This is how the Polls stand Today:
C4 results
Labour (40<4) Conservative (36>3) LibDem (13 No Change)
Times results
Labour (39<2) Conservative (36>5) LibDem (15<2)
Guardian results
Labour (38<1) Conservative (38>6) LibDem (16<4)
The Guardian's results of Lab 38 Con 38 and LibDem 16, mean that Labours majority would be cut to *16*, yes that's *16*.Looking back on the Brown bounce it is retrospectively clear that conclusions drawn were misreading the temporary conditions of the end of a ten year Premiership as meaningful.
Brown`s is trapped ,reconnected with Labour’s record, his faux newness is lost .David Cameron has sacrificed a great deal for the marginals and with Ashcroft`s doubloons clinking into place, Flash Gordon`s position may be worse than it looks . He has alienated his own Party, whose loyalty was based on projecting desires onto his pasty blank canvass. Crucially , the Unions want their money back, and the spectre of a Callaghan, ”Winter of Discontent “ , must be clanking its ball and chain gleefully in the Broon attic .His death warrant is in the post, but it may take a while getting there !
Labour`s mandate in England is untenable at anything like this position. Brown is planning a subterfuge in Scotland, ceding further powers without legislation. This must be nailed ,with the EU lie, as more “Old “Politics.
Unity sells. Many UKIP supporters, who know full well their spiritual friends are Conservatives, will baulk at betraying the country at this crucial time .Already their vote is subsiding . The BNP however, Labour’s nationalist rivals, are resurgent .Nick Griffin will stand in Thurrock if General Election is called .Their understandable dismay at the level of immigration will not be assuaged by a few meaningless gestures. These are lifetime tribal Labour supporters , and they will not be back any time soon.
.This is their private family squabble. The way ahead for Conservatives is deep into Liberal localist territory.Margaret Thatcher came to be associated with laissez faire government, silent on schools environment and services. It has become the orthoxy to assume she did not care about the small battalions, but that is far from the truth . She wished them to thrive , and the first job was to remove the stinking corpse of state coercion . This looked like an 'economic' argument which , like Marxism , allows individuals and states but little in between . This is a travesty of ‘The lady.’ who had little in common with the selfish 80s zeitgeist . Some of the “centralising” confusion may have been due to the battles she had to fight with local authorities lapsed into outright gangsterism.
Instead of banging Hayek on the table and saying , ‘This what we believe’ , David Cameron accentuates the objective . Not an atomised cold-hearted individualist country but one in which marriage,the ultimate small battalion, and compassion, is not disrupted by the state .Cameron’s dissection of the LAT (Living apart together) syndrome was pivotal to his magnificent speech.
In this sense Brown is the heir to a fictional Thatcher invented by the BBC in the period of Polly Toynbee as social affairs editor(90s). He really does see individuals as in direct relation to the state . Cabbages for young mums , Sure start and most importantly a benefit system that attacks human relationships are indicative. Things are privatised or run by Brown with nothing in between .
It is against the most deeply cherished tenets of the Labour Party to admit this is misguided .Cameron says it is; and this Conservative message looks oddly very much like the localism of ‘true’ Liberals . Cameron is not attacking single mothers he is removing the state obstacles to natural human behaviour. In other words he is the heir to the real Thatcher.
It is easy to despise Liberals as a disorganised rabble of contradictory poses but many of them are sincerely good people perhaps understandably put off the octogenarian image Conservatives once had . Cameron must continue to update style and bring the localism , freedom and innovative thinking they are capable of into the tent . Elected Police commissioners , vouchers for education, low level decisions in the NHS are key issues . It is not abandoning Thatcher it is rediscovering her for today.The connection was best expressed this way.
“There is such a thing as society It is just not the same thing as the state “
An overall majority requires another 11%. The coalition must stretch from UKIP to Liberal and bind itself around this optimistic belief compassionate free men and women. Cameron showed he has real dignity to set against Brown`s dismal misery which the British mistook for that quality. He has the ability to be the pennant, on this confused battle field, to which all good men and women can and must rally, to save the country from the featureless , blasted no-man’s-land of Brown`s socialist Britain
'For there is none of you so mean and base
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game's afoot:
Follow your spirit; and, upon this charge
Cry 'God for Harry! England and Saint George!'
( Rapturous ovation……
13 comments:
CLAP, CLAP, CLAP :) You definitely a rapturous ovation for that, n.
Auntie Flo'
I would, however, question your view of Marx. Riddled with faults as the man and his work were, like him or loathe him, Marx was wee bit of a genius.
His theory of Commodity Fetishism, for example, is stunning.
Who else (in the 1840s?) would have seen a table in the following manner:
As soon as an ordinary wooden table ‘steps forth as a commodity, it is changed into something transcendent. It not only stands with its feet on the ground, but, in relation to all other commodities, it stands on its head, and evolves out of its wooden brain grotesque ideas, far more wonderful than “table-turning” ever was.’
Not only did Marx discover the sinister power of commodities over humanity - that this damn table and a whole world of commodities come stalking us - he understood what gives commodities such perverse, secret power: our alienated labour or alientated human powers.
And it's that which makes us akin to cave dwellers, we still worship idols and fetishes. Or, in other words, consumerism is modern humanity's religious experience.
Just as there were apparently two Thatchers, there were also apparently two Marxs. Both Marx and Thatcher degenerated from bright young visionaries into miserable old gits with their minds rigidly set in cement. Though in my view the transformation in both of them was more apparent than real. The seeds of what was to come were always there.
Auntie Flo'
I have been banging the localist drum for ever and a day, glad to see you catching up N :-)
Also proper liberalism. The great fraud of the post-60s era is for left-wing authoritarians to claim that they are "liberals". The Tory party should return to its liberal roots and restore true localism. That is a powerful formula.
glad to see you catching up N :-)
It is my passion !!:)
Ee wuz bent ya know - Larry I mean.
Anyway, wot Ed said.
Hmm not wishing to split hairs but I thought you didn't like localism because quite often left wing councils screwed things up. Which of course they do and would in the future but should be punished at the ballot box not by central government...
Thanks Philipa, always good to be agreed with!
GHOST OF HITCH SITE is all about Heroin. Click it and check for yourself. Tsk, tsk. There\'s a whole band of bandits waiting to pounce as soon as you close your Google blog and it gets taken over by this band of hackers. Happens to the best of people.
Eh what ? I deplore drugs
You are sad, sad people living in a sad sad world. Just sayin\' that\'s all. Hitch\'s blog has been possessed by the possessors, mine went same way only I sued the bastards
I fought the big Google machine and I won, HA, HA, HA, HA losers
I only had to say \"BOO\", Yah, writ, lawyer and the Google machinery went berserk. Couldn\'t apologize enough
Eh what ? I deplore drugs
That\'s very civil of you Newman. You are a nice guy under all that bluster
"I deplore drugs"
Why? Are you aware alcohol is a psychoactive drug which kills more people and ruins more lives than all the presently illegal drugs put together.
For most of recorded time, all drugs were legal yet civilisation did not fall about. Prohibition began around 80 years ago as a direct result of the US Temperance movement with their tradition of Puritanism.
That tradition is strong in the Labour party, esp Gordon Brown. Why import that into the Conservatives?
There are 4.5 million recreational drug users in this country who regularly break the law - the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 - brought in by the Callaghan Government.
The Classical Liberal tradition states that personal freedom is paramount - the State does not own your mind or body. Unlike with the Left.
The default Conservative position should be liberalisation and legalisation - as is happening in much of Western Europe. It is the Patrician Right that seeks to condemn drug use - the same element of Conservatism that has made the party so unelectable in the past. Ignore them and ignore the Daily Mail. There are 4.5 million votes in it, not to mention the benefits of taxation of an otherwise untaxed and unregulated market plus the bonus of massively reduced acquisitive crime and freed up prison places for proper criminals.
It's so f**king obvious and everyone knows it. The first party to come and actually say it - Legalise, Tax and Regulate Recreational Drugs - will win by a landslide.
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