At home, New Labour has vastly extended the web of commissions, regulatory bodies – quangos of all descriptions – among which the equal opportunities and race industry commissions are the most destructive of harmony as each fresh instalment of coercive laws and multicultural ideology give self defining groups more opportunity to sue their employers, demand special treatment in schools and public services – all ultimately at the expense of the long-suffering, easy-going ordinary English, Welsh, Scottish and Unionist people who, like people in other countries, want to be good neighbours at home and abroad, but do not want their country’s institutions everlastingly questioned and attacked by an over populated media with seemingly nothing better to do.
The Fantasies
Fantasies do as much harm as exaggerated fears. For many, many years, fantasies about human nature have bedevilled the foreign and domestic policies of all the Anglo-Saxon (English speaking) countries, but none more destructively than Britain’s. In foreign affairs the last century’s list is endless. Before the War there were fantasies about the attitude of the USA to Germany, the strength of the French army, the benefits of appeasement. While Chamberlain and the pre-war conservatives are tarred with appeasement’s failure, the Labour party voted against conscription as late as May 1939, putting its faith in the League of Nations’ talking shop.
Now it is one thing to believe that a good talking to by Nanny Britain should make other nations or groups behave properly, it is quite another to act as if they will. Appeasement may be an appropriate policy towards others if it brings about a change of behaviour, But if they simply bank the concession and go on demanding more – as we have seen repeatedly with the EU and with some ethnic minority and feminist groups at home – then we must stop appeasing.
Post War, our dealings with the EEC have moved on from mere appeasement to handing over large assets, first to buy entry in 1973, and ever since to buy off ever more destructive actions by the EC/EU. You have to search very far back in our long history to see the last comparable period of such demeaning behaviour. This was the paying of Danegeld by Ethelred II’s government – the Archbishop of Canterbury in the lead – precisely 1,000 years ago.
What else is the handing over of our fishing rights, 20% of our milk demand to France, control of our international trading arrangements, control over the working hours of our people, but successive instalments of Danegeld paid to keep at bay (temporarily) ever more extreme demands by the EU to control our country in the interests of the Continent.
What is all this for? Here fear and fantasy coalesce. It is apparently to be “at the heart of Europe”, and/or a “bridge between the USA and the EU” – take your pick. Well, a map of the world will tell you (a) that Britain is geographically on the fringe of Europe – nearer to its oldest former colony Newfoundland than to Moscow – capital of Europe’s largest country – and (b) the USA looks out to Eastern Asia as much as Western Europe – if it wants any more bridges with Europe it is perfectly capable of building them itself.
Being “at the heart of Europe” or “a bridge between the USA and the EU” are in fact politicians’ metaphors which bear no relation to the myriad ways in which life is conducted between individuals and nations. As the English philosopher Hobbes observed 350 years ago: “covenants without swords are but words” – play acting in fact.
What we have today is a government reliant on words, led by an ex lawyer-actor – who evidently believes, in the words of the Bard, that: “all the world’s a stage” – for himself. Ethelred was like this – a Walter Mitty character in fact – dreaming up schemes – full of good intentions – while using the nation’s silver bullion to buy off the Danes – rather like the character Vernon Scripps in “Heartbeat” landing his half-brother with the dirty end of the stick.
While the beneficial role of government in our lives is extremely limited, the one indispensable duty of a national government is to organise and lead the country when the physical welfare of its people or the means by which they earn their daily bread is threatened.
Lack of Leadership and Management
The list of dereliction of duty in this regard is huge in the last four years or so – much of it due to fear:
(1) Three years of virtually open gates to plainly economic migrants, many masquerading as refugees from oppression – a definition now extended by a tender-hearted judiciary to cover family quarrels anywhere in the world;
(2) Committing the armed forces of the Crown to a Euro army for fear of losing Mr Blair’s place at the mythical heart of Europe;
(3) Willingness to compromise the effectiveness of these same armed forces by forcing them to accept women in roles for which they are patently unsuitable;
(4) Forcing a PC agenda on the police so that instead of doing what people, and most police officers, actually want – catching burglars, knife carrying muggers, ram raiders – police chiefs with an eye to Home Office recommendations for promotion are busy with equal opportunities agendas and community liaison committees*.
The real world foot and mouth emergency has in fact exposed Mr Blair as inadequate, ineffectual, hesitant – a modern day Ethelred the Unready in Dr Johnson’s pithy play on words.