Getting It Right

John Laughland has an article in this week's Spectator, which will go online a week after publication, about the disintegration of the mainstream French Right. It includes the following wonderful passage:

"Amid all this chaos, the ban on the burqa, which came into force on Monday, and which have been heavily reported in the British media but not in the French, is an irrelevance. The protests against the law have amounted to two women being photographed by 50 journalists in front of Notre Dame. There is a consensus in France behind the country’s century-old laws on secularism. There is also a consensus that Britain has been idiotic to allow multiculturalism to get so far out of control that Monday’s demonstration by veiled women outside the French embassy in London, demanding sharia law for France, was bigger than the one in Paris demanding the right to dress up in a sheet."

But the real message is that no one in France is able to answer Marine Le Pen's observation that "globalisation means getting slaves to make things abroad to sell to unemployed people here". The diagnosis is spot on, but no one can come up with a healthy alternative to her toxic prescription, even though such alternatives certainly do exist. In Britain, meanwhile, no one can even articulate the diagnosis. However, that the Spectator is giving room to Dr Laughland, among other proper conservatives, is a step in the right direction.

And note that even if Le Pen goes through to the second round, she stands absolutely no realistic chance of winning it. Think of this as an AV election, since it amounts to the same thing, only more expensive and time-consuming. The BNP or whatever might win a First Past The Post election somewhere or other. But never in a million years could it win an AV one. Vote Yes.