  5. Ah, the media who support the two busted flushes, Labour and the Tories, who can't get live without dodgy millionaires and trades unnions, because no normal individual would give them a 2 pence piece.

    The media who support our Big Two enemies whom nobody (except the media) likes any more... and who get less and less votes with each election.

    Labour/Tory spindoctors are left scrapping over a few swing-voters (all politics these days is targeted at about 2% of the elctorate) because most normal people, no longer vote for either of them.

    You have to feel for them-they know the jig is up.

    By the way, sir, did you see that poor useless Labour woman (what was her name again?), the Tory and the Australian Green clown on Question Time, just vanishing into insignificance, before the Farage Show?

    On immigration, and every other topic, it was so obvious (reinforced by the Twitter response afterwards) that only one party rep on that panel was speaking for Britain.

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  6. The Mail's editorial hits the nail today-the voters want policies, not insults.

    As the Mail says, if the mainstream parties had spent half as much "energy and resources" dealing with mass immigration, crime and our human rights debacle as they have smearing UKIP, then normal people would actually vote for them.

    We really love this-it shows the Big Two can't fight us on policy (who agrees with them on human rights or immigration?) they must resort to insult.

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  7. You sound exactly as the Lib Dems used to.

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