Who Will Do So Now?

Either it is late, or my subscription has lapsed; paperwork is all over the place at the moment, for reasons that will soon enough become clear. Anyway, the following may or may not appear in this week’s New Statesman:

Mehdi Hasan makes his point powerfully, even if much of what he says is really about class rather than about race. However, the real dearth is of a diversity of political affiliation and opinion, not the same thing as each other. Where are the Lib Dems, a party of government? Where are the Greens, with representation in both Houses of Parliament? Where are the supporters of UKIP, with seats in the Lords and now consistently tying with the Lib Dems in the polls?

Many Tories have, to say the least, profound reservations about consumerism, globalisation, American hegemony, Zionism, military-industrial complexes, and wars to make the world anew in accordance with some blueprint devised by New York intellectuals of Trotskyist provenance. But not in the papers. Labour’s electoral base, or what was that base before it was largely alienated into abstention, includes significant strands of patriotism, moral and social conservatism, and resistance to hysteria about climate change. But not in the papers. It is no wonder that Liberals in the country at large oppose a legislative body which meets in secret and publishes no Official Report, oppose the Common Agricultural and Fisheries Policies, and oppose subjugation to the legislative will of those who still defend the Soviet Union and of those who still defend that era’s Far Right regimes in Southern Africa and Latin America. But not in the papers.

Pro-Commonwealth Keynesians have been the most consistent opponents of European federalism for 60 years. But there was a media blackout when they banded together with others, including Liberals, at the last European Elections to point out that EU directives were forcing the privatisation of our public services, that European Court rulings were oppressing trade unions and encouraging social dumping, and that the EU was forcing grossly iniquitous trade deals on developing countries.

One could go on, especially about the lack of voices still speaking from outside London and the South East, and the lack of voices from abroad other than from the United States. Mr Hasan mocks Rod Liddle, but two years ago it looked as if he might have become Editor of The Independent and rectified these outrageous omissions. Who will do so now?