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The ‘Tory Secret Weapon’ is… Ken Clarke? Oh Jesus wept, just put the leadership of the Tory party out of our misery and get it over with. The ‘secret weapon’ of the Tory Party is a pro-Euro corporatist whose ability to alienate actual conservatives has been proven every time the bastard has rolled out over the last couple decades.
The Tory party is facing a widely detested and demonstrably failed government and the fact they are not forty points ahead in the polls shows just how far they have their heads up their own collective backsides… and now, just to dispel any lingering doubt, they dust off Ken Bleedin’ Clarke. Unbelievable.
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If this is not a sign they are doomed nothing is…
I think it is official now: the Tories have lost the plot! Not misplaced it, or mislaid it, but completely lost it.
The Tories have not lost the plot. Cameron has stolen it and then given it away.
Yep, they are crap. The prospect of more Broon is utterly terrifying though. So who to vote for..? It’s one big shit sandwich alright.
Also, further to the expat discussion a few posts back, can anyone tell me which ward you register to vote in when you are overseas? Any of your choice, or the last you were registered in or where?
I suppose they could dump his flappy arse on Labour…
I agree Perry. The Tories are behaving as if Wellington at the climax of Waterloo ran himself through with a sabre. It’s unbelievable. Not only is Ken so over the effing hill he’s up the next one but… Why oh why is a party up against a deeply unpopular one emulating it?
The only conclusion I can draw is that iDave actually believes in this shit. That the leader of Her Majesty’s loyal opposition is a fellow traveller and that the “clear blue water” has become distinctly a murky purple.
Ratbags the lot of them. And don’t get me started on that er… bloke who “leads” the Lib-Dems. Wassisname?
You may be willing to exchange voter appeal for policy soundness, but all this might well lead to four more years of Brown and final, irrevocable integration into the Eu.
I don’t know if you listened to Clarke on Any Questions on Friday night, but in the face of a baying mob, the audience in the East London mosque, and a rabidly left wing panel, including Red Ken, Clarke put up an excellent performance. He stayed calm and cheerful throughout, and I couldn’t help thinking what a great weapon the Tories have in Clarke if they would only push him more to the fore.
Hopefully, the Eu will fall apart under it’s own weight, but unless it is destoyed by the coming depression and resulting sovereign defaults, we should face the fact, however much we don’t like it, that under any forseeable UK government, we will be in the Eu come what may.
So be pragmatic. Give Ken his rein now, and get the socialists out. Worry about the Eu when Brown is out of office.
The real game remains the same. In a majoritarian democratic system it means getting a majority. The object of the Tories still has to be to persuade natural non-conservatives, and those who cannot in fact remember the contrast between the 70s and the 80s but have had a cliché luvvie establishment view of the evils of Thatcherism (and how Tony Blair was somehow a milder version) dripped into their brains, that a Cameron government would be sufficiently less vile than a Brown one to that voting Tory is neither unthinkable nor undoable.
Part of the strategic trouble the Tories have got into arises from the fact it is really difficult for any Conservative (or conservative) to grasp why most people are not filled with horror at what the incumbents have done. They were expecting it to fall into their laps, but the sovereign people are bored of crisis and will listen to any old rot suggesting is going away.
Ken Clarke’s views do not matter for the purposes of realpolitik. What matters is he comes across as a human being to the general public. It is perfectly sensible to play him up.
I find myself in the somewhat bizarre position of now wishing for a Labour victory because the Tories continue to demonstrate how utterly fucking useless they will be in power. On the other hand, I think if Labour win then enough of them may realise how damn lucky they were and dump Brown before long anyway. Not that he’s their only problem… Cameron…i have not one single good word to say about him and a whole book full of bad ones. Aaaaargghhh!
I think the best hope from here is a hung parliament, Cameron briefly being a minority government PM before being tossed by his own party (or the minority parties) and another election shortly after this one. A victory for either Brown or Cameron would be a disaster.
I have dipped in and out of the view held by Michael Jennings.
A slender Tory minority win could have the ability to trigger “fission” in both Labour and LibDems as they try and force their respective nuclei together. I predict a dense Socialist Particle splitting and recombining with many erratic electron shells, a lightweight Social Democrat particle plus some faint Liberal background radiation.
If the SocDem particle crumps into the Tory nucleus at a particularly unstable moment, we might see another stage in the reaction.
Tim: My feeling until recently has been that I was vaguely in favour of a Tory victory because few parties have ever deserved to be voted out more than Labour does at the moment.
However, Mr Cameron has become steadily less and less impressive, to the point that this is not a tenable position any more.
Can we root for a Tory majority, with a UKIP member beating Cameron?
(Not that it’s very bloody likely to happen….)
“Mr Cameron has become steadily less and less impressive”
Ah! The Obama Syndrome. With the pronounced difference that Conservative MPs could dump Li’l Dave’s sorry ass any time they chose. They don’t have to wait 4 years and then invite the general populace to join in the decision.
Which brings us back to the inevitable question. Not, what’s wrong with Davie; that’s obvious. No, the question is — what’s wrong with current Conservative MPs, who realize that Captain Ahab is steering the ship and yet won’t do anything about it?
No it certainly isn’t likely Ted, especially as UKIP dont contest all the seats. I’m Bristol West, until 1997 Tory for 130 years, then Labour, now a Lib/Dem nonentity has it.
There was a UKIP candidate last time, but as they only got 960 votes, they are obviously hanging on to the deposit money this time round.
I crossed my mind that the current Tory “strategy” was all a cunning plan to actually lose the election, knowing full well that things are only going to get worse economically. New Labour gets all the blame and this will destroy them forever, and would give the tories breathing space to think up a solution.
Alas I think they are even more clueless than NuLab, at least you can see Nulabs hidden agenda when you scratch the surface of their bullshit.
The Tories are just total bullshit, with no agenda worth mentioning (they certainly dont anyway).
Ask Ken Clarke if he has a copy of the Maastricht treaty and he’ll tell you …
There’s one around my office somewhere, ah yes there it is, propping up the shelf containing my Bebop CDs.
Ever read it Ken?
Good lord no! has anyone?
Yet the twat would have us in the Euro in a minute!
Would Tebbit vote for Ken?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v0lsvWq_piI
I will not vote for the lib/lab clone that is Cameron,he is wasted space. He is as wedded to the EU as is Clarke and is pushing the AGW thing for all he’s worth, we cannot afford it or him, end of.
There is actually reason in this madness Perry.
Listen to Cameron’s sidekick little George.
Little George clearly has no idea what he is talking about when he talks about economic matters (or business matters – not the same thing of course). Indeed this could also be said of David Cameron himself.
Whereas “Ken” Clarke at least sounds like he knows what the words mean and has had some experience of the world.
“But he is a statist twat” – I do not deny it. But compared to Little George and Cameron he at least “looks (and sounds) the part”.
As for real conservatives (people who might have avoided making Edmund Burke or M.J. Oakeshott ill) – “the word is” that Cameron is planning a “GREAT PURGE”.
Basically the “A list” (Cameron’s rich and Progressive friends – and one has to be both rich and Progressive to get on the “A list”, just being one or the other will not do) of Parliamentary candidates is going to be expanded (and renamed) so that all candidates will be selected by the high command (i.e. Cameron and crony types) and all real Conservatives (see above) will be forced out.
All Mr Cameron has to do is win the election and the Progressive dream – the dream of ALL major political parties being totally controlled by Progressives, will come true.
No irritating bunch of people on the Conservative backbenches to do such things as make Mrs Thatcher leader (1975 – although hardly any of the people who voted for Mrs T. where ever given a place in government).
Peter Hitchens may not be totally correct (i.e. the Conservative party may not yet be totally rotten) – but Cameron and co know it only needs one more push. Given an election victory with a sizeable majority and Cameron will attack the Conservatives in the Conservative party.
On the E.U. we already know what to expect.
The breaking of the “iron clad” promise to allow the British people a vote on the E.U. Constitution (the so called Treatry of Lisbon) told everyone, apart from the willfully blind, all they need to know about David Cameron.
“But Cameron must be an honourable man – he went to Eton” – so did Captain Hook.
Perhaps Mr Cameron’s next trick will be to disinter the corpse of Lord Salisbury and promote him to the front bench. Actually, scratch that idea. Lord S. was quite a small-government man. Would not fit in.
Okay kids I don’t understand what the problem is here. You have a parliamentary system, unlike the US. If the Republican party, feckless as it is, did something as atrocious as this, it would be truly frightening as third parties simply do not work here.
However, you can simply vote for UKIP. No wailing that it has its faults. However, will anyone here contest that they are far far better than the current ‘Conservatives’ ??
I DONT SEE THE PROBLEM!