Gays Have No "Right" To Marriage In Europe

The push for "gay rights" suffered a significant setback yesterday in a very surprising venue. The European Court of Human Rights ruled again that gays do not have a "right" to marriage, nor, when in a civil union, the same rights as a heterosexual married couple. This from the Daily Mail:

Same-sex marriages are not a human right, European judges have ruled.

Their decision shreds the claim by ministers that gay marriage is a universal human right and that same-sex couples have a right to marry because their mutual commitment is just as strong as that of husbands and wives.

The ruling was made by judges of the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg following a case involving a lesbian couple in a civil partnership who complained the French courts would not allow them to adopt a child as a couple. . . .

[T]he Strasbourg judges ruled that because the French couple were civil partners, they did not have the rights of married people, who in France have the sole right to adopt a child as a couple.

The judges added that couples who are not married do not enjoy the same status as those who are. They declared: ‘The European Convention on Human Rights does not require member states’ governments to grant same-sex couples access to marriage.’

In the 2010 case, Schalk and Kopf v. Autriche, the EUCHR first held that there was no European right to homosexual marriage. The reasoning of the Court stands in direct contrast to Perry v. Schwarzenegger, where an activist gay federal district Court judge overrode the will of 7 million Californians to write into our Constitution a new civil right to homosexual marriage. In the Schalk case, the EUCHR held that there was no textual right to homosexual marriage in the European Convention on Human Rights, and thus it was an issue of social policy to be left to the individual nations. That is precisely what should happen with the issue of gay marriage in the U.S.

It should also be noted that this presents an interesting conundrum for the activist wing of the Supreme Court. In Lawrence v. Summers, the Court, in holding unconstitutional state laws that outlaw homosexual sodomy, relied in part on EUCHR decisions holding likewise. The left wing Court members will have to do some legal gymnastics to if they want now to ignore the EUCHR decision on gay marriage when the issue finally makes it to the Supreme Court.

The issue of "gay marriage" is also of particular import today in the UK, where the "conservative" PM David Cameron plans to foist a right to gay marriage on the people of his nation, a very sizable portion of whom are deeply opposed. Cameron promised that the new mandate would allow Britain's churches to refuse to conduct homosexual marriage ceremonies, but the EUCHR also addressed that in the case yesterday:

The ruling also says that if gay couples are allowed to marry, any church that offers weddings will be guilty of discrimination if it declines to marry same-sex couples.

So we wait to see whether Cameron continues ahead with his plans to push gay marriage down the throat of the people of his nation regardless of this ruling. If he does, he needs to challenged for his position in the Tory party. In fact, he should have been challenged over his refusal to allow the people of the UK a referendum on EU membership after promising it during the election campaign. He is a spineless left-wing snake with about the same commitment to conservative values as Obama.

At any rate, until today, I thought that the lefties, particularly the Euro-leftes, had never run into a new claimed "right" that they wouldn't embrace, regardless of the plain language of their Constitution. Make that doubly true for "gay rights." But life is nothing if not surprising.

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More News In The "War On Religion"

The left's "war on religion" is in full swing on both sides of the pond. In the UK, it is rapidly coming to the point where to be a Christian is to be a second class citizen. The Tory government has taken the position in the European Court of Human Rights that employers can fire someone for wearing a cross. Further, although same sex unions are recognized in the UK, the Tory government plans to allow same-sex "marriage" by 2015. This from CNS News:

Britain’s Conservative-led government [Note: The Tory's are "conservative" in name only - they are only a slightly less radical version of Britain's socialist Labor party] plans to argue in a European Court of Human Rights case that employers are entitled to ban the visible wearing of crosses at work because displaying the symbol is not a recognized “requirement” of the Christian faith. . . .

News of the government’s intervention in the case comes amid a raging dispute between the government and church leaders over Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron’s plans to legalize same-sex marriage by 2015.

The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) is the final destination of two drawn-out legal battles, brought by Nadia Eweida and Shirley Chaplin, two women who fell foul of their employers for wearing crosses at work.

Eweida, a Coptic Christian and British Airways staffer at Heathrow Airport, was told in 2006 to remove or cover up a small cross she wears around her neck. She refused and was sent home on unpaid leave. Eweida noted that colleagues of other religions, including Muslims and Sikhs, were allowed to wear religious items such as hijabs, turbans and religious bracelets.

The airline policy won the backing of the National Secular Society, which complained that activists were “determined to push religion to the front line of British life” and accused Eweida of clearly being “motivated by a wish to evangelize at work.”

The following year British Airways changed its uniform policy and allowed Eweida to return to work, but refused to pay her for the period she was suspended. Claiming religious discrimination, she took the case to an employment tribunal, but lost.

After the Supreme Court declined to consider her case, she decided to take the matter to the ECHR.

Chaplin, a nurse in her 50s, was prohibited from working at a hospital after refusing to cover up a cross she said she had worn at work throughout a 30-year nursing career. An employment tribunal in 2010 ruled in favor of the employer, a government National Health Service (NHS) trust, saying its policy was based on health and safety grounds, not religion, and adding that wearing a cross was not a requirement for Christians.

Six senior Anglican bishops, including former Archbishop of Canterbury George Carey, backed Chaplin, saying in a March 2010 letter that that nurse “has worn the cross every day since her confirmation [40 years earlier] as a sign of her Christian faith, a faith which led to her vocation in nursing, and which has sustained her in that vital work ever since.”

“The uniform policy of the NHS trust permits exemptions for religious clothing,” they wrote. “This has been exercised with regard to other faiths, but not with regard to the wearing of a cross around the neck.”

The ECHR has also been asked to consider two other cases brought by British Christians claiming religious discrimination – a woman who lost her job with a London council in 2007 after she refused to conduct civil partnership ceremonies for same-sex couples; and a relationship counselor who was fired by a large national charity after refusing to provide sex therapy to same-sex couples.

Britain has given same-sex couples similar legal rights to married couples under civil partnership provisions introduced in 2005.

Now Cameron’s government is proposing to legalize marriage for same-sex couples in England and Wales, launching a public consultation exercise on the matter.

Although churches will not be forced to perform “weddings” for homosexual and lesbian couples, the proposals have ignited a storm of protest.

A letter by senior Roman Catholic archbishops, read at thousands of churches across England and Wales on Sunday, warned that that changing the legal definition of marriage would be a “profoundly radical step” that would “gradually and inevitably transform society’s understanding of the purpose of marriage.”

(H/T Sunlit Uplands and the Daily Gator)

As I wrote recently in A Historical Perspective On Religion & The HHS Mandate:

Socialism is a radical ideology that sprang up largely in response to the ills of the industrial revolution. The goal of socialism is to deconstruct traditional Western society and remake it under the auspices of an omnipotent government that would use its police powers to create a new order of ostensible social and economic equality. Socialists replace God with government as the source of morality.

That is precisely what is happening with this war on Christianity on both sides of the pond. It is a war that the left is winning - and if they fully succeed, history teaches us that the resulting society will more resemble the Soviet Union, circa 1919, than the U.S. in 1776.

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A Hung Parliament - Updated

The election is over in the UK, but the byzantine maneuvering to create a government is just beginning. With the vast majority of results in, the BBC is predicting:

Tory - 306
Labour: 262
Liberal Democrats: 55
Others: 27

To form a government, there must be a party - or a coalition of parties - holding 326 seats. The Labour Party, which has deconstructed Britain over its past 13 years of socialist rule, still managed to lose only 100 seats. And even though the Tories will be by far the largest party in Parliament, the fact is that the Labour may well be able to retain power through a coalition with the Lib Dems - also a far left party - and a few of the far left minor parties. This from the BBC:

Gordon Brown may start coalition talks with the Lib Dems, who, Nick Clegg admitted, had a "disappointing night" .

The BBC projection suggests David Cameron's Conservatives will have 306 seats. If there are 10 Unionists elected in Northern Ireland then Mr Cameron might be able to command 316 - probably still slightly too few for him to be sure of winning a Queen's Speech.

But Labour and the Lib Dems together would have 317 seats, according to the BBC figures, which even with three SDLP MPs would still leave them at 320 - again probably just a few votes short.

So everything is still at issue - though Labour has a slight advantage. All of this is truly horrendous. David Cameron, who has misled the Tory Party for a decade, attempting to turn it into a light version of Labour, has managed to pull defeat from the jaws of what should have been a victory so thorough as to have banished Labour the halls of government for a decade or more. You could track the recent downward spiral of the Tory party towards this election from the date the boywonder officially reneged on his promise to hold a referendum on the issue of EU.

Assuming Labour forms the next government, Cameron should be booted so fast from the Tory leadership his head should spin. The Tories need to replace him with someone who is actually a conservative and who will actually be governed by his ideals rather than pure political calculation, though it might already be too late. Labour has so deconstructed Britain that it may well be the damage it has wrought cannot be undone. A few more years of Labour misrule - or Cameron misrule for that matter - will like insure the damage is permanent.

Update: It appears that the Lib Dems have already slapped down Gordon Brown and Labour, saying that the Tories should have the first opportunity to form a government. That is code for "make me an offer."

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Dr. Seuss & A Message For PM Gordon Brown

Tory MEP Daniel Hannan rips into PM Gordon Brown following the most recent elections in the UK, calling on Dr. Seuss to get his message across.



Hannan is a Tory member of the EU Parliament, as well as an author and a blogger on the Telegraph. He is highly critical of the EU and Britian's integration into that body and is a strong proponent of radical democratic reform in the UK. What's not to like.

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Labour's "Long, Dark Night Of Humiliation" - Britain & Europe Swing Right

Labour did not just lose the latest 4 June EU Parliament elections, they got toasted. According to the Guardian:

. . . Labour trailed humiliatingly behind UKIP in the European elections and was expected to garner about 16% or 17% of the vote, its lowest share since the First World War and below the party's worst expectations.

During a dramatic night of unremitting gloom for Downing Street, the Tories appeared to have pulled more than 10 points ahead of Labour, with UKIP in ­second. The BNP also secured its first ­significant wins in British politics when its leader Nick Griffin became an MEP in the north-west, and Andrew Brons – a former leader of the National Front - won in Yorkshire and Humber.

Read the entire article. The gains by the BNP in particular have the left spitting blood. The British left did all they could to demonize the BNP, including trotting out the Archbishop of Canterbury, the odious Rowan Williams, to rail against voting for the BNP. All to no avail, it seems, as the Daily Mail reports: "The triumph for the [BNP] neo-fascist party, which will now send two MEPs to Brussels - including its leader Nick Griffin - sent shockwaves through Westminster . . ."

I do not know if its fair to characterize today's BNP as a "neo-facist" party, but I do know that they seem to be the only party speaking out on taboo issues that threaten the very fabric of the UK, not the least of which is immigration. They are tapping into a lot of angst among the rank and file that the Tory Party, which has sought to emulate the Labour Party in so many ways, simply is not. I think the best possible thing for British politics would be for the BNP to have a stand on the national stage. So long as they don't evince overt racism, they may be able to spark a true national debate free of PC restrictions on such things as freedom of speech, health and safety, multiculturalism, nationalism, and immigration - all areas where socialist policies have done immense damage to the fabric of British life.

Indeed, having watched the socialists in Labour deconstruct British society and attack Christianity over the past decade and then turn Britain into a province of the EU without a vote of the British electorate, its nice to see the pendulum swing and swing hard. Certainly a good portion of this vote was a reaction to the scandal over MP expenses. But it was part of a greater movement all across Europe that saw big gains by right and center-right parties, including most notably Geert Wilder's anti-EU, anti-immigration party which "shot to second place behind the ruling Christian Democrats by taking 17 per cent of the vote in the Netherlands." Wilders is outspoken in his stance against the predations of Islamists throughout Europe and is perhaps best known for his production of the movie short, Fitna (see here).

This also from the above-linked Guardian article:

Labour's European meltdown was amplified on a continental scale last night as the centre-left across the EU suffered defeats despite an economic climate from which it should profit. The most significant outcome was in Germany, the EU's biggest member country, where the Social Democrats (SPD) came in 17 points behind Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats and their Bavarian CSU ally.

In France, and Italy the centre-right also scored victories while Spain's socialist government lost to the conservatives.

Now if we can only get our own socialist left out of power, perhaps there is yet a chance for Western Civilization to survive.

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Should Republican's Emulate The Tories?

With the GOP's star temporarily in retrograde, everyone is chiming in on what ails the Republican Party and how to fix it. Reagan is dead, according to Jeb Bush. The right's stand on social issues is what's killing the party, says Olympia Snow. Howard Dean has declared capitalism a failed experiment (I love the degree of utter historical ignorance needed to make that statement). People want big government and lots of social spending according to Paul Krugman. Rush Limbaugh is killing the party, according to Colin Powell. Have I missed anything? Oh yes, become like Britain's Tory Party. That was today's helpful suggestion from James Forsyth of the UK's Spectator Magazine.

Mr. Forsyth's suggestion is based on his assessment that Republicans of today are similar to the Tories of 1997, when the Tories suffered the most decisive electoral defeat in British history. According to Mr. Forsyth, if Republicans merely tone down the social conservatism, or make of it an economic issue rather than a moral one, as Tories are trying to do in Britain, then perhaps Republicans can revive their party. If you don't follow British politics that closely, it sounds like a reasonable suggestion. But the truth is that the Tory Party has repackaged itself as a light version of the socialist Labour Party and it is reasonable to expect that, while they will assuredly win the next election, they offer no viable solutions to the serious problems Britain is experiencing.

The Tory Party came to power in 1979 under Margaret Thatcher. She worked tremendous changes in Britain (a short recapitulation of which you can read here) until she lost an intra-party fight as leader of her party in 1990 over her opposition to further integration in the EU. John Major took her spot, but a series of problems led to an absolute trouncing of the Tories in 1997. There are at least three similarities between Britain of John Major's days and the Republican Party of today. Most importantly, there were severe economic problems that occurred on Major's watch. Interestingly, the worst of it, Black Wednesday, George Soros had a major hand in creating. Further, the Tory brand and their claim to family values became tarnished through a series of widely publicized scandals - most of them sexual. And lastly, the press, led by the BBC, and academia were virulently liberal. These at least mirror some of the problems Republicans have suffered through over the past few years.

So how is it now that the Tories stand on the precipice of power? A part of it is, as Mr. Forsyth suggests, that Tories have recast some conservative issues, such as marriage and children born out of wedlock, on economic grounds. But he ignores that the Tories have gone much further, in many cases adopting Labour policies and punting on the really big issues. For example, the Tory Party still has not taken a firm position on the two existential issues facing Britain, whether to allow the people a vote on the EU's Lisbon Treaty - which saw Britain surrender its sovereignty to the EU - and what to do about the problems of open border immigration and the massive Muslim influx.

Beyond that, in many cases, its been the Tories who have tried to outdo the socialists on avant garde issues. For example, not only have Tories jumped on the global warming bandwagon, but David Cameron's advisor on issues dealing with green policy was a key witness advocating that three people who sabotaged a coal plant last year should be found not guilty. When Bishop Nazir Ali went public with charges that there are Muslim areas in Britain that have become enclaves non-Muslims dare not tread and that multiculturalism was an abject failure, it was the Tory Shadow Minister who was the first to call the good Bishop misguided. And it was just a few days ago that another Tory Shadow Minister appearing on a BBC game show threatened to kill Carrie Prejean because she spoke out against gay marriage - such is the Tory attitude towards free speech and their embrace of the most radical gay agenda in the Western world.

Tory popularity today is not because of their "conservative" policies, its because the Labour Party has bulloxed up the country economically and pursued radical social policies that have, one, attacked Britain's proud history, and two, that have made a multicultural mess of the country. The Tory Party does not present a real choice for the British electorate, unfortunately. And nor would a Tory model present a reasonable model for the Republican Party.

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What's The Difference Again, Between Tory & Labour?

The left's stranglehold on Britain is complete, particularly since the Conservative Party in Britain, the Tories, are really nothing more than a light version of Labour - complete it would seem, with the same socialist-left animosity towards free speech and Christianity.

This is a BBC program in which the MP and shadow home secretary Alan Duncan says that he would like to kill the "silly bitch" Carrie Prejean, Miss California, for stating her view that marriage should only be between a man and a woman.



I have to admit, I was surprised when the other lefties on the Beeb show went slack-jawed in amazement, given the casual anti-Americanism I've seen on that station over the years. At any rate, the Tories will take power in another year or two, but I doubt that anyone in the UK will note any difference.

(H/T Gateway Pundit)

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An English Lesson For E.J. Dionne

Dionne really is such low hanging fruit, going after his insipid columns is akin to taking a few practice swings with a bat before stepping up to the plate. Today he completely mistakes what is going on across the pond as the basis for his suggestion that McCain make a sharp left turn to be more like Obama.
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You can find EJ Dionne's column here. Dionne's message therein to McCain today - ditch conservative principles and become more liberal, just like the Tories did, and you stand a chance of winning the election.

There are just a few problems with that. First and foremost among them is that Republicans lost power when they lost their mooring from conservative values. They spent our wealth like drunken Democrats. When the now indicted Sen. Stevens put the Bridge to Nowhere on the Senate map, all but a few Republicans walked across it like lemmings. But that aside, looking to the UK, it is true that the Tories would never be mistaken for conservatives in the U.S. They are Labour lite - but they have been that way for the better part of a century. Voters are not warming to the Tories because the Tories have suddenly changed brands. To the contrary, they are utterly rejecting Labour, whose ideas are pretty much the mainstream socialism that Obama promises.

I've been calling Britain a laboratory in modern socialism for years. If there is a lesson to be learned from the British experience, it's that socialism is a grand failure.

As to why the Tories lost power in the first place - they sacked Margaret Thatcher because of her opposition to the EU. When Thatcher came to power, she did so on the heels of hard economic times. She revamped the British economy and tore the economic heart out of British socialism. She was villified for it, and when she lost power, that did not mean the end to the Tory problems on Europe. That, plus a series of sex scandals and some bad economic times did in Thatcher's successor, John Major. The Tories imploded, much as Republicans in 2006.

Now, after eleven years of mucking things up like only socialists can do, we are being treated to the spectacle of Labour embracing conservative principles in an effort to hold onto power. The latest Green Paper on policing, promising a devolution of power, is about as far off the left playbook as Nancy Pelosi embracing drilling in ANWR. So, to the extent that there has been movement in the political parties over the past decade in the UK, its been the movement of Labour towards the center left occupied by the Tories.

That aside, EJ did chuck in a few laughers with the best being far and away to assert that Gordon Brown and Obama share a "broadly center left world view." Gordon Brown is anything but center left. And to claim that there is anything about Obama that can be characterized as "center" or even "center left" is laughable. This is a guy whose voting record is well to the left of the only self-proclaimed socialist in Congress, who wants to declare Iraq a defeat, and who wants to institute cradle to grave socialism in the U.S. That is "center" only if you are in Cuba or Venezuela. Even China has given up that ghost.

Oh well, Dionne may never get anything right in his columns, but he always provides fine entertainment - unintended, though it may be.

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Labour Takes It In The Shorts

The socialist Labour Party was trounced in mid-term elections two months ago, and now, in a by election, have lost possibly the safest seat they had, Glasgow East. The Tories are publicly urging PM Gordon Brown to call another general election and even one Labour MP has now called for Brown to step down.
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This from the Telegraph:

Challenged by David Cameron, the Conservative leader, to call a general election after the loss of Glasgow East to the Scottish National Party, Mr Brown said he was "getting on with the job".

Preparing to meet trade union leaders in Warwick, the Prime Minister said: "We've got to listen and hear people's concerns and that's exactly what we are doing. People are worried every time they go to the petrol station for fuel and worry about the costs. These are concerns that are happening in every other country.

"My full focus is on taking people through these difficult times."

But Graham Stringer, a former minister and the MP for Manchester Blackley, added to the pressure on his leader by becoming the first Labour MP to publicly urging for Mr Brown to consider his position.

Mr Stringer said the Cabinet must have a "closed and honest discussion,” adding: “We need a new start and that can only come from a debate around the leadership.”

In one of the biggest electoral upsets of recent times, the Scottish National Party candidate John Mason last night overturned a huge 13,507 majority in Glasgow East and clinched the former Labour stronghold from the Labour candidate, Margaret Curran, by 365 votes.

Speaking earlier outside his home in west London, Mr Cameron said the result showed that voters were telling the Prime Minister: "We think you're failing and we want change."

Mr Cameron said: "I wonder whether we can put up with this for another 18 months.

. . . This morning Des Browne, the Scottish Secretary, admitted that it had been a "bad night" for Labour. But he said that the party had recovered from previous by-election disasters and could do so again. He maintained that Mr Brown was the best leader for the country in difficult times.

. . . The defeat sends a chilling message about Labour's electoral prospects to already dissatisfied party backbenchers, the majority of whom enjoy much smaller majorities. Labour's collapse in a working class area also suggests that the party's traditional support is joining the middle classes in turning their backs on the party.

This morning Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP deputy leader, said that if the result were replicated at the next general election, Labour would be left with only one MP in Scotland. She described the victory in Glasgow East as a "sensational, spectacular, epic result".

She said: "The cost of living, fuel prices and food prices were an enormous factor in this by-election. But also for the first time in history this was a by-election between two governments - the Labour Government in London and the SNP Government in Holyrood. Clearly the Labour Government is deeply unpopular."

Mr Brown has already seen a safe Labour seat lost in May when a 7,000 majority in Crewe and Nantwich was reversed by the Tories. Last month Labour came fifth in the Henley by-election. But for half a century, Labour has enjoyed political supremacy in the east end of Glasgow – the party's 25th safest seat in the country and its third most secure in Mr Brown's Scottish heartland.

In the poll, Mr Mason received 11,277 votes (43 per cent), beating Mrs Curran, who took 10,912 (42 per cent). The SNP's vote increased 26 percentage points on the 2005 General Election, while Labour's fell 19 points. . .

Read the entire article

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Britain's Final Chances

The EU will become a super-state once its Constitution, embodied in the Treaty of Lisbon, is fully ratified by all member countries. The EU is an anti-democratic experiment in socialism that stands in contradiction to Britain’s anglo-saxon traditions of representative democracy, individual rights and capitalism (see here, here, here and here). While membership in the EU has proven a boon for Britain’s political class, it has proven very bad for the rest of Britain in innumerable ways that only portend to worsen.

Britain's integration as an EU province is also very bad for the U.S. Britain has been America's closest European ally. As Britain is subsumed into the EU, so goes both its special relationship with the U.S. and, in a larger context, a critically important member of the anglosphere whose traditions and values animate the freest and most prosperous nations on earth.

Britain is at a tipping point on the EU membership in many ways. Things look bleak at the moment. Gordon Brown and Labour are determined to transfer Britain’s sovereignty to the EU without any vote of the people. The "conservative" Tory Party is little more than a light version of the socialist Labour party. As I posted here, it is led by David Cameron, a weak man driven by political expediency rather than conservative principles who has said that he will treat Labour’s actions as a fait accompli. What is going on in Britain is a stealth coup by a disingenuous political class that is being largely supported by British media though minimalist and superficial coverage.

We are down now to the last three chances to derail British ratification of the Lisbon Treaty and transfer of the bulk of its sovereign powers to the EU. The House of Lords must vote on the Lisbon Treaty this week. Ireland is the only country to hold a referendum on the treaty, and they do so on Thursday. Lastly, there is a court case seeking to force Labour to uphold its pledge and hold a referendum on the EU. Speaking on these issues are Melanie Phillips, John Bolton and EU Referendum’s Dr. Richard North.
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Author Melanie Phillips has written an exceptional article documenting the current situation and the stakes at issue:

. . . The EU is the issue that all politicians are ignoring in the hope we will forget about it. Most immediately, they hope we have forgotten to be concerned about the European Constitution, which is masquerading as a bog standard treaty over which we need lose no sleep.

This constitution, which would bring into being an unprecedented bureaucratic super-state and end once and for all what remains of the independence of EU member nations, was dumped after it was rejected by French and Dutch voters in 2005. It was then resurrected in all but name as the Treaty of Lisbon, which Parliament is in the process of ratifying. This week, that constitution faces a triple test.

Today, businessman Stuart Wheeler's legal challenge to Labour's refusal to honour its manifesto pledge to put it to a referendum reaches the High Court. On Wednesday, the ratification Bill reaches the House of Lords. This Bill was ruthlessly shoe-horned through the Commons. This week we will see whether their Lordships will also spinelessly roll over, or recall their historic role as a last- ditch defence of this country's interests against such abuse of power.

But something else is happening which our politicians didn't bargain for. As we know, the constitution has to be approved by every member state or else it falls. On Thursday, Ireland votes on the treaty - and it looks as if it might vote against it.
The Irish government is filled with panic and horror at the possibility that the Irish public might actually be thinking for themselves. For the EU has always relied on bamboozling the public about the joys of EUtopia and terrifying them that their whole world will collapse if it is thwarted.

More and more people, however, are realising that they have been lied to, not only about the constitution but about the whole EU project. In Britain, we were told from the start that it was only an economic union which would entail no loss of sovereignty.

That was the very opposite of the truth. The dirty little secret is that, even without the constitution, political power has simply drained away from Westminster to Brussels.

In a little-noticed but quite devastating speech in the Commons last week, the Tory MP Peter Lilley recorded that last year the EU passed no fewer than 177 directives - more or less equivalent to our Acts of Parliament - and 2,033 regulations enforceable in the UK, as well as making 1,045 decisions which affect us.

Our own Trade Minister has admitted that 'around half of all UK legislation with an impact on business, charities and the voluntary sector' stems from laws passed in Brussels. . . .

Now the former Tory policy adviser Lord Blackwell is arguing that Britain should renegotiate the terms of its EU membership, restricting it to trade agreements and common security and environment policies, but rejecting EU control over monetary policy, foreign affairs, defence and justice.

An opinion poll run by his group Global Vision suggests that more than a third of voters across all parties would back a prospective Conservative Government pledge to negotiate such a change, and that people would support it in a referendum by more than two to one.

The fact is that those opposed to the creation of a European super-state are not the 'xenophobes' or 'Little Englanders' of the overheated Eurofanatic imagination.

. . . The EU is fundamentally an anti- democratic project, based on the belief that the individual nation is the source of the ills of the world and that by contrast supra-national institutions offer the solution to all its problems.

It is that absence of democratic transparency which is now corrupting not just European politics but our own. The fresh outbreak of 'Tory sleaze' over the expenses gravy train is rooted in Brussels, where corruption is the accepted way of EU life.

Yesterday, the Irish government said that a 'no' vote over the constitution would be a crisis for Europe. What rubbish. The plain fact is that the EU has brought about a crisis for democracy within Europe. Which is why it is essential that we should renegotiate our place within it.

Politicians, however, run a mile from any such suggestion. The terror of acknowledging the true nature of what has happened, in case he is required to address it, has propelled David Cameron into a cul-de-sac.

His pledge to allow the British people a vote on the constitution is worthless since - as he has only now admitted explicitly - once the treaty is ratified it will be almost impossible to do anything about it.

But since his party has warned that the constitution will spell the end of British self-government, this turns Mr Cameron into the Hamlet of the European debate - an awesome talent for speeches denouncing tyranny, but a complete inability to act against it.

Mr Cameron is paralysed by fear of reigniting the Tories' internal civil war over Europe. But the Tory Europhiles are now moth- eaten has-beens who have comprehensively lost the argument with the British people.

The fact is that Parliament is now so emasculated it is becoming the equivalent of Westminster regional council in the Republic of Euroland.

. . . It is time to end this charade. Whatever happens to the constitutional treaty in Ireland or anywhere else, Britain must now re-negotiate its relationship with the EU. The politician who does so will be a hero to the nation. Which is why Mr Cameron should ignore the faint-hearts and suede-shod Euro-fanatics in his ranks. This country must rediscover its identity and sense of purpose, or else it is finished. It can do so only if it regains the power to govern itself.

The issue is quite simply whether democracy in Britain has a future at all. It could not be more fundamental. . . .

Read the entire article. Former UN Ambassador John Bolton spoke at the University of Dublin against ratification of the EU treaty, both because it is anti-democratic and its effects on NATO and the US-British relationship:

The Lisbon Treaty poses a threat to NATO and undermines democracy by handing more power to Brussels, a former senior advisor to President George W Bush has warned.

John Bolton, . . . said the new Treaty could hurt the military alliance between Europe and the US.

He was speaking only days before Ireland hold a referendum on the EU Treaty, the only member country to do so, with the latest polls showing the Yes campaign slightly ahead.

But an Irish vote No on Thursday will mean the Treaty, which abolishes dozens of national vetoes and creates the new post of EU president, cannot come into force in any of the 27 member states.

. . . Mr Bolton has previously warned the deal threatens Britain's special relationship with the United States and yesterday said he would not understand the Irish giving "more powers to bureaucrats."

He added: "The only people you elect have a very limited role and I think this treaty will further enhance the power of institutions in Brussels without extending democratic authority to people."

. . . A Global Vison/ICM poll published yesterday found 64 per cent of Britons would back a renegotiated looser relationship with the EU in a referendum, against 26 per cent who would oppose it.

Read the entire article. Dr. Richard North, who runs the EU Referendum blog, added his own thoughts to those of John Bolton:

. . . For sure, the official US view is very much at variance, expressed in a report last month from the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. This stated that Washington would support a more "muscular" EU, provided that European defence spending was sufficient for a radical improvement in military capabilities on this side of the Atlantic. Some four months previously, in a speech in Paris, Victoria Nuland, the US ambassador to NATO, had overtly supported a militarily stronger European Union . . . That support, though, was conditional on the Europeans embarking on a "radical improvement in military capabilities, with a far more focused policy on defence spending.

"While we cannot say that Bolton's view in any way reflects official US policy, it may be a straw in the wind. From the Istituto Affari Internazionali in Rome, we recently had a report indicating that many of the EU member states were having trouble meeting their existing defence commitments. While between 2001 and 2006, France, Britain and Spain spent more than three percent of gross domestic product on defence, Italy spent only 1.47 percent, and spending in Germany and Sweden sharply declined.

Even more recently, we had seen reports that the French military is in trouble, with most of France's tanks, helicopters and jet fighters are unusable and its defence apparatus on the verge of "falling apart".

Elsewhere on this blog we recorded the difficulties EU member states had in equipping its force for Chad and latterly we concluded that – in terms of military performance, the idea of European defence was an "unrealisable dream".Despite this, we have seen continued attempts by the EU to create a "European Army" – but all that actually amounts to is a "dedicated military headquarters", more structures and oversight of the military function by the EU parliament.

. . . For some member states . . . the objective of pooling military structure is to spend less money on defence.

Going back in history, one must recall that one of the greatest supporters of the nascent European "project" – in the fifties and sixties – was the US government, with CIA money being channelled into the European Movement. Not least, the US then saw in a united Europe a bastion against the emerging threat of Communism which threatened to engulf the whole of Europe.

Now, if Bolton is seeing the EU defence ambitions as a threat, he cannot be the only influential American to take that view. This may reflect the assiduous work of a number of British teams who have been over to the States, working through right-wing think tanks like the Heritage Foundation – warning them of the dangers.

As did it help the EU on its way, therefore, there is now a glimmer of hope that the US could be instrumental in prising away the UK from the "project", having seen – at last – that the EU represents a danger to the interests of democracy and global security.

Read the entire post. NATO as it is has significant, possibly existential problems. Most NATO nations other than Britain do not field a functional military and most NATO members are not fully supporting the NATO mission in Afghanistan. Moreover, given the anti-democratic nature of the EU, having all of the member nation’s forces integrated and under EU central control could prove problematic down the road for any states whose restive populations decide they no longer want to be part of the grand socialist experiment that is the EU.

At any rate, we are nearing the end of Britain's chances to sidestep the transfer of their sovereign rights to the EU. Much will be decided by week’s end.

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Tory Perfidy and British Sheep

If ever you questioned whether the Tory "Conservative Party" presented an alternative to the socialist Labour Party, put your questions to rest. They are no different. Even as Labour transfers British sovereignty to the EU without any say of the British people, the Boy Wonder shows his true colors. David Cameron states that he will not hold a referendum on the EU. And in reply, nary a "baa" is heard from the sheep across the pond.
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All three major British political parties, Tory, Lib Dem and Labour, promised the electorate three years ago that they would not transfer sovereignty to the EU without a referendum of the electorate. Labour ripped up that promise and has signed on the EU dotted line, refusing a referendum. Now the Tory party has tossed up its arms and said that they will not hold a referendum either. This from the Telegraph:

[Tory Leader] David Cameron has admitted that he may never be able to fulfill his promise to hold a referendum on the European Treaty.

The Conservative leader had wanted a poll on the Lisbon Treaty before its powers came into force, but has said it may be too late to reverse them by the time he becomes Prime Minister.

Legislation to ratify the EU Treaty is currently being pushed through Parliament by the Government, and should complete its final stages well before the next General Election, which is likely to be held in just under two year's time.

. . . Addressing a meeting in Harlow, in Essex, Mr Cameron admitted it would be "almost impossible" to have a referendum on the Treaty if it was already law in the UK and the rest of Europe.

He added: "We may have to say, well look, we're not happy with this situation, here are some of the powers we'd like to have back.

"But we can't give you that referendum on the Lisbon Treaty because it's already been put in place across the rest of Europe."

Read the entire article.

This is the penultimate betrayal of the British electorate. Cameron's excuse for his position is pure prevarication. Per the new Constitution, there is clearly delinieated method for withdraw from the EU which Britain could accomplish and then negotiate any method they want with the EU for trade, etc. That is not what the professional politicos of the Tory Party want. This must be a God send for Cameron, as he and his cronies get fully onto the EU gravy train and now use the laughable excuse of a Labour fait accompli to justify their complicity. As Peter Hitchens said not long ago, "I can guarantee that, as long as the Tories occupy the place which should be taken by a proper opposition, there's not the slightest hope of real change for the better." He is spot on in his assessment.

The Tory Party, since the day they got rid of Margaret Thatcher because of her opposition to the EU, has been sleeping in the same bed with Labour on this. The EU is a gravy train for the professional politicos of Britain. It is anything but that for the British populace, but that matters little since they have no say in the matter.

In America, a change on the scale of what is happening in Britain would require a fundamental revision of the Constitution - and indeed, the tsunami of laws and regulations from the EU are working a fundamental and quite likely irreversible change in Britain. My sense is - and I say this without any sort of melodrama - were a fundamental change of such a magnitude to our structure of government be taken fiat in America as it is being done in Britain, blood would fill the streets. Yet there is nary a "baa" from the sheep across the pond. I will simply never understand this - not from the country that has fought so dearly and repeatedly for its rights, from the time of the Magna Carta forward through to the battlefields of Europe.

Update: I do stand corrected. I forgot for a moment the EU Referendum, possibly the best blog on both sides of the pond, which has been leading the fight on the EU. Unfortunately, even they see no hope in the foreseeable future.

Update 2: The one country holding a referendum on this new EU Constitution is Ireland. They will vote on 12 June. As it stands today, the "No" votes hold a slight lead. Even if Ireland does vote down the Constitution, it will probably not even slow down the EU.

It should also be noted that the EU's latest anti-democratic effort is to do away with representation of Eurosceptic parties in the EU parliament.

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The Malignant Effects Of Socialism In The UK

I am a rabid anglophile by any measure. I believe that Britain has, over the last millenium, had the single greatest positive impact on the world of any nation. That said, as I wrote here, Britain today sits amidst a perfect storm brought about by its near century embrace of socialism and its membership in the EU. A read through the British papers today shows some of the truly malignant effects of socialism – one on crime and policing, the other on the war against Christianity.
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Socialists are by definition anti-democratic statists. A core tenet of the socialist philosophy is to centralize control instead of allowing locals to make their own decisions on local issues. One of the areas where the deleterious effects of centralization can be easily seen is in policing.

Local police chiefs in the UK are appointed and controlled from the central government. The locals do not control their police through the ballot box. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest complaints I hear from my British friends is that the police in the UK are nowhere near as responsive to the locals they serve as they should be.

Since all is centralized, what has inevitably evolved is policing based on targets and quotas set by a government that wants to show good statistics to the people in advance of elections. Indeed, if you read the Labour crime statistics, they are inevitably impressive. But get below the statistics, and what you find is a country that has spiraled so far down in terms of law and order that a person living in Britain today is less safe from violent and serious crime than if they were living in the Balkans. Indeed, the government’s quota system is not only an incompetent and incredibly cynical game of smoke and mirrors, it is having an adverse effect on Britain’s middle class, as discussed in a report just released:

The middle classes have lost confidence in the police, a stark report has warned. They fear they have been alienated by a service which routinely targets ordinary people rather than serious criminals, simply to fill Government crime quotas.

The attitude of some officers has also led to spiralling complaints about neglect of duty and rudeness. The report from the Civitas think-tank says incidents which would once have been ignored are now treated as crimes - including a case of children chalking a pavement.

. . . The report warns that a generation of young people - the police's favourite soft targets - are being criminalised, putting their future prospects at risk.

. . . The report details how officers are expected to reach a certain number of 'sanction detections' a month by charging, cautioning or fining an 'offender'. Arresting or fining someone for a trifling offence - such as a child stealing a Mars bar - is a good way of hitting the target and pleasing the Home Office. Amazingly, the chocolate theft ranks as highly as catching a killer.

Miss Sergeant says performance-related bonuses of between £10,000 and £15,000 a year for police commanders depend partly on reaching such targets. This leads them to put pressure on frontline officers to make arrests for the most minor misdemeanours. . . .

Read the article.

Meanwhile, the socialist Labour Government continues its war on Christianity - and as the Bishop of Rochester pointed out the other day, it is a war the government is winning at perhaps existential cost to British society. Indeed, it is a war that has been going on since the inception of socialism. "It is a profound truth," declared the British Socialist Party in a 1911 manifesto, "that Socialism is the natural enemy of religion." And today, we have the story of a man who regularly rented out a castle for weddings. The state is now closing his business because he refused to make the castle available for a gay couple to be wed there. The man is a devout Christian, such unions violate his faith, and the castle is his private property. The state is using its police power to punish him for his Christian faith and to promote its socialist, anti-religious agenda.

There is finally a push-back going on in Britain. The socialist Labour government is being slaughtered in local elections and faces the abyss come the next general election. That said, the “conservative” party in Britain, the Tory party, seems little more than Labour-lite. As such, it is doubtful that even a crushing Tory victory can salvage Britain with its historical anglo-saxon values in tact. That is certainly true as long as Britain remains in the EU. Britain is just too far down the socialist / EU road to survive in even its current form beyond half a century. If the Britain of Churchill is ever to return, it will take some near disaster to move the British of today from their complacency, though I of course hope that I am proven wrong in that prognostication.

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The Nature of The Tories

The Tory victory in the UK's local elections, discussed in the post below, has not made Britain's conservative columnist Peter Hitchens a happy camper. He sees the modern Tory party, led by David Cameron, as a light version of the socialist/marxist Labour party - a criticism that you will find repeated often on this blog. Given the existential challenges Britain faces, I suspect the revitilization of the Tories or the mark of their demise will come in the next few years when they retake control of Britian and have to choose what to do about the EU.

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This from Peter Hitchens writing in the Daily Mail:

. . . What I am in favour of is, above all, national independence in which we choose our own destiny. Without it we would just be the serfs of whoever ruled these islands from far off and it would be pointless to discuss politics because we couldn't affect our destiny. We are rapidly approaching this point as the EU increases its powers over us, and no seriously patriotic party can continue to avoid the issue of withdrawal from the EU.

Next, I am favour of the liberty of the subject in a society governed by the rule of law, in which law-abiding people (who have made their own laws to supplement the force of conscience) are able to live freely according to their consciences.

I believe that these conditions are only possible in a country where the married family is strong and the state is weak, except in the matters of national defence and criminal justice, where it should be strong. They also rely on adult authority over children and a strong, generally accepted morality based on Christianity. That's what I'm in favour of, and I judge all political actions by these tests.

. . . [T]he most urgent and important task, before all else, [is] to get rid of the Tory Party. I learned from discussions with leading Tories that they loathed and despised my views and did not share my objectives. I realised that neither I, nor anyone who shared my views, had any chance of entering Parliamentary politics as long as the Tory Party occupied the position which ought to be held by a properly conservative, pro-British political formation. there is no mechanism in the Tory Party for reform or policy change, so there was no possibility of working within it. If I was serious, then my first task must be to destroy it.

. . . Patriotic? [The Tory's are] the party that got us into the Common Market, that actively supported staying in, in the 1975 referendum, that agreed the 'Single Market' and the 'Single European Act' that ended our national veto, that rammed Maastricht through Parliament. This is the party that devastated the armed forces with cuts at the end of the Cold War. And, I might add, it was the party that failed hopelessly to rearm until the last minute, in the face of the German threat in the 1930s, and which tried to dump Winston Churchill as an MP when he objected to this. Patriotic, my foot.

Law and Order? I could go on for hours (see my book 'The Abolition of Liberty' , where I do go on for hours). But the Tories have been specially useless on this. They did nothing to save or reinstate the death penalty, and many of their MPs have always voted against it. They did nothing to reverse Roy Jenkins's abolition of foot patrols in the 1960s. And this is the party that passed the 1984 Police and Criminal Evidence Act, which subjected the police to a spider-web of politically correct codes of practice, designed by Guardian-reading liberal lawyers, which are the source of most of the 'form-filling' everyone pretends to be against.

Then there are prison sentences. It was the Tories, in the 1991 Criminal Justice Act, who first thought of defrauding the public by automatically halving almost all prison sentences, letting voters think that the Burglar Bill was going down for four years, while Burglar Bill knew perfectly well that he'd only serve two. Labour have been adept pupils in this game, but it was the Tories who thought of it.

The family? What did the Tories ever do for the family? The 1989 Children Act, a body blow to all types of adult authority, was once again a Tory Bill, inspired by United Nations Marxoid piffle about 'Children's Rights' (which mean social workers' rights to poke into private matters). And have you noticed the Tories trying to make divorce harder, or reforming the Stalinist laws that mean a man who wishes to stay married to his wife can be told he is divorced whether he wants to be or not, dragged from his own home by the force of law, denied access to his children and deprived of his rights in his own property?

Have you seen any Tory opposition, since the sad death of Janet Young (whose brave, honest conservatism was loathed by much of her party), to the spreading of anti-marriage propaganda in schools? On the contrary. the Tories now proudly endorse the entire agenda of the sexual revolution. You might also have noticed that it has been Tory local authorities which have persecuted people who protested against homosexual propaganda in public libraries, Tory authorities which have enforced politically correct rules to prevent conservative-minded parents from adopting, Tory local authorities which have snooped on the private lives of parents.

If there's a moral, cultural or political battle to be fought anywhere in this country against the revolutionary left, it will be the Tories who won't be fighting it. Office is all they want, and they'd promise to guillotine the Queen if they thought it would get them back into Downing Street.

. . . I defy you to tell the difference [between Labour and Tory] in practice. Sure, the slogans on the posters are different, but in reality, the only function of the Tories in our system is to continue to implement Labour policies while pretending to be against them, so providing a safety valve to vent discontent, whole leaving Labour policies untouched. The pattern of our government since the war has been intense revolutionary periods of Labour rule (1945-51, 1964-70 , 1997-????) succeeded by long years of do-nothing Toryism in which the Labour revolutions were not challenged, and the clock not put back by a single second. (the 1974-79 period is really just a mess of drift, since nobody had a proper majority, but Labour still managed to do quite a bit of damage).

This isn't the place to argue in depth about the Thatcher period, but even she failed to reverse the huge growth of the public sector, merely diverted it from the productive (coal, steel, gas, electricity, telecoms) to the unproductive (the NHS, armies of social workers, state education, local authorities) and she completely failed to challenge its egalitarian campaign to destroy proper learning and authority in schools, or to challenge its revolutionary social and moral agenda, undermining personal responsibility and family life - and eventually threatening liberty too.

Anyway, to the extent that she did challenge any of this, Margaret Thatcher was furiously opposed by her own party - and when she began to see the danger of the EU, which she had till then supported, the Tories savagely dumped her - as they would again dump any leader who took a genuinely pro-British position on anything. The myth that she was scuppered by the 'poll tax' is just that, a myth. It was her Maastricht speech and her 'No! No! No!' to Brussels rule that brought out the assassin's knives. Her replacement, John Major , was the first New Labour Prime Minister. The policy gap between Major and Blair in 1997 was minimal.

What's more, that gap has become even more tiny since 1997, as the Tories have done what they always do, and agreed to accept Labour policies as the condition of being allowed back into office ( see my last week's blog for a rare case of this brutal fact being stated in public) .

. . . I don't want a Brown government any more than I wanted a Blair government, and I am on record as about the longest-lasting and most consistent opponent of this lot in British journalism, from the days when some surprising people (you know who you are) were making their peace with New Labour and having drinkies at Downing Street. But if you do vote Tory you (and I ) will get five more years of Gordon Brown policies, and quite possibly five more years of Mr Brown too. The Tories are still a very weak party, and it will take an electoral miracle for them to win a working majority. They are, as they have been since 1997, the only opposition Labour (whose own vote is also shrivelling) can beat.

The Blairite media are now running a campaign to turn Mr Brown into a sort of political Jade Goody, a national hate figure so loathed that he has to go round with a bag, or a blanket, over his head. This is interesting in itself. Ask why the very people who put Mr Blair in power ( and never turned on Blair on this way, though he is just as responsible for it) now want Mr Cameron in office? Is it because they want a change? Or is it because they want things to stay the same, only to employ the safety valve and so ensure that a real re-examination of the way we are governed does not take place? A Cameron victory would mean the final crushing of all remaining conservatism in the Tory Party, and ten more guaranteed years of what we have now - universal political correctness, a bulging welfare state, gargantuan taxation and of course continued absorption into the EU and unending lawlessness and disorder.

. . . [I]f the Tories collapse there'll be a new party. . . . It's the best hope there is. The alternative is just years of the same, until the country, riven by crime and disorder, sinks beneath the waves of welfare bankruptcy and becomes a wholly subject province of the EU state, governed largely by force. Or we might get some kind of thug-nationalist government, swept to office by desperation. You want that? Stick to the Tories.

I suspect that what people don't like about this idea is that it is so harshly realistic, and requires too much of them.

. . . The British seem to need to face almost total defeat before they are interested in fighting to save themselves. Dunkirk has to come before D-Day. Well, think of the collapse of the Tories as a necessary political Dunkirk. I can't guarantee that victory will follow. That will be up to us. But I can guarantee that, as long as the Tories occupy the place which should be taken by a proper opposition, there's not the slightest hope of real change for the better. So please don't vote for them. It only encourages them.

Read the entire article.

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Might Britain Survive After All

Over the last decade, the socialist/marxist policies of the Labour government and the European Union combined in a horrendous synergism to drag down the economy of Britain and quite literally war against anglo-saxon culture and history. On Thursday, the British people seemingly stirred a bit from their stupor. In local elections, they handed Labour their worst electoral defeat in a half century. And that was just the beginning of the good news.

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When the votes were totaled, the Tories – ostensibly Britain’s conservative party, though they would be seen as well to the left of center in the U.S. political continuum – picked up the lion’s shared of the vote at 44%. The Liberal Democrat Party, a relatively new party that is trying to mark out the mid point between the Tories and the Labour party, came in second with 25% of the vote while the ruling Labour Party was in third with 24% of the vote. Both the UK Independence Party - the true home of conservatives in the UK - and the British National Party increased their margins.

What all that means is a royal drubbing for Labour in the local councils. Labour lost 331 Councilors and control of 12 Local Councils. The Tories picked up 256 Councilors, which gives them now a huge lead at the local level over Labour. This bodes ill indeed for the Labour Party, who are searching today for any message in the election results that they can latch onto and perhaps salavage their party before the next general election. As several commentators, the most colorful of which was The Times' Matthew Parris, have noted, there are no life preservers in the electoral sea in which Labour now finds itself adrift:

It's over. There was nothing constructive in the voters' message. These elections were not an invitation to change. They were a big two-fingered salute [the Brit equivalent of the middle finger salute on this side of the pond], a raspberry, a pressing of the de-trousered national buttocks to the window of the polling station. The voters are bored, tired, disillusioned and out of love. The affair [with Labour], which in 1997 was (for the British people) uncharacteristically intense, is over, and the falling out is correspondingly bitter. Such flames are not rekindled - and certainly not by Mr Brown, whose personal stamp characterises this administration.

Read the entire article. Not everyone agrees, of course. At least one ardent leftist, John Kampfner - not surprisingly a BBC personality, writing at the Guardian has suggested that Labour can win by taking an even harder turn to left, apparently readopting the marxian economic ideas of large scale income redistribution and nationalization of major businesses jettisoned from the Labour plank only a bit over a decade ago by Tony Blair. Good luck with that.

The most important part of the local election was the race for Mayor of London, a post held for the past eight years by the odious Ken Livingstone – better known as Red Ken – a true enemy of Western civilization. Red Ken has thankfully been handed his walking papers by London's voters who gave victory to the Tory candidate, Boris Johnson, by a wide margin.

This is all good news, though only a small first step, really. In the end, the most important question will be whether Britain is consumed by the EU in a transfer of sovereignty with no referendum of the Brtish electorate. And thus the big news of the week may well be the little noted court approval given to a case brought by Stuart Wheeler to force the UK government to hold a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty. More on that court decision here.

Showing how history repeats itself if you survive as a nation for a millenium, the good folk at Brits at Their Best saw the apparent mood of an angry electorate summed up in in John of Gaunt's speech about the state of England in Shakespeare’s Richard II.

This land of such dear souls, this dear dear land,
Dear for her reputation through the world,
Is now leased out, I die pronouncing it,
Like to a tenement or pelting farm:
England, bound in with the triumphant sea
Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame,
With inky blots and rotten parchment bonds:
That England, that was wont to conquer others,
Hath made a shameful conquest of itself.

Read the entire post. And another British blog, EU Referendum, one of the best blogs on either side of the pond, puts the election in perspective.

. . . [T]his was a catastrophe for the Labour party of some magnitude and one from which they will find it difficult to recover.

However, for the rest of us, life goes on and, let us face it, these were just local elections, which will change little and which were decided on a low turn-out as usual. In other words, for the majority of the population, even in the affected areas, they were of little concern. This will not change until there is a root-and-branch reform . . . [of local and national government].

. . . We have a new mayor, though many of us prefer not to have one at all. Nor are we all that desperate to have a London Assembly or the rest of those quangos that together make up the GLA or, more widely, “London’s government”. London does not need a government as it has managed spectacularly well without one for centuries. This supposed government is little more than a money-hungry incubus on the whole city.

On the other hand, if we do have a mayor, even temporarily, it is better not to have a power-hungry, self-centred, no-much-reformed socialist who brought in huge white elephants, thought of new ways to fleece the public and saw himself and his entourage as another foreign office. The truth of how much those trips abroad to places like Venezuela or to conferences about global warming has not yet come out.

. . . On to the new Mayor. Boris Johnson has won very handsomely. Despite the ridiculous system of three ballot papers, two preferences for the mayor and two separate votes for the assembly, which has consistently created more spoilt ballots in London than anywhere else, the victory is clear and uncontestable.

The turn-out seems to have been around 45 per cent, about ten per cent higher than last time and about 13 per cent higher than the time before. This is still not spectacularly high but by standards of local elections, not bad.

The irony here is that we were told twice by pundits of the stature of Simon Jenkins that the magical personality and popularity of Ken Livingstone would bring the voters out in far greater droves than ever before. It didn’t and neither did the media blitz on the subject. It was actually the presence of a credible rival that did the trick.

. . . David Cameron must have some ambivalent feelings. It does not take too many brain cells to work out that Boris Johnson will now have power base that is completely independent of the leader and, unlike Livingstone, he has never made the mistake of antagonizing other members of his party.

. . . Final count was 1,168,738 for Mayor Johnson and 1,028,966 for ex-Mayor Livingstone. One can but hope he will now disappear from public life and go back to spending more time with his newts.

Contrary to what the media tells us, Livingstone has not been a success in his life. Nothing but a career local politician, he actually helped Thatcher to destroy the GLC, which he had seen as his power base. Then he became an MP, only to find that as a back-bencher and a greatly disliked one at that, he had no role to play.

. . . It was time for [Red Ken] to go. Otherwise, the Conservative have not done as well as they had hoped in London. They lost one first-past-the-post seat in the Assembly and failed to gain another one they had high hopes for. They have gone down to eight constituency members with Labour having six. However, their vote across London has gone up by 6.20 per cent, so they will make the seats up, from the top-up list system. Labour’s vote went up by 3.36 per cent. A combination of higher turn-out and smaller parties being squeezed. It was rare to see any group quite as glum as the Greens were in the Great Glass Egg yesterday.

What about those top-up members? The big news is that, as expected, the BNP has passed the 5 per cent threshold and now has one member in the Assembly. Incidentally, if it is true that the main party candidates walked out of the room when the BNP mayoral candidate spoke but happily listened to the tyrant- and terrorist-supporting Lindsay Germain of the Left List, one can only marvel at their stupidity as well as bad manners. Then they wonder why people vote BNP. Richard Barnbrook, the man in question, will now be in the Assembly, so, as the song has it “ho, ho, ho, who’s laughing now”.

Having found the full list, I can say that the Conservatives have got three top-up seats, so two mayoral hopefuls, Andrew Boff and Victoria Borwick will be in the Assembly. Again, one can but wonder at their notion of what constitutes important political placing.

Labour has two top-up seats, with Nicky Gavron and Murad Qureshi back in place. That means there will be 11 Tory members and 8 Labour ones. The Lib-Dims have lost two seats and are down to three and the Greens have retained the two they had. BNP has one. What a jolly set-up that is going to be. . . .

Read the entire post.

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Cognitive Dissonance In The UK

There is a real bit of cognotive dissonance occuring in the UK today. By that, I mean people are acting way out of character. Before addressing the specifics, understand that one of the most fundamental differences between the political right and left is the difference in how each views centralization of power and the degree to which each believes the government should intrude into the lives of the governed. I could wax uneloquent on this, or I could just quote from the far more eloquent and incisive Thomas Sowell:

[W]hat the political left, even in democratic countries, share is the notion that knowledgeable and virtuous people like themselves have both a right and a duty to use the power of government to impose their superior knowledge and virtue on others.

They may not impose their presumptions wholesale, like the totalitarians, but retail in innumerable restrictions, ranging from economic and nanny state regulations to "hate speech" laws.

If no one has even one percent of all the knowledge in a society, then it is crucial that the other 99 percent of knowledge - scattered in tiny and individually unimpressive amounts among the population at large - be allowed the freedom to be used in working out mutual accommodations among the people themselves.
These innumerable mutual interactions are what bring the other 99 percent of knowledge into play - and generate new knowledge.

That is why free markets, judicial restraint, and reliance on decisions and traditions growing out of the experiences of the many - rather than the groupthink of the elite few - are so important.

Elites are all too prone to over-estimate the importance of the fact that they average more knowledge per person than the rest of the population - and under-estimate the fact that their total knowledge is so much less than that of the rest of the population.

Central planning, judicial activism, and the nanny state all presume vastly more knowledge than any elite have ever possessed.

The ignorance of people with Ph.D.s is still ignorance, the prejudices of educated elites are still prejudices, and for those with one percent of a society's knowledge to be dictating to those with the other 99 percent is still an absurdity.

Read the entire article here.

In one way, the Tory party in Britain are acting true to the form. They are running on the platform of devolving power to local governments in Britain - something the UK desperately needs. As it stands now, the British do not even elect their own local police chiefs. The degree of central government control over decision making in Britain is really quite amazing. And when it comes to the nanny state, that term is defined by modern Britain. That the Tories, who claim the mantle of conservative, should embrace devolving real power to localities makes perfect sense. But then there is the EU.

The dissonance on the conservative side comes from the inexplicable Tory support for the EU - a form of highly centralized, highly regulatory, anti-democratic government which is the penultimate leftist construct - and which will turn Britain into a mere province. Even after reading Peter Hitchens's take on Tory support for the EU, I still find it difficult to fathom. And on a related note, there is equally as much dissonance in the Tory refusal to unequivocably say that they will allow the people of Britain a referendum on the fundamental issue of whether the British government can unilaterally transfer sovereignty of the British nation to the EU. Both of these scenarios as pertain to the EU are impossibly dissonant with the concept of conservatism.

That said, there appear to be equally dissonant rumblings on the left. Earlier this month, an MP Frank Field, wrote what looked like a conservative manifesto, arguing that the left should decentralize control to a large extent. I was amazed to find that he was a member of the Labour party. He was clearly trying to neuter the appeal of the Tories, who are now ahead in the polls. But to even raise the issue is unthinkable to many on the left who ususally see the answer to all problems, including those caused by government regulation, to be more government regulation.

That said, I was amazed to find a similar appeal to Labour to consider decentralizing power on the opinion pages of The Guardian. The Guardian is a UK newspaper where you can find some of the best straight reporting of any newspaper, bar none. That is why I read it daily. The opinion pages are another matter entirely. Guardian opinions are so far left that, by comparison, the NYT editorial board look like neocons. For example, I read an opinion piece on the Guardian not too long ago bemoaning the fall of communism in the Soviet Union. Yet, there today on the editorial page is reliable leftie Martin Kettle arguing that "new Tory ideas about devolving power deserve a hearing:"

[T]he two main parties are now travelling in very different directions. Labour, according to Cameron, wants to use the digital revolution to modernise the bureaucratic state - through ID cards and the computerisation of the welfare state. The Tories, says their leader, have a radically different approach. They want to use the information revolution to liberate citizens and take them into what Oliver Letwin rather grandly calls "the post-bureaucratic age".

So is the devolution of the state, at last, the elusive great divide across which the two parties will battle for the nation's votes in 2009 or whenever the next election comes?

Cameron's speech came at the end of a seminar that was rich in interest and ideas about the evolving modern Tory attitude to the state's role. . .

Cameron and his shadow ministers today repeatedly talked about the centrality of fairness to any devolved settlement. It would be blindly partisan to pretend that there is no serious new thinking going in Tory ranks or to rubbish what Cameron and his team are saying as either irrelevant or deceitful - though I'm sure that won't stop many from doing just that.

The stubborn question that won't go away is that centralised state systems do not work as well as socialists used to think - or as some social democrats continue to hope. Devolution of power in the centralised British state has become a live issue in our politics because it appears to be the answer, or at least part of the answer, to some real failures of delivery and public satisfaction in the centralised system. It won't do to dismiss the Tory contribution to this debate - or the New Labour contribution to it either - as if it is simply some further abject moral failing by discredited political fainthearts. If only things were that simple.

All the political parties are struggling to present themselves as the party of devolution, choice and localism. They do so because our state system does not work well for the citizen. All the parties, though, have problems about doing what to replace it with - not just the Tories. The LibDems talk about devolution and believe in it - but they won't be the next government. Labour may well be the next government - but there's a gulf between what Labour says on devolution and what it believes. Moreover, Labour's record is hardly ringing proof that the man in Whitehall knows best. The Tories, though, both talk about devolution and believe in it . . . They are entitled to be taken seriously on the subject now - and entitled not to be dismissed a priori as either naive or deceitful. . . .

Read the entire article. This is left wing heresy of the highest order. This from a leftie appearing in the Guardian is cognitive dissonance so loud as to be deafening. Between that and what the Tories are doing on the EU . . . I'm just not sure which way is up any more . . .

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