It was good to hear Derek Conway yesterday. He was quite right. His son was paid as a part-timer on the lowest point of the lowest quartile, and yet look what happened. Whereas Jacqui Smith's husband is paid as a full-timer on the highest point of the highest quartile, despite doing nothing more than keep the constituency house in which she claims not to live anyway. Yet look what has not happened.
The real scandal exposed by the Conway affair was and is, that positions such as those nominally held by his sons are only open, even when they are being filled properly, to people who can afford to live in Central London on pay of only eleven thousand pounds per annum. In other words, to independently rich people. And even the Green Book restricts them to university graduates.
Instead, just as there should be a ban on any party funding except of an individual candidate by resolution of a membership organisation (whether the Midlands Industrial Council, the GMB, or whatever) the name of which would appear in brackets on the ballot paper, so there should also be at least a firm expectation that jobs such as this be filled from a pool maintained by that organisation, which would match the public salary of those thus appointed.
Friday, 1 May 2009
Holding The Centre
Harry’s Place is having a go at no2eu.
Where is “the centre ground”, where elections are said to be won and lost? Wherever it is, its inhabitants are allegedly delighted to be at the very heart of the European federalist project.
But it is not moderate, mainstream or centrist to wish to be subject to a legislative body, the Council of Ministers, that meets in secret and publishes no Official Report. Nor to wish to be subject to the legislative will of the sorts of people that turn up in the coalitions represented in that Council. And, indeed, in the European Parliament. Stalinists and Trotskyists. Neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis. Members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura. Neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany. Before long, the ruling Islamists of Turkey.
When Jörg Haider’s party was in government in Austria, the totally unreconstructed Communist Party was in government in France. In the Council of Ministers, we were being legislated for by both of them. In the European Parliament, we still are, because we always are. People who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland may not take their seats at Westminster. But they do at Strasbourg. And so on, and on, and on.
Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin rejected even the European Coal and Steel Community out of hand. Douglas Jay called it “the blueprint for a federal state”. Herbert Morrison, who once defined Socialism as “whatever the Labour Party says it is at any given time”, said of the ECSC that “the Durham miners would never wear it”, so that was just that. Hugh Gaitskell denounced the Common Market as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.
Peter Shore, Bryan Gould (the only MP to resign from either front bench in order to vote against Maastricht) and Gwyneth Dunwoody were a very long way indeed from the Hard Left. Ian Davidson, Austin Mitchell, Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Roger Godsiff still are. The Parliamentary Labour Party was overwhelmingly opposed to European federalism when it was overwhelmingly comprised of economically populist and social democratic, morally and socially conservative, profoundly patriotic, strongly pro-Commonwealth and moderately pro-American, often church-based politicians.
By contrast, the New Labour Project is riddled with those who have never said that their Communist or Trotskyist activities, including the deselection of many such traditional Labour MPs, were wrong at the time. They have only changed their tactics from economics to the social, cultural and constitutional spheres. Including European federalism.
Half of UKIP’s vote at the last European Elections came from disaffected Labour voters who had been, and who still are, been disenfranchised by the disappearance of the patriotic, social democratic, morally and socially conservative party that they had known. UKIP’s star turn was a former Labour MP. Combining its and the Tories’ vote in the North, the Midlands or London gave, and gives, a ludicrously high figure for the number of natural Tories living there. It has failed to keep those voters, including that former MP. But they still want an alternative to New Labour. These are people who would never vote Tory in a million years. But then, as patriots and as moral and social conservatives, why would they ever have done so? So the void is being filled. By the BNP. Is that what Harry’s Place wants? Perhaps so, since it endorsed the same London Mayoral candidate as the BNP.
On the Tory side, some of those who voted against Maastricht were Thatcherites. But most were not. Sir Nicholas Winterton (as he has become): a moral and social conservative, a diehard patriot, and with a strain of economic populism. Richard Shepherd (scandalously still unknighted): an unyielding constitutionalist and civil libertarian. Sir Peter Tapsell: an ardent Keynesian and Commonwealth enthusiast who has gone on to be a magnificent opponent of the neoconservative war agenda. Sir Richard Body: an anti-nuclear Quaker, a conservationist, and a Small Is Beautiful agrarian. And others besides.
If there is a centre ground, then its inhabitants are with Attlee, Bevin, Jay, Morrison, Gaitskell, Shore, Gould and Dunwoody in that they believe in the universal and comprehensive Welfare State. In the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment. In the former paid for by progressive taxation. In the whole underwritten by full employment. And in all these good thing delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government.
Those inhabitants are also moral and social conservatives, diehard patriots, and economic populists. They are unyielding constitutionalists and civil libertarians. They are ardent Keynesians and Commonwealth enthusiasts. They are opponents both of the neoconservative war agenda and of nuclear weapons (and yes, that did include the Gaitskellites). And they are conservationists, and Small Is Beautiful agrarians.
Refuse to vote for anyone else.
Where is “the centre ground”, where elections are said to be won and lost? Wherever it is, its inhabitants are allegedly delighted to be at the very heart of the European federalist project.
But it is not moderate, mainstream or centrist to wish to be subject to a legislative body, the Council of Ministers, that meets in secret and publishes no Official Report. Nor to wish to be subject to the legislative will of the sorts of people that turn up in the coalitions represented in that Council. And, indeed, in the European Parliament. Stalinists and Trotskyists. Neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis. Members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura. Neoconservatives such as now run France and Germany. Before long, the ruling Islamists of Turkey.
When Jörg Haider’s party was in government in Austria, the totally unreconstructed Communist Party was in government in France. In the Council of Ministers, we were being legislated for by both of them. In the European Parliament, we still are, because we always are. People who believe the Provisional Army Council to be the sovereign body throughout Ireland may not take their seats at Westminster. But they do at Strasbourg. And so on, and on, and on.
Clement Attlee and Ernest Bevin rejected even the European Coal and Steel Community out of hand. Douglas Jay called it “the blueprint for a federal state”. Herbert Morrison, who once defined Socialism as “whatever the Labour Party says it is at any given time”, said of the ECSC that “the Durham miners would never wear it”, so that was just that. Hugh Gaitskell denounced the Common Market as “the end of a thousand years of history” and liable to destroy the Commonwealth.
Peter Shore, Bryan Gould (the only MP to resign from either front bench in order to vote against Maastricht) and Gwyneth Dunwoody were a very long way indeed from the Hard Left. Ian Davidson, Austin Mitchell, Frank Field, Kate Hoey and Roger Godsiff still are. The Parliamentary Labour Party was overwhelmingly opposed to European federalism when it was overwhelmingly comprised of economically populist and social democratic, morally and socially conservative, profoundly patriotic, strongly pro-Commonwealth and moderately pro-American, often church-based politicians.
By contrast, the New Labour Project is riddled with those who have never said that their Communist or Trotskyist activities, including the deselection of many such traditional Labour MPs, were wrong at the time. They have only changed their tactics from economics to the social, cultural and constitutional spheres. Including European federalism.
Half of UKIP’s vote at the last European Elections came from disaffected Labour voters who had been, and who still are, been disenfranchised by the disappearance of the patriotic, social democratic, morally and socially conservative party that they had known. UKIP’s star turn was a former Labour MP. Combining its and the Tories’ vote in the North, the Midlands or London gave, and gives, a ludicrously high figure for the number of natural Tories living there. It has failed to keep those voters, including that former MP. But they still want an alternative to New Labour. These are people who would never vote Tory in a million years. But then, as patriots and as moral and social conservatives, why would they ever have done so? So the void is being filled. By the BNP. Is that what Harry’s Place wants? Perhaps so, since it endorsed the same London Mayoral candidate as the BNP.
On the Tory side, some of those who voted against Maastricht were Thatcherites. But most were not. Sir Nicholas Winterton (as he has become): a moral and social conservative, a diehard patriot, and with a strain of economic populism. Richard Shepherd (scandalously still unknighted): an unyielding constitutionalist and civil libertarian. Sir Peter Tapsell: an ardent Keynesian and Commonwealth enthusiast who has gone on to be a magnificent opponent of the neoconservative war agenda. Sir Richard Body: an anti-nuclear Quaker, a conservationist, and a Small Is Beautiful agrarian. And others besides.
If there is a centre ground, then its inhabitants are with Attlee, Bevin, Jay, Morrison, Gaitskell, Shore, Gould and Dunwoody in that they believe in the universal and comprehensive Welfare State. In the strong statutory and other (including trade union) protection of workers, consumers, communities and the environment. In the former paid for by progressive taxation. In the whole underwritten by full employment. And in all these good thing delivered by the partnership between a strong Parliament and strong local government.
Those inhabitants are also moral and social conservatives, diehard patriots, and economic populists. They are unyielding constitutionalists and civil libertarians. They are ardent Keynesians and Commonwealth enthusiasts. They are opponents both of the neoconservative war agenda and of nuclear weapons (and yes, that did include the Gaitskellites). And they are conservationists, and Small Is Beautiful agrarians.
Refuse to vote for anyone else.
Britain Before Thatcher: Don't You Believe It
In The First Post, Neil Clark writes:
Monday, May 4 marks the 30th anniversary of arguably the most significant event in post-war British politics: the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher.
The dominant narrative - accepted even by many who consider themselves to be on the left - is that Britain's economy in the 1970s was in such dire straits that our country urgently needed a change of direction.
Britain, in this account, was the 'Sick Man of Europe'. The unions and inflation were out of control. Our inefficient nationalised industries were an expensive disaster. The Labour governments of 1974-79 were complete flops. The post-war mixed economy model had failed.
But this narrative is a myth.
It's true that inflation hit 27 per cent in 1975, but this was largely a consequence of the Yom Kippur War oil price shock, which saw oil prices quadruple, and not a sign that the mixed economy model had collapsed.
By 1978, the British economy was rapidly improving. Inflation was down to single figures and unemployment was falling too. Productivity was rising, including in the nationalised industries. North sea oil revenues were starting to transform the balance of payments, which showed a surplus of £109m in 1977. And in December 1978 Britain recorded a massive trade surplus of £246m
During 1978, Britain's standard of living rose by 6.4 per cent to reach its highest ever level: so much for the 'Sick Man of Europe'.
"The outlook for Britain is better than at any time in the postwar years," was the verdict, not of a Labour party propagandist, but of Chase Manhattan bank's chief European economist, Geoffrey Maynard.
Bernard Nossiter, a Washington Post journalist, argued in his 1978 book Britain- the Future that Works, that Britain, unlike the US, had created a contented society that had managed to get the balance right between work, leisure and remuneration.
Far from having had enough of Labour and the post-war consensus, opinion polls show that the party would have won a General Election, had Prime Minister James Callaghan called one, as expected, for October 1978.
The so-called 'Winter of Discontent' of 1979 - which ushered in Thatcherism - is also shrouded in myth. James Callaghan never said 'Crisis, what crisis' - that was an invention of The Sun. The strikes themselves only lasted for a comparatively short period and were largely over by February 1979.
One might ask why all this matters. It does, because if we are going to break with neoliberalism, we need to shatter the myths put forward by Thatcherite ideologues. We need to understand the truth which was that the British economy performed far better 30 years ago than is commonly believed. The mixed economy model didn't fail. We were no more in need of Mrs Thatcher's 'painful medicine', than someone suffering from a common cold needs a course of chemotherapy.
Acknowledging the truth about the 1970s is important, because it means that we can then return to an economic model that served the great majority of Britons extraordinarily well for over 30 years after World War Two. It was a model under which large sections of the economy - including transport, energy and most major industries - were in public ownership; capitalism was strictly regulated and made to work for the common good and manufacturing was regarded as more important than finance.
In no other period in British history was there such a rapid rise in living standards. The gap between rich and poor was significantly reduced. As the One Nation Tory Harold Macmillan, one of the architects of the post-war consensus, famously declared, we never had it so good.
Since 1979 we have followed a very different economic path: one of deregulation, privatisation and allowing 'market forces' to rule the roost. And we all know where that has led us.
Monday, May 4 marks the 30th anniversary of arguably the most significant event in post-war British politics: the coming to power of Margaret Thatcher.
The dominant narrative - accepted even by many who consider themselves to be on the left - is that Britain's economy in the 1970s was in such dire straits that our country urgently needed a change of direction.
Britain, in this account, was the 'Sick Man of Europe'. The unions and inflation were out of control. Our inefficient nationalised industries were an expensive disaster. The Labour governments of 1974-79 were complete flops. The post-war mixed economy model had failed.
But this narrative is a myth.
It's true that inflation hit 27 per cent in 1975, but this was largely a consequence of the Yom Kippur War oil price shock, which saw oil prices quadruple, and not a sign that the mixed economy model had collapsed.
By 1978, the British economy was rapidly improving. Inflation was down to single figures and unemployment was falling too. Productivity was rising, including in the nationalised industries. North sea oil revenues were starting to transform the balance of payments, which showed a surplus of £109m in 1977. And in December 1978 Britain recorded a massive trade surplus of £246m
During 1978, Britain's standard of living rose by 6.4 per cent to reach its highest ever level: so much for the 'Sick Man of Europe'.
"The outlook for Britain is better than at any time in the postwar years," was the verdict, not of a Labour party propagandist, but of Chase Manhattan bank's chief European economist, Geoffrey Maynard.
Bernard Nossiter, a Washington Post journalist, argued in his 1978 book Britain- the Future that Works, that Britain, unlike the US, had created a contented society that had managed to get the balance right between work, leisure and remuneration.
Far from having had enough of Labour and the post-war consensus, opinion polls show that the party would have won a General Election, had Prime Minister James Callaghan called one, as expected, for October 1978.
The so-called 'Winter of Discontent' of 1979 - which ushered in Thatcherism - is also shrouded in myth. James Callaghan never said 'Crisis, what crisis' - that was an invention of The Sun. The strikes themselves only lasted for a comparatively short period and were largely over by February 1979.
One might ask why all this matters. It does, because if we are going to break with neoliberalism, we need to shatter the myths put forward by Thatcherite ideologues. We need to understand the truth which was that the British economy performed far better 30 years ago than is commonly believed. The mixed economy model didn't fail. We were no more in need of Mrs Thatcher's 'painful medicine', than someone suffering from a common cold needs a course of chemotherapy.
Acknowledging the truth about the 1970s is important, because it means that we can then return to an economic model that served the great majority of Britons extraordinarily well for over 30 years after World War Two. It was a model under which large sections of the economy - including transport, energy and most major industries - were in public ownership; capitalism was strictly regulated and made to work for the common good and manufacturing was regarded as more important than finance.
In no other period in British history was there such a rapid rise in living standards. The gap between rich and poor was significantly reduced. As the One Nation Tory Harold Macmillan, one of the architects of the post-war consensus, famously declared, we never had it so good.
Since 1979 we have followed a very different economic path: one of deregulation, privatisation and allowing 'market forces' to rule the roost. And we all know where that has led us.
A True Conservative Writes
Specifically, Stuart Reid writes:
Swine fever could not have come at a better time for Gordon Brown. Now at last the newspapers have turned their attention from the horrors of the recession and sleaze - aggravated most recently by the Budget - to the rather more straightforward horrors of a flu pandemic that, we are told, could kill 120 million people worldwide.
You know where you are with mass graves, and pretty soon no doubt there will be someone to blame. It couldn't be better. All the same I am still focusing on the economy.
Last week, for the first time in my life, I listened to the Budget as it was being delivered, though I cannot pretend that I took it all in. It was a nice day and I was sitting in the garden sunning myself like an old lizard - or a teenage girl - and some of the ledger-clerk stuff was a bit above me. What on earth is an "accelerated capital project"? What, come that, is a "top-up trade credit insurance scheme"?
Most years I rely on those Budget-at-a-glance boxes in the tabloids to find out what it means to me. It usually means absolutely nothing. Mostly it's a penny here, a penny there. Only billionaires care about such sums, because a billion times a penny adds up to the price of a lunch for two at Le Gavroche followed by a modest weekend at the tables in Monaco.
But let's not be snobs. Billionaires are people too, and right now they are hurting. Not only will they soon have to pay more tax, but in the past year, as we read last weekend in the Sunday Times, the recession has wiped £155 billion from fortunes of Britain's richest 1,000 people: Lakshmi Mittal is down to his last £10.8 billion and Roman Abramovich to his last £7 billion.
Our newspapers - some of which are owned by billionaires - gave the Budget stinking reviews, but I rather liked it, or at least was greatly impressed by Alistair Darling's performance.
He did not have a very upbeat tale to tell, and he chose exactly the right language for the job. He was a model of calm, Somme-like stoicism as he delivered the bad news about, for example, the hundreds of billions of pounds we must borrow to see ourselves through until pay day. The figures were so ridiculously large, however - and the recovery forecasts so wildly optimistic - that it was hard to take them seriously. Still, you never know...
We are living in an Alice-in-Wonderland world, and the only sensible thing for the sceptic to do at the moment is to be sceptical about the experts' scepticism. All we know for sure is that we know nothing about how all this will pan out.
***
The recession is a great opportunity for the Church to get its message across. God willing, the Pope's forthcoming social encyclical - due, apparently, on the feast of SS Peter and Paul (June 29) - will sock it to the neo-liberals (aka neocons) who take it upon themselves to speak for the Church in matters of economics, and try to persuade us that Benedict XVI is sold on the Anglo-American economic order.
He isn't. The Pope is a Catholic, and therefore subscribes to Catholic social teaching, which is as hostile to liberal capitalism as it is to socialism, and especially to the sort of deregulated numbers rackets that the Mammon-worshippers of London and New York have been running.
In his days as a cardinal the Pope spoke out against the "tragic legacy" and "cruelty" of liberal capitalism. In Brazil in May 2007, addressing the Latin American and Caribbean bishops, he drew parallels between Marxism and capitalism: "Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it.
"The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness."
Swine fever could not have come at a better time for Gordon Brown. Now at last the newspapers have turned their attention from the horrors of the recession and sleaze - aggravated most recently by the Budget - to the rather more straightforward horrors of a flu pandemic that, we are told, could kill 120 million people worldwide.
You know where you are with mass graves, and pretty soon no doubt there will be someone to blame. It couldn't be better. All the same I am still focusing on the economy.
Last week, for the first time in my life, I listened to the Budget as it was being delivered, though I cannot pretend that I took it all in. It was a nice day and I was sitting in the garden sunning myself like an old lizard - or a teenage girl - and some of the ledger-clerk stuff was a bit above me. What on earth is an "accelerated capital project"? What, come that, is a "top-up trade credit insurance scheme"?
Most years I rely on those Budget-at-a-glance boxes in the tabloids to find out what it means to me. It usually means absolutely nothing. Mostly it's a penny here, a penny there. Only billionaires care about such sums, because a billion times a penny adds up to the price of a lunch for two at Le Gavroche followed by a modest weekend at the tables in Monaco.
But let's not be snobs. Billionaires are people too, and right now they are hurting. Not only will they soon have to pay more tax, but in the past year, as we read last weekend in the Sunday Times, the recession has wiped £155 billion from fortunes of Britain's richest 1,000 people: Lakshmi Mittal is down to his last £10.8 billion and Roman Abramovich to his last £7 billion.
Our newspapers - some of which are owned by billionaires - gave the Budget stinking reviews, but I rather liked it, or at least was greatly impressed by Alistair Darling's performance.
He did not have a very upbeat tale to tell, and he chose exactly the right language for the job. He was a model of calm, Somme-like stoicism as he delivered the bad news about, for example, the hundreds of billions of pounds we must borrow to see ourselves through until pay day. The figures were so ridiculously large, however - and the recovery forecasts so wildly optimistic - that it was hard to take them seriously. Still, you never know...
We are living in an Alice-in-Wonderland world, and the only sensible thing for the sceptic to do at the moment is to be sceptical about the experts' scepticism. All we know for sure is that we know nothing about how all this will pan out.
***
The recession is a great opportunity for the Church to get its message across. God willing, the Pope's forthcoming social encyclical - due, apparently, on the feast of SS Peter and Paul (June 29) - will sock it to the neo-liberals (aka neocons) who take it upon themselves to speak for the Church in matters of economics, and try to persuade us that Benedict XVI is sold on the Anglo-American economic order.
He isn't. The Pope is a Catholic, and therefore subscribes to Catholic social teaching, which is as hostile to liberal capitalism as it is to socialism, and especially to the sort of deregulated numbers rackets that the Mammon-worshippers of London and New York have been running.
In his days as a cardinal the Pope spoke out against the "tragic legacy" and "cruelty" of liberal capitalism. In Brazil in May 2007, addressing the Latin American and Caribbean bishops, he drew parallels between Marxism and capitalism: "Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it.
"The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness."
Pétain The Patriot?
Noah Millman thinks so. And I think he has a point.
The Vichy regime’s enactment of, in particular, anti-Semitic legislation unbidden by the Germans can only be deplored, as can its decision to fight with the Axis rather than simply to withdraw from the War. But when it comes down to the Armistice itself, what else were the French supposed to do in 1940?
In the neoconservative world of perpetual early adolescence, there may have been some sort of third way. But in the real world, there was not. There was the option of doing what they did. Or there was the option of France’s incorporation into the Third Reich, which would thus have acquired the French Empire on every continent. Which would have been preferable? Clearly, the option taken.
To the end of the War and beyond, many of the French regarded Pétain as fighting Hitler from Vichy as surely as de Gaulle was fighting Hitler from London. That view may not have been entirely right, but it was certainly not entirely wrong.
Pétain’s name was never abominated like that of Laval, who really did want France to be run from Berlin. Thanks both to Pétain (who instead wanted to restore the monarchy, an institution always reviled in practice by Fascists) and to de Gaulle (who was also later to consider most seriously such a restoration), Laval never got his wish.
Leaving aside the question of whether Hitler ever had the slightest intention of invading Britain (and if he did then he inexplicably ignored the open goal in 1943), imagine if such an invasion had in fact taken place and then been, as it certainly would have been, successful at least to the extent of capturing London, which is geographically peripheral within its country just as Paris is.
Churchill or whoever might have fled to somewhere or other, although heaven knows where – if Britain had fallen, then America would immediately and understandably have reached the most cordial terms with Germany, with which she was not at war when any such possibility existed.
But if he had ever come back in triumph to a country still legally independent and possessed of her Empire, then that would have been thanks to those who had stayed on and secured that state of affairs, not least against the Laval-like domestic elements that would have wanted incorporation into, and thus also the surrender of the Empire to, the Reich.
It was only thanks to Pétain that there was still a France, as such, for de Gaulle or anyone else to liberate. Had much the same circumstances ever arisen here, then to have done much the same thing would have been infinitely preferable to the only alternative available, not in an ideal world, but in the real world.
There would have been no question of fighting with the Axis, since the War would have been over (the Soviet Union would have come to terms perfectly easily, having started the War as part of the Axis anyway).
Nor would legislation mining the rich seam of French anti-Semitism have been enacted here, since the new government would have been a bulwark against those who wanted it as surely as against those who wanted to go to war against Stalin.
It would have been only thanks to say, Chamberlain, that there would still have been a Britain, as such, for Churchill or anyone else to liberate.
Such things are lost on the neocons of the world, of course. If they were not, then they would not hold the views that they do on Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or so very many other places and subjects.
But grown-ups have no excuse.
The Vichy regime’s enactment of, in particular, anti-Semitic legislation unbidden by the Germans can only be deplored, as can its decision to fight with the Axis rather than simply to withdraw from the War. But when it comes down to the Armistice itself, what else were the French supposed to do in 1940?
In the neoconservative world of perpetual early adolescence, there may have been some sort of third way. But in the real world, there was not. There was the option of doing what they did. Or there was the option of France’s incorporation into the Third Reich, which would thus have acquired the French Empire on every continent. Which would have been preferable? Clearly, the option taken.
To the end of the War and beyond, many of the French regarded Pétain as fighting Hitler from Vichy as surely as de Gaulle was fighting Hitler from London. That view may not have been entirely right, but it was certainly not entirely wrong.
Pétain’s name was never abominated like that of Laval, who really did want France to be run from Berlin. Thanks both to Pétain (who instead wanted to restore the monarchy, an institution always reviled in practice by Fascists) and to de Gaulle (who was also later to consider most seriously such a restoration), Laval never got his wish.
Leaving aside the question of whether Hitler ever had the slightest intention of invading Britain (and if he did then he inexplicably ignored the open goal in 1943), imagine if such an invasion had in fact taken place and then been, as it certainly would have been, successful at least to the extent of capturing London, which is geographically peripheral within its country just as Paris is.
Churchill or whoever might have fled to somewhere or other, although heaven knows where – if Britain had fallen, then America would immediately and understandably have reached the most cordial terms with Germany, with which she was not at war when any such possibility existed.
But if he had ever come back in triumph to a country still legally independent and possessed of her Empire, then that would have been thanks to those who had stayed on and secured that state of affairs, not least against the Laval-like domestic elements that would have wanted incorporation into, and thus also the surrender of the Empire to, the Reich.
It was only thanks to Pétain that there was still a France, as such, for de Gaulle or anyone else to liberate. Had much the same circumstances ever arisen here, then to have done much the same thing would have been infinitely preferable to the only alternative available, not in an ideal world, but in the real world.
There would have been no question of fighting with the Axis, since the War would have been over (the Soviet Union would have come to terms perfectly easily, having started the War as part of the Axis anyway).
Nor would legislation mining the rich seam of French anti-Semitism have been enacted here, since the new government would have been a bulwark against those who wanted it as surely as against those who wanted to go to war against Stalin.
It would have been only thanks to say, Chamberlain, that there would still have been a Britain, as such, for Churchill or anyone else to liberate.
Such things are lost on the neocons of the world, of course. If they were not, then they would not hold the views that they do on Yugoslavia, or Rwanda, or Afghanistan, or Iraq, or so very many other places and subjects.
But grown-ups have no excuse.
The South Will Rise
Right Democrat has this, from Time:
Rep. Artur Davis, the four-term congressman from Alabama, is starting his campaign for the 200 gubernatorial race -- and is considered the candidate who could bring about a Democratic revival in the South.
Nearly 40 of the nation's governor's seats will be open between now and November 2010; in the South, the governor's races in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and in Alabama will be key tests of whether the Democrats can extend their recent gains.
If elected, Davis' win would land another blow to what remains of the G.O.P.'s racially divisive Southern Strategy. He would also be only the third black elected governor in American history, the second from the South.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, George Wallace's daughter, drew headlines recently for endorsing Davis, and says, "I believe he'll be one of the best governors we've ever had." Asked what her father would say about the prospect of a black governor, she adds, "He'd just say, 'It's the future,' and I think he'd be okay with it."
Rep. Artur Davis, the four-term congressman from Alabama, is starting his campaign for the 200 gubernatorial race -- and is considered the candidate who could bring about a Democratic revival in the South.
Nearly 40 of the nation's governor's seats will be open between now and November 2010; in the South, the governor's races in Virginia, South Carolina, Georgia and in Alabama will be key tests of whether the Democrats can extend their recent gains.
If elected, Davis' win would land another blow to what remains of the G.O.P.'s racially divisive Southern Strategy. He would also be only the third black elected governor in American history, the second from the South.
Peggy Wallace Kennedy, George Wallace's daughter, drew headlines recently for endorsing Davis, and says, "I believe he'll be one of the best governors we've ever had." Asked what her father would say about the prospect of a black governor, she adds, "He'd just say, 'It's the future,' and I think he'd be okay with it."
I Never Said That Specter Was A Nice Man
And nor does Martin Meenagh:
Senator Arlen Specter, who has now transferred to the Democrat Party in the United States Senate, is one of the odder founders of sixties counterculture. It was Specter, after all, who came up with the idea of the 'magic bullet' that killed President Kennedy. It is well known in popular culture, an impossible, dancing mannlicher-carcano thing that most people think can't have done what Specter said it did to President Kennedy and Governor Connally in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963.
In fact, it did not have to. Specter's idea was based on the thought that Lee Oswald must have been guilty, and that the photographs and films available required a crazy bullet. As you can see from the animation below this post, when computer reconstructions such as that of Dale Myers are done these days, the bullet has to have had a straight, not a magic path, and has to have come from Oswald's position.
In addition, given that Kennedy was wearing a truss and a back brace, and couldn't move, that bodies move in the direction of a bullet when brain matter is blown explosively forward by a bullet from the rear, that tests on the bullet fragments tie it to Oswald, and that bone fragments and the effects of the supersonic bullet explain why most of the witnesses in front thought something flew past them, there is no need for a complicated conspiracy. Lee Oswald was an embittered and disgraced Marine with a gun. Taking easy shots against a target moving upwards at eleven miles an hour in a car too heavy to change gear easily or without stopping, he made himself as famous as the character in the 'fugitive' TV show he loved.
I spent a long time in my life reading histories of the Kennedy assassination to relax, and could go on about all of them. I've read the Warren report out of interest, and vividly remember buying a summary and overcoming my usual instant travel sickness by reading it in glances on the bus home years ago. I could even tell you Oswald's taste in television. I've chatted with alumni students of mine who knew Jack Ruby as the mouthy 'wannabe' he seems to have been. But, as Vince Bugliosi has shown, and as was obvious anyway, I think that case ought now to be closed.
Specter's lie, however, fed into the poison of Vietnam and the baby boomer's disillusion, and reinforced suspicion of government by its silliness. He made up a fact to fit a near-certainty, rather than admitting he didn't know something. That spread distrust, in its crazy way. My argument is that he shouldn't have done that, and its one that I have had with senior policemen over drinks about things they knew went on everyday in the Met too. Even if you know they are guilty, you should not make up evidence.
Its often very difficult to ever hold the liars to account, and often their lies encourage worse. By the time people like Josiah Thompson and Mark Lane--who are, I think, pseudohistorians, the latter more than the former--started spreading conspiracism, Specter was off elsewhere pursuing his reward, which was a seat in Congress in the 1966 Republican backlash. Since then, he's essentially been a sort of managerial liberal in a state that has always had very radical-conservative elements in his party. He does the necessary things, kills the babies, plays the game. In public, he was helped by--indeed got away with this by-- playing off the likes of Rick Santorum, and by the general effete elitism of the Democrats before Ed Rendell. Santorum, laughed at by the media but a man I honestly admire, didn't seem to get what a backstabber his colleague was until it was too late.
Then, inevitably, time ran out for Specter too, except that he is being provided with a lifeline. His predictable move to the Democrats is being embraced by the Democrat leadership. Salivating at a potential supermajority in the Senate--a highly unreliable notion if it's based on Specter, Lieberman, or any one of the rest of its supposed 60 members--they are trying to discourage any challenge to their new best friend.
I really wonder if this is not a mistake. The Washington leadership of the Democrat Party isn't really that good. It is, to use a vulgar British phrase, in fact completely up itself and divorced from most notions of moral reality. Most of the older ones live in the shadow of either abandoning George McGovern or pursuing the long shadow of his aims, and the younger ones tend to reliably travel on the wrong bus. Very few of them would even know what 'chappaquiddick' really meant when they were taking the moral high ground or praising Ted Kennedy.
Specter will serve anyone who lets him sit near the driver, generally, and when bankers are in charge, at least the likes of him realise that party labels are just conveniences.
Specter essentially left the Republicans because he worked out that he wouldn't win their primary. I love primaries, and think them democratic innovations that we should have here. If individuals are in responsible personal office, they should be chosen responsibly. Sometimes, though, I realise why I love the rule of law and the idea of freedom more than democracy, given that Specter did originally win some before the electorate's non-damascene moment.
If you are in Pennsylvania, you have a chance to make the coming Democrat primaries really mean something.
I would say to any Pennsylvania Democrat that you should take a long, hard look at people like Admiral Joe Sestak, who has a good deal of money and guts. Not much of a conscience, but he is more honest about it than Arlen. Specter does not have to be your Senator.
I would also say to readers that a proper, non-polarizing Republican vision of a small state, low tax, federalist party that dismantles the state slowly could well prove very attractive. The question Republicans who agree should ask themselves is, with useful liars like Specter who essentially would be useful cover for that agenda if it got traction gone, how bad or dangerous a reaction to Obama's new big-state successful party are they going to have to sponsor before it loses and they take over? Eisenhower/McCain republicans are much more attractive than Cheney ones. I know. I've kissed a couple.
Senator Arlen Specter, who has now transferred to the Democrat Party in the United States Senate, is one of the odder founders of sixties counterculture. It was Specter, after all, who came up with the idea of the 'magic bullet' that killed President Kennedy. It is well known in popular culture, an impossible, dancing mannlicher-carcano thing that most people think can't have done what Specter said it did to President Kennedy and Governor Connally in Dallas on the 22nd of November 1963.
In fact, it did not have to. Specter's idea was based on the thought that Lee Oswald must have been guilty, and that the photographs and films available required a crazy bullet. As you can see from the animation below this post, when computer reconstructions such as that of Dale Myers are done these days, the bullet has to have had a straight, not a magic path, and has to have come from Oswald's position.
In addition, given that Kennedy was wearing a truss and a back brace, and couldn't move, that bodies move in the direction of a bullet when brain matter is blown explosively forward by a bullet from the rear, that tests on the bullet fragments tie it to Oswald, and that bone fragments and the effects of the supersonic bullet explain why most of the witnesses in front thought something flew past them, there is no need for a complicated conspiracy. Lee Oswald was an embittered and disgraced Marine with a gun. Taking easy shots against a target moving upwards at eleven miles an hour in a car too heavy to change gear easily or without stopping, he made himself as famous as the character in the 'fugitive' TV show he loved.
I spent a long time in my life reading histories of the Kennedy assassination to relax, and could go on about all of them. I've read the Warren report out of interest, and vividly remember buying a summary and overcoming my usual instant travel sickness by reading it in glances on the bus home years ago. I could even tell you Oswald's taste in television. I've chatted with alumni students of mine who knew Jack Ruby as the mouthy 'wannabe' he seems to have been. But, as Vince Bugliosi has shown, and as was obvious anyway, I think that case ought now to be closed.
Specter's lie, however, fed into the poison of Vietnam and the baby boomer's disillusion, and reinforced suspicion of government by its silliness. He made up a fact to fit a near-certainty, rather than admitting he didn't know something. That spread distrust, in its crazy way. My argument is that he shouldn't have done that, and its one that I have had with senior policemen over drinks about things they knew went on everyday in the Met too. Even if you know they are guilty, you should not make up evidence.
Its often very difficult to ever hold the liars to account, and often their lies encourage worse. By the time people like Josiah Thompson and Mark Lane--who are, I think, pseudohistorians, the latter more than the former--started spreading conspiracism, Specter was off elsewhere pursuing his reward, which was a seat in Congress in the 1966 Republican backlash. Since then, he's essentially been a sort of managerial liberal in a state that has always had very radical-conservative elements in his party. He does the necessary things, kills the babies, plays the game. In public, he was helped by--indeed got away with this by-- playing off the likes of Rick Santorum, and by the general effete elitism of the Democrats before Ed Rendell. Santorum, laughed at by the media but a man I honestly admire, didn't seem to get what a backstabber his colleague was until it was too late.
Then, inevitably, time ran out for Specter too, except that he is being provided with a lifeline. His predictable move to the Democrats is being embraced by the Democrat leadership. Salivating at a potential supermajority in the Senate--a highly unreliable notion if it's based on Specter, Lieberman, or any one of the rest of its supposed 60 members--they are trying to discourage any challenge to their new best friend.
I really wonder if this is not a mistake. The Washington leadership of the Democrat Party isn't really that good. It is, to use a vulgar British phrase, in fact completely up itself and divorced from most notions of moral reality. Most of the older ones live in the shadow of either abandoning George McGovern or pursuing the long shadow of his aims, and the younger ones tend to reliably travel on the wrong bus. Very few of them would even know what 'chappaquiddick' really meant when they were taking the moral high ground or praising Ted Kennedy.
Specter will serve anyone who lets him sit near the driver, generally, and when bankers are in charge, at least the likes of him realise that party labels are just conveniences.
Specter essentially left the Republicans because he worked out that he wouldn't win their primary. I love primaries, and think them democratic innovations that we should have here. If individuals are in responsible personal office, they should be chosen responsibly. Sometimes, though, I realise why I love the rule of law and the idea of freedom more than democracy, given that Specter did originally win some before the electorate's non-damascene moment.
If you are in Pennsylvania, you have a chance to make the coming Democrat primaries really mean something.
I would say to any Pennsylvania Democrat that you should take a long, hard look at people like Admiral Joe Sestak, who has a good deal of money and guts. Not much of a conscience, but he is more honest about it than Arlen. Specter does not have to be your Senator.
I would also say to readers that a proper, non-polarizing Republican vision of a small state, low tax, federalist party that dismantles the state slowly could well prove very attractive. The question Republicans who agree should ask themselves is, with useful liars like Specter who essentially would be useful cover for that agenda if it got traction gone, how bad or dangerous a reaction to Obama's new big-state successful party are they going to have to sponsor before it loses and they take over? Eisenhower/McCain republicans are much more attractive than Cheney ones. I know. I've kissed a couple.
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