No one would vote for a heavily publicised Blairite breakaway party, while a heavily publicised party of the supposedly populist Right has in fact managed all of one seat at a General Election, filled by a man who disagrees with that party about pretty much anything.
David Cameron was the reason why probably half of the current members of the Conservative Party, and certainly three quarters of those aged under 30, ever joined it, or in most cases ever even considered voting for it.
Same-sex marriage, especially, but really the whole agenda and the man himself, were why they felt able to join, and why enough people felt permitted to vote for that party as to give it its first overall majority in a generation.
It is purely and simply a fact that any alternative right-wing position has no popular following. Unlike, very obviously, David Cameron. Or Jeremy Corbyn.
For, just as it is Corbyn, and not Liz Kendall or Dan Hodges or whoever, who is the Anti-Cameron, so it is Cameron, and not Nigel Farage or Peter Hitchens or whoever, who is the Anti-Corbyn.
Farage agrees with Corbyn about quite a lot, while Hitchens agrees with Corbyn about a truly enormous amount. But then, Kendall agrees with Cameron about quite a lot, while Hodges agrees with Cameron about more or less everything.
The admittedly small minority of Conservative MPs that is opposed to European federalism and to military interventionism is now saying openly how much it is looking forward to working with Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition.
Effectively, those MPs (the only ones who agree with Hitchens about anything; not much, but at least anything) already accept Corbyn's Leadership, and thus that of his party under him. This is even before he has won.
Cameron's overall majority is 12.
The admittedly small minority of Conservative MPs that is opposed to European federalism and to military interventionism is now saying openly how much it is looking forward to working with Corbyn as Leader of the Opposition.
Effectively, those MPs (the only ones who agree with Hitchens about anything; not much, but at least anything) already accept Corbyn's Leadership, and thus that of his party under him. This is even before he has won.
Cameron's overall majority is 12.
Cameronism and Corbynism are the twin poles of British politics. There is no Third Way.
while a heavily publicised party of the supposedly populist Right has in fact managed all of one seat at a General Election""
ReplyDeleteIt won four million votes, which it's share of seats doesn't reflect. I can't think of any party of the "populist Left" that managed a fraction of that many votes, and thus has a fraction of that much support. Can you?
Nor did any party of "the populist Left" come anywhere in the election before that one, which UKIP won.
""any alternative right-wing position has no popular following.""
Disproved by the preceding facts.
No "alternative" left-wing position" to the Labour Party has ever managed four million votes at a General Election or indeed seven million at a European election.
Lynton Crosby, archictect of that Tory victory (and inded of B Tony Abbott's) says that he won it by pretending the Tories were Rightwing, and his own polls showed that was the popular position.
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6017/lynton_crosby_s_poll_is_a_headache_for_cameron
Yes, dear.
DeleteAnd it's only Monday.
David Owen has got better in recent years but the SDP ended up accepting the leadership of Thatcher and therefore of Thatcher's party. Any Blairite breakaway during the Heir to Blair's premiership would be like that from the start, like the Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang.
ReplyDeleteBut without 53,000 members or 30 per cent of the seats.
DeleteStill, providing Cameron with his majority against those of his own MPs who voted with and under Corbyn against wars, against the EU and thus its austerity programmes, against the erosion of civil liberties, and so on.
The variously Christian Democratic, Liberal, Nationalist and Agrarian parties in the East German Bloc system did used to do their own think occasionally. Not very often, but once in a while.
Whereas there would be no chance of that from the Blairite satellites of Cameron.
Hitchens wasted alot of his youth on Corbyn's side; he recalls life in the mad world from which Corbyn hails here.
ReplyDeletePeter Hitchens @ClarkeMicah Aug 20Peter Hitchens on the weird world in which Left-wingers live: http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2015/08/yes-east-germany-was-terrible-but-was-it-a-joke-or-a-warning-.html …
That was a long time ago. The home lives of UKIP activist were shown on television in the run-up to this year's recent General Election. Oh, dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.
DeleteStill, they turned out to be harmless when the seats were added up, and we shall never hear of them again.
Nor from their type of Tory, who saw a Leader whom they truly despised win their party's first overall majority in 23 years.
They and the Kippers alike are now eking out their last days polishing their collections of Royal commemorative crockery, or dusting the Regimental Cap Badges of the British Army that is the only book in any of their houses.
It's all fun, but can Corbyn really "change the weather"?
ReplyDeleteOn the scale of Asquith; Attlee; or Thatcher? "England is a hard country to move, Mr Hyndman, a very hard country indeed" (Disraeli to the proto-Corbyn).
No, it isn't. England is a very, very, easy country to move. The thing is that the English never notice that the movement is happening. That is what makes it so easy.
Delete