Simmering below the surface...

Alan Douglas

Someone taking M Kite seriously ? Whatever next ? The Spectator drowning in the same pool that devoured its sister publication ?

Alan Douglas

Verity

Yayyyyy! Print the rebels' names so we can send them emails of support and agree to be put on their mailing lists for donation solicitations.

an ex-tory voter

It is about time someone held this pseudo conservative PM to account. He has had ample opportunity to listen but is determined to continue regardless of the rising tide of criticism. Now is the time to call him to heel. It must be no holds barred and if that causes the fall of this socialist government, then so much the better. Let's have a GE while Labour is leaderless and let's have a CONSERVATIVE PM at the head of a CONSERVATIVE PARTY. And before anyone complains, I am fully aware it is rude to "shout" but that is far less disrespectful than getting yourself elected on a set of promises and then deliberately engineering a political situation which allows you to ditch those promises. The time for quiet speaking is long since past, lets see some real action from those Tory MP, who claim to be "conservatives". Pragmatism is the refuge of the coward and the scoundrel, there will never be an alternative option if all we ever have is pragmatic politicians. Stand up you useless bunch of xxxxx and speak up for your electorate and for conservative principles.

Rhys

An extremely important issue for MAINSTREAM to take up and pronto is the proclaimed intention, in defiance of all the evidence, of the buffoon Clarke to drag the Coalition back to the pantomime nightmare of criminal justice leniency and lunacy that was the Criminal Justice Act 1991 ( the one which, inter mucha nonsensica alia, obliged all Magistrates and Judges to sentence defendants with a hundred and more convictions as if they were first time offenders ).

The LibDems' actions in going against their very specific manifesto pledge are not merely a PERCEIVED act of treachery : they are a real act of 'trahison des clercs' against the plebs who took them at their word.

Ditto Tory ditching of their very specific pledges to get tough on crime ( see esp the pledge on knife carriers ).

What these actions do is totally destroy any residual faith amongst the electorate ( and in the case of the student fees issue the young and upcoming electorate in particular ) that politicians' commitments at election time mean anything.

What can Tories or LibDems possibly say next time round which can possibly evoke any trust whatsoever ?

Destruction of trust in the democratic process ( and following so quickly on all the mea culpas and promises to do better after the expenses scandals ) is a far more important issue than is the comparatively technical point about fees.
The alleged savings from the new fees arrangement will not even kick in till after the election after next ( when some paltry re-payments of loans start trickling in ) so all that trust in Libdems has been squandered for a piddling pot of message.

Far worse than the fees issue will be seen to be this issue in respect of obliging Judges and Magistrates to be EVEN MORE GROTESQUELY LENIENT THAN THEY ALREADY ARE:

This is one which bids fair to totally destroy the Conservatives. If they are going to preside over a general emptying of the gaols which everyone knows they would scream blue murder about if Labour did it - what exactly remains as a reason for voting Tory ?

In the predicted outcome of absurdity and increased criminality which inexorably followed the 1991 Act the Tories were able to repeal it within a year. Will the LibDems allow them to do the same this time round ?

If MAINSTREAM rebel and block Clarke and the homicidal consequences of his self-satisfied, isolated from real life, beaming buffoonery they will be saving the Party and the Coalition from itself. (If Clarke gets to spend more time flogging cigarettes to third world youth well that's his business .)

If they don't the Poll Tax débâcle will appear by contrast as a polite minor exegetical discussion between elderly theologians at a bishop's tea party.

Ellis

Fiat justitia ruat caelum. Wishing for the fall of the coalition may satisfy some 'purist' tories but those of us who would prefer not to see the return of labour will give Cameron and Clegg a chance.

libertarian

We are well past the time for a huddle of disaffected Tory MP's to form another internal club.

What is needed now is a NEW PARTY that represents the views of the libertarian, small state, free market,low tax, small business, direct democracy tendency.

Conservative Party membership is at an all time low of 170,000 and dropping daily. Of those members that are left they are predominantly senior citizens. Lab has less than 120,000 members ( not counting Union blocks) and LibDems less than 50,000.

There are 26 million voters in UK.

Andy Leeds

Well you can't blame the Tory backbenchers getting pissed off. Many of the things they care about - Europe is a prime example - have been ditched to please the LibDems and all we get in return is a diet of moaning from the likes of Simon Blood Hughes. So I say all power to their elbow.

BigAl

Well said Ellis!

dg

See the coalition as an extra-marital affair rather than a marriage. The language is that of a cheating spouse. Denial, white lies, selective blindness to reality, and rationalisations. They started with "give the coalition a chance", they continue with "don't cause splits, of course the coalition won't continue", next will be "we've been together for five years, no point splitting up now", and finally the truth "we had to form a new liberal party to get rid of the right wingers".

an ex-tory voter

@ Ellis Cameron and Clegg have had their chance and Cameron in particular has been found wanting. As for the failure of The Coalition and the unlikely possibility of Labour gaining a majority. Tell me please what are the significant differences between what Cameron / Clegg are doing and what Milliband would do were he actually in power.
The risk of Labour gaining a majority is minimal, the difference between Coalition policy and Labour policy were they to gain power is minimal. From The Nation's point of view, there is everything to gain from forcing the failure of The Coalition and little to lose were that gamble to fail and result in Labour's re-election.

Tarka the Rotter

I'm simmering above the surface having just read this:

"Harriet Harman has praised ‘heroic’ immigrants who claim welfare payments in Britain and use the cash to support families living abroad.
She said the Government should make it easier for them to send the money home and called for tax refunds to encourage more immigrants to follow suit, in particular those who paid for their children to be educated in the Third World.
The Labour Deputy Leader, who is also the party’s spokesman on International Development, derided ‘those who say we should look after our own first’ in the recession and vowed to fight any attempt to cut the £9.4 billion overseas aid budget".

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1337876/Harman-praises-hero-immigrants-send-welfare-handouts-home.html#ixzz17vmd7co1

TrevorsDen

If this group exists they should call themselves Conservative Suicide.

And really really really I grow totally tired of the usual numpties constantly pandering to a Conservative past which never existed. If Cameron is not a conservative PM then who was? McMillan? Heath? Hume? Eden? I seem to remember that Churchill used to be a liberal.
Or was it the PM who went out of her way to keep us in the EU and actually signed the Single Market treaty?

Its laughable - someone says emptying prisons? Huh? The policy will mean 3000 fewer prisoners by 2014.
The policy will allow really serious criminals to be kept in longer. Just where are the billions to come from to build new prisons and run them - even if it were a good idea.

In 1992 we had just over 40000 in jail. Today we have over 80. Is the world any better?

But none of this is the real point - we have a conservative led govt cutting spending to reduce a deficit - and making cuts the like of which we have not seen before; greater than Thatcher achieved and having to sail the inevitable political storms to do it.
But the sodding numpties - they are STILL not satisfied.

The phrase 'tossposts' comes to mind.

Verity

Relagalise gun ownership.

Make it legal to carry concealed.

This will deal with the knife and rapist grunge. A knife has absolutely no value before a gun.

Ex-Tory voter

"Forced into the division lobbies to back a European foreign ministry and increased EU budget, they felt enough was enough." They should have said backing the EU was a step too far and refused to do it for the country's sake.

Austin Barry

And all the while a growing Muslim minority watches and waits: the future most certainly belongs to them.

ollie

"....and if that causes the fall of this socialist government,"

I'm no fan of the coalition, but come on - this is simply far-fetched.

Tiberius

I like your choice of the word "purist", Ellis, but I have a suspicion that Cameron's predecessor as Tory PM might have another word for those kindred souls who contributed to 13 years of New Labour.

Mainstream? Losing general elections by a cricket score doesn't sound very mainsteam to me.

an ex-tory voter

Trevors Den

The problem for you and all the Cameron apologists is that "the lunatic fringe" are not convinced by the use of "the deficit" as a reason to keep quiet and accept the increasing speed of integration into the EUSSR. As far as I am concerned the deficit is a sideshow, a short term problem which can be resolved in a decade or two. On the other hand, loss of sovereignty, loss of national self-determination, the transfer of power to the EU, the lack of democracy, the subservience of Westminster to Brussels, these are the real issues, these are the things which will lead to real and serious strife in this country. Cameron uses the deficit as cover for his really important work and along with many others, I do not buy it and I never will. Give me democracy or give me nothing!!!

Tiberius

Ex Tory: there's nothing to be apologetic about. Cameron has brought his party back from the wilderness and saved the country from more New Labour.

I should have thought the "lunatic fringe" should apologize for handing Blair and Brown a free ride for 15-odd years.

The EU has been an issue for years, and I simply don't understand why people think Cameron can snap his fingers and make it go away. No one before has managed it. Do you think he is so exceptional that he can but chooses not to?

However, this deficit is current and very real, and your complacency over its effects if not addressed shows that your dislike of Cameron is, I suggest, affecting your ability to think clearly (and you're not the only one guilty of that).

dg

Tiberius, the modernisers caused the problems in the first place. SDPers advising John Major. SDPers advising William Hague. SDPers advising Iain Duncan Smith until he stood up to them and they chucked him out. SDPers advising Michael Howard. Trevors Den is correct when he says the Tory party has a history of being a silly leftist party, which is why we need a gang of four moment for some proper patriotic people.

PayDirt

May I join the crowd of ex-Tories. I did not vote for Cameron as was, to be shafted with the current shower. He has magnified the disparity in student debt between the countries of this so-called United Kingdom. It is simply too outrageous. This is war. The sooner Cameron-Clegg are out of power the better. Let us have a proper conservative party to meet the challenge of the lefties amongst us.

TrevorsDen

Not to put too fine a point on it extory - you are thick.

I notice you decline to answer my point about previous tory PMs.

The deficit will take care of itself in 20 years? Typical thick comment. I suggest you vote labour next time if thats your attitude.

Your sick obsession with the EU is beyond parody - Its immigration from the EU is going to make life difficult. Not for those in jobs they will make life better; we need someone to serve us coffee don't we. No, it will make life difficult fore the NEETs which this govt is courageously trying to do something about after 13 years of labour betrayal.

Tiberius - I could not agree more. And putting the totally disastrous labour party back in power is all that these thick hysterical crackpots and their loony plottings will achieve.

Rhoda Klapp

If the coalition was serious about the deficit it would be cutting much more robustly, and that means going on a hostile telly and explaining cuts (real cuts, not the PR nibbling round the edge we see now) rather than apologising for them, and having a confrontation over these student fees which are not even a real saving in current expenditure and serve only to upset a lot a people who should have been on the govt's side.

If the coalition was serious about government it would be a lot bolder, not necessarily only on left/centre/right issues, but on the coming energy crunch, the actual failure of education to deliver, export of jobs funded by EU money and many more. We should not be squabbling over abtruse tory ideological issues, but over real problems which Labour ducked and this lot seem to be ignoring.

lids

The Conservative party isn't called the Conservative party for nothing. Doubt they'd have the balls to splinter off, but it would be fantastic news for the british public if they did. If we have to do with MAINSTREAM then so be it. Hope David Davis is running it and he gets a feel for being in charge, so much, that he risks launching a new party. Disappointed that they only considered voting against tuition fees because of how THEY had been treated. How about the middle classes who have been hammered more under Cameron than under Brown?

Cameron has been a disaster. He reminds me of Blair in so many ways. Please what is the point in having a Conservative led government if it does not effect Conservative legislation.

Come on Davis, break away and start again!

2trueblue

Bash it and bash it until you trash it. Great idea. We had Liebore for 13yrs and everything they touched was engineered to destroy the UK. They are out. Keep them out. Divided we fall. There is only one show in town, s
don't like some of the scenes and certainly don't warm to some of the characters, but if anyone thinks that letting Liebore back is an option they are mad. We will not get over the debt with some careful management so don't be deluded that there is any quick fix. I hate the present set up but hate Liebore and the vacuous media more.

strapworld

I see that polite gentleman of the commentary,Trevors Den, the Mr Magoo of the blogosphere, is up to his usual trick of personal abuse.

My experience has always been that when people resort to the kind of childish abuse that he specialises in they have no argument. Indeed the very fact that membership of the Conservative Party is at its lowest is evidence that something is seriously wrong with the party.

Cameron could not defeat Gordon Brown. The most detested Prime Minister this country has had in modern times. I will repeat that for TD's sake. Cameron could not defeat Gordon Brown!

Cameron did not win the general election!

Cameron failed. He is a loser and should there be an early general election and he still heads the Conservative Party they will lose the next general election and, tragically will possibly allow the boy Ed into number 10!

Cameron ensured a slavish response from the new MP's because of his A list system which ensured he got the people he wanted. The very fact that Maude was in charge of that dark exercise is sure proof that they did not want committed tories!

I do not care what goes on in committee rooms at meetings of the 1922. I do not care what David Davis says or does. What I care about is how we the people have been duped by another politician, namely Cameron.

He stood for certain things. He has failed to deliver one! He failed to beat Brown and he has failed the people. He will be flung out of office far sooner than he believes.

As Macmillan stated/ "Events, dear boy, events" Events will certainly cause an early general election.

As for Trevors, Den who wears his rose tinted spectacles constantly, he is a bad mouthed irrelevance. The King Canute of comments! The man who stands alone at social events because, frankly, he is a bore!

Liz Brown

I would vote for a donkey it it would release us from Europe's bonds and the climate nutters

Verityred

Trevorsden, among others, speaks sense as usual. The anti Cameron headbangers on this site have been spluttering and bitching their impotent hard right drivel on here for so long, they may be in danger of boring even themselves to death.

Occasional Ostrich

@Verity

A Smith and Wesson beats four aces, eh?

Commentator

More flatulent gin-soaked outpourings from the bar room "philospher", TrevorsDen, whose sense of irony has surely deserted him when he accuses others of being thick. At least that other dreary echo chamber of the Coalition, Tiberius, manages a veneer of coherence.

John Bracewell

Vote Cameron to get Brown out.
Accept the Liberal Coalition to keep Red Ed out.
Vote Conservative to get Liberal policies.
Nothing is heard from the coaliton apologists about Vote Conservative and get Conservative policies on EU, Immigration, prisons, global warming etc.
The message that it will be worse if you don't vote Conservative is wearing very thin, if we do not get Mainstream Conservative policies implemented.
Trevorsden's personalised comments are worthy of coming from the uncouth mouths of Labour Louts.

Jonathan Woolf

At the risk of being accused of undermining the Coalition, how does adding about 3% to the Conservative party's share of votes constitute bringing the tories out of the wilderness? Howard got 33% against Blair, prior to one of the worst economic and fiscal collapses in modern history, whereas Cameron was facing the man who'd wrecked Britain's economy, was a volcano of simmering rage and insecurity, and was leading a clapped out and in-fighting government.

Hardly a glorious electoral triumph is it?

Vulture

The story of 2011 is going to be the coming apart of the Coalition.

The Lib dems are toast. I live in a 'safe' Lib dem seat ( Norman Baker's) and feeling abt the student fees among the middle classes is so ferocious that I doubt that even the previously popular Norman will win again. The LDs will be lucky to hang on to half a dozen seats.

The only problem for the disillusioned Lib Dem voters who may turn Norman out is that he will be replaced by a Tory! Labour cannot win in the south.

And now that the LDs have been killed (their funeral will take place after they lose the AV referendum)- its the clear duty of all true Tories to get rid of the liberal Heath-Cameron clique on a popular policy to reclaim our country from the EU, Islam and criminals.

It is significant that the younger Tories see this even if Dave does not.

TrevorsDen

Mr Strapworld you call that personal abuse? Someone comes out and says something thick and what do you expect.

But you are the same, constantly inventing a past conservative party that never existed. Childish? Lost argument? You do do not make any comment on past conservative PMs who were so much more right wing than Cameron.
If you look on Conservative Home you will see lots of comment about conservative party membership and how it is actually being counted properly now and you will also see many comment about how the colonel blimps who you so clearly admire don't like new members getting in their way.
Bitter in my tipple 'Commentator' - but you too do provide no evidence to back up your hysteria. For instance the EU budget was agreed by Brown who also appointed baroness Ashton.

This coalition is in fact very little different from Thatchers first govt. All the garbage spoken by a gang of hysterics will not change it - and do not think your loud mouths will make the rest of us roll over and die.

BTW - if Rhys can point to the specific LD manefesto pledge about tuition fees I will be genuinely glad because I could not see it. The £10k tax allowance is however writ pretty large.

Commentator

TrevorsDen, thanks for parading your ignorance about Mrs Thatcher's first administration.....which included among other things reductions in the top rates of tax and the basic rate (not raising them) and winning an enhanced rebate from the EU, much to the disgust of Dave's spiritual forebears, Carrington and Gilmour.

TrevorsDen

Thank you Bracewell - but you again ignore the point - were Heath Home McMillan Eden mainstream?
Thatcher lost the Falklands and had to retake them Thatcher took us into the single market. Very bright.
Yet some of the idiot savants out there are now pretending that these cuts are not steep enough - despite the fact that they are bigger than she implemented despite the fact that they are the biggest since the 70 and the IMF.

Cameron is utterly and totally mainstream conservative. Indeed too left wing for me but that is what the conservative party is.

You hilariously suggest that we are getting LibDem policithe week after the LDs tore themselves apart over implementing a tory chancellors cuts in higher education and breaking a publicity stunt promise by its leader.
Mr Bracewll it's simple - you are a joke and 'that' whats wearing thin.

And PS
Any numpty who thinks these 'cuts' are fictional should brace themselves over the next 18 months.
The latest is Milliband protesting against the plan to the axe scheme paying teenagers to stay in school. A great scheme - but no money. Big softie innee Cameron. A Cameron BTW who won more seats at an election than any leader in modern times.

TrevorsDen

Yes Thatcher - or rather that pillar of mainstream conservatism Howe - cut the top rate - to 60p !
They could not cut it more because there was no money. Sound familiar?
Next bright idea 'Form a 'tory SDP'' - brilliant, I can remember what that did to labour. The big laugh is that I am accused of being short sighted.

And deary me today - all the while I thought we were having tory govts in the past but they were really SDPs. IDS was advised by 'SDPers' until they threw him out? To elect Howard!! IDS was elected by the right wing, like Hague and the bright wing elected Howard. Just how divorced from reality can you get? Crikey just when I thought I was being too harsh calling you all loonies.

Rhoda Klapp

TD, the numbers say the cuts are fictional. That is total expenditures are still rising. Yes, money is being moved around, and shrouds are being waved, and frontlines services, whatever they are, being sacrificed to save the bureaucrats. But the reduction in the deficit is minimal, the reduction in the debt negative. The cuts are not deep enough, the size of the state is not being reduced (and this should be tory ideology, not even rightist) and problems are being laid up for the future. Why are we fighting the next generation (whether correct or not) instead of cutting the £20bn a year we are wasting on climate change nonsense? Why cannot the broad church even throw a bone to the right wing? Is annoying them part of the plan? I understand the whole right agenda cannot be delivered in current circumstances. Why not a bit of it? Is the LD tail wagging the dog?

Chris lancashire

TrevorsDen, Tiberius - excellent, sound good sense. If the extreme right of the Conservative party cannot see beyond their small minded prejudices that Cameron (and Clegg) are doing this country a huge service then they are to be pitied.

denis cooper

"At one stage, Tory whips were so desperate they called in potential rebels and told them that if they voted against the government, they would not get any help to find a new constituency when the proposed boundary changes went through."

Yes, that has always been the real reason why Cameron wanted to reduce the number of MPs.

Nothing at all to do with "cutting the cost of politics", or making Parliament more efficient - those were never anything more than pretexts to be swallowed to the gullible - and everything to do with strengthening the hand of Cameron and his whips over troublesome Tory backbenchers.

Ross J Warren

Talk about internal divisions inside the Conservative party are premature. However anyone who belives that the rank and file are 100% happy with everything being done in their name is barking mad. Cameron is percived as weak over Europe having given away large sums of our money with not so much as a wimper. There is concern that the low-paid are going to suffer disprotionally, and annoyance at the contining advoidance of tax by some companies.
The Cuts may well be rather to small, which means that there will be decades not years of pain as we reduce the bloated state to a more sensible size.

Ruby Duck

Thanks for the link, Tarka.

Rhoda Klapp

What fun, what an education, to find people who think they are conservatives adopting the 'extreme right' pejorative of the centre-left in order to denigrate people who rather incline towards, well, personal responsibility, respect for the taxpayer, freedom from the EU superstate and so on. What extreme right policies do you think are up for adoption? Where were you when you wanted my vote? I don't recall being too rightist for you then?

Ex-Tory voter

TrevorsDen: "Not to put too fine a point on it extory - you are thick."

As you don't know me, it's a bit much to denigrate my intellectual abilities - or is it that you are too slack and sloppy to address your remarks to the right person? There are two Ex-Tory voters, one with the indefinite article (An Ex-Tory voter) and myself. If you're going to spray insults around, please ensure they are directed in the right direction.

Commentator

TrevorsDen, thanks for proving your ignorance. Howe's 1979 cut of the top rate to 60% represented a cut of almost 40% on existing rates which had been kept very high by both Labour and Heath. So yes a radical drop and especially so in the context of the times and given it was one of the Tories' first acts on coming to power. The Tories put up VAT at the same time but so has Cameron and he is raising top rates of income tax and CGT, not the reverse. So the usual spurious attempts by you and your mates to paint Cameron as a radical like Thatcher are fake.

Verity

Chris Lancashire - See, here's your mistake. You use "extreme right" under the impression that it's a perjorative, whereas it is a heroic term.

People who use "extreme right" in this illiterate sense are always under the impression that Hitler was "extreme right". Just to save you future embarrassment in front of historically literate people, Hitler was the head of the Socialist Workers' Party. The clue, in case you're still missing it, is in the first word.

TrevorsDen

Mr 'ex-tory' you are the one who talked about a pseudo tory PM, and then despite my offer have still not explained how this compares with Churchill who was once a Liberal, Eden, McMillan, Home, Heath and Major. Did Thatcher withdraw from the EU - no she signed the single market. She also lost control of her Chancellor - Lawson. The big story then was the splits between her and her financial advisor and Howe/Lawson. Lawson ruined his reputation by shadowing the deuchmark - but who was PM?

In short Mr 'ex-tory' you talk rubbish and I for one have no faith in your self professed intellectual abilities.

Verity, Mr L did not mention Hitler - you did! YOU are putting the assertion that Mr L thinks of the extreme right as Hitler then criticise him for something he did not say. Such is the weakness stupidity and dare I say it thickness of your argument.

TrevorsDen

You really are a dope 'Commentator' - thats the whole point - the cut that you trumpet was on the stupendously stupid 83p in the £ top rate which was still then reset at 60p which is still higher than the current top rate of 50p which is on earnings over £150000. The 60p rate was the equivalent band to the current 40p.
By my calculation a reduction of 23p in the £ from 83p is about 28% - but I am happy to be proved wrong.

I would like to see income tax abolished but I can just about contain my anguish at people on £150k paying tax at 50%.
Meantime this shockingly soft LibDem infested govt are intending to raise the basic threshold to £10k.
I do not see the parents of potential students moaning about that.

Rhoda Klapp

Well, who is extreme right, in this context? What are the extreme policies that have been espoused here? Never mind all the cod history, right now, who is suggesting anything extreme, TD? Examples? What is happening here is that some of us don't like Cameron, and you do. That seems to be all, and I don't see that all the rhetoric is justified.

TrevorsDen

Strikes me Ms Klapp you are incapable of reading the context.
Verity invented Mr Lancashire comparing Hitler with the extreme right. Mr Lancashire ... geddit? Ask him about who the right wing nut jobs are on here.

My point is simple - Cameron is no different than most Conservative PMs. His cabinet even with 5 LDs in it is probably as well balanced as Thatchers first one and it took her and Howe until 1981 to approach the scale of cuts of this administration. Yet we are told by the dupes out there that Cameron is too soft. On the day that even more cuts in education are announced and a 4% cut in local authority spending.

I think the rhetoric is totally justified. Especially when the loser in the 2005 leadership election continually throws his toys out of the pram and compares totally unfavourably with Willie Whitelaw. Davis is a disgrace. And I speak of somebody if he had had a vote would have voted for him.

Rhoda Klapp

TD, you appear to reply but you do not. What right-wing policies? Never mind Verity, or Hitler. What are the far-right policies either mooted here by loonies or suggested by tory MPs? Well?

Commentator

Rhoda, I think TrevorsDen is in need of the men in the white coats. Let's face it, only a deeply strange person spends hours on the internet spewing bile at complete strangers because they refuse to bow down and worship his beloved Dave. It half-reminds me of Unity Mitford's infatuation with Adolf Hitler.

Rhoda Klapp

Commentator, alas this: "only a deeply strange person spends hours on the internet" comes a bit too close to home at Schloss Klapp as well.

Tiberius

It would be interesting, Verity, to know on which writers' texts you base your claim to historical literacy.

Karl Popper and (particularly) Leonard Schapiro were required reading when I studied political science. Fascism and Nazism were creeds based on racial struggle while Marxism and Communism were based on the class struggle. The characteristics of these creeds meet under the heading of totalitarianism. Historically, and this may just be convenient shorthand, the racial elements have been called the Far Right, and the class struggle the Far Left.

Tiberius

I think, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to judging who is spending too much time posting on the blog, we should all be prepared to shout "I'm Spartacus!", unless of course we lack self-awareness.

Rhoda Klapp

Tiberius, the racist elements of Mussolini fascism are not particularly prominent. Nationalism is of course an intrinsic part, but so is collectivism. It's like a national socialism. Quel surprise. I suggest you revisit your political education. you probably were told about fascism by someone who equated it with Hitlerite racist ideas. In fact there was no more racism in the fascist creed than you would have found in any British middle-class drawing room, or working-class pub, come to that.

The slogan of Fascism was "Everything for the state, nothing outside the state, nothing above the state." That's pretty socialist.

Tiberius

Rhoda: political science is not a science of hard fact like physics, but none the less, are you able to refer to an academic authority which places Mussolini's fascism as a political movement of the Left? Just a casual scan of Wikipedia describes Spanish fascism as of the Right, for example.

Rhoda Klapp

What part of that state thing do you not get? It's collectivism, except the state does not reuire ownership of the means of production, merely control. That seems to be the only differentiation in reality, although the socialist version may well claim it is all for the good of the proles rather than the nation, that isn't the way it works out because collectivism cannot come without compulsion.

TrevorsDen

'It's collectivism, except the state does not reuire ownership of the means of production, merely control. '

Hence Ms Klapp we have right wing totalitarianism and left wing totalitarianism.

Stalins tanks were built by the state. Hitlers by Krupp.
In fact for instance 3 independent companies developed designs for the Mark 4 tank, Krupps winning.
In this respect Germany was no different from Britain.

TrevorsDen

Commentator - the bile comes from the nut jobs attacking 'Dave'. You and they seem to object when I point out the flaws in their argument.
Clearly there are flaws in their and your argument since you now bring the Hitler comparison into play - thereby totally undermining your case.

For the record I think Cameron is to the left of me politically. Unlike the nut jobs I am not driven into paroxysms of bile by that. I am satisfied that we have a broadly central and mainstream conservative as PM as opposed to the loony and incompetent and totally maladjusted Brown (and Son of Brown).
I aim to do nothing to change that state of affairs. It leaves me happy but definitely not hysterical.

Rhoda Klapp

Yes TD, but what makes one left and the other right? Even when we accept that totalitarian regimes like Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany were pretty much the same (and there is no originality in that thought) how does one distinguish left from right? Mussolini was an ex-socialist, and he says the difference between fascism and socialism is the primacy of the state in fascism vs the primacy of class war in socialism. I'd put it as collectivist vs individualist, but I am aware that is not sufficient. When you talk of far-right policies, what do you mean? Is it the same as the next person's far-right policies, or is it 'what I don't like'? What I do reject is that racism is the difference. Musso was evidently a fascist, but his writing don't mention race except to dismiss it, Subjects of the state matter, subjects of other states don't (as I understand it).

I don't think examples from defence procurement work very well.

TrevorsDen

Oh and again for the record - I doubt that there are many more right wingers on this board then me. I would like to see hanging brought back and more control of immigration and lower taxes and smaller government. I would be happy to be out of the EU. I would repeal the human rights legislation (nothing to do with the EU) - or provide better guidelines for judges.

But as an example I do not blame the EU for all our ills. Nor do I think it sane to simply withdraw unilaterally without a new negotiated arrangement between us. Nor do I think it would make much difference (except in one key area) since we would probably enact voluntarily most of its regulations (just like Norway does). The key area is immigration and how this is a serious infringement on national sovereignty when you have nations of widely different economic strength.

On another - I deplore the scrapping of grammar schools but the infrastructure of education makes it loony to try to bring them back. I do believe in streaming in comprehensives. Mrs thatcher closed umpteen grammar schools.

Basically I am happy with what I have got. io believe its called compromise.

I do think however there is an argument for suspending EU immigration rules under the present economic climate otherwise our efforts to reduce the shocking number of NEETS is going to be undermined.

Rhoda Klapp

And I would like to see those policies or something like them in government plans. But I can't. And they are mostly not left/right issues in terms of political philosophy, although clearly they are in day-to-day politics here, merely because of apparently arbitrary party preference.

Can't agree on the EU. You might think it is not a priority, as we are deep in trouble anyway. There may be something in that, but I don't think you appreciate just how much the hands of government here are tied by EU actions. The british jobs issue is only the tip of the iceberg. There is no putting it off until tomorrow when it is your sovereignty at stake.

Herbert Thornton

Peter Hoskin's recommendation that we read Melissa Kite's Sunday Telegraph account of internal Tory strife is well worth following. Even more encouraging is the reference to Insiders saying there is now a very serious prospect that a group of Conservative backbenchers may organise themselves into a pressure group prepared to vote against the Coalition and that some have suggested for themselves the name - Conservative Mainstream.

I have just read a letter on a similar topic in Canada's National Post. The first part of it fits the situation in the British Parliament so perfectly that it is worth reproducing here -

"Exasperated by the conniving machinations of a treacherous politician, Cicero jumped to his feet at the Roman Senate and launched his famous Catalinarian oration: "For how long," he asked "are you to abuse our patience? And for how long will that madness of yours mock us? To what end will you throw your unbridled audacity around you?""

Does that not also fit Cameron?

Here, I paraphrase the rest of the letter - Who will be the new Cicero to harangue both the Coalition and Labour MPs and shame them for being so intellectually trapped in the fictions of political correctness and multiculturalism, that they ignore the true interests of the British people and instead complacently pursue policies that are corroding our values, abandoning democracy and - worst of all - allowing Islam to hatch and nurture so much extremism that Britain is being dragged towards religious civil war?