...More boring political bollocks. Feel free to skip it. Feel free
to skip. They can't stop us skipping.
[Written 1999, when I cared more and thought less. But you know what? I think I stand by
almost all of it.]
-
'Witness to the end of a political era: Philip Gould foresees the
death of the Conservative party...
'We are approaching the end of the century, but is it also the end
of a political era?...Old Left and Right are now effectively bankrupt.'
- Times, 25th September 1999
..Mr. Philip Gould is a very annoying man
and I am particularly looking forward to feeding him his testicles
when the revolution comes. Al dente, I think I will serve them.
..An adviser to Tony Bleurrgh and one of the
architects of the Blair Witch 'Project', Mr.G has previously boasted in the press
that the next hundred years, at the very least, will belong to his
noxious little cabal. Even before they came to power, New Labour had
all the humility it had taken the Conservatives eighteen years of
government to achieve.
..Phil based this thesis on a claim that the
politics of the next century would be the politics of the middle
class. I find this strange when the traditional middle class has been
withering away for some time and continues to be undermined and made
insecure by his party's policies. As I suspect Mr. Gould knows, unless
he is an idiot rather than the being of pure evil I take him to be, if
New Labour's loathsome 'project' (strange to refer to the destruction
of a way of life as if it was some nerdy science experiment) ever
comes to fruition, there will be no middle class as we know it. The
world will be divided into the incredibly rich, the incredibly poor,
and a tiny rump middle class: a handful of professionals
and media types, living hand-to-mouth with not a long-term job contract
between them. The rest of the middle class will have been made
redundant by laissez-faire economics, globalization, and information
technology. From the Daily Mail readers Blair so amusingly conned at
the election to the current crop of university students, many of the
people who currently look forward to a middle-class life will count
themselves lucky to be slinging hamburgers in a few years time.
..There is something in Mr. Gould's latest
effusion which merits attention, however. In the article above, he
takes note of a phenomenon I have been aware of for some time, and
to which I have decided to give the name of Blair Rage. The syndrome
is characterized by an inability to think of the prime minister without
succumbing to an overwhelming frothing hatred and impotent fury.
Looking back over these usually calm and lucid pages, I find that I
am not altogether immune to it myself.
..Gould points to the late Max Beloff's
essay, also published on the opinion page of The Times, in which he
compared Blair to Hitler. I remember Beloff's piece and it amused me
at the time. There were some valid points in it; the man is
a Nazi, after all. But that a respected academic should say so in the
pages of the Times caused even me to raise one exquisitely shaped eyebrow. Nor was
Beloff alone in his insensate fury. I have seen several comparable
outbursts of hatred directed at the prime minister from normally moderate men on the same opinion page,
not usually noted as a forum for hotheads or fanatics, Mr. Gould apart.
One commentator was so incensed by the Hector of the Balkans' handling
of the Kosovan crisis that his bile spilled over onto the Kosovan
refugees in a most unpleasant way.
..The first victim of Blair Rage in this
country may have been the excellent Scottish bag-lady I met at a train
station during the election campaign. Blair had not long returned
from his pilgrimage to Rupert Murdoch's private island, where he had
asked for permission to become Prime Minister. More recently, he had
for a time stopped showing his teeth when he smiled, as his handlers
feared they might be alarming the electorate. The Scottish lady had
a different take. "They didn't stop him smiling because of his goofy
fucking grin. His spin-doctors noticed he had Murdoch's
pubes caught in his teeth." Bless her rotten heart, that was
worth every one of the five pence I gave her.
..The latest victim of Blair Rage is
almost certainly Gordon Brown. The rumour is that on his regular
Pensioner Murdering Night, he now forces the pensioners to wear
Tony Blair masks before he murders them.
..At first Blair Rage was largely confined
to veterans of the Old Left or Old Right, but lately it has been
spreading to ordinary people everywhere. Early symptoms include ripping,
defacing, or simply shuddering at the Prime Minister's picture in a
newspaper, or yelling obscenities at his image on a TV screen. Voodoo
dolls are often the next stage. In the final stages of the psychosis,
the victim's life is completely consumed by the overwhelming desire
to stuff the bastard inch by inch into a mincing machine.
..What is it about the Prime Minister that
provokes such extreme reactions from normally reasonable people?
..Where does one begin? Is it the lies, the
hypocrisy, the nauseating blend of piousness and realpolitik? The
manipulation of the media, the attempts to extend control into every
aspect of life? The bizarre, deranged, shameful, toe-curling episode
of a Prime Minister yelling at public sector workers that they have
given him scars on his back? If I did not know that the holiness was
a front for his Satan-worship (New Labour not being worried about GM food but
being opposed to genetically modified babies confirms something I have
long suspected about their dietary habits), one would think our leader
had some weird Christian Martyr complex. Nail the fucker up, I say,
give him his wish. Scars on his back, indeed! The man would have
us believe he is some kind of avatar of Peter the Great, desperately
trying to reform a hopelessly backward and terminally ungrateful
nation of turd-eating peasants. Perhaps the Hitler comparisons
are apt; the tone of self-pity and heroic struggle against the
odds is pure Mein Kampf. One is reminded of Orwell's
comment on Hitler's personality as presented in that book:
'If he was killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem
like a dragon.' If you ever come round my way, Mr. Blair, I'll
show you scars on your back. There is a staple-gun and a sign
saying, 'I am a Nazi pig, please kick me,' with your name on it.
..Is it just the grin, the ears, the voice?
..Or is it more to do with the
sense of complete and utter fucking frustration and impotence the Blair
regime has given to so many of us? The feeling that we have no choice,
no alternative, no way to say no any more? By turning Labour into the
Thatcherite Conservative Party Part 2, Blair and his henchbeings have
disenfranchised the Old Left, even the moderate Left, and in effect
the Old Right, i.e. the moderate Right.
..So is Philip Gould right? Are these groups
just going to fade away?
..To predict the death of the Conservative
party is misleading as well as arrogant. As he well knows, New Labour
are the Thatcherite Conservative party by another name. As for the
nominal Conservative party withering and dropping off, I find it
unlikely but I couldn't really give a stuff. I find Mr. Hague agreeable,
his voice evoking pleasant memories of Chorlton off Chorlton and the
Wheelies, and I am aware that for some time now the Tories have been slightly more
left-wing than Labour - John Major rejected the idea of replacing
student grants with loans three times - but they are essentially the
same beast: two rival factions of the Amalgamated Laissez-Faire Nazis
whose only real quarrel is who gets to be king of the castle.
..The old, pre-Thatcherite, One Nation Tories
are a different matter, however. The small c conservatives have no home any more than the
Old Left, who are of course small c conservatives too. The two groups should make common cause against the New Labour
humanoids.
..Yes, that is what I would like to see, unlikely
as it sounds: Old Left and Old Right united against the common enemy
who would see them extinct. Both have more in common with each other
than with the dominant New Right. Both would be prepared to see a
degree of economic interventionism on behalf of the interests of the
British people. Both are largely Eurosceptical. Both are voiceless and despised in Tony's Brave
New Britain.
..Instead of clashing with each other as
they are predicted to do at Bournemouth this week, the Countryside
Alliance and the disenfranchised Left should be allying with each
other. Common ground could initially be found in a united opposition
to the Euro and EEC bureaucracy, and a campaign to protect the
environment, about which Blair patently does not give a toss. Working
together for the good of the country, Old Left and Right may be the
ones to bury the egregious Mr. Gould rather than vice versa, after first doing that
thing with his nuts.
..The idea seems far-fetched now, but before
too long some sort of united independent people's movement of this
kind will be absolutely necessary. Gouldibollocks, classless opportunist bastard that he is, accuses Old Left and Right
of being mired in anachronistic preoccupations with class. I am not
sure he is right, but notions of class must certainly be set aside
in the face of an enemy that threatens us all. Phil says we are
trapped in the past. The future he is so eagerly rushing us towards
will be a very horrible thing for most of the British people. The
only people for whom life is going to get better are a handful of
billionaires, the chairmen of multinationals, and their paid stooges
like Gould and Blair. Eventually the British people will realize how
much they are going to lose in the name of being modern.
..Cheer up though! Things aren't that bad.
Here is a picture of Bill Treacher.
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