We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
|
Even the police and civil servants may be ready to remove Brown It occurs to me, reading this item about the decision by the authorities not to prosecute Damian Green, the Conservative MP, over his farcical arrest, that they decided that picking on this guy now that the UK government is in such a terrible mess might not be a runner. The police/Crown Prosecution Service might have been more confident of doing the government’s bidding when the government appeared all powerful. Now, I get the impression that in Whitehall, and across much of the government machine, arses are being covered, positions prepared. The police have probably woken up to the idea that soon, perhaps sooner than some imagine, their masters will be different, if only by political colouring.
This is how regimes die. Their toadies and functionaries start to turn on them.
Meanwhile, I wonder if we can persuade our American blogger friends to notice that the government of a G7 nation and NATO ally is, er, about to implode. I mean, I think that might even be of interest to The Community Organiser. Or maybe not.
|
Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
|
I agree, maybe we can’t get any messages through to the White House, but how about Instapundit (see previous posting), Fox News and the rest of them, the ones who actually made Dan Han’s video go global? Okay, this time, they aren’t needed to make a big bang out of this ecause it’s already big, but imagine the ripples when Our Man In Washington is told to switch on his telly, to watch a fawning transatlantic video interview with Guido, accompanied by very unfawning and unadmiring commentary about Gordon Brown.
I realise that my WishfulThinkingOmeter is going mad just now, but I really think we could be only days away from a Big Switch being thrown, by the people who ultimately decide these things.
If I was Derek Draper, I’d now be writing my book, confessing all and telling all, really fast, just in case this is all done and dusted in a month, and everyone really is “moving on” by the time Gordon Brown: My Part in His Downfall by Derek Draper reaches the bookshops.
I think you are being over optimistic about sudden change. Brown is going to cling on by his fingernails until someone stamps on them. Do not expect him to go honourably. The creature has no concept of honour or decency.
I for one never thought Brown would go honourably. But I do think that we may be quite close to a delegation of sufficient clout giving him the push, one way (all going to visit him to say privately: go) or another (all saying go in public).
If we are waiting for Gordon Brown to do the decent thing, we will wait for ever. Luckily, we aren’t.
Some may take a certain joy in seeing Gordo Brown fall into the deep hole he has been digging for himself lo those many years — but even if it happens, it won’t change anything. The political class, and now the bureaucrat class, are so entrenched that nothing short of Madame Guillotine is going to change the culture.
Gordie looked the other way when Our Lady Jackie was caught abusing her expenses. Now the inestimable Daily Mail guesses that about half the members of the House of Commons have been similarly fiddling expenses — and Members of the European Parliament have just legalized yet another expense-extorting scheme. The fish is rotting from the head.
Will anyone in the US pay any attention? Not likely. In the US, GM’s troubles can largely be attributed to GM’s internal version of the Social Security Ponzi scheme finally coming home to roost — there simply is not enough money to pay for all the health care & pensions that have been promised. Yet the US punditry & politicians have resolutely refused to draw the lesson that policies which have destroyed once mighty GM can do the same to the US itself.
There will be tears before bedtime, all round the world.
I’m not sure that the US Administration is paying *that* much attention to the other side of the “Special Relationship”; and that’s not me trashing the Obama Administration per se but it’s more a feature of the State Department Panjandramerie in general.
From over here, as an expat, when I talk to Americans who have a reasonable grasp of European Politics, they tend to see the current Tory and Labour parties as essentially fungible – and Old Tone as having been a foreign policy straddler.
The ones who use the UK as an object lesson in what America could become can see there’s not much difference between Broon’s and Call Me Dave’s policies.
I think Bod has it about right. There still seems to be no interest in this story on the part of the mainstream media over here; there’s not even anything on the Drudge Report! We really are a pretty provincial bunch. Frankly, I’m impressed that he could find any Americans who have a “reasonable grasp” of European politics!
(N.B., I really like the word “panjandramerie”. Not sure when I’ll ever have chance to use it, though.)
Laird,
In case you ever have the opportunity, I misspelled. it’s ‘panjandrumerie’ (n.b. ‘u’ not ‘a’).
The funny thing is that Samizdata gives us wonderful opportunities to educate – I had been totally unaware of a WW2 device called “The Great Panjandrum”, cited here. Oddly enough, I think that the analogy with the State Department is somewhat MORE apt with this information.
Neville Shute’s Great Panjandrum (Link)
Why should anyone here want Brown and his henchmen to go? We want the whole philosophy of government discredited along with the petty methods. No one should be able to get in and pretend to be changing things a little, nor to be cleaning up the sleaze but carrying on with Blairism (essentially Blair’s trick with taking over from Major).
Guy, I strongly disagree. The “to save the village, we must first destroy it” line has been used for a long time now – by the likes of Sean Gabb, etc – to justify the argument that we need to have this bunch of folk in power as long as possible in order to discredit big government. well, I think it is now fair to say that Brown has “tested to destruction” (remember that phrase) the idea of Big Government. The test is over. The electorate have seen the results.
I think that the next Tory government will not be a great improvement but I actually do think there will be some cuts in public spending, some removal of oppressive rules. I am not holding out for much more, or expecting much more. But a degree of retrenchment will occur. After the nightmare of NuLab, that is about as much as any sane person can expect.
Jonathan,
You know I’m a longstanding opponent of Sean’s (and Perry’s) nihilistic rejection of all parties and all our limping institutions. But the reason I differ from you on this point, is precisely because I agree with you.
I’m much more optimistic about the present Tory party than most posters here, in fact. But we want the New Labour system of neo-corporatism and empires of officialdom throughly destroyed. That means the rigid Brown should stay until the next election in order that the present administration cannot spend a few months repositioning itself and writing him out of history with all the powers of the mighty tax-funded official PR machines at its disposal.
What I find particularly alarming about the Green case is the recent revelation that one of the keywords for which his inbox was searched was the name of Liberty head Shami Chakrabarty. Setting aside the actions and stances of the organisation itself for a moment – I personally do not share all its views, not by a long chalk – one has to wonder what the implications are here.