The worst of Times

There’s a letter, indeed the featured one, bold type ‘n’ all, in today’s Times.

On-line (though not in print) the correspondence is sub-headed:

The metropolitan liberal elite show contempt for the population of rural England and the democratic choice some of them have made

It is all a response to a piece by David Aaronovitch. As far as Malcolm’s comprehension goes, Aaronovitch was presenting the “modernist” case, particularly in one respect:

Prime Minister’s Questions … had begun with a warning about the almost imminent collapse of A&E services in England and bad unemployment figures across the UK. Yet of the six Conservative MPs who stood to ask questions, no less than five were talking about when to have a referendum on Europe. They might as well have been in Caracas.

But they are all MPs and all honourable men, I thought, so this difference in perception is probably mutual. Where they sit for in Essex, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire or Wiltshire, the EU may indeed be more important than it is to me in London. On questions such as immigration, perhaps my metropolitan attitude seems as peculiar to them as their parochialism does to me.

And it suddenly occurred to me that this difference in perception helps to explain the divided nature of Boris Johnson. When he is being touted (as periodically he is) by right-wing Tories as an acceptable successor to the backsliding Cameron, Boris can appear something of a shire hero. But when he’s actually talking seriously about the future of Britain, he’s a full member of the metropolitan elite.

Yes, Malcolm thinks he has a grasp on that.

So here comes Michael Patterson of Swineshead, Lincs:

Sir, David Aaronovitch seems shocked by the realisation that, outside London and the great cities and university towns, there exists an England that does not buy into the cosy liberal certainties of “an outward-looking, open-minded polity” (“Unshackle London from the backward shires”, Opinion, May 16).

He cites Boston, Lincolnshire, where the immigrant population — virtually all from EU countries — is now about 10 per cent. An unremarkable proportion in a capital city perhaps, but in this traditional market town a change that has come about within ten years, putting enormous pressure on housing, schools, the NHS and policing.

Mr Patterson suggests whom to blame:

[Aaronovitch] is largely right to suggest that these immigrants are filling agricultural jobs that locals are no longer willing to do. He seems to view the latter’s interests as unimportant in comparison with an immigration policy that is bringing about a radical change in the character of British society without the explicit support of the people.

Hold your horse, Mike!

That’s not the whole story, at all, at all.

The essential fault, if there is one, lies with agribusiness, and — at one remove — its unwholesome dependency on the big supermarket chains. Which makes us consumers and our demand for cheap food — at two removes — also culpable.

The economics mean that the whole food-chain relies on the gang-masters. Let’s hat-tip another Tory, worthy in one respect: the MP for Boston and Skegness is Mark Simmonds, Mr Patterson’s elected representative. Simmonds may feel a hunted man with the UKIP surge on his patch; but he deserves respect for his extended campaign to make gang-masters fully responsible.

Lincolnshire immigrants

Malcolm feels a letter to The Times coming on. Like all his other great thoughts, it will likely go unpublished.

He would wish to express sympathy to Lincolnshire folk threatened by alien incursions.

In his North Norfolk youth he recalls similar griefs being expressed.

Even after thirty years in the neighbourhood, one particular social out-cast was regularly denounced as a “furrener” [Sc. "foreigner"]. He was a yeller-belly, an incomer from Lincolnshire, one of the scab-labourers brought in by the local farmers to break the farm-workers’ strike of April 1923.

What goes around, comes around.

The best of Times

As Malcolm has previously opined, if it’s got to be a Tory, Matthew Parris is as house-trained and gentlemanly a specimen as can be found.

His column for today’s Times starts with a good’un:

“God,” said an excited Tory after a fellow MP was pulled from the sawdust of Thursday’s Private Member’s Bills tombola clutching a euro-referendum Bill, “must be a eurosceptic.”

No. God must favour the sane for He directed my steps that same night to a book launch at the National Gallery where the totally sane Conservative MP for Hereford, Jesse Norman, was unveiling his new study of Edmund Burke. And as I walked across Trafalgar Square contemplating the great 18th-century liberal conservative philosopher, God reminded me of the last time the Tory Right were deafening us, and I quoted Burke on this page: “Because half a dozen grasshoppers under a fern make the field ring with their importunate clink, whilst thousands of great cattle reposed beneath the shadow of the British oak chew the cud and are silent, pray do not imagine that those who make the noise are the only inhabitants of the field.”

What madness has seized my party? Is it only the noisy ones? Have the rest been brainwashed? Or just scared into silence? If so, that silence is flattering the hysterical minority. The silence must be broken. The Tory MPs keeping their heads are more numerous than we may suppose; we need to hear them.

Let’s be honest here, when Parris quoted that from Burke, it was mid-December 2012, and Parris was even more extreme in his denunciation. The header was:

Stamp on the grasshoppers of the Rabid Right

These spittle-flecked, obsessive reactionaries belong in UKIP. Don’t let them shelter under the Conservative fern

Furthermore, in that earlier piece, Parris continued the quotation (which should end above with a wholly-grammatical and super-Goveian semi-colon):

… that of course they are many in number; or that, after all, they are other than the little shrivelled, meagre, hopping, though loud and troublesome insects of the hour.

The original is in the 143rd paragraph of Burke’s Reflections on the French Revolution.

The spirit of a gentleman

Malcolm recalls, a bit earlier in that Burkean out-pouring (he checks: it’s the 133rd paragraph), the great man (as are all Trinity men) was pronouncing on the natural relationship of learning to the established social order:

Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilization, and all the good things which are connected with manners and with civilization, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two principles; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood, and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude.

Which, in small part, is simply arguing that learning is its own reward: not a thesis accepted by the utilitarian Gradgrind-Gove types who dominate the curriculum.

Trinity colours

Our undergraduate scarves are still like those once sported by the Lady in his Life and by Malcolm himself: they should be in a closet somewhere. If the moths haven’t reached them.

The colours were dark blue and light blue, which suggests the desired comparison, with a stripe of red. There has always been a radical streak about TCD. Once upon a not-too-distant time (thanks to the provision of the College’s foundress, and the bigotry of John Charles McQuaid) Trinity had a particular spirit of religion. But the spirit of a gentleman was ever on the syllabus (and it wasn’t restricted to Jameson Redbreast).

A cock-and-bill story

Malcolm spent yesterday afternoon at the British Museum form the Pompeii and Herculaneum exhibition. This being about Roman domesticity, penises form a large — nay, grotesquely inflated — part of the show.

Can it be coincidence that a similar manifestation occurs in Anne Treneman’s Political Sketch for the Times? Both occasions seem to involve, in the context of Europe and imminent fall-out, some form of goat-fuck:

… beyond a cluster fuck, worse than a FUBAR. Continued attempts to correct the situation only make the situation worse and more embarrassing.

This is La Treneman at her brightest and best, doing a delicious vamp:

Welcome to Eurovision, Westminster style. I had no idea when I went along to the Private Member’s Bill ballot yesterday that it was going to be so much fun. For this is not a ballot at all. It’s more a raffle, with a bit of bingo thrown in and also darts, as in when they bellow “One Hundred and Eighty!”

Our Master of Ceremonies was Lindsay Hoyle, the Deputy Speaker whose sense of fun and Lancashire accent are proving a huge hit these days. He had a glamorous assistant, of course. Tall, thin, dressed as a penguin with a white bow-tie, his real name was David Natzler and he was Clerk of Legislation but, of course, we started to call him Debbie.

She concludes:

“Shake ’em up!” cried Lindsay as the big moment arrived. “The winner of the day is … ”

“One hundred and ninety-nine,” announced Debbie.

“Oooohhhhh!” cried the audience.

Lindsay flipped through his list. “James Wharton!”

We looked at each other. Who? Still, within minutes, we were being flooded with information about Mr Wharton. He was the young (aged 29) Tory from Stockton and a Eurosceptic. His majority was tiny (332) and he had made the news for being linked with a company that sells stone statues of giant penises.

Sorry, but it’s true. It may not be in the best taste but, then, this IS Eurovision.

Two after-shocks:

1. Malcolm’s classical eddikashun makes him want to prefer the plural form as penes. It is also the Oxford Dictionary‘s preferred plural form, where penises is dismissed as Brit. Curiously, penes is also the term used to mean “in the possession of …” or “in the hands of …” One hits upon it occasionally in footnotes and bibliophile commentaries. Logically penises are commonly “in the hands of …”, but there is no direct etymological link.

2.Then there’s the business of It may not be in the best taste but …

Forty years ago there was a previous Pompeii exhibition in London. As Malcolm recalls, it was sponsored by the Daily Telegraph. An acquaintance of the Lady in Malcolm’s Life was commissioned to produce the educational poster to accompany the show. The artist’s proclivities were well enough known for the instruction to include “and definitely no penises”.

This became a challenge. Sure enough, there is at least one member, suitably disguised, included. Malcolm still has the mounted (ahem!) item in the Redfellow Hovel attic.

A Bond of Association

There is this mistaken belief that the English have highly-developed sang-froid. They are cool, calm and collected. They learned it from Baden Powell:

A Scout smiles and whistles under all circumstances. When he gets an order he should obey it cheerily and readily, not in a slow, hang-dog sort of way. Scouts never grouse at hardships, nor whine at each other, nor swear when put out.

Don’t believe it.

Periodically the English go ding-bat. As they are doing round about now.

This time it’s the Tory end of the political spectrum; and the goad is the Europe thing.

We are led to believe that all we need is a futile Parliamentary gesture for a mythical referendum on a non-negotiation which isn’t going to happen and which won’t satisfy anyone:

DAVID Cameron’s EU referendum Bill is a bold act of political cunning.

At a stroke he has given a boost both to wavering Tories flirting with UKIP and to his panicking, mutinous back-benchers — while challenging Clegg and Miliband to back him or deny the public a say.

 The PM knows his Bill for a 2017 referendum is probably dead without Lib-Dem and Labour support. And neither Europhile Clegg nor Miliband trust voters not to want out. They’d rather we had no choice.

 As President Obama said yesterday, Cameron is right to renegotiate our position within the EU before he puts an in-out vote to the country.

 But his Bill shows that this time his cast-iron referendum guarantee is what it says on the tin.

 It may be doomed. But at the next election Cameron can now credibly present the Tories as the only major party ready to let Britain decide its own future.

A formula of words solves all problems.

So to the past …

It happens that Malcolm was re-reading Robert Hutchinson’s account of Elizabeth’s Spymaster: Francis Walsingham and the secret war that saved England. By pure coincidence, just as the news of Cameron’s and Hague’s self-serving and politically-cleaving shibboleth was hitting the tapes, he had reached Hutchinson’s Chapter Four, which starts with Burghley’s and Walsingham’s cunning plan. They:

… needed once and for all to defuse the powder keg of conspiracy they believed was threatening the survival of the Protestant realm of England.

The so-called ‘Bond of Association’ was their adroit solution.

In anyone’s language, it was little more than lynch law.

The idea, probably the product of Burghley’s devious ingenuity, had initially been very simple. It proclaimed that any wicked person who caused the death of Elizabeth would be ineligible to succeed her as ruler of England. Its objective was thus very clear: at a stroke it removed Mary as the focal point of any Catholic conspiracy. Then came a series of more hard-line revisions …

It certainly rallied the troops:

Despite some strong misgivings within the legal classes — lawyers and magistrates — men and women in their thousands did sign copies of the Bond, the illiterate simply with a cross as their personal mark. They pledged themselves before God to take the law into their own hands and to ruthlessly hunt down and destroy anyone associated with a plot to kill Elizabeth. There were even special church services to further sanctify the process of oath-taking.

As for the Queen of Scots, she did what any politico would do when faced with mass hysteria:

… she happily signed the paper herself on 5 January 1585.

At the moment the only questions are whether David Cameron comes out of his present difficulties looking silly, or very silly, and his party looking just split, or totally ruptured. We have had a quarter-century of this internal feuding; and on present form it looks as if the disintegrating English right will be dismembered for as long again. [The Scottish right is happily sailing along under the banner of the SNP.]

At some point the non-Tory parties and the vast majority of sane non-UKIPers will have to sit on their hands, look bemused, say nothing, and let the forces of unreason tear the political Right and Centre-Right asunder.

A Bond of dis-Association, either way.

Conservative future?

Oh, the irony!

In the age of the Boeing 747 and the Triple E class freighter (as above: it carries 18,000 standard containers), ConservativeHome foresees the future of Britain outside the EU:

Back from the future

Malcolm would have to admit Mark Pack came as close as anyone yet to defining why UKIP causes cringing:

Some of UKIP’s support comes from places the Liberal Democrat should leave well alone — especially those yearning for a 1950s-style society of white men at work, white women at home and gays in the closet.

Why only LibDems, Mark? And why only Some of UKIP’s support?

An agenda for retrogression

Meanwhile, there are the opening four paragraphs of Tim Montgomerie’s piece in this Monday’s Times [£]. These provide as good a check-list of the present Tory malaise as you’ll find; so let’s rip them from behind the pay-wall:

Spend most of your time as Tory leader ignoring the issue that matters most to your activist members: Europe. Launch your bid to be leader by promising to introduce a tax allowance for married couples and then, once you’ve won power, fail to deliver that pledge at four successive Budgets. Tell parents that they can set up any school they want as long as it’s not the one they most want, a grammar school.Stop Gordon Brown holding a honeymoon election in 2007 by promising to abolish inheritance tax but then put it up in office. Spend the general election campaign talking about an issue that no one understands — the Big Society — and don’t talk about immigration, an issue that three-quarters of voters do care about. Subsidise expensive renewable energies at a time when families are struggling to pay their electricity bills.

Form a coalition with the Liberal Democrats even though 80 per cent of your members want you to lead a minority government. Promise not to reorganise the NHS, then reorganise it anyway. Oppose press regulation but then embrace it. Keep pledging to tackle European human rights laws but do nothing when Abu Qatada proves again and again that Britain is run by inventive lawyers rather than democratically-drafted laws.

Insist that you want to reach out to northern and poorer parts of Britain but stuff your Downing Street operation with southern chums who attended the same elite private schools as you. And, just for good measure, insult people who normally vote for your party as clowns, fruitcakes and closet racists.

There are six policy-points there, and counting, that Malcolm, as most decent types (probably including Mark Pack) must find close to abominable; but we’re not Tories, and we’re not seduced by Farage’s forked tongue to bite his rotten apple.

Even so, as Clegg was so emphatic that Europe was his main reason for urging Gordon Brown not to resign, to allow more time to knock sense into the Tories, we might reasonably ask: “How well is that one going, Nick?”

The light of evening, 11th May 2010

No election is a “good one to lose”; but that last one came close.

Any incoming administration was going to have to spatchcock a programme out of nowhere. Alistair Darling had already gone a fair distance in sketching one out. That Gids Osborne, not Darling, was the recipient of the poisoned chalice will tax future historians in finding enough ordure to chuck.

Instead we got Alec Issigonis’ (attrib) horse is a camel designed by a committee. The committee being the now-infamous “quad” of Cameron, Osborne, Clegg, and Alexander. Read that as an interior decorator’s otherwise-unemployable son, an EU apparatchik, a huckster for a Scottish ski-lift, presided over by the:

PR man for Carlton, the world’s worst television company. And a poisonous, slippery individual he was, too.

No! No! Who was spawned was even more hideous! The ConDem creature came straight out of Mel Brooks’s Young Frankenstein:

The Monster: For as long as I can remember people have hated me. They looked at my face and my body and they ran away in horror. In my loneliness I decided that if I could not inspire love, which is my deepest hope, I would instead cause fear. I live because this poor half-crazed genius, has given me life. He alone held an image of me as something beautiful and then, when it would have been easy enough to stay out of danger, he used his own body as a guinea pig to give me a calmer brain and a somewhat more sophisticated way of expressing myself.

What could possibly dissuade us from confidently predicting a quick ride to Hell in a handcart? Who could doubt there was something even more horrible and unprincipled waiting in the wings, stage right?

And then all our fears were doubly underlined: it was going to be gothic Dickensian as well:

• Veneerings in 10 Downing Street: bran-new people in a bran-new house in a bran-new quarter of London.
• Thomas Gradgrind for education minister: A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over.
• Josiah Bounderby slashing-and-burning what was left of local government:  A man who could never sufficiently vaunt himself a self-made man. A man who was always proclaiming, through that brassy speaking trumpet of a voice of his, his old ignorance and his old poverty. A man who was the Bully of humility.
• Culture courtesy of the Dodger: as dirty a juvenile as one would wish to see; … all the airs and manners of a man. … He was, altogether, as roystering and swaggering a young gentleman as ever stood four feet six, or something less, in his bluchers.
• Health in the claws of Quilp: … his complexion was one of that kind which never looks clean or wholesome. But what added most to the grotesque expression of his face was a ghastly smile, which, appearing to be the mere result of habit and to have no connection with any mirthful or complacent feeling.
•  Bumble the Beadle for welfare:

Oh yes, this is looking distinctly due for disaster.

Let’s change the literary media and revert to Young Frankenstein for Gids Frankenstein’s economic experiment on the British body politic:

[after failing to bring the creature to life] Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: Nothing.
Inga: Oh, Doctor, I’m sorry.
Dr. Frederick Frankenstein: No. No. Be of good cheer. If science teaches us anything, it teaches us to accept our failures, as well as our successes, with quiet dignity and grace. [starts beating up the creature] Son of a bitch! Bastard! I’ll get you for this! What did you do to me? What did you do to me?

Laugh and the world laughs with you

At least one is allowed to laugh at, and with Mel Brooks. The imperial and imperious Cameroonie ukase has gone out that UKIP are no longer “clowns”. Well, respectable thesps do tend to look down on lesser theatrical species.

And that is a shame.

For, if there is anything more ludicrous than the pantomime camel that rules us, it is the troupe of performing Kippers.

What other “party” has been so prone to splits and harbouring frauds? How many kipper MEPs have cast themselves adrift, unable to stomach any longer the overweening pump and pomp of Farage?

And, what — may we ask — are kipper policies? The next mile-stones are the EU-elections (in which the kippers expect to do well) and the Scottish referendum (on which they might be expected to have an opinion). Try the Scottish UKIP websites and you find:

Not Found

The requested URL /scotland was not found on this server.

Hielan laddies

UKIP have a “Scottish chairman”. He is one Mike Scott-Hayward, a former Tory councillor … a former army major and ex-coastguard officer. And then we have the amazing political-chameleon,

UKIP’s first Scottish spokesman is Mike Haseler, an energy sector researcher from East Dunbartonshire. He was a Liberal Democrat candidate in Watford in the 1990s and stood for the Greens for the Holyrood elections in 2003.

Haseler has a blog, which explains what a well-rounded specimen he is: a self-proclaimed expert in physics, electronics and some philosophy, studying archaeology, learned Danish to understand the competition, worked in the wind industry (surely, a given for a politico) but is now a climate-change doubter. According to his blog, he joined UKIP as long ago as March, 2013. A “March violet“, indeed. Yet, a person of outstanding merit, to have risen so quickly from aspirant member to “first Scottish spokesman”.

As for “policy”, the aim seems to be to render Scotland into an administered colony:

Although UKIP wants to scrap MSPs, it says it would hold on to the Scottish Parliament, with MPs handling affairs on their doorstep three days a week and UK matters at Westminster the other two.

Presumably, some Tory presence would be required in Edinburgh were there ever to be a Tory government in Westminster. So we can confidently expect the Dáil Éireann solution of a nominated “taoiseach’s eleven” to keep the natives in order.

Slugging it out

Much of this came together in Malcolm’s recent recollection of Julian Critchley.

Critchley was a close buddy of Michael Heseltine, a dandy, a bon-viveur, a man-about-town, possessed of considerable wit, a sharp pen and a waspish tongue. As the Tory MP for Rochester between 1959-64, then retreaded for Aldershot for 1970-1997, that absence cost him promotion in the interim. He was a “country member” of the Westminster club, commuting for whipped votes from Ludlow. He was , by any contemporary standard, wringing”wet”, as the Guardian obituary summed him —

a liberal Tory, supporting one-nation social policies, membership of the European Community, and a defence policy based on Nato and a nuclear strategy. He would have been a natural and able young ally for Edward Heath, campaigning for him against the Conservative right, which was increasingly hostile to the Rome Treaty and current levels of public spending.

Everything that the present Tory tendency is not.

His saving grace was as a gad-fly to whom Thatcher never took (and whom he mocked disgracefully — it was he, not as frequently-cited Denis Healey, who stuck on her the moniker, “the Great She-Elephant”). As a result the ministerial team was denied one of the brighter sparks in sight.

Malcolm’s reason for this memory is that Critchley deplored the dumbing-down of the Tory Party, and the arrival of the “garagistes” (we stand correction on that spelling, though we can be sure Critchley would have made it as effete as possible). The “garagistes” were the golf-club nineteenth-holers, the wide boys, the “Essex men” who came to infest the Tory Party under Thatcher.

So, three decades on, and the change of a single initial letter F for g, we are fulfilling his prophecy, with Nigel of the cheesy grin and the ever-ready pint, as the apotheosis of all things garagiste.

Any hope of realities here?

Malcolm had forsworn utterances — there are other priorities in his complex existence.

Then came the forked-tongues of the spinners of the English County Council elections.

So, let’s start from the top

We are talking of the shire counties. These are, largely, where the fox is routinely pursued by the unspeakable after the uneatable. They amount to a moderate part of the UK populace. But no cities. Not London. No metropolises at all, at all.

The big news is that, among the hicks and rubes and bumpkins, the weirdos (hereinafter “UKIP”) got one-in-four of a less-than-30% poll. That will be front-page news on Saturday. The Earth is expected to tremble.

Where it mattered, the forces of decency (hereinafter the “Labour Party”) seemed to do quite well. There was a parliamentary by-election, which Labour took at a stroll. Of course, the mainstream rightist media won’t say that, but take away a top-name and drop an odd percentage point, and you might think differently. Anyway, Labour took South Shields with a plurality.

Misrepresentatation

Now there was Paul Staines (by name, by reputation) of Guido Fawkes telling us:

the extent of Labour’s thoroughly underwhelming day becomes clear

This, incidentally, before the final results are in.

This odd presumption had to be reinforced by reference to Mark Pack, the Lib Dem snake-oil salesman. Odd, isn’t it, that Fawkes — who normally has a hot-line from Tory Politburo — has to reach out to Pack?

Pack had taken an incomplete return and quantified it, to “prove” that the Labour vote was down by more than either the LibDems or the Tories. Wonderful things numbers. Here are some more:

Tonight there are:

• 26% fewer LibDem County Councillors;
• 23% fewer Tories;
• 1838% more UKIPpers; and
• 217% more Labour councillors.

Apparently it would in Tory terms have been a massive disappointment had Labour not gained 300 seats. They didn’t. It was only 291.

Similarly, the prognostication from Labour was that the Tories could lose 200 seats … and hooray! Well, 335 Tory county councillors are now without a seat. Sad, that.

Coagulating creaking crap!

The Tory poster campaign for the 2005 General Election was hardly subtle:

Wherever you went across the country, two months before the expected (and eventually declared) date, these posters appeared. All with the same “closed question”: Are you thinking what we’re thinking? Fortunately Michael Howard’s attempt at mood-management didn’t work. The Tories had bought in Lynton Crosbie, who had been the political strategist for John Howard’s four election victories in Australia. Britain was thus introduced to the dubious benefits of “dog-whistle politics”.

In 2013 the Tories are just as desperate — and even more blatant. There’s a short, bottom-of-the-page piece by Marie Woolf in the Sunday Times. Well, they had to squeeze it in somewhere: much of the rest of the issue is devoted to “Maggie Thatcher still dead! Official!” Here it comes:

Poor countries should be paid to process asylum seekers who are trying to get to Britain to stop them “disappearing” onto our streets, says a plan published by a group of influential right-wingers within the Conservative party.

Now Malcolm reckons he’s read that opener at least three time — and still doesn’t “get it”. Why the “disappearing” bit? If people immigrate, and then are indistinguishable within the whole population, have they not assimilated successfully?

The rest of the pieces is very much “tell me the same old story” — all the predictable terms are there: the Tory fret over a surge in support for the UK Independence party, the need for harsh immigration controls; deportees should appeal only after they being deported …

There has to be a Wizard behind the mask of this Oz nonsense. Step forward the plan’s begetter:

Julian Brazier MP for Canterbury [who] claims that housing, schooling, the welfare state and even the sewerage system are creaking under the strain of immigration.

Excuses! Excuses!

Gids Osborne has been baling the failure of his economics of the previous government (until that one was laughed down), the weather, snow, floods, drought, the royal wedding, the Olympics and anything else that came to mind. That set the pattern:

• Now the housing crisis in the South-East (and it is mainly in the South-East and where the bourgeoisie buy their second and holiday homes) is the fault of immigrants! Not, as most realists thought, because the privatising of social housing has been a disaster.
• The schools crisis is not because Gove pulled the plug on the previous government’s plans — no, no! it’s all down to immigrants who don’t speak English.
• The social security system is also stretched because of the number of immigrants who are unemployed … three of the top five nationalities for settling in Britain — Bangladeshis, Nigerians and Pakistanis — “have well above average unemployment rates”.  Actually, as other statistics show that’s more a function of social class than ethnic origin. And what are the determinants of class — and so employability? Education, perchance, for one?

The blockage in the pipes

Sitting on the 299 bus, en route to a liquid lunch at Ye Olde Cherry Tree in Southgate, it was the Lady in Malcolm’s Life who spotted the killer: the creaking of the sewerage system.

It’s got to be vindaloo.

Rejoice! TINA’s back!

It jumps out of the screen (or, if you can find a full text, the page):

If there was another way I would take it. But there is no alternative.

Yes: David Cameron has tripped off to Keighley and made a speech, saying … well, absolutely nothing. Except that he is the current possessor of Ma Thatcher’s handbag, and is prepared to filch the odd trifle therefrom.

Except:

That’s from 1980, when the Tory government was already heading further and further into the slough of despond.

Consider this, from Anthony Wells’s ukpollingreport:

Thatcher’s key economic speech of 1o October 1980 was her  Conference “not for turning” address to the Tory faithful:

If our people feel that they are part of a great nation and they are prepared to will the means to keep it great, a great nation we shall be, and shall remain. So, what can stop us from achieving this? What then stands in our way? The prospect of another winter of discontent? I suppose it might.

But I prefer to believe that certain lessons have been learnt from experience, that we are coming, slowly, painfully, to an autumn of understanding. And I hope that it will be followed by a winter of common sense. If it is not, we shall not be—diverted from our course.

To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the “U” turn, I have only one thing to say. “You turn if you want to. The lady’s not for turning.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again”

And Yogi Berra is still with us (now in his later 80s).

The problem common to Thatcher in 1980, and Cameron in 2013 is: who is their audience?

It is, in short, their own party — and in both cases the speeches are defence mechanisms, self-defences against an increasingly unhappy and fractious parliamentary party. We need to recall that in 1980 Thatcher was not, by any means, the autocratic Tory leader that Galtieri, his Argie military cronies, and near on a thousand unnecessary corpses made her.

Cameron’s electoral problem

It isn’t just the Eastleigh business. The 1979 General Election meant that Thatcher’s Tory benches included 22 Scottish MPs (with 31.4% of Scottish votes) — Cameron has just the one (and 16.7% of the votes). In 1979 Northern Ireland returned five (of the ten in total) MPs as Ulster Unionists (with 36.6% of the poll) — on all matters economic, the UU MPs voted with the Tory Whip: today there is not a single Ulster Unionist MP remaining, despite Cameron’s explicit involvement and rebranding of UCUNF.

Let’s continue.

In September 2012 The Economist had a definitive description of:

The great divide
Economically, socially and politically, the north is becoming another country

The piece went still further back, and deeper into the socio-economics of English history:

The north remains poorer than the south, with sharply lower employment rates and average incomes. In 1965 men in the north were 16% more likely to die under the age of 75 than men in the south. By 2008 they were 20% more likely to, according to a study published last year in the British Medical Journal. This is not just because poor people die young: rich northerners apparently live shorter lives than their southern peers…

Whereas government spending is spread fairly evenly across the country — nurses and teachers are needed roughly in proportion to the population — private-sector growth has been heavily concentrated, mostly in and around London. Between 1997 and 2010 gross value-added, a measure of output, grew by 61% in the three northern regions. In London and the South East, it shot up by 92%. According to a study by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change at the University of Manchester, the state accounted, directly and indirectly, for 64% of the jobs created in the north between 1998 and 2007, against just 38% in the south.

It also considers the electoral impact:

The Conservative Party is retreating in the north, too. Its problem is not just that northern seats tend to be poorer, and thus more likely to vote Labour. Broad mistrust of the Tories, cemented during the 1980s recession, means middle-class voters in the north are actually more likely to vote Labour than are working-class voters in the south. Policy Exchange, a think-tank, points out that Conservatives held two-fifths of northern seats in 1951. They now hold less than a third, mostly in rural areas. In the cities, and in former-coal mining areas, the party is all but invisible. In July the Sheffield Conservative Party was forced to relocate to nearby Rotherham, as it is so short of cash…

And, of course, so much of what ConDem austerity economics has done disproportionately impacts upon the North and the devolved regions: the attacks on public employment, the squeeze on municipal budgets, replacing poor employment with even poorer-paid part-time work, lower productivity, rack-renting public housing, energy costs, transport costs … What, will the line stretch out to th’ crack of doom?

Cameron’s revolting women

This is the most jaw-dropping of the lot: women have turned against the Tories. In every post-War election until 2005 women voters preferred the Tories: it has been a declining gap (it was +12 in 1974), but in the last two general Elections, it has reversed. When one digs down into the most recent YouGov/Sunday Times poll, we find the gender gap is now a chasm:

Note that: a 12 point gender deficit for the Tories.

A curious beast

Peter Hoskin on ConHome finds only luke-warm words for Cameron’s speech (and it was an extended one) today, at Keighley:

David Cameron’s speech on the economy today is a curious beast. Here we have the Prime Minister pronouncing on growth, competition, debt and all that – but it has a thin flavour to it, as though it’s just an appetiser for the Budget in a couple of weeks. There are no new policy announcements, nor anything we haven’t really heard before. Yet perhaps that is the point: Mr Cameron emphasises, à la Lady Thatcher, that “there is no alternative” to the Coalition’s current plan. He speaks of consistency and continuity. It reads like a message telling everyone – from the restless Tory backbenches to Ed Balls and Vince Cable – not to expect a change in course.

That addresses the “what” of the speech (or, perhaps the “what-not?”), but not the more telling “where” (Keighley!)  and “why?” (because he’s dans le merde!). On the other hand, that’s precisely what Nick Robinson has caught on (and saying far more succinctly and elegantly than Malcolm managed here):

Perhaps most revealing, though, is that he feels the need to make this speech at all and who it is aimed at. It is a restatement of the government’s central economic purpose aimed at:

• his own party, which is why he is borrowing Margaret Thatcher’s language
• the North of England
• and women

Look at this paragraph to see what I mean :

“I know things are tough right now. Families are struggling with the bills at the end of the month. Some are just a pay-cheque away from going into the red. Parents are worried about what the future holds for their children. Whole towns are wondering where their economic future lies. And I know that is especially true for people here in Yorkshire and in many parts of the north of our country who didn’t benefit properly from the so-called boom years and worry they won’t do so again. But I’m here to say that’s not going to happen. Because we have a plan to get through these difficulties – and to get through them together.”

A man! A plan! A canal! Panama!

As good a palindrome as you’ll get in these parts to remind us just how much of British politicking involves going round in circles and disappeared up one’s own … canal.

National Sisterhood Week continues …

For poison in your sabbath morning porridge, there’s no better source/sauce than the Murdochian Sunday Times [£]. With added brimstone.

What seems to be a straightforward partisan piece, from only the first paragraph and the second sentence, turns into precisely the opposite:

Tory victim of by-election ‘dirty tricks’

The Eastleigh by-election battle turned personal yesterday after Labour and the Liberal Democrats were accused of dirty tricks over the Conservative candidate and her family. Opponents of Maria Hutchings, who is running for the Tories, questioned why her house still had a lit-up Christmas tree in its window long after Christmas.

Which decodes as either ‘absentee’ or ‘nutter’.

Then we get the recital of William Hutchings (age 11) and his ambition to be a cardio-respiratory surgeon, which can only be satiated outside the state system of education. Now back to the Great Christmas Tree riddle:

Supporters of Hutchings pointed out, however, that both the Christmas tree and her comments about education should be seen in the context that she has autistic children with special educational needs.

Conservative campaign HQ said Hutchings kept the tree up until it died for the benefit of one of her children, although neighbours said it was there all-year round.

Immediately from there, into a very odd semi-sequitur:

Diane James, the UKIP candidate, said she felt she had to justify publicly why she did not have children in the face of a Tory campaign focusing on the fact that Hutchings is an accomplished mother of four.

James said: “I couldn’t have children. It’s a big regret of my life, but I can’t do anything about that. I presume the Conservatives are mentioning that their candidate is a mother because they want to focus on family values.

If that seems odd, it is because it is — to the extent of weirdness. Even more so, when Mike Thornton, the front-runner Liberal Democrat (who, like O’Farrell for Labour, is never mentioned by name) features himself as a parent whose daughter went through the local schools to become a medical student. One might feel such a contrast is more relevant than Ms James’s aside.

After a side-track (three paragraphs on the betting odds — LibDems 8-13, Tories 7-4 and Labour on 8-1), we are back to the complex private life of Mrs Hutchings:

Some Tory activists have privately expressed concerns over the selection of Hutchings as their candidate.

In the run-up to the last general election in 2010, in which she was battling to unseat Chris Huhne, the Lib Dem MP whose resignation sparked the by-election, Conservative headquarters was warned that she faced “severe financial problems” and desperately needed more support for her campaign. A confidential file submitted to Tory central office described her as being “at breaking point”.

The party eventually agreed to help Hutchings with mobile phone, petrol and other costs. A source said: “There was a serious worry about Maria last time. She was under a huge amount of strain and the party had to be strong-armed into supporting her.”

The source said Sir George Young, the chief whip, would have been alerted to concerns held on file.

Curiouser and curiouser. Why Sir George? It’s not immediately in his remit; and wouldn’t be unless Mrs Hutchings wins the seat. Why is he dragged in, rather than — say— Greg Shapps, who is currently responsible? Obviously the mobile phone, petrol and other costs are to do with private life: otherwise they would be part of the statutory electoral expenses. And as far a candidate in a highly-marginal seat, up against a star-player from the other side, not being under a huge amount of strain … words fail.

The Sunday Times piece concludes with a paragraph of ritual praise from Eric Pickles (why him?) and another ticking off Mrs Hutchings’ merits as an opponent of gay marriage, her Euroscepticism and that she is “not a Tory toff” but a local mother who has “campaigned tirelessly for special needs children”. Which neatly overlooks that she was parachuted in, from Essex, for the 2010 election, as a ‘Cameron cutie’.

One other mystery persists about this Sunday Times piece. On-line it is counterpointed by two graphics. One is the latest YouGov opinion poll (Labour 43%, Conservatives 32%, Lib Dems 12%, UKIP 9%). The other is a grimacing Nigel Farage with his candidate, both with rosettes and against UKIP posters. In the print edition there is an extra: a singularly unflattering upward-shot portrait of Mrs Hutchings’ treble chins.

You don’t need a semiologist to detect a strong sub-text in all this.