Shallow Grave

This one was never going to go away quietly. So the main piece of evidence relating to the flagrant sale of seats in our very legislature has never been made public? Something tells me that it very soon will be...

A Failed Strategy

A generation of alliance with one abortionist, family-destroying, poverty-spreading, warmongering party against the other, and for what? The American Catholic bishops are of course right, both to enjoin American Catholics not to vote for strongly pro-abortion Presidential candidates, and, as bishops, to decline to endorse specific candidates either. But the several levels of naivete on the part of the American pro-life movement over the last 35 years and more is the reason why its enormous popular base is looking at literally having no one to vote for this time next year.

Switzerland-at-Sea?

J, who regularly comments here, writes approvingly of Britain’s becoming “Switzerland-at-Sea” under these proposals. Yes, very major forces under this system would be (as they would be if the parties remotely reflected the political traditions at work in the electorate at large today) us, a High Tory paleocon party, a traditional Labour Left party without Stalinists or Trotskyists, and an Old Liberal party. All anti-war, of course. For the very good reason that the pro-war position has neither any popular following nor the slightest basis in any indigenous British political tradition.

And yes, nothing could happen in practice without the approval of all four of the largest parties, each of which could therefore expect an equal number of Cabinet seats and a Minister in each department. But as to who those parties would be at any give time, what is set out is the possibility, not only of at least six parties, but possibly of eight, or 10, or even 12. Though no neocon one, it seems. Frit.

Switzerland-at-Sea? Well, we could do a lot worse than that. But Britain simply is not Switzerland, although her people do have the same right to the peace, prosperity, liberty and democracy that are all currently being denied to us on a systematic basis by the Political Class and its media lackeys.

Immigration and Security

Have the Tories given up their belief in the “free” market (which by definition includes unrestricted migration) and in the contracting out of public services? If not, then they are in no position to comment about illegal immigrants working in security. Nor, while it retains such beliefs, will the Government be able to do anything about this.

West Was Best The First Time

Regular readers might recall that I was rather concerned at Lord West’s appointment as Security Minister. Defence, you could understand. But Security?

However, I have changed my mind on this one. We all know that he isn’t in favour of banging people up for months on end without so much as charging them, whatever he might have been forced to say this morning (and congratulations to the spectacularly incompetent David Cameron for failing to mention it at PMQs). The Armed Forces swear and owe allegiance, not to the government of the day, but to the Queen, i.e., to our permanent constitution of liberties under the Crown rather than citizens’ obligations to the State. Old Labour and the Old Tories understood this, and shared it.

But New Labour and the New Tories don’t. They simply have to go, in order to be replaced with something better. If that means that the sworn defenders of our liberties have to act in order to create the situation in which those in any case basically defunct parties can be replaced, then so be it.

What Is Harriet Harman FOR?

There was Harriet Harman next to Jacqui Smith yesterday, and there was Harriet Harman next to Gordon Brown today. She always sits to the immediate right of whichever Minister is speaking. What does she do? What is she for? Except, of course, making it impossible for any man, wife of man, daughter of a man, or person who has ever so much as met a man, to vote for a party which gives house room to her, to Emily’s List, and to the rest of them.

Many Mansions

Congratulations to Newsnight on putting up Irwin Stelzer and Denis MacShane, both of the Henry Jackson Society (all other nominal affiliations, such as MacShane's Labour Party membership, being neither here nor there), to discuss the Mansion House speech. Isn't balance wonderful?

There will be a lot more of this while the old, ostensibly separate parties remain nominally in existence, not least due to the failure of the media to report their tiny and elderly membership, the very high proportion their members either in receipt of councillors' allowances or married to people who are, the tiny numbers involved in picking the MPs for safe (i.e., most) seats, and the laughably small percentages of the eligible vote that the parties now secure. But people do now seem to be working these out for themselves.

MacShane managed to accuse only the Tories of being opposed to the EU (and, for that matter, only the Hard Left of being opposed to American hegemony) without Paxo, the alleged Grand Inquisitor, picking him up at all. That, despite the previous report's having contained a brief exchange with the Old Labour Eurosceptic MP, Eric Ilsley, expressing his fear that there was now a "special relationship" between the US and not Britain, but the EU. There always has been, Eric. There always has been. Just ask the Henry Jackson Society. Still, it looks as if another golden penny is also dropping at last.

Stelzer was perturbed at Gordon Brown's suggestion that Britain might have any important bilateral relationship other than with the United States. So, dear readers, with where might such a relationship be, and why?