I believe economics, and the way economics has shaped society in the past 15-20 years, plays a major role. Sure the young Corbyn supporter doesn’t understand economics, but point me towards a demographic that does. Every government in every western country is staring down the barrel of ballooning deficits, a debt which will take millenia to pay off, and not a single major party anywhere wants to even talk about it, let alone do anything about it. A simple reduction in planned expenditure increase is dressed up as a savage cut by damned near everyone: the Tories’ supposed austerity isn’t some fringe issue on the left, it is a widely accepted truth across the whole electorate. The people pointing out that these cuts are anything but are basically a handful of cranks on the internet. Like, erm, me. If any government program is threatened with a cut taking expenditure levels back to what they were in, say, 2010 half the country screams that medieval times are making a comeback and the other half believe them. The knowledge of economics among electorates is woeful, and almost all of them have signed up fully to the belief that all government expenditure is necessary, good, and wise and any cuts are bad. Nobody wants to even think about the size of the deficit and the national debt, it just keeps racking up. So if we’re going to criticise the young Corbynistas for not understanding the consequences of unsustainable economics demanded by ignorant voters, we might perhaps want to first ask where they got such ideas from. It’s too easy to blame Marxist indoctrination in schools when supposedly conservative governments, backed fully by the supposedly conservative middle classes, have been so irresponsible with public finances for several generations. Conservative governments might not be quite as reckless as Corbyn would be, but we’re talking about the difference between disaster and a catastrophe here.
|
|||||
|
The Conservative party gave me absolutely nothing in their manifesto that would make me inclined to vote for them. They have done nothing while they have been in power that would make me inclined to vote for them. The only thing that they had going for them was that they were not Labour. As far as I can see, the hung parliament is a result of his party being utterly rubbish and running an utterly rubbish campaign. They took the electorate for granted when they sowed and this election result is just what they deserved to reap. – Commenter Stonyground remarking over on Longrider. This strikes me as a near perfect and succinct summation of why the Stupid Party was almost defeated by the Evil Party. Personally I supported the idea of the election, but even given my loathing of Theresa May, I was stunned by how badly May came across during the campaign, snatching near defeat from the jaws of victory. June 10th, 2017 | 45 comments - (Comments are closed)
 Guy Herbert: Theresa May proven worse than cancer. It is a fine slogan June 9th, 2017 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Like most of my fellow Samizdata contributors, I imagine, I am watching the election results in the UK and the projections from exit polls suggesting that the Tories may not even have a working majority. And about 10 days or so before the full, formal negotiation process is due to start over the UK departure from the European Union. It is a non-trivial possibility that Brexit may either not happen or at all, or take a form on such a humiliating basis that it is not really a departure from the EU at all. As already noted, the idea that it was smart strategy for the Tories to pursue a centrist, pre-Thatcherite, interventionist agenda, was always dumb. Not least because to make a positive case, it was necessary to stress the pro-enterprise case for leaving the EU, rather than simply promising to introduce the very kind of dirigiste policies that the UK was supposed to be freeing itself from by leaving. Mrs May, does not have it in her to make a positive case. It has come to this: a party led by Jeremy Corbyn, Marxist, hater of Israel, cheerleader for the IRA, Hamas, and a foe of open markets and the West in general could be close to holding power in a few days’ time. I seriously hope I am wrong. But whatever happens, I think it is highly probable that May may not be in Downing Street for very long. June 8th, 2017 | 103 comments - (Comments are closed)
The main political insight of Thatcher and Reagan was that parties of the center-right must be parties of economic growth. Having wavered since, those parties now risk losing their way entirely. Some centrists will argue, quirks of this campaign notwithstanding, that Mrs. May shows how to win an election. The important question for conservatives to ask is: To what end? – Joseph C. Sternberg, Wall Street Journal (behind a paywall) June 7th, 2017 | 17 comments - (Comments are closed)
We happily say ‘Christian fundamentalist’ about people who are Christian and fundamentalist. We use ‘Buddhist extremists’ to describe violent Buddhist groups in Myanmar. And yet Islam is ringfenced from tough discussion; phrases which at some level include the word ‘Islam’ are tightly policed; criticism of Islam is deemed a mental illness: Islamophobia. This is incredibly dangerous. This censorious flattery of Islam is, in my view, a key contributor to the violence we have seen in recent years. Because when you constantly tell people that any mockery of their religion is tantamount to a crime, is vile and racist and unacceptable, you actively invite them, encourage them in fact, to become intolerant. You license their intolerance. You inflame their violent contempt for anyone who questions their dogmas. You provide a moral justification for their desire to punish those who insult their religion. June 6th, 2017 | 29 comments - (Comments are closed)
One probable outcome of the emergence of knife wielding jihadis on British streets will be an increase in British people arming themselves as well. Of course, this will be treated as a bigger threat than the jihadis by the state, but one might speculate how many unarmed people would have been killed and wounded if the jihadis had not chosen to attack in well protected central London but rather some part of the country where armed policeman are few and far between. June 4th, 2017 | 160 comments - (Comments are closed)
For many people, 9/11 remade their political world. Excluding 9/11 itself, has continuing Islamist terrorism in the years since 2001, such as last night’s attack at London Bridge, changed your beliefs? June 4th, 2017 | 69 comments - (Comments are closed)
“Taxing wealth reverses the relationship between citizen and state: rather than it being in charge of protecting our life, liberty, and property, we now work for it. There are no more proud freeholders; citizens become meek leaseholders with the government in charge. Our property becomes a temporary privilege, to be used until accumulated taxes return to the ultimate owner, the state.” – Allister Heath, Daily Telegraph, 1 June. (Behind a paywall.) June 2nd, 2017 | 60 comments - (Comments are closed)
Let us put to bed the idea that Labour voters are well meaning people who just happen to have different ideas about economic policy, or are voting Labour out of habit (“my father voted Labour – so I am voting Labour”). People who vote Labour THIS TIME are voting for someone, Jeremy Corbyn, to be Prime Minister of the United Kingdom – and they are doing so in the full knowledge that he is an enemy of Britain (and the West in general) and an ally of the terrorists – both Marxist and Islamist terrorists. May 30th, 2017 | 20 comments - (Comments are closed)
Historically, it seems to me that Mr Corbyn has been more comfortable in the company of people who make private bombs than those who sell private bonds – Mr. Ed of this parish, who may or may nor be a talking horse but make sense regardless. May 28th, 2017 | 6 comments - (Comments are closed)
Post-Brexit Britain will no longer be bound by an EU Code of Conduct that seeks to police the online speech of over 500 million citizens and ban ‘illegal online hate speech’. Or an EU law that encourages the criminalisation of ‘insult’. Or a proposed EU law that undermines fundamental freedoms by purging Europe of every last shred of supposed ‘discrimination’ […] There is just one, small problem: when it comes to censorship and the quashing of civil liberties, the UK doesn’t need any encouragement from the EU, or anybody else. May 28th, 2017 | 15 comments - (Comments are closed)
|
   |
||||
All content on this website (including text, photographs, audio files, and any other original works), unless otherwise noted, is licensed under a Creative Commons License. |
|||||