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Time for an update about British party politics. When I started Samizdating, I posted a piece about how the British media have finally started laying in to our hitherto untouchable Blair Labour – from now on: Blairbour – government, after about seven years of Blairbour being beyond criticism. However, in my earlier posting I exaggerated how easily the Conservatives might be able to exploit all this. I assumed that they could make clear and rapid strides in the entirely smart direction, and of course being the Conservative Party that’s beyond them. Plus, I keep forgetting how much Normal People hate and despise the Conservatives.
The underlying story here is of a great nationwide coalition for Blairbour between (a) Normal People who want better public services without taxes going up, and (b) Abnormal Socialists who find the Conservatives so appalling that they are prepared to tolerate any other non- or anti-socialist humiliations in order to see the Conservatives go on being humiliated by the Normals. This coalition is starting to crumble.
The Normals want “better public services” and the idea was that by booting out the Conservatives (who supposedly don’t care about public services) and having a Blairbour government that did care about public services (but who wouldn’t put taxes up), they’d get better public services. This was never true. “Public services” don’t work like that. See everything else ever written by libertarians since the dawn of time. Blairbour cannot ever do as well with public services as it has promised. Some public services have patchily improved, at great cost. Others have got worse, also at great cost. Blairbour is starting to mutter about tax increases. The patience of the Normals is wearing thin.
Insofar as it is possible to contrive any “better public services” the only methods that stand any chance – and it is only a chance – are Conservative methods. So now that “we must start actually delivering better public services”, the Abnormals are also starting to be seriously pissed off. Their own methods always fail, and everyone except them knows it. So the methods of the hated Conservatives are being obstinately persisted with by Blairbour, and if anything being beefed up (“we must now actually deliver better public services”). So the patience of the Abnormals is also wearing thin.
(The Abnormals also hate that Blairbour backs the USA against Terrorism. The Abnormals are deeply confused about Terrorism. Some Abnormals are neutral for it. Others Abnormals are neutral against it. None oppose it as keenly as Blairbour or the Americans.)
But the Conservatives remain hated and despised by both Normals and Abnormals. Blairbour is no longer the Best Government available. But Blairbour remains something almost as politically potent, the Least Worst Government. Watch for a huge surge in the polls by the Conservatives, because if that happens I’ll be proved wrong. But my best guess for the next general election is for further significant gains by the Sod-You-All Party, that is to say a further decline in the overall percentage of people eligible to vote actually bothering to vote, for anyone, with the actual number of MPs remaining much as now, except that there’ll be a few more Liberal Democrats. Far more likely than a surge of enthusiasm for the Conservatives – or for anybody else – is a general sense of depression and cynicism about politics as a whole.
Sounds good to me.
Which provokes the question: what of libertarianism? Could there be some kind of British “libertarian political party” cobbled together to fill a small but growing patch of this huge vacuum and snatch some of those idle votes? Maybe. But as usual, the Conservatives are now making just enough libertarian-ish noises (“diversity” – “importance of the market”) to keep all those “libertarians” who are fascinated by British party politics fascinated, still, by the Conservative Party. And the rest of us have better and more amusing things to do with our lives.
Yes, I think that’s what they call it: being ‘ahead of the curve’. In this case, the ‘curve’ that I am ahead of is The Times in an article warning of the dangers of the Proceeds of Crime Bill, the UK government’s grand apparatus in the already-discredited war against ‘money-laundering’.
The writer adopts a more conservative (some might say measured) tone than I did. The piece reeks of unctious solicitude much in the manner of a senior Civil Servant advising a Minister that his decision is ‘courageous’ but it does taper to a fine point:
“The legislation needs to be framed in such a way that it does not deter honest businesses from consulting their professional advisers on grey areas, where they may need clarification of their position in order to be able to rectify it. Otherwise the very professional confidentiality that has created a healthy climate of compliance in the UK will be undermined. This is likely to lead to more criminality, not less.”
Precisely the point I made (among others) nearly a year ago(1).
Still, my natural desire to gloat must be tempered by my satisfaction that some serious people in serious places are starting to get the message and, more importantly, are broadcasting it.
(1)= (link requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded for free)
I was quite overjoyed to see the BBC news report that two thirds of the entire population of Gibraltar turned out in a demonstration, led by the mayor (or whatever the head of government there is called) in defense of their right to decide their own fate.
That the United Kingdom could even consider negotiating with Spain over the transfer of Gibraltar to them is appalling. Not because of anything they are doing in the negotiation specifically, but because of the entire concept that underlies their talks.
It is like Feudalism.
In Feudalism, the peasants and their land are traded about between rulers like poker chips in Las Vegas. The thought people who live in a place might actually prefer one situation over another is foreign, or at least not as important as Raison’s d’Etat to the Feudal Lord.
This is not a UK party issue. The Conservaties sold the Hong Kong peasants to China; now Labour wishes to sell the Gibraltar peasants to Spain. At least in Northern Ireland we’ll get to vote about it. Repeatedly if we want.
I would imagine the Falklands peasantry will be the next to be sold off. After all, it’s bloody expensive defending them. Then perhaps we can sell the Channel Islands slave… er peasants… er subjects… to France! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
I would suggest to Gibraltarians they begin to arm and prepare defensive positions. The government of the United Kingdom wants to sell them, so perhaps a slave revolt is in order.
At the very least they could make it very messy for Spain. I’ll bet there are loads and loads of hardened tunnels and caves in those rocks.
Inside Europe: Iberian Notes on 11:00 CET, March. 22, 2002 (no link to individual articles) does a pretty good job of comprehensively trashing the Spanish claims on Gibraltar and pointing out the weird logic involved.
Margaret Thatcher‘s remarks are hardly surprising to anyone who has read what she has said over the years but it was a surprise to me as an outsider looking in to read the negative response from so many British Conservatives.
For years Perry has been telling me that they are ‘The Stupid Party’ and are not committed to resisting EU envelopment and super-statism. I see now that he is quite correct. [Ed: like I said about the Libertarian Party in the USA, there are some good people in the Tory Party, but they are not the ones running it]
It seems that the only argument between the much of the Tory party and their political enemies in Britain is the rate at which British is to be enveloped by Euro-statism. The British Army was once said to be ‘Lions lead by Donkeys’. It would seem the Tory Party are ‘Donkeys once lead by a Lioness’. As the contrast between the more dynamic economy of the USA and Euro-sclerosis grows harder to miss by even the most willfully blind, how can the party which actually started the privatising ball rolling that shattered the seemingly unstoppable advance of ‘democratic’ socialism in the 1980’s have come to being in step with histories obvious losers? The Stupid Party indeed.
Thieves tried to grab a diamond necklace from U.S. entertainer Liza Minnelli while she was honeymooning with her new husband David Gest. The Oscar-winning star was the victim of an attempted robbery when the car in which she was a passenger stopped at traffic lights in Holland Park, west London.
That should boost the British tourist trade – not!
This is the first time I have noticed one of the 2001 pattern two pound coins (£2 = US $3). I think the tails side is far nicer than the messy modern art confusion of the previous pattern, which looked like a circuit board that had been stamped on by an elephant.
 
 Taking the tube (London’s underground rapid transit system) last night was a nightmare. A delay on one line meant no trains at a rush-hour period for more than 20 minutes. Chaos. Angry crowds. A scene sticks in my mind. A young London Underground staffer, dressed in usual garb of garish blue jacket and hat, was shouting at a vexed young man in a suit, telling him to wait at a certain point. She was using the manner of a particularly authortarian school-marm. Ask yourselves, gentle reader, could such a thing occur in a privately run business, like a food store? I think I know the answer to that one.
 London Underground’s new slogan?
Lagwolf witnesses the Sith Parliament at work abridging civil liberties
I was involved in the pro-hunt protest outside of the Houses of Parliament today. It was a well behaved and good humoured protest which occupied the road outside the building. At 3pm sharp the protestors left the road and gathered in the protest area on Parliament Square or the nearest pub. Alas our efforts were rather less than effective and the parliamentarians voted to ban hunting. It is now up to the Lords to protect this quintessential English freedom.
The fact there are Conservative MPs who voted for the full ban is most distressing and deserve all the derision decent people can muster. That Ann Widdecombe MP voted to ban is telling of how the Tory party has members who do not believe is anyone else’s freedom besides their own. Her own dubious sexuality makes this more offensive. Her “do as I say not as I do,” mentality is most galling. I hope that any Tory MP who voted for this ban is deselected at the earliest opportunity. You either believe in freedom or your don’t. Anyone who voted for a ban on fox-hunting does not believe in freedom…full stop.
Lagwolf
Do politicians really say what they think? Or is their language forever circumscribed by the weight of office, the delicacy of diplomacy and the sensitivities of a fickle public?
If that is true, then maybe ex-politicians find they are invested with a freedom of thought and action denied to them during their careers. Vide the loud and clear message from Baroness Thatcher in her latest book ‘Statecraft’.
“The preliminary step, I believe, should be for an incoming Conservative government to declare publicly that it seeks fundamental renegotiation of Britain’s terms of EU membership.”
We all know what she said and we all equally know what she means. ‘Fundamental renegotiation’ is a polite term for ‘withdrawal’. I say this not because I am in the business of second guessing Baroness Thatcher but because there is no way to ‘fundamentally renegotiate’ the rigid terms of EU membership without excusing yourself from the club. Can we exclude ourselves from the ‘Acquis Communitaire’? If so, we are out and that’s that.
She is not the first person in Britain to suggest full withdrawal from the EU but, to my memory, she is the most high profile. Despite possessing nothing now except an honourary title, Thatcher’s legacy and image loom large over the British psyche for both those who loved and those who hated her. This book will not herald any change in current government policy but it is still important because there is a certain power in simply saying the unsayable. It is like prising open a rusty, bolted door so that others can all begin heaving against it in unison. Up until now, debate in Britain has revolved around whether or not we should adopt the Euro. Now the debate can legitimately move on to our entire place in the EU. Thatcher has said it, so others can say it too.
It may not be the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end but the cracks are starting to show, as evidenced by all the urgent scurrying (deliberate use of metaphor) around by various media, government and political poobahs to condemn, deny, rebut and dismiss her remarks.
So get your crowbars out, boys and girls, we’ve got some cracks to work on.
I do not often post about specific bits of government legislation as it makes for awfully dry subject matter but I am unable to resist publishing this example of incandescent lunacy.
A year ago or so I wrote an extensive piece for the Libertarian Alliance about the nature, scope and effects of the UK Money Laundering laws (soon to be codified in the Proceeds of Crime Act).
One of the offences specified is that of ‘Tipping-Off’. If a banker/lawyer/ financial adviser suspects a client of money laundering then he is obliged to report the matter to a responsible officer within the firm who must then decide whether or not to make a report to the National Criminal Intelligence Service. All this must be done in secret because the client must not be told that he is under suspicion (in case he flees the jurisdiction). To spill the beans is to commit the offence of ‘Tipping-Off’ (maximum sentence 2 years in prison).
Well, as if destroying the principle of client confidentiality and trust is not bad enough we all now have to contend with Section 29 of the Data Protection Act 1998 which requires all companies to disclose all internal memoranda to their clients upon demand, even those voicing suspicions of money laundering and, hence, tipping them off!!
One law now forces lawyers/bankers/accountants to break another law!! How long can it be before one is liable for prosecution just for turning up at work in the morning?
Do we have a Government or do we just have a Random Regulation Generating Machine up there?
Take a look at a fine article defending the ancient British sport of foxhunting by former Labour MP Brian Walden in today’s Daily Telegraph titled Ban on foxhunting would be a triumph for the mob. I cannot do better than Walden in laying out the case as to why a proposed ban on hunting with hounds is a monstrous attack on liberty, which libertarians, be they meat-eaters or hard-core vegans, should reject.
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