Some people may be cheered up by the election of a new Tory leader yesterday. It makes no difference to me. The Conservative Party is still quite clueless about what it faces, and so cannot fight it. And this is why it failed to save us from the miserable Budget of Rachel Reeves, which will do so much harm and no good.
It used to be quite reasonable for Labour, then the party of the working class and the trade unions, to use its time in government to help its supporters. That is how democracy works. When it went too far, as it always did, a Tory government could sweep in and clear up the mess. But since the middle 1960s, Labour has not been the party it once was.
It became a radical movement, determined to revolutionise our society. It abolished the idea of personal responsibility. Criminals were not to blame for their crimes. Those who would not work for a living were indulged. It launched a long war on the married family, trying and failing to replace it with the state.
The state became more powerful than parents in the upbringing of the young. Schools ceased to be places where knowledge was passed on from one generation to another. They became machines for promoting political and social equality, and political correctness.
Some people may be cheered up by the election of a new Tory leader yesterday, but it makes no difference to Peter Hitchens, as the Conservative Party is still quite clueless about what it faces, and so cannot fight it
Immigration was welcome because it helped to make Britain less British. The armed forces were no longer there to defend the country but to intervene in idealist utopian foreign wars.
The Tory Party never grasped this. It carried on believing that Labour was the same old tax-and spend trade union party. It never reversed or even weakened Labour’s revolutionary programme. It failed utterly to stop the Blairite takeover of the legal system and the coup d’etat of establishing a ‘Supreme Court’ in a country where Parliament is actually supposed to be supreme.
I had the strong impression that the Tories actively collaborated with Harriet Harman and the other social revolutionaries as they rammed through their keystone Equality Act in the last years of Gordon Brown’s government.
The only response to this in the Tory Party has been to try to conjure up what they wrongly imagine is the spirit of Margaret Thatcher: crude unsustainable tax cuts and jingoism about conflicts in which we have no national interest. They tried to ride the European issue for a while, like an elderly auntie on a bucking bronco, but they did not understand that either – and it left them lying on their backs in the dust with their bloomers showing.
It was all very well having no ideas to speak of, in the old days. But since the Marxists took over Labour, British conservatism has needed first of all to understand what it is up against, and then to develop a counter-attack. It has done neither. Until it does, it will continue to fail – especially when it is in government.
Rachel Reeves’s Budget will do so much harm and no good, Peter Hitchens writes, as the Labour Party is now a radical movement, determined to revolutionise society
How can I investigate anything?
Sometimes people wrongly accuse me of being something called an ‘investigative journalist’, a term that gives me the creeps. Often, they are suggesting that I have some superpowers to find things out, way beyond those of normal human beings. I don’t. I rely entirely on how free and open our society is. And these days, it isn’t either especially free or particularly open.
All journalists are surely supposed to enquire into the things they report. But what if nobody wants to tell us anything? This is often the case – if the information does not serve some lobby or cause or ambitious politician. A couple of examples. I have been trying since October 19 to find out when Sir Keir Starmer first joined the Labour Party he now leads. I cannot, so far, find out. He spent much of his early years mixed up with groups linked to the Marxist Left. Did he join Labour in those days?
On a smaller issue, in late September I witnessed, from a passing bus, what looked like the aftermath of an incident involving a pushbike rider and the rider of an e-scooter. Unless I am suffering from delusions, a police car and an ambulance were both visible at the scene.
I was interested because I think e-scooter accidents are under-reported, and also because I have come close to being swatted by e-scooters while on my bike at that exact spot, more than once.
The police said they had no knowledge of any such event. The ambulance service refused to discuss it, as they were too busy or something. I used Freedom of Information rules to get them to tell me, weeks later, that they had indeed been at such an event and had taken somebody to hospital. The police remain silent. I suspect it won’t ever be in official statistics.
It is growing increasingly impossible to find out anything anyone does not want you to know.
Time to stop this garish, fake festival
I actually find Halloween and its foreign relations, such as the Mexican Day of the Dead, disgusting. What is funny, smiley, amusing or appetising about portrayals of skulls?
You may find, in many old English churches, pretty gruesome representations of skulls or even of corpses. They are there, quite clearly, to frighten and to chasten those who see them. They have a serious purpose. This junk does not.
Peter Hitchens’s journey to and from work has this week been polluted by a huge horrible garish plastic skull, in the queasy colours of cheap confectionery. This one here sits outside Paddington Station in London
Everyone’s now catching up with those of us who have for years deplored the raucous, commercial rubbish of the wholly imported fake festival we have just endured once again. But how long will it be before it falls from favour?
This week my journey to and from work has been polluted by a huge horrible garish plastic skull, in the queasy colours of cheap confectionery. It’s obviously some form of advertisement. But why would a grinning death’s head persuade anyone to buy the product?