What Labour Hath Wrought

LIke the RMS Titanic, the UK's ship of state is sinking. British journalist William Shawcross, writing at the NRO, tells why in a damning indictment of Labour and its 12 year stewardship of Britain. This from Mr. Shawcross:

A Foreign Office diplomat’s proposal to mark the Pope’s visit to Britain with Benedict condoms and by having him bless a gay marriage, open an abortion clinic, and set up a hotline for abused children is a perfect example of the ruling Labour party’s degradation of Britain. Former ambassador Sir Ivor Roberts said on Sunday, “I cannot think of a papal visit anywhere in the world where the host government has had to apologize so profusely and abjectly…for the appalling behavior of one of its officials.”

The truth is that the Foreign Office is no longer fit for purpose after 13 years of New Labour dogmas and a succession of weak if not feckless ministers, in particular the incumbent, David Miliband. Under New Labour, the idea that the Foreign Office should actually fight for British interests is considered passé, if not racist and imperialist. Instead, New Labour has forced Britain to become a mere piece of the bland but increasingly oppressive Bambiland of the E.U., promoting such PC global issues as gay rights (except in Muslim lands) and man-made climate change. . . .

Charles Crawford, a distinguished ambassador who retired early in despair at New Labour’s destruction of British diplomacy, says that in Euroland, “religious pieties plus national identities and symbols, and thus the role of national embassies, are all essential targets of postmodern pastiche.”

He is right — “postmodernism,” the disastrous creed that there is no objective truth and that everything is relative, is the defining characteristic of New Labour. The only force of which Labour (like most E.U. ruling parties) seems to be in awe is Islamism. No Foreign Office official would have drawn up a document mocking Islam. “Postmodernism” is in effect a form of appeasement.

And Gordon Brown has been a disaster for this country. As the all-powerful chancellor, he spent the first ten years of New Labour undermining what might have been sensible Blairite reforms to education, health services, and welfare. Brown and his allies wanted no success for Blair — instead, they simply threw money at unreconstructed and inefficient structures. Billions upon billions of taxpayer money is still being squandered. Perhaps most tragic is the lack of welfare reform. Brown has perpetuated the growth of a wretched, demoralized underclass, unwilling and increasingly unable to work.

At the same time, Labour has continually expanded its client state (70 percent of the workforce in Northern Ireland), which produces nothing. Every person in the U.K. now has £40,000 of national debt to his or her name.

The list of horrors is endless: Brown sold our gold at about the lowest price imaginable, he destroyed the country’s strong pension system, he broke Labour’s promise for a referendum on the E.U.’s Lisbon Treaty, and he has mortgaged Labour back to the trade unions. Harold Wilson had more courage.

Unforgivably, Brown has treated our soldiers with contempt. He has never given the armed forces the resources they needed to fight in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many men have died in battle because of inadequate equipment. Recently Brown was forced to correct a lie he told the Chilcott Iraq Enquiry when he claimed that under him, defense spending had risen every year.

Labour boasts that 3 million new jobs have been created — but most went to immigrants. Labour deliberately let immigration rip but never put this controversial policy before the voters in a manifesto. Some leaked Labour documents suggest this was a deliberate policy “to dilute Britishness” and create a new class of voters grateful to Labour.

It is an outrage that the British people were never told the truth about Labour’s immigration free-for-all. Instead, Labour apparatchiks denounced anyone as racist if he or she complained. Those who hate the rise of the British National Party should blame Labour, not the poor white voters whom Labour abandoned and whose lives have been changed forever by uncontrolled immigration. Last week, two London taxi drivers told me that they were going to vote BNP because it’s the only party that cares at all about them.

It’s not just about immigration that they complain. People are grossly offended by the drunken anarchy that Labour has encouraged in so many town centres, with 24-hour drinking, the litter that everyone now feels free to throw, the noise, the anger, the increasing incivility. The quality of millions of peoples’ lives has really suffered.

This government has made countless attacks on our civil liberties and has constantly, carelessly undermined our constitution, which has been carefully crafted over centuries to protect us. The Lord Chancellor has gone, the Law Lords have gone, now the House of Lords, one of the last bastions of independent expertise, is also threatened by Brown, who wants to create an elected clone of the Commons. Nick Clegg would do the same.

Labour’s bullying “multicultural” ideology has been a catastrophe. The government has cosseted extremist Islamist preachers of hatred to a shocking degree. No wonder French security officials talk of “Londonistan.” At the same time, under New Labour’s “progressive” laws, ordinary Christians have been persecuted for their views. Gordon Brown boasts of being “a son of the manse,” but he cares far more about leftist ideology than he does about the religion of his father. Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has now taken up the cudgels on behalf of Christianity, its followers, and the fine tradition of British tolerance. It is a measure of the illiberalism of this government that he should have to do so.

“Orwellian” is an overworked phrase, but at least everyone knows that it means something destructive to society. It is a fitting description of the debasement of language, the ignorance of history, and the oppressive culture of “postmodern progress” controlled by thousands of highly paid apparatchiks that Labour has forced upon us. . . .

In his conclusion, Mr. Shawcross calls for people to vote for the Tories as their best option to right Britain's sinking ship of state. Perhaps if anyone heard from David Cameron words similar to Mr. Shawcross, they might be able to do so with some confidence. But by all measures, David Cameron is nothing more than a base political opportunist himself who has, once having promised a referendum on EU membership, reversed himself not long ago. Unfortunately, it appears that the only real conservative party in Britain, the UKIP, is rudderless at the moment. The upcoming election will no doubt be interesting, but I seriously doubt indeed if it will result in a positive change in direction for Britain.

Just to highlight one other point, note that Mr. Shawcross credits "Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury" as being the nation's best defender of Christianity, That is because the current Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, elevated to his current position by nomination of Labour PM Tony Blair in 2002, has proven utterly worthless in standing up for Christianity and the Anglican Church.