I am not saying that Rory Stewart will be a bad Chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee.
I am saying that the Chairmen of Select Committees, although they ought to be elected by the whole House, ought always to come from the Opposition.
In this case, it ought to have been one of those Labour MPs who voted against the war in Libya.
If there was also a sense that it needed to be an MP from the Far North of England, then the job ought to have gone to Ronnie Campbell.
He has a son in the Royal Marines, who has served both in Afghanistan and in Iraq. Chickenhawks, take note.
Neither of Tony Blair's elder sons served in any of his many wars, or in any of those which he has pressed upon us since leaving office.
What's the press coverage of the One Nation Society been like?
ReplyDeletePeter oborne is excellent today on why the entire British political system is in crisis-and is now selling itself to the highest bidder.
ReplyDeleteAs he rightly says-this is typified by Miliband parachuting in an American to run his strategy like a troubled multinational hiring a management consultant to take over the running of a failing foreign subsidiary.
UKIP, he says, are alone in refusing to hand the party to PR managers and spin-doctors, which is why Tory/Labour attacks on its MEP's unguarded remarks (like Roger Helmer's comments on homosexuality) only help UKIP's poll ratings;people love them precisely because they are politically incorrect-so utterly different to the stage-managed anesthetized blandness of the PR consultant-run mainstream parties
Pint-in-hand Nigel Farage, with no spindoctors or management consultants, is the only party leader who could have dared make those comments about how it feels to share a train carriage with your fellow British citizens and hardly hear a word of English being spoken.
Every normal person agrees.
But no party leader would dare say it. That's why we love UKIP.
Anonymous 1: exactly as anyone would have expected. What an extraordinary question.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous 2: bless. Whoever you are, you don't love UKIP enough to give it a seat in Parliament. Let us pass over the suggestion that UKIP's supporters are "normal".
On topic, please.
It's supporters are normal working class people according to poll analysis. It is failing to attract rich voters, Peter Kellner says. All it's voters are typically financially insecure and socially conservative; that's the profile that emerges.
ReplyDeleteOborne is also brilliant in identifying Miliband's decision to rule out an EU referendum as the moment he became just another member of the aloof Establishment.
I have a new respect for Oborne's analysis.
Progressonline notes correctly that UKIP speaks for those dissatisfied with diversity, multiculturalism, and liberalism.
ReplyDeleteThe main parties speak for "those proud of our diverse multicultural society".
I'm glad Peter Oborne is recognising Peter a Hitchens analysis of our failed political system and the EU Establishment that runs it.
http://www.progressonline.org.uk/2014/05/12/time-for-the-liberal-fightback/
The best for which UKIP can hope next year is half of its Euro turnout next week.
ReplyDeleteThat is around one sixth of the Euro turnout, a pitiful share of the General Election turnout, and nowhere near enough to be the First Past The Post anywhere, at which point UKIP will be over.
But then, pitiful is how UKIP's supporters define themselves. It has been a very long time since Thatcherism.
Although they still would not thank you for calling them working-class.
And we shall see who and what they are when we see the breakdown of votes by constituency and ward.
I am not putting up anything else off-topic.
Ukip want to strip us plebs of the vote: http://www.politics.co.uk/news/2014/05/13/strip-public-of-the-vote-says-ukip-candidate
ReplyDeleteRonnie Campbell is another of those MPs never allowed on television. You should do more to chase that one up, you are really on to something there.
Another thing, quickly: Peter Hitchens makes a point of not telling his readers to vote Ukip, Peter Oborne is scathing about how corrupt Ukip are.
ReplyDeleteI really must commend Peter Oborne's analysis today. Absolutely brilliant.
ReplyDeleteIt's spot on. Could have been written by Peter Hitchens.
Peter Oborne 15 May 2014; (""British politics is broken - and only Nigel Farage is profiting") writes;
"" it looks possible that next week Nigel Farage will come top in the national vote. This will be a truly astounding achievement.... No political party in modern history – not even Neil Kinnock’s Labour in 1987 – has come under such sustained attack and misrepresentation. Mr Kinnock at least had The Guardian and the Daily Mirror; Mr Farage cannot boast a single national title, and several papers are running vendettas against him. Mr Kinnock was treated reasonably fairly by the broadcast media. This is not the case with Mr Farage: consider the lacerating contempt shown towards him by Channel 4 News and its chief presenter, Jon Snow. Nick Robinson, the BBC’s political editor, has also abandoned his usual fairness when dealing with the party."
I couldn't agree more. No party has ever commanded such widespread Establishment hatred-yet topped a national poll.
On Ed Miliband's plummeting poll ratings Oborne writes;
""David Axelrod's client Ed Miliband... made a very serious mistake three months ago when he allied himself with the political and corporate establishment and ruled out a referendum on Europe.""
Indeed.
It's to us to make that "political and corporate Establishment" pay for it-on May 22nd-and every time we get the chance.
And then Farage will never be heard of again.
ReplyDeleteThe only polling question that matters is how people are going to vote in a General Election. On that one, Labour has been home and dry for years.
Peter Hitchens despises Ukip. But Peter Oborne despises them even more. This is Ukip's swansong. No Commons seats next year and that will be the end of it. It could easily collapse in the meantime.
ReplyDelete