The poisoned chalice grasped by Margaret Thatcher in 1979 is very similar though not identical to that awaiting David Cameron. Even before he begins to deal with the colossal problems ahead, Cameron knows that election victory will provoke an even more vitriolic response from the Left than during the years following 1979.
The hard and violent Left know that they will never, ever win power by the ballot box which they therefore scorn. They prefer to agitate and harass, through a large number of disparate, single-issue pressure groups. (The green ones are quite successful - have you noticed?) They make live as unpleasant as possible for the greatest number of innocent people in the hope of blaming it all on the wicked 'right wing government' and leaving sour memories of the Tory years. And when the electoral cycle brings Labour back to power, the Conservatives' years in opposition echo to the Left's non-stop chant about the last, long-gone Conservative government, with the intention that the electorate should fear the return of the wicked Tories. No matter what damage Labour in office wreaks, it is masked by the chants blaming the Tories.
Thirty years ago, Margaret Thatcher dared to question what had come to be thought of as the post-1945 welfare state consensus which, even by 1979, was draining the very lifeblood of the British economy while transferring power from the people to the state bureaucracy and trade union moguls, in the process infantilising the citizenry even as it impoverished them, paralysing the country even as it bankrupted it. But listen to the recordings of the Left's howling (literally) rage as Margaret Thatcher entered Downing Street for the first time. And that was before she actually had done anything. The mere prospect of anyone challenging their right to determine the course of British history according to their dogmas caused outrage.
The mantra of the Left, from Gordon 'Bonkers' Brown and Billy 'Loveable Leftie' Bragg to Bob 'Sod the Voters' Crow contains the word 'Thatcher' in every verse, almost twenty years after her departure. Why? Because her sheer effrontery appalled them. They have never got over it. She shattered their 'historical inevitability'. How dare a Conservative challenge their Long March? 35 years after Attlee, a Tory woman with starched hair and a posh voice and married to a filthy capitalist oil millionaire, is elected to power by the stupid electorate who still don't get it - still don't get that the revolution is not to be denied or overturned even by a majority vote. Thatcher's victory was intolerable and the memory of the outrage must never die. Please to remember, etc., like Guy Fawkes.
Pretty soon after Thatcher's ascent to power, the recidivist Left took to the streets, just as they are threatening to do now. They became violent and targeted private property and the police, orchestrated by people with no concern whatever for the welfare of the British people.
New Labour was no more to the liking of the Hard Left than Margaret Thatcher, although they held their fire for fear of bringing down a nominally 'Labour' administration. Nevertheless, they have steadily continued in the same direction, marshalling ever larger gangs (remember the G8 'anti-globalisation' destruction) using various names and flourishing a variety of red, green and rainbow banners. Amusing how people espousing an internationalist creed march under a banner saying 'anti-globalisation.
Recently, with another Tory government on the horizon, the Left have been flexing their muscles and getting up to fighting weight. Their pent up energies and frustrations will be vented on David Cameron. The unions have a £25 million war chest with which 'to unleash hell' on a Tory government. So much for elections and democracy. Not much has changed on the Hard Left since Lenin, has it?
The past twelve years have been a good time for the Left which nevertheless has felt constrained to utter the odd random bleat about the Blair/Brown government being 'right wing', which convinced no-one except possibly Will Hutton, David Aaronovitch and a few of the more barking bloggers.
The Labour government of which the fantasist Gordon Brown was chief architect made sure its golden geese were well fed. Labour sought union permission for government policies through the 'Warwick Agreement'. It gave them a lot of taxpayers money. It swelled the ranks of the index-linked pensioners on the public payroll, whose salaries outstripped those in the wealth-creating sector as the unions took hold in a way they no longer can outside Labour's state apparat. (Well, apart from Bob Crow.)
Culturally and politically, Britain during the Blair-Brown years has succumbed further to the Gramscian 'long march through the institutions' which are now largely captive to the well-entrenched Left. Even if Cameron gains a landslide mandate they will fight him tooth and claw on the assumption that the Tory years are no more than a temporary hitch in the Long March to historically inevitable Socialism. They mean to cling like limpets so that come the glorious day they will be in place to carry on where they left off. So to speak.
Freedom of thought and speech in our universities are a thing of the past. Our secular and religious history, our high culture and our national memory are almost entirely erased from the school curriculum and public discourse. Preference for our own culture as against anyone else's is, in some aspects, actually outlawed now, by Labour. Our electorate has been sedated by welfare and rendered supine and disconnected from the political system by which the political elite gains power. The Left is not going to allow any government to alter that, election or no election.
Our wealth-creators have had to export many of their functions, including manufacturing, to countries like India and China in order to remain profitable, creating domestic unemployment which Brown dealt with by the simple expedient of creating more state jobs and declaring the growing numbers of unemployed 'unemployable' due to mysterious forms of 'incapacity', requiring yet more welfare payments.
And now the enemy is on the march. A Tory government is about to be given power by a very angry electorate, whose pensions and savings have been stolen by Labour to shore up its leader's position and allow him to continue savaging Britain's social stability, national identity and economy in the name of his and their anti-natural idea of 'equality at any cost'. And of course the cost is liberty for, as Hayek demonstrated, a society may have liberty or equality but not both. The Left chooses equality at the cost of your liberty, and there is to be no discussion.
But now the nation is too sick of Labour to give them another term in power, and the only recourse for the Left is to try to scare the voters away from the Tories. Team Brown is whipping them all up with the familiar chants of 'The 1930s!' and 'Thatcher!'
It will avail Labour nothing.
Cameron will take over and begin to govern and the Left will strike up its familiar, enraged howling even before he does anything at all.
The Conservative Party has no legitimacy in the mind of the left, simply because they are Conservative. Elections are irrelevant. It will be war. Dealing with Labour's malign scorched-earth legacy will mean pain (although Brown even at this late hour is lying about that because he can - he will not be around to be proved wrong) and the Left will do its damnedest to exculpate the Labour Party and pin the blame on the Tories. We have lived through it all before.
Brown will be watching from his retirement sinecure when the petrol bombs are thrown - and he will smile.
People will get hurt. Cameron will need broad shoulders. He will be seen to have them.
But brace yourselves. Marches, demonstrations, riots, large scale civil disorder... we are about to find ourselves living in interesting times. And all because we as a nation are about to vote against the Left. That sort of disobedience is not something they are prepared to tolerate.
You see, we delude ourselves if we think we are free to choose our rulers. The Left will do that for us and we must be re-educated so that in time we will all accept the historical inevitability of that. In the meantime, if we defy them, they will punish us. Isn't that right, Mr Crow? Mr Livingstone? Mr Umunna? Mr Hundal?
Thats a very troubling vision but i fear you are correct.
ReplyDeleteThe left seem to think they have some divine right to rule and even when it goes wrong in spectacular fashion its always someone elses fault.They seem to think if they just had a bit more money,power or time things would come right but as history proves time and time again it always ends in failure.
Do socialists realize that 150,000,000 citizens have died at the hands of socialist leaders? attempting their perverse doctrine and blair/brown continue the killing in Iraq and Afghanistan.