To be perfectly honest I never held out any hopes that the Cameron led Conservatives would be much different to New Labour’s “progressive left” neo nazis. David Cameron, a slick, silver tongued, smooth face ex public schoolboy for whom spin mattered more than substance and public perception the prime concern was nothing if not a Blue Blair.
Some people have accused me of being a closet Conservative because Boggart Blog does not lay into the Tories as hard as we do Labour. Now other bloggers might find being called a Tory offensive but Boggart Bloggers are thick skinned. A little insight into the satirist’s art might help though. While a party is in power they must, of necessity do lots of things, deal with problems, put forward policies and respond to events. This gives us lots to write about. The opposition on the other hand can just stay under cover and keep sniping occasionally. Thus the party of government will be the butt of most jokes. If anyone still thinks I’m a closet Tory just click on Thatcher in my tags. You will soon be set straight.
As an election looms however the opposition parties cannot simply sit back and watch government fail, they must try to look like a government in waiting. And so we are sharpening the knives and reaching for the scatterguns and grape shot for the Conservatives, Lib Dems and UKIP. It’s hard to get laughs out of the BNP and any attempt usually attracts comments saying we should not make them look funny and ridiculous but should rant about how evil they are. Ironically the Anti Nazi League are likely to win the BNP more votes than the party’s policies.
At the moment it is not just the BNP and their much hyped (thanks to the left wing protests) spot on Question Time that the “progressive left” champions of free speech and civil liberties are working themselves about but the boy David’s decision to let his party’s guys in the European Parliament sit with the Eurosceptics.
There is no real reason why the Conservatives should not sit with the right wing Eurosceptics and every reason why they should. They are after all Britain’s party of Euroscepticism.
Unfortunately a couple of these Euro-eurosceptics have been involved with some things the left do not find acceptable, extreme nationalist groups in small east European former Soviet nations for instance. One Latvian guy is on record as saying The Holocaust was really no big deal and The Jews would really have something to whine about if they had suffered under Hitler as much as Latvia had suffered under Russian oppression. No matter how much we disagree with him the man is as entitled to his opinion as any of us and the left should understand that Latvians, Lithuanians, Poles, Hungarians etc. might just conceivably have a different perspective on the events of 1939 – 45 to us in the western democracies.
That is the problem with all supra national social democracy projects, try to blend different cultures, religious denominations and ethnicities together and you are bound to end up with a mess. It’s like putting a ginger cake mix and a chocolate cake mix in the same mixer and making one cake. When the EU was smaller the Germanic/Latin/Celtic mix was fine. Now it’s a mess.
The politically correct left, increasingly unabashed about revealing their authoritarian tendencies tell us if only we would open our minds to new ideas we would understand how delicious chocolate ginger cake is so if we don’t start eating and saying yummy yum they will declare chocolate ginger cake denial a crime against humanity and send us all off to gulags.
Now conservatives don’t give a crap about me or anyone else who is not stinking rich. Which is OK by me as I don’t give a crap about them. The progressive left however are obsessed with trying to impose their world view on everybody and simply cannot comprehend why Latvians, Lithuanians and Hungarians are so keen on nationalistic ideas.
It is the flicking the V aspect of the Conservative decision I approve of, I would never support a Conservative candidate. For anyone strongly committed to an anti-Europe stance UKIP should be the part of choice. An assortment of mavericks, nutters, eccentrics, oddballs and cranks must always inspire more public trust than career politicians.
A final point, no matter how nasty and nationalistic the Tories new best Eurobuddies are the European Socialist Group to which Labour belongs contains many equally nasty characters who were members of communist regimes in their own nations during the Soviet era. On top of that the socialist group is dominated by predominantly Catholic Social Democrats. And the leader of the Catholic Church is Pope Benedict who was, was he not, a member of the Hitler Youth in his youth.
Is this leftwing outrage then just a case of the pot calling the kettle a utensil of colour?
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I agree about the 'can't simply sit back and let the government fail'. Well they can but it's just not very inspiring.
The flaw in many liberals approach to nationalist extremism and other sorts of intolerance is that, at bottom, they're having a discussion with themselves. And sometimes they seem to be doing this just to bolster their own political position - sometimes they don't seem to be aware that they're doing it.
What they're not really doing is looking for ways to convince their intolerant opponents that about their liberal beliefs.
Still thinking about the cake.