A state of emergency

Paul Lay

Does Selbourne exaggerate our plight? The answer's on the cover…in red…

“Plus: Emily Maitlis on Belgian chocolates in Libya”

Ian C

I am not sure that he has told us anything we did not know already and he has hardly offered much by way of resolution of the difficulties we face. A modern plural state is demonstrably unable to please all of the people all of the time (his inference seems to be that Cromwell could - patently not the case). But his implication is that we need to return to 'old' Tory or Labour values for the solutions are a denial of modern reality. His statement that we are in "a quagmire in Notting Hill" should read "and Islington" also. His correct assertion that “limitations upon ‘choice’ seem like authoritarian infringements” should be more emphatic. They are authoritarian infringements. The question is how to limit them and sell the more necessary intrusions as 'giving away some natural liberty to enjoy civil advantages’? His analysis that the 'right to choose' has been transferred to a Menu of selections of individual interpretations is correct. Again, what to do about it in the context of a post-religious, multi-cultural era dominated by information and entertainment reaching into the home in away that is very difficult to supervise. The only answer he puts forward to the national identity crisis is ID cards - and that is a bit like the answer to the 'meaning of life being 42' in the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. The objection to ID cards is mainly one of knowing that governments in this country cannot run anything well so it will fail in its obejective - part of the problem as already implicitly identified defined by him - and that the fact that government and the political classes are so inept which is the stem of the majority of modern day problems and disillusionment, not the lost principles and institutions of yesteryear. The principles are timeless, the institutions are not. We will all willingly fall back into a non state of emergency once we get governance that ceases to be self-seeking and aggrandising and hopelessly inefficient.

Fergus Pickering

So this guy proses on about doom for far too many pages and the answer is - I.D. Cards! Anyone who thinks the answer to anything at all is I.D. Cards can't be worth listening to, can he?

john

Am I the only one who felt his right arm uncontrollably jerking up to his face a la Strangelove on readin this piece?

McLovin

Can anyone take a man who has such a hideous comb-over seriously?

Surely he's just another beardy weirdy wacko.

Bob

I thought he raised some serious points but obvioulsy Spectator readers are not up to it judging by the above comments.

jean shaw

Anyone who suggests ID cards as a solution to anything has to be going off the cliff along with all the rest of the wittering classes. No point in reading the article.

Ian C

That's a really constructive contribution Bob, thanks. It was so easy to find what you find to be 'serious points' that the rest of us did not.

McLovin

Yeah Bob, knock it off, I get enough moaning from my mother.

I'm just trying to lighten the mood by pointing out the obvious fact that this fella is an egghead. Period. He can't be trusted.

Chuck Unsworth

"and warns that we have gravely underestimated the growth of public anger at Britain’s decline"

Two points:

a) Who are 'we'? and,

b) I do hope that the level of anger has been wildly underestimated.

The fact is that anger or more correctly, weary resignation, is all pervasive. The determination by many (New Labour) politicians to paint a rosy picture is laughable. The fact is that they have lost all credibility and everything, no matter if true, that they say is disbelieved. There is profound cynicism now. The more astute politicians can capitalise on it. However, those who are associated with the disappointments of the last decade are unlikely ever to recover their standing in the minds of the electorate.

Cogito Ergosum

It is time for the Conservative Party to return to two slogans that were very effective in 1951.

1. Set the people free.

2. Bonfire of controls.

Let us take seriously the proposition that we are a free country, and accept that freedom includes the freedom to make mistakes (within reason).

Ian C

Mathew, I suggest that you now refer to the peice about the Justice System for why this piece by Selbourne was weak at best.

Nick Kaplan

What a load of spurious twaddle, anyone who quotes Cromwell (and that many times) as the shining light in understanding freedom and morality is clearly horribly mistaken. Cromwell, a Puritan (seemingly like Selbourne himself) had no understanding of liberty; as Selbourne explains, he thought it meant “rigorous settled obedience to the laws that are just”. This is reminiscent of Rousseau’s belief that one can be forced to be free as long as one obeys the laws of the community (the general will); it is the most dangerous distortion of the notion of liberty that has been used to justify various totalitarian regimes who claimed to know what was good for people better than individuals themselves. Even more laughable than this (mis)understanding of the idea of freedom is Selbourne’s rather pathetic solutions to the problems he identifies. Ending privatisation seems to be a main theme, suggesting that Selbourne, who rightly identifies the uselessness of our public services, believes the only solution is to carry on with the same failing policies that landed us in the mess in the first place. He offers no solution to the growth in inequality (which is hardly a problem since the very poorest are in real terms better off than a generation ago anyway), instead lamenting the fact that our economy is “driven by consumer spending” (so how else should we drive our economy???) and that progress is measured by growth (as opposed to what stagnation, recession?). This whole article is full of nauseating puritanical nonsense based on what I can only presume is some religious view of what is moral that he believes should be forced upon the rest of us.