The Slog: The Prime Minister is off to America, where it is expected he will be
briefed on what to think during the coming year. But before leaving, he
will kick off his big EU fightback with some pro-Brussels spin that is
so leaden, it really does feel like something Mandelson might have come
up with in 2005. Staying in the EU, Cammers will claim, will earn £10
billion for Britain. This is because the Eton Mess hopes to help clinch a
global trade deal with Obama and the EU, so of course it is a very good
reason for keeping the Special Relationship as well. By the way, given
the likely outcome of these trade talks, while Britain will trouser
£10bn, Washington will pick up a mere £63bn, or slightly more than they
paid in debt interest last week. ‘The deal could be worth £380 a year
for each British family’ puffed the Number Ten Bollockserator.
Anyway, just so we’re clear here, the reason to stay in the EU is
because it’s about to do a deal with the US.
Do try to remain clear on that one, because there are no local elections to be won by UKip this week and so Boris Johnson is now telling us that the question of EU membership “is no longer of key importance to the destiny of this country….The political row [about it, which I've been stoking up for months] risks overshadowing more important weaknesses in the economy…”. Ah, OK. So Ukip, which held a really important message for Brits last week, is this week irrelevant, says Boris.
Do try to remain clear on that one, because there are no local elections to be won by UKip this week and so Boris Johnson is now telling us that the question of EU membership “is no longer of key importance to the destiny of this country….The political row [about it, which I've been stoking up for months] risks overshadowing more important weaknesses in the economy…”. Ah, OK. So Ukip, which held a really important message for Brits last week, is this week irrelevant, says Boris.
I know this is what Boris will say this morning, because Channel
Island cruising Bumboy Bobby Winnet trailered the Johnson remarks in his Telegraph column
late last night. Yes, it was a case of a Telegraph hack filling space
to tell readers about another Telegraph column that BoJo was going to
unveil the following morning. Les jumelles de Barclaysark don’t
do subtle, and their choice of messenger never varies. You have to
laugh. In fact, I have to laugh out loud when Boris tells us that the
real problem Britain faces is sloth in the workplace. Quite
right. All these f**king two-toed tree sloths coming into the country
and stealing our jobs. It’s a disgrace.
So on one side of the House we have a Party run by a bloke who says
the EU is a red herring, and a Prime Minister in the same Party who says
yes of course we must stay in because our zookeepers allies
think we should. And while Red Herring Tory says in or out who gives a
sh*t, Red Hot education poker Michael Gove says he thinks the
eurosceptics may well be right, and if they are he’ll be right behind
them. Nigel Farage’s negotiation process with these chaps was never
going to be easy.
From Red Tories to Blue Labour, but still on the EU issue that
doesn’t matter any more, those of a blue tinge among the Ed Miller Band
members – MP for Dagenham & Rainham Jon Cruddas, and Ed’s former
guru Lord Glasman seem to be the prime movers here – are all for getting
a renegotiation of the EU rules on unfettered migration. Ed Miliband
himself, who is of course Red, is even keener on forgetting the entire
thing, because his left wing would like the entire Indian sub-continent
in Burnley by 2015, whereas his near right wing (more Pink than Blue)
wants to ‘reconnect with Labour’s lost voters’ – that is, to get elected
at all costs by saying whatever it takes. He is so keen for the whole
thing to go away, he’s as keen as mustard….and thus probably Brown Ed
these days. Or maybe that’s just his trousers. Ed is obviously very good
with colours, because when Environment Minister under his promoter totally wrong-headed Gordon Brown, he was Green.
From the start of this bunfight (roughly thirty years ago or more)
those leading operations have always been keen to call the EU ‘a matter
for personal choice’ by legislators – Westminster code for “we’re both
totally split so we’ll say ‘vote with your conscience’ while bullying
the crap out of you to toe the line behind the scenes”. But forgetting
the EU for a minute because it’s imploding anyway, it’s the colour
spectrum that intrigues me.
It does seem to your correspondent that Labour’s colour is red, and
the Conservative colour is blue. These globally recognised signs of
liberal v conservative are either the ones to go with, or they aren’t.
‘New’ Labour – the dreadful invention of the late Phil Gould – was
really a fudge saying “there is no longer a united or electable unit
called The Labour Party”. ‘Blue’ Labour – equally wooden as a concept –
is saying something similar, only sixteen years further on…as in, “We
are no longer a Party at all, but rather a loose alliance of cynical
troughers who will be whatever bloody colour you want us to be so long
as we can win power”.
The situation is slightly different in the Tory Party, where you can
just about admit to being good with colours these days, but it’s still
frowned upon in private. There are no shades of blue, as if this might
be some political boat-race, there are Clubs and Committees. There was
the Monday Club, then when that went a bit odd, the No turning Back
Club; and the 1922 Committee. These are all examples of the Conservative
Right, which you can tell by the way they’re either extinct, or
determined not to turn their backs on 1922. Mainly they want to turn
their backs on the Treaty of Rome (even the Romans themselves do now)
and this principle, plus their antediluvian feelings about many things
such as ethics and hanging chimney sweeps, is what separates them from
the Club That Dare Not Speak It’s Name. No, I’m not talking about the
Masonic Paedophile Elm Lodge tendency, but rather the thing which in
recent weeks I have dubbed Borishunt Fallongove.
You could give this schism various titles – like ‘Barclays and Rupert
Murdoch Yes!’ (BARMY!) or ‘Against Thatcherite Wets and Trimmers’
(ATWAT) – but all they do is confirm why the group has no name: like The
Tribune Group in Labour, it is unelectable in its true colours….which
are probably black, and pitch black. It aims, as far as I can gather, to
take over the Tory Party and bury ‘One Nation Conservatism’ forever,
possibly with the help of a UKip alliance – depending on how things pan
out.
Burying One Nation (or Tory Reform Group) Conservatives effectively
also means storming and then pillaging Camerlot, which always was – you
read it here first, by the way – a sloppy, Blair-admiring shower of
wah-wahs who, as with New Labour – believe whatever it seems appropriate
to believe at any given point. Their guiding mantra is ‘Caution without
thought for the Consequences’, which explains better than anything else
I could offer up why it steered the Tories from the calm of an azure
milkpond sea onto the rocks in the 2010 Election, thence to introduce an
anarchic and muddled series of measures slashing the Defence budget,
starving NHS hospitals, and not quite installing Murdoch as Britain’s
Media Gauleiter. (The difference between Camerlot and Borishunt
Fallongove is that the latter would install him as The Lord High Prince
Rupert, regent to the heir apparent, Aidan I of Sark.)
My bottom line on all of this is simple: observing the two main
Parties at Westminster nowadays is like being at a masked ball where
there are only two types of mask, but behind each one are at least two
faces. As long as the two big Parties are there purely for the
convenience of maintaining a closed shop, it will from now on always be
like that. Having a left-leaning Labour Party and a Right-leaning
Conservative Party is no longer practical in a socio-economic
environment where left and right mean nothing, there are no labourers
any more, and most conservatives seem to be radical. At one time, I
thought that a LibDem presence forcing the introduction of PR might act
as a Trojan Horse to destroy the fascist discipline of the two Party
machines, but it’s now obvious I was wrong: from the day in March 2010 I
spotted that Clegg had dropped PR as a deal-breaker-or-maker in the LibDem Manifesto, it was clear he’d lost the plot….or probably wanted the cosy closed shop as much as the rest of them.
I still think it highly possible that coming econo-fiscal whoopsies
will break down the old Party lines, and I still think that the best
approach to reforming the culture of government in Britain is via a
Citizens’ Alliance pressure group informally regulating and threatening
politicians with ideas rather too big for their boots. But for today, I
will confine my comments on the Great EU Debate to these: in a way, BoJo
is right, in that the EU will eat itself anyway. Where I differ is that
I think we would do well to divorce from both the EU and the USA,
reaffirming Anglophone relationships and forging new ones with Asian
tigers. The idea that this would make Yankosprout want to freeze us out
is poppycock. However, the idea that we can remain sitting in the EU and
muddling through is not just poppycock, it is dangerous cowardice.
Which is, I’m afraid, all you are ever going to get from two machines
interested only in Party power and personal enrichment.
Edited by WD
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