Guide Our Endeavour: Do Different

John Gummer may be a Europhile and a Green, but he opposed the Iraq War, used his then column on the Catholic Herald to issue thunderous denunciations of Bush, and is as pro-life and pro-family as anyone can be who was a Minister continuously between 1979 and 1997, the only other such record being that of Ken Clarke. He is the third Suffolk MP to announce his retirement, with a fourth widely rumoured to be on the cusp of doing so before midnight tomorrow, thus guaranteeing local control of the selection process. Or what little remains of such control.

For the high number of Suffolk retirements, plus the goings on in South West Norfolk, provide an opportunity to test out across those two counties candidates, probably billed as Independents this time, who are serious about agriculture, manufacturing, and small business. About national sovereignty, the Union, economic patriotism, local variation, and historical consciousness. About traditional moral and social values, the whole Biblical and Classical patrimony of the West, close-knit communities, law and order, and civil liberties. And about academic standards, all forms of art, mass political participation within a constitutional framework (“King and People” against the Whig magnates), and conservation rather than environmentalism.

Candidates who are serious about a realistic foreign policy, the Commonwealth, the constitutional and other ties among the Realms and Territories having the British monarch as Head of State or other such constitutional links, the status of the English language and the rights of its speakers both throughout the United Kingdom and elsewhere, and the rights of British-descended communities throughout the world. And about the longstanding and significant British ties to the Arab world, support for the Slavs in general and for Russia in particular as the gatekeepers of the Biblical-Classical civilisation, and a natural affinity with Confucian culture.

And candidates who are serious about exactly as much central or local government action as is required by these priorities, with a profound suspicion of an American influence and action characteristically defined against them.

The candidates should not be hard to find. But what of that which may delicately be called the resources? Sir Jeremy Bagge, over to you?