Careful Before Committing

Peter Hitchens writes:

Some things cannot be unsaid. And the dismissal of UKIP voters as ‘fruitcakes’, ‘closet racists’ and ‘clowns’ by several senior Tories is one of them. Because, you see, it is what they really think. For years, the Tory elite were not afraid of their own supporters. They relied upon their pathetic loyalty. They thought they could kick them, ignore them, shove them aside, do anything to them, and they would still carry on raising the money and delivering the votes.

I remember, over various lunch and dinner tables, trying to explain to various Conservative heavyweights that they had deserted the British people over education, crime and disorder, mass immigration and national independence. They were contemptuous, bored, and I could see behind their eyes a lofty disdain that I, apparently a member of the elite classes myself, should have anything to do with what they saw as lumpen rubbish.  If they didn’t actually call me a ‘fascist’ as left-wingers tend to do, they weren’t far off thinking it.

They just wanted to get back to discussing the latest gossip, the latest faction fight. They were professional politicians. The last thing they wanted to discuss was politics. They were surprised that I, a political journalist, was interested in such stuff. Shouldn’t I be concentrating on gossip, like everyone else? It was so wonderful to watch it all blow up in their faces at the weekend, the Kenneth Clarke outburst followed by the visible gulp, and the cold sweat, as they wondered suddenly, ‘what if they actually do take votes from us?’

And now Mr Slippery is bleating that he is sorry: “We need to show respect for people who have taken the choice to support this party and we are going to work really hard to win them back.” Surely nobody will believe this. Respect? Fear, more likely.  What he means is “Blast! We counted on them remaining loyal whatever we did, and now find that we were wrong. They are more intelligent than we gave them credit for, and we have hurt their feelings. But we are not intelligent enough to see that the cat is out of the bag. They know what we’re really like and will never forget it. So we will once again treat them as if they were stupid. We will pretend, really hard, that we actually like them, at least until the votes are counted at the next general election, after which we will go back to doing what we always did.”

Now there are problems here. For me the great paradox is that Nigel Farage  – if he were not in UKIP – would be a perfect embodiment of much I dislike about the Tory Party.  I sometimes wonder how some of the ideas I set out here end up in the UKIP manifesto, given that UKIP’s thinkers (whoever they are) are unlikely to be former members of the Labour Party,  ex-Marxists or former Moscow correspondents , and so couldn’t really have reached the same conclusions that I have done. Of course, the Leader’s musings on the subject of drugs , on BBC Radio 4’s Any Questions on Friday 2^nd April 2010, are a point of absolute disagreement between me and UKIP. And it’s not just about drugs. It sums up the fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals.

Let me refresh memories:

Here’s what Mr Farage said : ‘I have a feeling that prohibition in this whole area simply isn't working. Every year we say that we are going to fight the war on drugs harder than we have fought it the year before. And I think this is one of those areas of life, and, whilst people may find this distasteful, I think we need a proper full Royal Commission on this whole area of drugs to investigate whether perhaps life might be better for millions of people living on council estates that are dominated by the drugs dealers, that are dominated by the crime that surrounds, the money that people raise, to get these drugs, let's find out through a Royal Commission whether perhaps we should decriminalise drugs, whether we should license them, license the users, and sell them at Boots - because frankly if you add up the costs of drugs to society the big problem is the fact that they're criminal and everything that goes with that. And I think there is an argument that says if we decriminalised it we would make the lives of millions of people far better than they are today.’

He went on to add, when challenged by the [then] Labour Cabinet minister Peter Hain: ‘The drugs problem, the cost of policing it, the costs of prisons, gets worse every year.’ When Mr Hain said that he (Mr Farage) was talking about a drugs free-for-all, Mr Farage, in my view not very accurately, retorted that he hadn't said that, but that he had called for a Royal Commission to investigate it. It seems clear from his words that he would hope for that Commission to produce a particular outcome.

He then returned to his argument, saying: ‘If you examine the percentage of crime, the amount of police time, the amount of court time and the amount of people in prison and you add it all up, drugs are costing this country £50 to £70 billion a year - all because it's a criminal activity. And I would argue that when the ban on Mephedrone comes in, the big winners are the drug dealers. The policy's failing. More and more people are taking drugs, the cost goes up every year, we are losing the war on drugs, let's face up to that.’

When the programme's chairman, Jonathan Dimbleby then pointed out that some police officers believed decriminalisation would ease the problem, Mr Farage appeared to me to say ‘absolutely’ in approving tones. A discussion about this, and the full context of the matter, can be found here.

Some of you may have noticed that a growing number of ‘libertarian’ Thatcherite think tanks take the same line, and it’s my view that this view is a completely logical development of Thatcherite liberalism, which substitutes the market for morality and indeed finds it hard to tell the two apart. Would the Lady have been for decriminalisation? I wouldn't put it past her. I believe she favoured abortion [very strongly], and we know she was relaxed about divorce.

I think UKIP is not a conservative formation, but Thatcherism in exile. Alas, the combat over the corpse of British Toryism is largely a fight between Hayekian economic liberals, who have belatedly become hostile to the EU,  and Macmillanite Third Way social democrats who just love the EU. The battle over the EU gives the conflict some apparent edge. But in fact actual conservatism is hardly represented at all, and has little interest in the outcome. Both offer no challenge to the Gramscian movement.

By the way, a recent reader complained that I had linked Gramsci and Roy Jenkins. I hadn’t in fact done so. Jenkins and Crosland revived social democracy after Attleeism ran out of steam. Gramsci reactivated revolutionary socialism after Soviet Leninism failed. Both currents came together in New Labour, whose ‘Eurocommunist’ current merged with the old Jenkins-Crosland tendency. Note how New Labour has gradually become able to deal with Jenkinsite Social Democrat defectors from the 1980s again, though several of them also ended up in the Tory Party, which tells you something, not least that Mr Cameron really is the Heir to Blair. And note how relations between Blair and Roy Jenkins were warm and cordial.

Even so, UKIP, whatever its origins, nature and direction, is a torpedo which has holed the Tories below the waterline, and should with luck finish them off entirely over the next ten years [he said that 10 years ago], when I expect a great realignment of British party politics. Serious conservatives, however, should be careful before committing themselves to anything.