Well, are we?

Alas, this didn't make it into the Church Times, which has been discussing the absolute
incompatibility between a pluralist and a secular state, and the necessarily totalitarain character of the latter:

The Reverend Giles Walter should not be surprised that his experiences in the old Soviet Union are now mirrored in today's Britain.There is a widespread notion that the socially conservative, Keynsian, Beveridgite, patriotic and largely church-based Labour Movement drove out the Communists and Trotskyists who had infiltrated the unions and the Constituency Labour Parties respectively. But this is in fact the opposite of the case: Tony Blair is surrounded by utterly unrepentant old Communists and Trotskyists from the 1970s and 1980s. Likewise George Bush is also surrounded by those in the latter category, as Bill Clinton was, and as (God forbid!) another President Clinton would be.

Furthermore, all three British parties (what little remains of them) are in the grip of that Washington Beltway junta's neoconservatism, which is in fact utter Marxism, with only the ending changed so that the bourgeoisie wins. It remains Marxist in its dialectical materialism, Leninist in its vanguard elitism and in its use of various (not least, religious) interests as "Useful Idiots", Trotskyist in its entryism and in its belief in the permanent revolution, and yet also Stalinist in its desire to create the dictatorship of the victorious class in a superstate from which to export it (including by force of arms) throughout the world while vanguard elites owe allegiance to that superstate rather than to their own countries. The London-based vanguard elite already controls both main parties, and is on the brink of taking full control of the third party.

So those parties now could not be further removed from their own socially conservative, economically populist, and patriotic roots in orthodox Christianity, even though this (although the Christian character has become somewhat obscured in the popular mind) remains mainstream opinion in this country, and especially in the areas where General Elections are won and lost: Scotland, Wales, the North and the Midlands, in each of which the Conservatives lost scores of seats to Labour in 1997 and show no sign of ever regaining office by regaining them; and the West Country, where the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats fight for the difference between a majority government and a hung Parliament at every Election.

Consequently, the parties now have almost no members or money, and take pitiful, yet still decreasing, shares of the eligible vote. By the time of the 2013 Election, they simply will not exist.

But someone is going to have to contest elections 10, 20, 30 or 40 years from now. Or are we just going to leave that to the Trots, the Islamists and the BNP?

Well, are we?