For all the other gifts of Peter Hitchens, he is no soothsayer where the political parties are concerned.
20 years ago, he joined the Blairites in telling us that the Conservative Party would be dead 20 years thence. It now enjoys an overall majority in the House of Commons.
10 years ago, he joined the Cameroons in telling us that the Labour Party would be dead 10 years thence. It is now the largest political party in Europe.
Through much of the last Parliament, he told us that the Liberal Democrats would withdraw from the Coalition, go into an arithmetically impossible one with Labour, and thus make Vince Cable Deputy Prime Minister.
"The old system of volunteer workers and mass membership parties has almost completely died," he tells us even now, a week after precisely that system had canvassed every voter, every single one, in Stoke Central, with the desired result.
His story that Gerald Kaufman and the Labour Right had wanted to lose the Darlington by-election of 1983 is hardly news, either. It has been universally known since 1983.
He also has Walter Mitty fantasies about the attitude of the British trade union movement to Solidarity in Poland, and about why Margaret Thatcher never outlawed the trade union political levy, both of which seem to indicate that he regards himself as the pivotal figure in post-War British history.
"The old system of volunteer workers and mass membership parties has almost completely died," he tells us even now, a week after precisely that system had canvassed every voter, every single one, in Stoke Central, with the desired result.
His story that Gerald Kaufman and the Labour Right had wanted to lose the Darlington by-election of 1983 is hardly news, either. It has been universally known since 1983.
He also has Walter Mitty fantasies about the attitude of the British trade union movement to Solidarity in Poland, and about why Margaret Thatcher never outlawed the trade union political levy, both of which seem to indicate that he regards himself as the pivotal figure in post-War British history.
And much else besides.
Hitchens's theory about the Coalition bespoke an almost perfect ignorance of the character of all three parties.
But his bizarre suggestion of an alliance between Labour and, of all things, the SNP goes far beyond that.
He knows literally nothing, not the first thing, about either of them. Nor, not unconnectedly, about the policy programme that is currently being implemented at Holyrood.
Labour and the SNP? I ask you!
Are you barred from joining Labour? Is Fleming still hampering your progress?
ReplyDeleteYes. But no. I have no desire to be a member of the Labour Party.
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