Sinking To Their Standards

Peter Hitchens does himself no credit with this:

Of course France would never in a thousand years have considered giving a British firm the contract to make its medals. Quite right, too. 

The reason why we have even discussed awarding such a contract to the French is that we believe, as they do not, in the absolute rule of law – the thing which distinguishes us from all the rest of Europe. 

So when we sign an agreement saying our markets are open, we mean it. And when they sign it, they don’t. The only way we would ever prosper in the EU is if we sank to their standards.

Especially since he also writes this:

You may wonder what happened to the three people arrested and held overnight for daring to protest at last October’s visit by the president of China, that callous, touchy and aggressive despotism.

One of them was barged and grabbed by a helmeted police heavy. All, disgracefully, had their homes searched. 

All were, in the end, released without charge. In that case, how can this heavy-handed treatment possibly be justified?

It cannot. But then, we simply do not have any belief in "the absolute rule of law" in this country, unless by that is meant the absolute permission of its forces to behave in ways such as this.

Think of the "welcome to our world" reaction that greeted complaints about what was, comparatively speaking, the very light policing of the Countryside March.

No one has ever died as a result of that event. Whereas people are still dying of injuries sustained from the Police, or from people dressed up as the Police, during the Miners' Strike, or at Wapping, to name but two.

Egged on by the Butcher of Wapping, 96 class and regional enemies of the Prime Minister of the day died at the hands of the Police in a single afternoon at Hillsborough.

Beyond the above definition, the only Rule of Law in this country has been, and remains, for the kind of people who organised the Countryside March, who were extremely unrepresentative of the countryside in general.

They were protesting against a law that was enacted, but which has never been enforced, with the Police routinely acting instead as escorts to the flagrantly criminal breach of it.

Plus for their faintly wayward, but always indulged, offspring. For example, the student wing, if there can be any other, of what is now the Socialist Workers' Party.

In any case, the only law requiring that medals now be made in France if that happened to be cheaper, is the law of those to whom Hitchens has suddenly chosen to make today's vulgar appeal, which is so very far beneath him.

His column was spiked for weeks after the General Election, and Dan Hodges arrives on the Mail on Sunday next week. Who would not flee the wreck of the Telegraph?

As to the Mail on Sunday, the paper is changing. And the worry is palpable.