Thursday
Talking of conviction parties, as I was the other day, how about this shamelessly populist rant, from the leader of the LPUK. Its basic message is very simple:
Join us.
Alas, whenever I hear that phrase I tend to be reminded of a big ugly guy in a hat, beckoning, with a machine gun, to Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon to come over and become bit part players (i.e. corpses) in a gangland massacre that the two soon-to-be cross-dressers have just made the mistake of witnessing. Luckily, the machine gun guys get distracted by the arrival of some cops, or Some Like It Hot would not have been much of a movie.
Mr Devil's Kitchen didn't mean it that way. I wish him and his party the best of luck. They will need it. Times have changed since I wrote this, and as I said in my posting yesterday the internet has changed the rules for small political parties hugely. I now think that however difficult and dangerous a British Libertarian political party may prove to be, it simply has to happen. Certainly lots of others think it has to, to the point of joining it in quite promising numbers, and who am I to try to stop them? But many of the warnings in that Libertarian Alliance piece from over a decade ago do still apply.
I wonder how many candidates the LPUK will manage to field in the next general election? The willingness to be (electorally speaking) massacred is unfortunately a job requirement, but as I said in my earlier bit about UKIP, the silly parties might actually soon start doing a bit better, what with the big three parties being so widely despised, and now that the silly parties no longer depend on mainstream media coverage to be noticed at all.
I consider it interesting that UKIP and LPUK have both recently followed the Conservatives in choosing a couple of Old Etonians to be their leaders. Coincidence? Probably, but Etonians have always been good at smelling power. Two further straws in the wind to suggest that the age of the silly parties may now be with us?
As I've long suggested! The point of having a UKLP is not that different from the LPUSA. It is a vehicle for getting a lot of notice of your ideas when politics time comes around. Perhaps not as much as the major parties, but now, with the internet having our backs, any major media we can get here can point people who have been kept safely inside the leftists rhetorical box at an entire ecosystem of thought of which they have heretofore been totally unaware.
Posted by Dale Amon at January 7, 2010 05:43 PM
Dale, I agree: The principle reason I like having the LPUK is for the possibility of increasing public awareness of libertarianism. I will consider that it has been successful in this when I see a Libertarian on Question Time!
Brian, whenever I hear the phrase "Join us," I also think of a film, but mine is Evil Dead!
Posted by Richard Garner at January 7, 2010 10:06 PM
Just a minor point: I recall it emerging from a previous discussion here of the LPUK that they are very keen to be known as: "LPUK".
Call them what Dale Amon just called them, and they are one small horizontal line from being UKIP, a confusion that the LPUK is extremely anxious to avoid.
Posted by Brian Micklethwait at January 7, 2010 11:16 PM
As a means of drawing public attention to the cause of getting government the fuck out of our lives and as a means of pressuring the government into holding a referendum on EU membership (to whatever extent that is possible), UKIP, in as much as they maintain a relentless focus on the monstrosity that is the EU are just as likely recipients of my support than LPUK/UKLP, who in my opinion, are basically just an uber-UKIP: "Give us your moral sanction to hold government power, because we hold government power to be morally wrong..."
A variety of distinct political groups appealing for the repeal of various areas of legislation (and nothing more) are possibly a better alternative if they can each generate sufficient media attention (like Fathers4Justice or Islam4theUK). The important idea to spread is cutting back government - that's it. And the key word here is "spread"; why make do with lumpy libertarian potatoes, when, by cutting your potatoes up you can increase surface area and cut back your cooking time? Why let yourself get dragged onto contaminated ground by debates about "well what would you do about problems x, y and z?" Fight on ground of our own choosing - not that of the enemy's.
Posted by mike at January 8, 2010 07:16 AM
Now you have me flummoxed...I always thought the silly parties were Lab-Con-Lib.
But seriously, folks, anyone who votes for any of that useless trio of lookalikes does not have the interests of his country at heart and is thus, in my book, no better than a traitor.
Think about it...we are no longer free; thanks to those evil bastards who have, against our will, ceded our sovereignty to an alien bureaucracy. We are a "Gau", a province of the EU which decides our laws & way of life...and drains away what little money we have left...and all thanks to LAB/CON/LIB treachery.
Vote for ANY party which will move heaven & earth to get us out of the EU.
The alternative is to continue cowering in submission.
Posted by permanentexpat at January 8, 2010 05:14 PM
