A FEW months ago I wrote here about how William Hague had become a Davos poster boy. I explained how influence and groupthink could turn a libertarian Thatcherite into a globalist, authoritarian technocrat. Shortly afterwards, Hague completed one of the most astonishing U-turns in politics. In a dangerous step towards a Chinese-style social credit system, he joined Tony Blair to help him force ID cards on the public.
How people change. In 2004 he voted against Blair’s Identity Card Bill. He voted against it again in 2005. In fact when he was in opposition in 1998, this is what he thought he believed:
‘For when we listen to Britain, we are listening to the defenders of liberty and freedom. In the face of this Government’s attitudes we must make sure we are seen as the party of personal liberty. For the British Way is to keep Government in its proper place – as the servant, not the master … make sure Government minds its own business so that people can get on with minding their own.’
However, by 2013, Hague was rejecting claims that the government were spying on the public. The fatal words were ‘law-abiding’ citizens have ‘nothing to fear’. The perennial defence of the dictator. When politicians ask why no one trusts them any more, you can reply in two words: William Hague. At least Blair has been consistent.
Read the whole thing. Strongly recommended.
Until recently, but I think that has more to do with trying to get Kneel Starmer into No. 10. He’s just postponed pontificating about things which were preventing the return of Liebore. See how long he can keep it up.
As for Billy Hague. He says what he thinks will get him paid. If he’s pro-ID cards now it’s because one of the big tech companies think there’s money to be made in going through that whole palaver again. Despite the fact that we only dumped all that crap in 2010 and the ID card booths are still shitting up Post Offices up and down the land.
I don’t need an ID to exist. So Billy Hague can go back to having lots of totally heterosexual sex with Fffffion and drinking 17 pints a day like a real man.
Liar! Liar! Pants on Fire!
Yes politics does corrupt people – and, yes, politics is my own trade (so that does not speak well of me).
For example, only six (6) Members of the House of Commons voted against the totalitarian Equalities Act of 2010 (because people were terrified of being called “racist”) – the people who complain about Frankfurt School Marxism now, mostly supported the Act of Parliament that made it the law. Made it compulsory for public bodies to push it.
As for William Haig – yes a sad decline from someone who had some regard for liberty, to the waste-of-space establishmentarian he is now.
However, there is a big price to be paid for standing against the Corporate State. For example I remember, a couple of years ago, listening to Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton proudly saying he had kept massive election fraud out of Texas (which he had). I knew as I listened to him that the Corporate State types (including the RINOs) would destroy Mr Paxton for that – and they would not just kill him (they are too sadistic to just kill) – they would seek to humiliate and discredit him, via the Police State FBI and so on.
Rather like the fate of the honest judge in the Japanese television series of the Chinese story “The Water Margin” – the honest judge saves the life of an innocent man (who is about to have his head sawn off) – so the powerful decide to destroy the judge, not by just killing him (that would be too clean), they frame him on false charges, so that he is despised by all (they hope spat on by children whilst in chains and so on) and discredited.
In the modern world if you oppose the Corporate State they destroy you – and they do it sadistically.
As for the contradiction between Frankfurt School Marxist DEI and Corporate State (let us be blunt – Fascist, Public-Private Partnership) ESG, this contradiction will become very clear over time. But I doubt that will help us.
In the Japanese television series the heroes win in the end – but real life is not like that.
“law-abiding citizens have ‘nothing to fear'” .
Who decides who is law abiding? In Russia, Canada, the USA, and, to a certain extent, the UK, anyone who disagrees, or challenges, government policies, are not classed as law abiding. Canadians have had their bank accounts closed, lost jobs, homes, and marriages for disagreeing with Castro’s alleged bastard son. Russia recently sent a man To prison for 25 years for criticising the invasion of Ukraine. In the UK, a woman was arrested for sitting on a bench. There are many more examples, too numerous to mention.
To be law abiding, you have to accept, or not challenge, the Soros/Fauci/Gates manifestos on The Great Reset or Building Back Better, something that our politicians seem only too keen to follow. Perhaps the promise of being included in this great reset, and becoming members of the chosen elite, is too much of a temptation to turn down?
Hague wrote a decent biography of Pitt the Younger, and he’s been good on issues such as modern slavery etc. But I suspect that he has become “respectable” and enjoys being a sort of elder “statesman” in the party.
It is all very sad.
@Paul, I forgot about “The Water Margin”, and what a terrific TV show that was. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0227975/
Re: ‘Elder “statesman” of the party.’
Thomas Brackett Reed, Congressman 1892 : “A statesman is a successful politician who is dead.”
“Now I know what a statesman is; he’s a dead politician. We need more statesmen.” —Bob Edwards
Johnathan Peace – yes indeed.
Anyone who claims that “the eastern mind” is not capable of understanding individuals standing up for universal principles of justice, has not watched the show or read the story.
Dyspeptic Curmudgeon – President Warren Harding dramatically cut government spending and taxation, released the political prisoners of Woodrow Wilson, and stood up for the rights of black people. And President Harding is just remembered as “corrupt” – which he was not.
When a politician does the right thing – they are smeared and their memory is treated as a joke.
Both the good side and the bad side of Warren Harding reminds me of Senator Roscoe Conklin, his version of what a Republican should be.
I’d submit that it isn’t politics that destroys the soul, but the soulless who destroy decent politics.
The fundamental thing that destroys organizations over the long haul (even the short one, in some…) is the creeping influence of the inimical “career man” getting into positions of power within them. It starts with one weasel, who wends his or her way through the system, and then they identify and promote their fellow sociopaths. Once a critical mass is reached, where the majority of the upper levels of the hierarchy are these sorts of creature, the organization is done.
It’s an observable part of the organizational life-cycle. So long as there aren’t any powers and perks available, and the upper echelons just have hard, thankless work as their reward, that’s preventative for this happening. Once there’s power, perks, and “glory” available, well… It’s like throwing chum into the water, and the self-interested, self-involved start showing up.
I can’t think of a single organization I’ve ever seen that had some form of preventative mechanism for this syndrome that worked. It’s apparently an inevitability; nobody polices the venal bastards on their way up, on the make-and-take. We really should have our eyes out, and when that bastard Bob starts moving up the hierarchy because he kisses ass so well and stabs everyone below him in the back, someone should be slipping him a shiv or two. Nobody does it, though. They just sigh in relief that he’s gone, and forget the fact that he’ll come back as CEO or something else high-up in the hierarchy.
A lot of this is because the nice people who’re in charge when the Bobs are developing their weasel skills are charmed by them, taken in by the sociopathy. Bob is perceived as “getting things done”, and the reality is that he’s the death of the organization in a few short decades, once the idiot “nice guys” are gone.
Happens everywhere, and it’s a human flaw. My take is that we don’t have the social mechanisms or reflexes for dealing with hierarchy above about the hunter-gatherer band level, and should organize ourselves accordingly. The only solution I can see is a zen sort of thing… Overcome human inability to build lasting functional organizations run decently by simply not having them in the first damn place. We ought to run things on cellular ad-hoc lines, and when the need is gone, the organization goes with it. Leave it there, and it’ll just attract the weasels who want the attendant power and authority.
The other problem we have is that we’re wired to respond to power and authority, even at the interpersonal level. My mother married poorly twice, mainly because she mistook the behaviors of two very damaged men for them being confident and masterful males. Both of them were sociopathic bastards who were highly damaged, but she couldn’t see that due to her sheltered upbringing. It’s a hardwired trait, but one that generally fails to distinguish between outward appearance (confidence, charisma) and actual performance. I watched my father fool a number of women, over the years, just as he did my mother. Observationally, I couldn’t quite figure out why they couldn’t see him for what he was, but they were fixated on those things that weren’t really real, just like a lot of executive types can’t see that the sycophantic yes-man they have working for them is actually a venal creep destroying his organization from within. It’s a piece of the same issue; people tend to focus on observable things that signal “leader”, and ignore those things that they really ought to be looking out for, in order to prevent organizational damage.
The other problem is that the people on the left and right of the sociopath aren’t often willing to do the necessary and ensure their failure the way they ought to be, for the long-term interest. Peers and subordinates often see things that the bosses don’t, just like your friends and families vet your potential spouses. My mother failed to listen to her friends and family about the men she married; that bit her in the ass later on. They’d warned her, both times.
Like I said, it’s all of a piece; sociopaths function by sending false signals, and they are enabled because we listen to those signals.
I’d argue it is the principle/agent problem writ large.
Once the company executives stop prioritising their sole goal of returning value to shareholders (while operating within the law) and start prioritising whatever bullshit gets them the greatest remuneration then the company is doomed.
Been in a few companies like that, usually happens after the founder dies / retires / exits.
John Galt said:
You’re focusing on the second-order effects of selecting the precise wrong people to be made executives. What I’m pointing out is the sad fact that they got selected for those positions in the first place, which is where the root of the problem lies. Those executives were likely selected by the founders because they were successful sycophants that managed to portray themselves as being the sort of person the founder wanted in charge.
There’s also the sad fact that a lot of effective founders are fundamentally flawed human beings, like most who rise to leadership positions within hierarchies. I never ran into a single “decent human being” who was successful at high rank in the Army; all of them were damaged goods, one way or another. The decent human beings were all either sidetracked because they couldn’t make the damaging sociopathic decisions they needed to make, or because they didn’t want to pay the price personally. Best officer I ever worked for chose not to undertake battalion command, opting instead to take an Engineer district. Can’t blame him, but he did what was best for himself and his family. He had a following that would have moved heaven and earth to work for him as a battalion commander, and he actually sent all of us an apology letter when he made that decision.
Successful leadership often requires outright sociopathy; the problem is keeping it in check and harnessed for the good of all, not just the sociopath and his hangers-on.
I do agree with what you’re saying, but I think you’re looking at the problem from a standpoint well past the stage I’m talking about.
There is very little real politics left – in the sense of actual power in the hands of elected politicians. For example, the “Chief Executives” (I can remember when this position was called “clerk” – or, at most, “chief clerk”) of local councils “give their pronouns” and boast of their Frankfurt School of Marxism “Diversity and Inclusion” agenda, regardless of what the voters want. And if any elected politician complained, I can assure you that it would be the elected politician who was punished.
A poem by Kipling often comes to mind these days, when I think about the dying West.
“When you lay wounded on Afghan plains and the women come out to cut-up what remains, just roll on your side and blow out your brains – and go to your God like a soldier”.
I suspect we should have done that 30 years ago.