WHAT happened to the hope that a rare instance of direct democracy in 2016 would make British politics more representative and responsive?
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The same elite that had promised to deliver Brexit the day after a vote has failed to deliver it in three and a half years. Indeed, some Members of Parliament have shamelessly redefined themselves as not ‘representatives’ after all.
The ruling Conservative Party is on its third leader to promise but fail to deliver Brexit. Almost all other British political parties are committed to overturning the referendum result of 2016 and their own manifesto commitments of 2017 to honour the result.
Even the Brexit Party, led by people who prided themselves on ‘insurgent politics’, caved in to the Conservative Party’s self-serving argument that its fake Brexit would be better than splitting the Brexiteer vote.
Then there is the Labour Party, led by Jeremy Corbyn, who must take the lion’s share of the blame for muddying British politics to the extent that popular will, constitutionality, freedom of speech, property rights, and Britain’s identity as Western are no longer sacrosanct.
How does he do it? Corbyn is a thoughtless Marxist by any honest political philosopher’s assessment. He has stuck with the most reductionist, pretentious dogma of modern politics, yet remains so unprincipled that he has vacillated for and against Brexit, a second referendum, a withdrawal agreement, and even a general election.
He epitomises the hypocrisies that result from the perversion of liberalism called ‘progressivism’. Progressives claim progress because advertisers and broadcasters under-represent white males, violence is an acceptable form of politics against anybody labelled a ‘fascist’, the solution to prejudice is to reverse the prejudice, downgrading crime on the grounds of the criminal’s ‘under-privilege’ is ‘social justice,’ and anybody is guilty until proven innocent as long as the accused is more representative of the ‘majority’ than the accuser.
Progressive politics are destructive politics and Corbyn would be Britain’s most destructive Premier since at least Tony Blair, if not Clement Attlee. He would not just destroy Britain’s identity, he would damage the West. While Corbyn vacillates on domestic policies, he has never vacillated in his distaste for Western civilisation.
Corbyn allows for terrorism that is anti-Western, anti-imperialist, anti-Israel, and Republican, has shared platforms with former members of Hamas, Hezbollah, and the IRA, equates the Islamic State with the US military, blames Islamism on Western imperialism.
He blames the suicidal terrorism in London of 7/7/2005 on ‘the way we inflict an insecurity on so many other people’, equates British Army activity in Northern Ireland with terrorism and opposes British strikes against terrorist sanctuaries abroad.
In 2014, he dismissed the Russian invasion of Ukraine as ‘not unprovoked,’ he welcomed ‘the resurgence of Russia and the enormous economic power of China’ as signs of the end of Western hegemony, and dismissed the EU and NATO as ‘the tools of US policy in Europe’.
Weeks after Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, he gave a speech claiming that ‘NATO was founded in order to promote a Cold War’. In 2018, he doubted British indictments of Russian state-sponsored agents for the murder of British persons on British soil with a nerve agent, and called for attention to Russian accusations of British fakery.
Corbyn doubts the legality of British military intervention in Syria, but defends Russia’s intervention. Corbyn claims to be a democrat, but celebrates criminal autocrats in Cuba, Venezuela and Syria.
He claims that his moral relativism is about universal human rights, but he took money from Iran to present an official television channel that glorified Iranian human rights abuses.
He claims that Labour ‘is an anti-racist party to its core’ but has not solved its anti-Semitism. Corbyn claims to stand for ‘a better, fairer Britain’ and ‘for the many, not the few,’ but campaigns for racial and gendered quotas.
Before you get complacent that this list of hypocrisies and contradictions must discredit him, consider that Corbyn does well in post-modernist, post-truth Britain. A fringe member that nobody took seriously took over the Labour Party in 2015.
In the general election of 2017, he garnered more seats than surveys had forecast, and was a few seats away from coalition government. In 2018, struggling leftists on the European continent upheld him as their saviour.
A critic (Robin Simcox) lamented that ‘he is now mainstream’ and ‘tantalisingly close to No. 10 Downing Street’. Simcox predicts that Prime Minister Corbyn would certainly reduce Britain’s role in Western institutions.
Another critic (Con Coughlin) has predicted that, if Corbyn were to become Premier, Britain would be excluded from the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence alliance. Australia’s most recent High Commissioner to Britain (Alexander Downer) agrees.
We might take comfort from recent polls suggesting that Britons take Corbyn less seriously in 2019 than they took Michael Foot in 1983. On that basis, the other parties expect to do well in this general election. But Britons in 2019 have changed greatly in demographics and politics since 1983. They already baffled pollsters in 2017.
Now consider this: Even if Corbyn doesn’t win a majority, he might still enter government if a hung Parliament can’t form a government without him. Even if Corbyn isn’t invited into a coalition, one or more of the other party leaders will be forming yet another government with no popular enthusiasm.
One third of Britons report that they will vote against their most-disliked candidate rather than for any liked candidate.
I haven’t even got to the most discomforting consideration: Even though Corbyn might be unelectable as a person, his politics have already won.
Six of the eight parties currently represented in Parliament are explicitly socialist and /or progressive (Labour, Scottish Nationalist, Liberal Democrat, Sinn Fein, Plaid Cymru, Green). The Conservative Party is nominally conservative, but in recent years its Parliamentary party has been dominated by socialists masquerading as ‘moderates.’
Some have quit for explicitly Left-wing parties (e.g., Heidi Allen); or lost the whip when they voted against Boris Johnson’s government (e.g., Ken Clarke); or postured as independents with vacuous claims to ‘new politics’ (e.g., Rod ‘Rory’ Stewart). Even without them, the Conservative Party’s manifesto continues to ape the Left-wing consensus.
All British political parties have embraced the nonsense of social justice. All the parties – competing to outspend each other on the NHS without reform – are committed to spending more, borrowing more, and inevitably taxing more.
All the parties show up to hear what a Swedish teenager has to say about climate change. None of the parties cares to admit the urgent issues of our time – declining tolerance, contentment, productivity, health, education standards, welfare dependency and abuse, security, social cohesion, manners, public safety, reliance on foreign investment/ownership, out-of-control immigration and population growth and skilled immigration dependency. Let alone examine the progressive political-social-cultural-moral reasons for them.
Even as Corbyn seems unlikely to win the premiership on December 12, his politics continue to ruin our civilisation.
Bruce Newsome
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/corbyn-may-not-win-but-his-politics-have-already-poisoned-us/
Bruce Newsome
