-----Original message-----
Free Life Commentary
Issue Number 132
Friday, 25 March 2005
http://www.seangabb.co.uk/flcomm/flc132.htm
Tax, Public Spending and Everything Else:
The Sorry Truth about
The Conservative Hidden Agenda
by Sean Gabb
After several weeks of appearing to do well, the Conservatives
have, by general agreement, just wrecked their pre-election
campaign. Apparently, the Deputy Party Chairman - a man called
Howard Flight, of whom I had previously never heard - gave a
speech last Wednesday evening to a closed meeting. During this,
he promised his audience that the true scale of spending cuts
intended by a Conservative Government would only become clear
after winning the general election. This promise was somehow
reported to the media - first rule of speaking to a closed
meeting: there is no such thing as a closed meeting: every
statement is as much on the record as if made in a television
studio - and the man has had his political career ended as a
punishment. He has been sacked from his job and deselected from
his seat in Parliament.. His colleagues are now running
desperately from studio to studio, putting on their usual
headless chicken performance.
If I still had any intention of voting for these people at the
election, or any hope that they would win, or that they would do
anything worth calling conservative if they managed to win, I
might share the dejection of my Conservative friends. But I long
ago gave up all hope in the Conservative Party, and I am instead
in my rather gloomy way amused. The Government and its Enemy
Class allies in the media are glorying in the revelation and are
speaking solemnly about the Conservative "hidden agenda" of real
spending cuts. The evident truth, however, is that so far as the
Conservatives have any hidden agenda, it is not to have an agenda.
The Conservative strategy for winning the next general election
has two elements. The first is to hope for the Labour vote to
collapse. There is some reason to hope for this. The white
working classes are beginning to realise that Labour is not
their party. Its economic interventions are determined far more
by the desire of big business for cartelised markets than by the
stated wishes of ordinary people for security. The rest of its
domestic policy is dictated in part from Brussels, and for the
rest by the needs of a politically correct cultural revolution
that is stripping us all of our ancient liberties and our
national identity. As for its foreign policy, this is run wholly
from Washington, and the most energetic and patriotic young
working men are regarded simply as potential cannon fodder. At
the same time, the Moslems, who are most cohesive and
electorally important group among the ethnic minorities, have
been alienated by a war of military aggression against Iraq. Why
this war was launched my Moslem friends cannot agree. Was it the
security needs of Israel? Or was it the greed of the big oil
companies? Or was it some hubristic stab at empire by the
American ruling class? There is no agreement on reasons. But one
consequence of the war has been a disengagement of the Islamic
interest from Labour. The more politically active of these two
vital members of the Labour electoral coalition are looking
round for other parties to support. Many of the rest will not
vote at all. Labour may therefore go into the next election sure
only of firm support from within the public sector; and while
this has been greatly expanded since 1997, it is still not a
decisive electoral force.
This element in the strategy, however, is one over which the
Conservatives have no control. The second element is within
their control. This is the traditional "Quisling Right"
approach. The Conservatives are hoping to mobilise their own
core voters to turn out by implying promises without making them
and by making promises that they have no intention of keeping.
The two key issues among core Conservative voters are
immigration and Europe - and when these people complain about
the former, let us be honest, they are not thinking about Poles
getting off a coach to find work as builders or waitresses, but
about dark faces in the street, regardless of how they got here.
This may be an uncharitable prejudice: it is, even so, a burning
issue among increasing numbers of people, and there are votes to
be had in promising to do something. Nevertheless, it is
perfectly clear that, behind their tough rhetoric, the
Conservatives intend nothing of substance on either issue.
The promise to renegotiate some of the European treaties is
backed by no commitment to withdraw from the European Union if
the stated demands are not met. It amounts therefore to an
undertaking to behave like an aggressive and foul-mouthed but
paraplegic beggar - all demands for performance, without the
means to compel it. How anyone was able to take the
Conservatives seriously on Europe would defeat my understanding,
if large numbers did. Fortunately, large numbers do not take
them seriously, and my understanding remains undefeated.
As for immigration, even if seriously intended, the quota system
would be unworkable. There would be institutional pressures for
the limit to be exceeded every year: there would always be
"exceptional" circumstances. The proposed points system, whereby
better educated immigrants would be substituted for the mass of
welfare claimants who presently are coming in, would be
corrupted in no time. If a genuine British passport can be
bought for £2,000, how much for an Indian MBA? Or for a Chinese
degree in computer science? And there are no significant
proposals to deal with secondary immigration by dependants. And
the Conservatives are barely talking about what for many is the
far greater problem of tertiary immigration via the higher birth
rates of the immigrants already here.
Labour may play along with these Quisling Right initiatives, by
warning of the costs of leaving Europe, or denouncing the
Conservatives for "playing the race card". But we can be assured
that no changes are proposed in either issue to the established
trends - or in any other issue of importance. For the
Conservatives, political success means no more than that they
sit in the official cars, and they preside over the next round
of national destruction. That a Conservative Government should
be a government of conservatives is no part of their strategy.
I tested this hypothesis, by the way, when I had dinner last
month with a senior Conservative politician. I asked him if his
people had any plan to abolish bodies like the Commission for
Racial Equality and the Health and Safety Executive. Would they
shut down large parts of the ideological and repressive state
apparatus, thereby making our lives better and even paying for a
few extra tax cuts? He pulled a sad face and said that nothing
like this had even been discussed, and that, bearing in mind the
sort of people who run his Party, he personally saw no point in
trying to trying to get it discussed.
And so we are able to explain the otherwise inexplicable
digression the Conservatives made earlier this month into
abortion law reform. Why did they do this? Why, in a country
where hardly anyone seems to care either way, were they talking
about limiting the time for legal abortions? Were they copying
the tactics of the American Republicans without considering the
very different state of public opinion in England? The answer is
no. This was a Quisling Right approach to groups previously
overlooked. Though most people in this country would rather not
think about it, there may be several hundred thousand
Christians, Moslems and Jews who do care about the number of
viable pregnancies terminated because they are inconvenient.
Were they to win the next election, the Conservatives would, of
course, leave the law unchanged. But the issue was raised and
discussed; and while most electors have probably forgotten it
was ever raised at all, many within the targeted groups now
think the Conservatives have promised to change the law.
This was a smooth and probably successful raid on an electoral
interest. What happened this week was of the same nature, but
failed. It was another Quisling Right approach, this time to a
group that was thought to favour cuts in government spending.
The assumption is that most ordinary people like to see about
half their income taken and spent on their individual and
collective ruin. This being so, cuts must never be promised in
public. The most that can be discussed is how to trim the rate
of increase in spending to below the rant of general economic
growth. But some groups are known even by Conservative
politicians to want lower taxes, and these must be kept on side.
Hitler used to specialise before 1933 in making different
promises to different groups in closed meetings. Either he was
brighter than our Conservatives - and this would not be hard -
or closed meetings were more closed in his day. Whatever the
case, the Conservatives have had their Easter break ruined.
And they richly deserve their present embarrassment. They are
political frauds. By continuing to exist and to show some
prospect of being able to win an election, they attract funding
and votes from genuinely conservative parties. Yes, this Labour
Government is dreadful. Yes, Tony Blair is personally and
politically the vilest wretch who ever lied his way into the
House of Commons, and his colleagues are a gang of traitors who
deserve hanging from the nearest lamp post. But this is not good
enough reason for thinking that another Conservative Government
would be in our long term national interest. We need to destroy
New Labour. Before then, though, we need to destroy the
Conservative Party. The Enemy Class media has its own reasons
for kicking the Conservatives down. But this media should be
regarded in this respect as objectively allied to the forces of
conservatism.
I know some of my readers will think my closing sally
disrespectful. But I really cannot help myself. The
Conservatives have been crucified today. Is it too much to hope
they will not be resurrected on the third day?
==========================
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