Civilised Measures

He holds a foreign policy position that is held in the House of Commons only by the Corbynite Left on a good day such as it has less and less often these days. Both his steadfastness, and the growth of their bad days, are because, unlike far too many of them, Peter Hitchens is one of us:

"I am a social conservative. I therefore support any civilised measures which sustain the happiness and security of the married family. A good wage for honest work, secure employment, safe and healthy housing and universal health provision all seem to me to work towards this end."

"I am a liberal on nothing," George Galloway recently told his seven-figure, twice-weekly global television audience, soon after having tweeted:

"The “Lifestyle-Leftism” (HT @SWagenknecht) of much, indeed most, of the “Left” leaves me (and most people) cold. My lifestyle is not theirs. My views on marriage, family, drugs, alcohol, abortion, euthanasia, public licentiousness, transmania, etc, are not theirs. I’m interested only in changing the lot of the workers and the poor in all countries. Their wealth and power. Not in their colour, creed, or sexual orientation and tastes. Those things belong in the realm of the personal. I’m interested in the public realm. In the transfer of wealth and power in favour of working people and their families. That’s what I call socialism. And it’s why I have less in common with the “Left” than I have ever had after more than 50 years on the left."

Well, yes, although some of us are a bit more convinced that the personal is political. For example, "Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation."

So wrote Professor John Milbank, a sobering 11 years ago. We are all Postliberals now. Even my onetime Durham Union Society sparring partner, Sohrab Ahmari, who has gone from the ferociously neoconservative seconder of Kevan Jones, to a co-founder of Compact, which announces that, "Our editorial choices are shaped by our desire for a strong social-democratic state that defends community—local and national, familial and religious—against a libertine left and a libertarian right." It is of course strongly averse to military adventurism abroad. Peter has written for it. In Sohrab's case, thank God for Opus Dei.

Here in Britain, then, onwards and upwards to a thinktank, a weekly magazine of news and comment, a monthly cultural review, a quarterly academic journal, and perhaps eventually a fortnightly satirical magazine. In good, old-fashioned print, so that no one would be able to press a button and delete them. The thinktank and the magazine need to be up and running at the start of the forthcoming General Election year. If you do not like that, then carry on doing your worst.

You see, when I tell you that there is going to be a hung Parliament, then you can take that to the bank. I spent the 2005 Parliament saying that it was psephologically impossible for the Heir to Blair's Conservative Party to win an overall majority. I predicted a hung Parliament on the day that the 2017 General Election was called, and I stuck to that, entirely alone, all the way up to the publication of the exit poll eight long weeks later. And on the day that Rishi Sunak became Prime Minister, I predicted that a General Election between him and Keir Starmer would result in a hung Parliament.

To strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.