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Samizdata quote of the day – the harsh lessons of our new world disorder We can no longer afford luxury beliefs. It’s not sustainable to have investment funds which shun arms companies on ESG grounds. It’s no good saying you want to save the planet if you can’t stop China and Russia controlling more and more of it. It’s self-harming to apply DEI policies to the military. The services are there to intimidate and, if that fails, kill our enemies, not impress them with how kind we are to people struggling with their gender identity. Laws policed by foreign courts which prevent our security and intelligence services doing what is necessary to keep us safe are weapons we have fashioned to arm the terrorists who wish to harm us. If our agents can’t do their job because of the ECHR, it must be changed until they can. Or junked.
– Michael Gove (£), who for once is kind of making sense
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We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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Wonders will never cease!
Actually, that’s not quite fair: he used to enjoy a good reputation for mastering his brief (whatever it was at the time).
That’s the annoying thing about Gove: once in a while he does indeed make sense. “People are fed up with ‘experts’” for example. But he fails to do it consistently. And he can also turn on a sixpence. In this very quote he criticises Net Zero and yet he was an eager and early supporter of Greta.
I would argue we never could afford luxury beliefs which is one of the major reasons we’re in this bloody mess!
This deeply saddened me.
Viz – I mean is nothing left that is profane!
Good, but for how long? I remember he once seemed sound on the climate panic, but then without warning he went native and took the establishment line along with almost everyone else. Such was the effectiveness of years of propaganda from third-rate scientists and first-rate agit-proppers.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/48012795
In case anyone had forgotten.
MPs clapped Greta after her speech and Environment Secretary Michael Gove said “we have not done nearly enough” to combat climate change.
He said: “The time to act is now, the challenge could not be clearer – Greta, you have been heard.”.
“who for once is kind of making sense” … he made very good sense in Education once upon a time. Not often, afaik, since.
‘I can’t hold it back any more; I love Tony (Blair)!’- Michael Gove, 2003.
I remember seeing the above quote around the time he became an MP in 2005 and thought he must be a wrong ‘un. Outside Brexit, which they botched anyway (and currently seems pretty pointless given Britain largely does the same as EU and on immigration we’ve become more nuts than most EU states), what we got from the Tories of 2010-2024 was continuity Blairism. Not surprising when Blair admirers like Gove were powerful in the party.
I have been referring to the Tories as Blue Blairites for years. Fuck ’em.
Gove is intelligent, with several sound instincts. But sadly he is also an invertebrate and that makes all the difference. In a political career, a brain is more useful than a spine. But in public service, it is the other way round.
Prior to taking on the Spectator editorship, Gove wrote the odd column for the Times. Every one could have been written by a former Labour minister. Mind you, Gove’s former colleague Danny Finkelstein is a Tory peer, which itself should have been enough to make any conservative desert the party.
In case you were umming and ahing over whether Tories were stupid or evil, the fact that they clearly know what conservative voters want and can recite it when required while at the same time having no intention of implementing any of it puts them firmly in the evil camp.
President Trump, for all his other faults, understands all this – and Michael Gove when a minister in the last government, clearly did NOT, at least gave no sign of doing so.
[Rour le Jour is wrong about many Conservatives, for example, Jacob Rees-Mogg – but he is, sadly, correct about Michael Gove. It was not that Mr Gove was defeated by vicious officials – he never tried to fight them, indeed he was on their side on such matters as Covid lockdowns.]
Neither do the governments of Western Europe, or the governments of Canada and Australia – which tend to be still stuck in the DEI and ESG swamp (although the names change – the banks and so on can say “we are not pushing ESG anymore” whilst pushing the same insanity by some other name).
As for the chances for change – many friends (both in the Conservative Party and in the Reform Party) keep talking about the next General Election in the United Kingdom.
There need be no General Election till July 2029.
July 2029 – they just have not grasped how far away the next election can be (and will be – why go to the country any earlier?).
By July 2029 the United Kingdom will be in a truly terrible situation – it is possible that it may not even exist in its current form.
Perry was wise to leave.