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Samizdata quote of the day – Britain is where it is because of the Tories But eventually one notices that the Tories cannot achieve the easy things either. They cannot stop the boats because the Blob is too powerful. They cannot build houses because the planning system is too powerful. They cannot cut spending because the Treasury is too powerful. They cannot reform the NHS because the NHS is too powerful. And now they cannot liberalise Soho because the Soho Society is too powerful. There is one common denominator here, folks: it is called the Conservative Party.
– John Hardy (£)
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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.
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It’s not incompetence, it’s castration.
Not really. They say they “cannot because…” but the truth is they do not actually want to overturn these things, or change anything beyond cosmetic tweeks. A critical mass of Tory apparatchiks entirely agree with, and are part of, the Blairite establishment’s constitutional, political, and cultural world view.
Ignore what they say, just focus on what they do. What they say they want, what they say they believe… it is purely tactical, a differentiating illusion. The actions of Westminster council is a near perfect proof of that.
The Uniparty is real.
‘… eventually one notices …’
Does one? Does one indeed? One’s just noticed, a week last Tuesday, that the Tories are: a) eunuchs, and; b) enjoying it.
For the love of God, who is this prat Hardy?
Someone pointing out that the Tories are the problem?
Evelyn Waugh on why he did not vote Conservative (or, indeed, vote at all) – beyond the flippant comment about “I would not give advice to my King on who he should choose for his ministers” there was the real reason – “the Conservatives have never put the clock back by a second”.
For a real Reactionary, i.e. someone who wants to roll back “Social Reform” (statism) this is damning.
It was a bit unfair – as both Churchill and Eden reversed some (far from all – but some) of the insane statism of the Atlee government (which about half the British people voted for – not just in 1945, but in two later elections – which is both astonishing and horrifying – those who believe the British people have a traditional love of liberty need to reflect on this).
And Margaret Thatcher also reversed some statism (some – again far from all) – but since 1990 the record has been awful, starting with John “we have spent more money than Labour promised to spend” Major.
As for institutional factors – I was struck by the difference between Borough Council level, and Unitary Authority level.
At the level of Kettering Borough Council (now abolished) we could freeze Council Tax – which meant a real cut in Council Tax every year, as inflation ate it away.
But at North Northants Unitary we had to increase Council Tax every year by the maximum – and the Reform Party has done the same thing.
Replacing the Conservatives with the Reform Party in North and West Northants has led to no real changes – yes there have been some cosmetic changes, such as getting rid of the Ukrainian flags (the average Reform Party voter and activist is not fond of Ukraine – Perry is an exception to that), but the increase of spending, taxation and regulation continues. “Andy” Burnham loves vast “local” authorities that are not local at all – his ideal would be Regional government where there would be no chance whatever of doing anything other than nod through the expansion of government – democracy in theory alive, but, in practice, totally dead.
Just like national level government – where the structure only now permits government to expand, not be rolled back (as Liz Truss found out – the hard way).
“Then smash the structure!”
I agree – but I see little chance of this happening this side of the collapse of the United Kingdom.
Does any nation, any people, have a love of individual liberty – a real aversion to statism, government spending, regulations, and so on?
Genuine question – as I do not know.
I would love it of there was such a people somewhere.
Certainly the British do not – and neither do the Americans (1936 proved that – Franklin Roosevelt used the Constitution of the United States for toilet paper, violated every contract, public and private, and stole the monetary gold of ordinary people – and was reelected by 60% of the vote – still at least he did not murder millions of human beings, as his friend “Christian Gentleman” Stalin did).
Even Switzerland is not what it was.
In an election in the Canton of St Gallen in the 1840s Progressive (read “evil”) forces won by a single household – it was incredibly close election.
Later when the Swiss Confederation was debating whether to use violence against Cantons that wished to leave the Confederation – the vote was also very close, if St Gallen had voted the other way, the vote would have gone the other way.
This is important – as the use of armed violence to enforce “Union” in Switzerland was taken as a precedent – in both the Italian and German lands.
Still Switzerland had a fairly limited government – up to much more modern times.
By the way it is a myth that the “Planning System” prevents developments – it generally does not.
Indeed it would cause bitter laughter among local people (all over the country) to be told that the “Planning System” prevents the building of hated warehouses and housing estates, at it is once-in-a-blue-Moon that local people get their wishes respected.
London based think tanks insist that few houses and flats are being built – but people who actually use their eyes to look at physical towns (as opposed to government statistics) can see housing estates and flats being built all over the place.
Reform Party voters tend to be very much against this – if they found out that the London leadership of Reform supported even more developments (and I am NOT saying they do – but the post implied that they do), they would not vote for the Reform Party any more.
The Planning Laws were a failure – they did not prevent the horrible post war developments, both government and corporate.
I was reminded of a case recently – the destruction of the beautiful Peacock Hotel in Northampton
Back in the 1950s Northampton (astonishing though it may seem today) was a nice place – it was the center of England, which was also (generally) a nice place.
The Peacock Hotel was the best hotel in Northampton – and one of the finest in the whole county, it had been so for centuries. Famous people had stayed there (such as Prime Minster Churchill) and had delivered speeches from it.
But in 1957 it was bought by “developers” they took out the windows (so the wind and rain could get at the building) – they sold off the doors and fireplaces, they looted the building and left it (deliberately) to decay – so they could say (a few years later) “it is dangerous, you have to let us demolish it”.
And they did demolish the hotel – and built some piece of crap on the site, like the rest of the pieces-of-crap that now dominate the cities and towns of this land.
Anyone who has come into contact with “development projects” (what Americans call “Urban Renewal” [the city of Charleston, South Carolina, appears to be one of the few places where the “developers” were defeated] – i.e. the replacement of good buildings with horrible buildings, or no buildings at all – just massive roads and empty space) knows what bastards control it – whether they are government or corporate.
I remember the destruction of wide areas of my own town (Kettering) in the 1960s and 1970s.
Do not tell me that this did not happen, I watched much of it happen – and do not tell me it was good, as it was obviously evil.
The “Planning Laws” were a dead letter – they prevented nothing.
Any government can denounce the 1967 UN Refugee protocol. Or parts of the ECHR.
The title of this post caught my eye because it connected to my recent thinking, that Margret Thatcher is responsible for our current ills. The argument goes like this, Thatcher showed that there was an appetite in the country for genuine right wing politics. This put the wind up the progressive elite who, fearful of losing control, were determined to ensure that there was never another Thatcher, and the tool they used to achieve this was mass immigration. Unfortunately as we have discovered, once you get a large enough body of immigrants they are able to press for more immigration. In engineering terms run away positive feedback. The situation is made worse because you can use those immigrants to “goose” GDP, making it even harder to turn back the tide.
Oo, Paul, your tiny little North Northants council. We have all of North Yorkshire as one council. If going by bus to a council meeting I’d have to leave the previous day to get there in time.
Yes, and yes again.
@Deveril – you may not like his prose style but we can’t have too many commentators pointing out the duplicity of the Blue Tie Blairites. Especially as they are making a concerted effort (aided by the propaganda in the Terriblegraph and Spectator) to brush over their failings and to pretend that Kemi is the second coming. Not to mention the daily attacks on Reform and Farage.
jgh – yes indeed.
These vast “local authorities” are not local at all – and people who are elected to them find they are puppets having to rubber stamp tax increases and regulation increases.
“Andy” Burnham and the rest of the “educated” (indoctrinated) – want de facto Regional government (they have for many years – and some moronic “free market” institutes in London agree with them) – which would utterly destroy what is left of democracy.
These de facto regional authorities (so called “devolution” – taking power further and further away from people, thus reversing the meaning of the word “devolution”) would (by the very nature of how they are structured) increase statism – that is what they are for.
The cat was let out of the bag when “Andy” Burnham said he would “devolve” money to such bodies – both Conservative and Reform Party councilors asked if they could use this money to cut taxes – give the money back to the taxpayers.
Of course NOT – taxes must never be reduced, they must be endlessly increased. That is not just the creed of “Andy” – it is the creed of the entire establishment (hello Economist magazine – which does not understand that States such as Texas, Tennessee and Florida do not have a State Income Tax because they have LOWER GOVERNMENT SPENDING than Hellholes such as New York and California – the “Economist” article on these matters mentioned everything under the sun, but not LOWER-GOVERNMENT-SPENDING) and the legal system they have created.
In case anyone does not know – Florida does not have a State Income Tax because its Government-Spending is, per person, about half that of New York State (it is not “revenue from tourists” – contrary to the liars of the Economist magazine), and Tennessee and so on, also have much lower Government-Spending than Dem controlled States such as New York and California.
Marius – the Telegraph seems to be concentrating its fire on the Restore Party, those attacks help the Reform Party. The Telegraph is one of the few media outlets that is not on the left, although, yes, there are some leftists who work for the Telegraph (so one must be careful).
As for Kemi Badenoch – if anything the policies of the lady are to the right of Nigel Farage, and people who do not support the policies of the lady policies (for example opposition to Net Zero and to the European Convention on Human Rights) will not be allowed to stand as Conservative candidates.
There is no logical reason why Kemi and Nigel can not work together – indeed they MUST if there is to be any chance of defeating Labour at the next election.
But both Kemi and Nigel reject cooperation – and continue to exchange insults.
It is like watching a Classical Greek Tragedy – everyone outside can see the characters are acting in a way that must lead to their destruction (and the destruction of everything they care about) – but the characters in the play, can not see this – and continue to walk towards their destruction.
Hat tip to Mr Simon Webb (“History Debunked” on YouTube) for this analogy.
Marius, it’s not his prose style that I object to, it’s the fact that it’s taken him a genteel few decades to notice that the Tories are the problem.
It staggers me there are people still in the Tory zombie coma, or who have only just shaken themselves out of it.
Nothing he wrote indicates it took decades for him, rather than the article’s target audience, to notice.
I voted Tory first in 1979, and kept voting Tory after Thatcher was deposed because all the other options were worse, not because I though the Tories were peachy.
UKIP tempted me but that sadly succumbed to nutters, driving Farage, Towler etc to depart.
And then the Brexit Party happened. I was an early member, because for the first time, I saw a meaningful alternative that wasn’t a performative protest vote, laser focused on a key issue. And the Brexit Party morphed into the Reform Party, of which I was also an early member, because I saw they would have no truck with counterproductive ethno-nats nutters.
I knew from John Major onwards the Tories were dismal. It was not that it took long to notice, it was that there were no meaningful alternatives that were not even worse or pointless. But now there is an alternative.
Deveril – unless Kemi Badenoch and Nigel Farage cooperate Labour will win, yourself and Marius may prefer to throw insults about – but that remains true. It is no good dismissing the Express, the Mail and the Telegraph as leftist propaganda – they are telling the truth about the need to work with Kemi, the Conservative Party is not going away.
People who have never stood for election, and are not really interested in defeating Labour or the Greens and Lib Dems (and they, and the Scots and Welsh “Nationalists”, who are not really nationalists, will all come together in an unofficial pact at the next election – the parties of the left already-have an unofficial pact round her) need to grow up – and, to be fair, so do Kemi and Nigel.
On elections Mr Farage has defeated “Count Binface” by more than two-to-one – this is a solid victory and Mr Farage should be congratulated on it, although (of course) the real test was always going to be the by-election in Clacton in the Autumn.
The Parliamentary inquiry is a farce – everyone knows it is rigged against Mr Farage, and it would be could for Kemi Badenoch to tell Conservative Members of Parliament to have nothing to do with it, and to NOT put up a candidate against Mr Farage in the Autumn.
Tragically I think the lady will make the mistake of “putting the boot in” – seeing Mr Farage in trouble and helping the left against him, that would make cooperation between the two parties even less likely – and ensure the victory of the left at the next election.
If that terrible mistake is made by Kemi – the left will (privately) laugh, whilst publicly thanking K.B. for helping expose the “sleeze” of N.F. – when the left congratulate you, you are doing something wrong, very wrong.
Still let us end on a positive note – if Clacton had been, say, Los Angeles, Nigel Farage would have LOST against Count Binface, or against Charles Manson for that matter.
Mr Farage would have been leading 2 to 1 till the early hours of the morning – then there would have been a “vote dump” (the term is actually used now – the media do not bat an eyelid about using the term – they see nothing wrong with election fraud) of votes (not from real voters) all-for-Count-Binface.
Do not laugh – as in the Los Angeles election the pro Fidel Castro Mayor (the worse Mayor in the history of the city) was declared to have come first, and an obscure Communist from India (who most people had never heard of) was declared to have come second – after lots of “mail in ballots” arrived – ballots which had never seen a legitimate voter
So the two Communist candidates were declared to have passed – and will have a farcical “election” between the two of them in November – with the non-Communist candidate (Spencer Pratt) totally excluded from the election.
I remember Nigel Farage sitting with Kari Lake during the count for the election of Governor of Arizona – everyone knew that Kari Lake had more support than the Dem, but the Dem was declared the winner, it was totally rigged – and the Corporate media just carried water for it, pretending that everything was fine (the Wall Street Journal included).
To be fair – if a far leftist offends the establishment they are also the victims of election rigging, for example the East Asian lady who was cheated of the Democrat nomination for Governor of Wisconsin – the lady was well in the lead, but then the “vote dump” in the early hours of the morning occurred, a lot of ballots suddenly appearing and all-for-one-candidate.
It is all so twisted – it is a corkscrew.
At least Clacton has honest elections.
The rigging of the first round elections for Mayor of Los Angeles was a major mistake by the left. They should, even from their own point of view, have only rigged the second round of the elections – in November.
If a conservative comes second the media (including fake conservative media – such as the Wall Street Journal) can, dishonestly, say “you are just a bad loser – accept the democratic result” (this is what they did to Kari Lake after the lady, and the voters, suffered election fraud in Arizona) – but when the non-Communist candidate does not even come second, when two Communist candidates are declared to be first and second (so any non Communist candidate does not even get into the second round) then that is too much. And, remember Mayor Karen Bass is a pro Fidel Castro lunatic (who would have “fiddled whilst Los Angeles burned” but she is unable to play the fiddle – or, indeed, to do anything – other than rig elections) , and her “opponent” in November is a Marxist from India – who most people (including me) can not remember the name of. Most people do not know who this lady is – but she was declared to have come second.
It is just too much – no one, not the Wall Street Journal, not anyone – can pretend that elections in the big cities of the United States are straight now.
What happened in Los Angeles exposed what the big cities are really like – utterly corrupt.
Better, a thousand times better, Clacton over Los Angeles.
We’ve recognised the indolence of the Conservatives and punished them, and are still punishing them. Unfortunately that left the field open for the other half of the Uniparty. But we will punish them too, given a chance.
Political shifts take a long time, years and a Parliament or two. Politicians will say ‘Events, dear boy, events’ – it suits them to keep a narrow focus so they can duck, dive, and spin. What they should say is ‘Patience, dear boy, patience’. And we should keep track.
If the Tories had any sincere sense of the scale of their betrayal and failure, they’d have taken themselves into a darkened room with a revolver and a tumbler of whisky.
If Reform and the Tories unite then not only will I for one depart Reform’s stable, but for a certainty the Tories will devour Reform. And then continue their betrayal and failure.
The only thing the Conservatives conserve is the political legacy of the previous Labour ministry.
The only reason the Conservatives exist is to get into office for that same purpose.
What is interesting, is why new buildings are almost always ugly
Why ?
Deveril = Reform are “the Tories” – both nationally (look at who the Members of Parliament of the Reform Party are – either ex Conservative Members of Parliament, or ex Conservative Party members) and locally. As for you leaving the Reform Party – so what? The point is defeat Labour – not please you Sir. And the only way to have any chance of defeating Labour is for Kemi and Nigel to work together.
And why did people in various parts of the country switch parties? As Dr Johnson said “a man is seldom so innocently engaged as when he is after money” (other motives leading to much worse conduct) – men and women in North Northants, and elsewhere, switched parties to save-their-seats which meant saving-their-income. They did not really believe that having a Reform controlled Council, or government, would mean some dramatic change – some cosmetic changes (such as getting rid of Ukrainian flags), but not fundamental changes. They are not idiots – they know the British system of governance.
Why did I not turn my coat? Why did I not save my position and income? Not out of some high principle – it was just that, like Sergeant Harper in the Sharpe novels, I had worn the coat so long I sort-of got stuck to it. Even though I had been punished by Central Office – in one of their efforts to please the Guardian newspaper. Quite funny really – as I was kicked out for a year, but still had to turn up for an election count (in 2019) – as it was my name on various legal documents. “Please come – but do not wear the rosette”. Fair enough, why not – after all, I had nothing better to do.
Phillippe Hermkens.
Most people in building and architecture, and art (and music – and so on) are SHEEP – but there are a few wolves.
The wolves hated beauty because they hated “capitalist” civilization – really they hated civilization (they added the word “capitalist” as a form of mental dodging – trying to hide their evil, even from themselves).
Think of Le Corbusier in France or the Bauhaus in Germany – like Picasso in painting, and various people in serious music, they made no secret of their political and cultural agenda.
The buildings are ugly on purpose – because the people at the top of the movements hated beauty, and everything else connected to civilization – the traditional family, private property in the means of production, everything.
H.G. Wells (and other swine) explain the matter – for example, in passing, in his story “In The Days Of The Comet” – how traditional buildings were deliberately destroyed, even though that meant that people had to live in tents or huts till the new ant heaps (sorry “cities of the future”) were built – ditto paintings, literature and so on (all consigned to the fire – and Fabian Mr Wells thought this idea was wonderful)
And Big Business went along with it all – even though the new buildings were not really less expensive, and tended to have high maintenance costs, and, indeed, fall down after a while.
My biggest mistake, for most of my life, was to defend the Corporations – they are terrible, very rich – but still terrible.
The Corporate bureaucracies, like government bureaucracies, go along with every fad and fashion – without bothering to think about them.
As NickM says of local officials – “jobsworths” – that goes for high Corporate managers as well.
Look at their advertising – all about “The Message” (anti racism, anti sexism – and so on) – no real concern with selling goods and services.
And why should the managers care about that? After all they do not actually own these “business enterprises”.
Look at the old Lloyds building – compared to the (very expensive to maintain) monstrosity, that replaced it.
The old building survived the Blitz – but did not survive Corporate fashion, even though the fashion was created by people (the wolves at the top of the various “movements” – who lead the mass of sheep) who wanted to exterminate Big Business – including the Corporate managers and their families.
The Pompidou Centre – sums it up, a deliberately ugly building (created by socialists filled with hated for civilization), filled with deliberately ugly art, commissioned by a “conservative” President – who also actively encouraged the Third World invasion of France.
Deveril talks of a darkened room and a tumbler of whiskey – that is not necessary, just the loaded revolver.
It may indeed be time-to-die.
In the early 1970s the “conservative” Western leaders, President Nixon, Prime Minister Heath, President Pompidou, made friends (actively made friends) with Mao of the Marxist People’s Republic of China – perhaps the largest scale mass murderer in human history.
And if anyone says “they did not know” – I have a bridge to sell you.