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]

Reasons for leaving the EU and some random thoughts on Theresa May’s brand of conservatism

A report presented to the European Parliamentā€™s Committee on Budgets gave an inclination of how the EU intends to spend European taxpayersā€™ money in 2018 and 2019. Among the planned expenditures is a stunning ā‚¬6.18 million (Ā£5.3 million) for furniture. One can only speculate as to what sort of furniture would cost the EU so much over the course of a single year.Ā Even this sum, however, is dwarfed by the amount the EU intends to spend on a communications campaign which they claim will ā€œexplain the purpose of the [European] Union and the [European] Parliament to the citizensā€™ ahead of European Parliament elections in 2019ā€. So thatā€™s ā‚¬33.3 million (Ā£28.6 million) on an EU PR campaign. In total, it will be ā‚¬25 million (Ā£21.5 million) next year, and another ā‚¬8.33 million (Ā£7.1 million) in May 2019, all aimed at boosting the European project through these elections.

CapX.

Of course, countries that aren’t members of transnational (“tranzi”) organisations are just as capable of blowing millions or more of their citizens’ wealth on such foolishness, but it does seem that with tranzi organisations, there is a greater momentum for this nonsense, because the chains of accountability involved tend to be weaker. And never forget good old-fashioned empire building: the EU, as I like to remind my Remainer friends, is at root a political project and that those who consider it to be a Good Things don’t scruple that hard about what is needed to spread The Word. I have, in my capacity as a journalist down the years, been to my fair share of EU gabfests, and I have always been struck by just how many media “aides” and so on there are in attendance. I recently went to Malta for such an event, and there were enough EU officials running the thing to make up three football teams. This is where the money goes. Just because someone as florid as Nigel Farage denounces EU waste and spending doesn’t make his comments any less true. And getting away from this circus, it seems to me, is a prize worth taking.

Right now people are debating the pros and cons of what Britain is doing. Britain does, I hope, have a chance to use its departure from the EU as an opportunity not just to break free from EU cost and regulatory nonsense, but to consign plenty of homegrown foolishness to the garbage can. And it is therefore all the more depressing that an authortarian centrist such as UK Prime Minister Theresa May seems determined to march the country down into a dirigiste dead end, if only for reasons of narrow party advantage, although there is a chilling thought that this fan of Joe Chamberlain, god help us, actually means it.

29 comments to Reasons for leaving the EU and some random thoughts on Theresa May’s brand of conservatism

  • Mr Ecks

    She has hitched her star to Brexit. She would fudge it but the nasty EU gang is giving her little choice but to play it straight. If the ESpew had the brains of a gnat –as opposed to evil animal cunning which all political scum possess–their tactic would be Honey and Slime in order to help their ReMainiac pals over here. However they are outraged that little people have dared to tell such Grandees as they to piss up their legs and play with the steam. So nasty it is and she can’t be seen to cave to that.

    She is thick and she is well-off, middle-class, cultural Marxist, London Bubble, BluLabour scum in the exact mould of Camoron save she is yet more authoritarian and a bigger RoP-sucker even than that fool.

  • Johnathan Pearce (London)

    As is so often the case Mr Ecks, half of what you say is absolutely spot on, the rest is deranged. I doubt she is much of a cultural marxist, whatever that’s supposed to mean.

  • Cal Ford

    Milli-May is using Brexit as a chance to enact her policies, because apparently it’s now her party.

  • Paul Marks

    Quite so J.P. – quite so.

  • Mr Ed

    As is so often the case Mr Ecks, half of what you say is absolutely spot on, the rest is deranged

    Deranged? He strikes me as getting his point across with fine economy of words.

  • Mr Ecks

    May likely never heard of the Frankfurt School but she in on board with enough of their doctrines to make her a fellow-traveller by default if not design.

    Are racism/sexism etc ( and all the usual buzzwords) far from her lips? This is the famously daft cow who recited pure Marxian femmi-commissar “trafficking” garbage in the HoC about “100,000 under-age Viet girls” being held as prisoner/prostitutes in the UK’s nailbars FFS.

    Likewise do the Police pursue criminals of a certain group with the same determination they pursue “hate-speakers” and thought-criminals in general? She could try (at least) to change that but does nothing. She did nothing to protect our borders as Home Sec and I think her sympathies are on Merkal’s side even tho’ she now has little choice but to stand up to EU bullying.

    Don’t forget that the Civil Service –back in the 90s–was one of the first to throw aside the old standards of the “reasonable man” test in cases of discrimination (or daring to speak out “offensively”)and adopt Marxian subjectivist crap such that if the supposed “victim” of any action or remark feels offended by it then it is offensive regardless of whether any reasonable person would agree with that assessment. May has the power to change that back again and fire the Senior Civil Service pukes who brought it about. Don’t hold your breath waiting.

    No –she may not completely talk the talk of cultural Marxism but to a high degree she walks the walk

  • Rob

    Dirigisme is the spirit of the age. You can’t send half of your youth to ‘university’ and expect anything other than an arrogant belief that they can control the world around them.

  • Eric

    Britain does, I hope, have a chance to use its departure from the EU as an opportunity not just to break free from EU cost and regulatory nonsense, but to consign plenty of homegrown foolishness to the garbage can.

    I expect that’s what keeps the Remoaners up at night.

  • Britain does, I hope, have a chance to use its departure from the EU as an opportunity not just to break free from EU cost and regulatory nonsense, but to consign plenty of homegrown foolishness to the garbage can

    It’s going to take at least a generation for any of that to happen, if at all. We’ve taken the first step, and if there is any hope it’s in the young, as they percolate up into the establishment. The establishment of the day is hopelessly wedded to regulatory nonsense and homegrown foolishness and are not likely to change their spots midstream.

  • Laird

    I’ve never before heard of “percolating up“. Interesting concept. šŸ˜›

  • Mr Ed

    Laird,

    Tides might percolate up in some estuaries, at some times.

  • Chester Draws

    She is thick and she is well-off, middle-class, cultural Marxist, London Bubble, BluLabour scum

    And yet she is running the country and you are not.

    That you disagree with her does not make her “thick”. It makes you wrong, and rude.

    I imagine most of us reading this are well off and middle class. You are making no fans by suggesting that being well-off and middle class is a problem. I would regard getting everyone to well-off as a solution. The middle-class is just a slur. What class are you btw?

    I’d just like to point out that May and Margaret Thatcher had extremely similar up-bringings, went on to get similar degrees, didn’t enter politics immediately but didn’t become Prime Minister until they served their time in parliament.

    Do you regard Thatcher as well-off, middle class thicko who lived in the London bubble?

  • JohnW

    Was it not Theresa May who banned Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer from entering the UK while allowing free entry to the likes of Shady “pro-stoning” Alsuleiman and Muhammad “Al-Qaeda apologist” Al-Arifi?

  • Mr Ecks

    She is thick and she is well-off, middle-class, cultural Marxist, London Bubble, BluLabour scum

    “And yet she is running the country and you are not.”

    Neither are you and so what. If either of us had spent our lives climbing and slime-ing we might be where she is now and have the same compromised mental and moral outlook. Actually no as someone with my beliefs would have NO chance of getting where she has crawled.

    “That you disagree with her does not make her ā€œthickā€.”

    Never said it did. Any proof of her stupidity needed is more than demonstrated by her crap record at the Home Office and her moronic Viet announcement. She IS thick–you can like it or not. Doesn’t change it.

    “It makes you wrong,”

    Sez you.

    ” and rude.”

    Guilty as charged.

    “I imagine most of us reading this are well off and middle class. You are making no fans by suggesting that being well-off and middle class is a problem. I would regard getting everyone to well-off as a solution. The middle-class is just a slur.”

    I couldn’t care less about fans.

    In this context “middle-class” goes with cultural Marxist. Perhaps I should have made it clearer. I applaud the original middle-class values of getting on in the world ( altho not at any cost) etc. What I despise is the middle-class left.

    That poor people of little education and hard lives might fall for Utopian leftist cockrot is one thing–bad enough in itself– but some small smidgin of understanding if not approval exists in me. That lots of young, dumb, well-off MC scum, most of whom have never had a days financial hardship in their lives have crawled up Marx’s arse to the degree that the future of Western civilisation itself might now be in the balance boils my piss to a nuclear degree. Worthless scum whose adolescent angst and pathetic teenage beefs with Mummy and Daddy now cast a long shadow of support for evil and tyranny across the entire West. That is the “middle class” I loathe. People who have made good minus Marxian rhetoric I have no quarrel with.

    “What class are you btw?”

    A son of Toil and glad of it.

    “Iā€™d just like to point out that May and Margaret Thatcher had extremely similar up-bringings, went on to get similar degrees, didnā€™t enter politics immediately but didnā€™t become Prime Minister until they served their time in parliament. ”

    Again so what? Thatcher pre-dated–just–the final ascendency of cultural Marxism. And whatever Thatchers failings I doubt she would have been dumb enough to spout –without a second’s thought-the “trafficking” bollocks that May did.

    “Do you regard Thatcher as well-off, middle class thicko who lived in the London bubble?”

    The London Bubble of well-off cultural Marxism had not fully formed in Thatcher’s era. She would not have fitted in with them anyway. Nor is Thatcher any sort of saint whatever her achievements.
    ..

  • Nicholas (Unlicenced Joker) Gray

    You British still haven’t told us which day you will celebrate as Brexit day- June the 23rd, or March the 29th! The referendum, or the delivery. Or will you celebrate both?

  • PeterT

    25th of October continues to do just fine.

    Chester, sit down and stop fidgeting with your pearls.

  • Cal Ford

    You’re joking, right, Nicholas? The British establishment will never establish a Brexit celebration day.

    I suggest we start up our own celebration day. It should be June 23, because that was a glorious day, when the people spoke. Any celebration day should celebrate the actions of the people, not the actions of the government. We want to reinforce the idea that it’s the people’s decisions that count, not the government’s (which should just follow from the former).

    But there’s no point doing it until we’re actually out, and until it’s established that we really have got out properly, and that Milli-May hasn’t done a deal to salvage a lot of what we were trying to escape from.

  • RouĆ© le Jour

    Personally I don’t believe in the Marx hobgoblin. It’s the bureaucracy vs. the people, and much of the upper middle class has made the rational decision to support Sir Humphrey as most of them owe him their jobs.

  • Johnathan Pearce

    Mr Ecks, it was plainly foolish to dismiss May as thick, as you did. A better word would be unwise, or ideologically narrow. She’s highly successful in her area; that does not mean she is correct about things, or that her reasoning skills and so on are ideal, but to dismiss someone of her rank as thick is, well, thick. She certainly has a certain cunning, rather as Corbyn does (although I would argue that he is closer fitting the “thick” designation, given his attachment to hard-left ideas for his entire miserable life.)

  • monoi

    She is thick in the sense that outside her area of expertise, ie climbing the greasy pole bereft of principles (remain one day, brexit the next), she still spouts the leftist crap which is bringing our countries down.

    She is the british equivalent of hollande, becoming PM by default and a major stroke of luck.

    Meanwhile, inflation is up, pound is down, deficit reduction will never happen and the “state is a force for good”.

  • Mr Ecks

    Monoi pretty much covers it–for which thanks.

    She is not stupid in the sense of not knowing which way round her knickers go on.

    She is interested only in what advances her and evidently has zero concern for anything outside that. She has a degree sure but that doesn’t mean that she isn’t a fool outside the realm of her own self-interest and advancement. She is.

  • JohnW

    She is thick in the sense that outside her area of expertise…

    Isn’t her area of expertise supposed to be politics?

    In my view, Theresa May is not merely thick but wilfully ignorant.

  • Watchman

    Nicholas,

    Why would we have a day to celebrate the assertion of our freedom? We aren’t one of these parvenue countries where such things are the basis of holidays šŸ˜› , as we much prefer religious festivals, random times of the year and an approximation of the great socialist festival of May 1st (that has to fall on a Monday so misses the date six times out of seven…).

  • Watchman

    And in general, Ms May is not a leftist. She’s a conservative in the proper sense of the word, with a belief in the efficiacy of the state. You don’t have to be left-wing to believe the state can be the solution (you might have to be stupid to be fair), any more than you have to be right-wing to believe in individual liberties. What Ms May believes seems to hark back to pre-Thatcher conservatism in the UK, and perhaps to the more recent examples of Bush-type Republicanism and European Christian Democratic politics. It’s an intellectual strand of thought that is opposed to socialism and other left-wing ideals, even if it is not exactly attractive to us here.

    As for cultural Marxism, Ms May is only following this in an incredibly diluted way. Rather she is politically old-enough to still see the issues of the Westminster bubble as important and miss the point that people are rebelling about that as well, so her field of reference might be influenced by cultural Marxism. Although I doubt opposign racism and sexism is really cultural Marxism as opposed to sensible ideas – the way she chooses to do this is simply a reflection of her political belief.

  • PeterT

    Itā€™s an intellectual strand of thought that is opposed to socialism and other left-wing ideals

    Unless of course that is the current status quo, in which case it’s dandy.

  • hennesli

    when some people use the term ‘cultural Marxist’ what they really mean is anyone who is not a religious or ethnic nationalist.

  • Richard Thomas

    Just what we need… Tranzsplaining.

  • Mr Ecks

    Hennesli: “Some” might. But it applies very nicely in most cases ta very much.

    Watchman: One Nation Tories….like Heath? ‘Nuff said.

  • Derek Buxton

    The EU always was set up to be a bureaucrats paradise, set up by them and totally run by them as they increase the number of their followers. Mrs May listens to civil servants, bureaucrats to a man and has little idea of what they are doing to us, the People. I am still looking far a single policy that would qualify as Conservative, all we have is theft and more theft, camoron in skirts. The other parties unfortunately should not be backed by anyone wanting a free, liberal society….as we once had until the 50s.