What even, er, Tories think about the Tory government

The government is led by a clique of toffs who have neither respect for their colleagues, nor empathy with the average voter. Their born-to-rule mentality means they have a greatly over-inflated view of their own capabilities, which deafens their ears to the advice and warnings of others who might actually know better. They are nothing like as good at governing as they think they are. And this...is now inflicting serious harm on the country...
Andrew Rawnsley on how Tory MPs regard Cameron et al

Being myself a southern, public-school, Oxbridge person, I do not feel patronised by this milieu, but even I, as I watched the Budget on television and saw the “Quad” of Messrs Cameron, Clegg, Osborne and Alexander all in a self-congratulatory, Oxford Union row, did get that “What do they know about anything?” feeling...
Charles Moore, Daily Telegraph

There has never been a better time to fight to kick out this corrupt, useless 'government of the rich by the rich for the rich' - roll on the May Day marches, the May elections and most critically the mass strike on 10 May - March together - and strike together!

The Guilty Men

There is a classic scene in The Godfather, where Don Vito Corleone sits down for a meeting with the other heads of the Five Families, and agrees to make the peace if only it is guaranteed his son Michael is safe from reprisals for killing a police captain. As Don Corleone warns though,

'I'm a superstitious man -- and if some unlucky accident should befall him -- if he should get shot in the head by a police officer -- or if he -- should hang himself in his jail cell -- or if he's struck by a bolt of lightning -- then I'm going to blame some of the people in this room. And that, I do not forgive.'

In a similarish spirit of unforgiveness, it might be worth compiling a list of the top ten people who are worthy of blame should the worst case scenario happen and the British Nazi Party either take control of a council or even take a seat in this general election. Of course, as a Marxist, I understand that it is not the fault of individuals if a fascist party makes any kind of breakthrough - rather one should blame a crisis prone system of exploitation in which people are forced to compete with each other for jobs, the racism against migrant workers that results combined with the past failure of any British government to ever fully come to terms with the legacy of empire, the recent invasions and occupations of Muslim countries and concurrent rise in Islamophobia, the 13 years of attacks on the working class made by a so-called 'Labour Government' and so on and so forth. Nonetheless, individuals do play a role as well, and while theoretically every single member of Parliament who fiddled their expenses deserves to be on this list, this post aims to highlight the ten key individuals who I personally will not forgive should the fascists make any kind of breakthrough in two weeks time...

1. Mark Thompson, Director General of the BBC - for giving the Nazis unprecedented favourable and largely uncritical media coverage in the run up to the election - essentially he (like most others on the list) might properly be regarded as 'an appeaser of fascism'.
2. Jeremy Paxman, BBC Newsnight presenter - for giving 'Nazi Nick' Griffin some of the most friendly and cosy interviews imagineable (eg on Newsnight on 24/4/10).
3. David Dimbleby, BBC Question Time Presenter
4. Tony Blair, former PM and war criminal.
5. Gordon Brown, current PM for his obsession with 'Britishness' and spinning the racist 'British Jobs for British Workers' line in 2007
6. Jack Straw MP - for both trying and failing to beat Griffin in public debate
7. Margaret Hodge MP (not strictly a 'guilty man' but an appallingly useless)
8. Peter Hill (editor Daily Express) - for relentlessly whipping up racism against migrant workers
9. Dominic Mohan (editor The Sun) - ditto
10. Paul Dacre (editor, Daily Mail) - ditto

Feel free to suggest others I have missed out etc... How for example did racist Immigration Minister Phil Woolas slip under the radar? Should Rod Liddle have made it on? What of Martin Amis? Or the likes of Nick Cohen and others on the pro-war 'Left' who gave intellectual legitimacy to racist terms such as 'Islamo-fascism'?

Out now! The Enoch Powell Dog Whistle

Are you a Conservative MP or MEP who has recently taken a nose dive in the popularity stakes?

Maybe you recently accidentally on purpose declared that Britain's most popular institution, the NHS, was all a terrible 'mistake'?

Does everyone in your constituency now hate you with a rare vengeance?

Are you worried about whether you will survive the next election?

Then you maybe are in of need of...

The Enoch Powell Dog Whistle

'I used the Enoch Powell Dog Whistle and found it worked a treat. Before everyone hated me, but now at least racist voters respect me. The BNP even declared me their favourite 'politician of the week' - so I must be doing something right!'' - 'Desperate' Dan Hannan, Kent.

Without Michael Jackson There Would Be No Tap

After a weekend spent lounging around in the sun reading an introduction to Martin Heidegger (don't ask) and watching Glastonbury highlights on TV (do ask - and incidently, what was it with all the Loyalist flags flying about all over the place?), I am not really in the best position to comment on what is going on politically in Britain and internationally (though I did gather a much loved icon from the world of music died last week - as did this chap - and that Wimbledon is underway). Hopefully I will have a better idea and understanding after this weekend's Marxism festival (while there is always good old Lenin's Tomb).

But briefly surmising the headlines, I see New Labour are still defiantly insistent on making the working class pay for the crisis of capitalism by removing unemployment benefit from under-25 year olds deemed not to be working hard enough at finding a job - while silmulaneously freezing student grants and loans (though not tuition fees). There was a time when a threat to cut unemployment benefit would bring down a Labour Government through internal rebellion - but the Party has long stopped worrying about such things and learnt to love not simply Peter Mandleson, but also fraud and corruption around expenses going to the highest level of government as well as bailouts for bankers that have to be paid for somehow.

Still, if New Labour can't provide bread, at least it is providing circuses. Lets not worry about the billions to be spent renewing Trident nuclear submarine or the killing fields of Afghanistan - lets get all nostalgic for the old imperial spirit and kick back and enjoy the spectacle of 'Armed Forces Day'! Let's party like its 1945!

Tony Blair is doing his bit to raise people's spirits too. At a time when most people are worried about whether they will have one job at the end of the week, Blair is bravely leading the fight for the right to work. Though Blair already has so many jobs it is difficult to keep count (there was bringing peace to the Middle East, saving the planet from climate change, ending world poverty, as well as advising the bankers JP Morgan, Zurich Insurance, and running the Blair Faith Foundation thing, but I am sure I have forgotten something) he is now bravely battling to also be the next European president regardless. As the Guardian notes 'the Briton's main assets are name and brand recognition, international contacts, and the absence, so far, of any serious rival for the post.' There is just one minor problem which might stop Blair adding yet one more job to his CV - most people in Europe, for some odd reason, associate the 'Blair brand' with lying and committing war crimes. Oh yeah, and also being a complete and utter wanker.

Meanwhile, Ed Balls, currently New Labour's schools secretary but also the man who dreams of being a future Labour leader, is doing his bit to get people to smile through the recession with his own distinct brand of political comedy. Not only was Balls-by-name recently caught out putting through Mark Steel's classic Reasons to be Cheerful on his expenses, Balls-by-nature has now also come up with the cheery idea of introducing a five year MOT 'license' for weeding out incompetent professionals. Which profession in British society is it that has most failed in its duty, that is full to the brim of the most shady and sinister characters? Which profession is the weakest link that most needs the introduction of a five year license to practice? Greedy bankers? City traders and speculators? No, underpaid and overworked teachers of course! Brilliant stuff Balls!

The only possible 'reason to be cheerful' will be if New Labour's anti-working class policies and measures such as these fail to get onto the statute book because this utterly useless Brown government fails to renew its own 'license to govern' when it comes up for renewal next year (and long before reaching the five years in office mark). Those wishing to help build something new from the ashes of New Labour, a socialist phoenix that can rise from the flames, should join those protesting at the Labour Party conference, Sunday 27 Sept, in Brighton at the demonstration called by the UCU and NUJ, supported by the Fight for the Right to Work campaign.

An apology to readers

This last week I have subjected readers of Histomat to quite appalling images - the faces of two of quite possibly the ugliest politicians in Britain today in every sense - Phil Woolas and Nick Griffin. For this I can only apologise. To try and make amends, I will refer readers to this article, which is almost guaranteed to put some rather different images in your head. Unfortunately the images likely to be conjured up revolve around the third of the 'ugly sisters' of British politics (see below). D'oh...

The very model of a modern bourgeois politician

Any semi-regular readers of this blog might well over time have got the impression that New Labour resembles a despicable bunch of war-mongering, cynical, unprincipled, shameless careerists who have abandoned entirely the egalitarian socialist ideals of the labour movement and sold their souls in pursuit of 'power for power's sake'. How refreshing then to find that, perhaps inspired by Barack Obama's oratory about change and hope,* New Labour seem to recently have made an slight ideological turn in the hope of inspiring young idealists to join them.

Take for example, the heartwarming interview published this week with the new Immigration Minister Phil Woolas. 'I'm trying to heal this country' Woolas said. Stating he joined Labour 'because of racial tension', Woolas declared his complete opposition to racism, and his commitment to helping 'break down racial stereotyping'. Referring to the British Nazi Party, declared 'In a democracy you've got to beat them, and you don't beat them by pandering to them. You beat them by thumping them politically in the face.'

Inspiring stuff. Woolas's political philosophy is all about 'keeping it real'. 'Letting people know that you understand in this modern world is as important as what policy you pursue...It's very important in politics that the public see politicians being real people.' And what does 'keeping it real' mean for Woolas in terms of New Labour policy? Woolas proposes 'a mature debate on immigration'. About bloody time, you might think. For over a century in Britain the body politic has been polluted and poisoned by right wing media racist scapegoating of immigrants and asylum seekers, fueled by opportunistic politicians who should know better. The time for a 'mature' debate on immigration in Britain, which discusses the merits of an open borders policy, is long overdue. As Jeremy Seabrook notes there is a hidden noble tradition up to the present day among ordinary people of welcoming the dispossesed to Britain, which one prided itself as being a beacon of liberty for the world on this question. 'It is easy to harden hearts in a vacuum, especially when created by media owners pursuing some vanished dream of imperial or racial supremacy. Everything depends upon direct experience of exiles' suffering; there is no lack of people in Britain who want to show the world our better selves, and demonstrate to the tormented and persecuted that we are a refuge not a fortress.'

Well, we can dream. In reality, for all Woolas's declared intentions about 'saying the unsayable' and 'thinking the unthinkable', when it comes to immigration, rather than even discuss the idea of open borders, New Labour is unfortunately happy to play the race card in the oldest most traditional fashion of 'divide and rule'. Praising Brown's slogan of 'British Jobs for British workers', Woolas declares his committment to getting his 'hands dirty', and notes of racist voters - 'You have to let them know you know what they are thinking'. As Diane Abbott noted, 'Woolas is peddling every rightwing half-truth about immigration.'

He claims that the government has "to face up to voters' concerns about the level of immigration". But the truth is that the government has done little else but pander to white fears on the subject. Since 1997 the government has passed seven separate pieces of legislation on immigration and nationality, all designed to make the system tougher. Woolas claims that it is "too easy to get into this country". Tell that to my constituents who wait years to be joined by their partners or dependents. Or explain this to the young children detained for months in detention centres for no other crime than being the offspring of asylum seekers. The truth is that the legislation has never been more draconian, and asylum seekers and would-be migrants have never had fewer rights. If the numbers of migrants continue to rise it is because of the "pull factor" of an (up until now) booming but deregulated economy sucking in cheap labour. And there has been a global rise in the millions seeking asylum from war, pestilence and famine. We all know that a recession leads inexorably to a rise in racism and xenophobia, but a cap on immigration is not the answer.

Indeed, that last month, Woolas told The Times that such a cap was necessary as a result of the economic crisis was about as unremarkable as it was possible to imagine. Could you get a more classic ABC textbook Marxist model of the kind of thing a capitalist politician representing a capitalist government might say in the midst of an economic crisis? Rather than allowing working people's anger to explode into righteous indignation at the richest and greediest parasitical bankers and stockbrokers and those in power like Woolas who have just spent billions and billions of tax payers money on bailing out such people, there is an attempt instead to divert attention and bitterness against the poorest and most powerless and vulnerable people in society instead - migrant workers. If New Labour had any kind of social conscience, then scum like Woolas would never have been able to rise inexorably to the top of the Party, and that he has the support of Gordon Brown and the rest of the Cabinet shows only the depths to which this party supposedly committed to 'democratic socialism' has sunk. As you were.

* The reaction to Obama's victory in Britain was quite amusing. David Cameron, leader of the Conservative Party, said the following: 'In these difficult times people everywhere are crying out for change. Barack Obama is the first of a new generation of leaders who will deliver it.' Of course, Cameron offers a similar message of 'change and hope' as Obama in that having an Old Etonian Oxbridge-educated rich white man as British Prime Minister would really constitute something new and inspiring...

An Urgent Appeal: Can you help?

Our world is in crisis. Recession and war spread. The environment is steadily being destroyed under capitalism. The gap between rich and poor is wider than ever, reaching historically grotesque proportions. Just one tenth of the US defence budget could mean that no one in the world had to starve or die of preventable diseases because of lack of access to clean water. The case for another way of organising society - the case for a world where the needs of people come before the drive for profit - the case for socialism - has never been more self-apparent.

There are billions of people suffering in the world today. It is hard to think about individual cases. But please spare a moment if you can to just think about what you could do to help just one person. Meet Douglas Murray.



Douglas has had to survive a very tough upbringing indeed, possibly one of the toughest in the world. He was born into the British ruling class. He managed to survive, but was left scarred for life:

Eton and Oxford educated, an Anglican — sorry, a "practicing Anglican," as he corrects me — and complete with the chiseled features and upper-class accent one associates with the British aristocracy...

Having survived that ordeal - and who knows the kind of brutality, sadism and sheer horror he must have experienced in the process - then something even more terrible then happened to Douglas. He experienced an ordeal that would transform his life for ever. He became a victim of crime - in this case - a thought crime. As Douglas tells us, he was 'repeatedly mugged by reality'.

Mr. Murray was, however, "repeatedly mugged by reality" by three pivotal events — Kosovo, the September 11, 2001 attacks, and the reaction to those attacks on America.

Did he suffer directly from any of these events, I hear you ask? Was he perhaps caught up on the end of a NATO airstrike while on holiday backpacking around Serbia? Was he unfortunate enough to be on one of the planes that was hijacked on that fateful day? Was he on the recieving end of a racist backlash in America or detained in Guantanamo Bay for years on end without a trial or contact with his family?

Well, not quite, as it happens. But, as I am sure you will agree, what he experienced was even worse.

Kosovo was his "defining conflict." It shocked him that the governments of Europe were prepared to allow another genocide take place on European soil. The September 11, 2001, attacks provided the second jolt, and the third came with the "reaction to 9/11." He witnessed a large swathe of people in Europe and in America who still "didn't get it" and whose reaction was self-blame rather than seeking to defeat the terrorists. Realizing that the world he loved faced real danger, he turned to the practical world of policy and became a neocon.

Yes you did read that right. Douglas became a neoconservative. Initially, Douglas's 'early interests lay in literature and the arts, and not in practical government policy' but now he became political. What unimagineable torment must he have suffered? Can you imagine the intellectual turmoil such a transition must have thrown him in? To go from Eton - the bastion of Conservatism - to end up a NeoConservative. His parents must have been mortified (but we hear that as of yet they have not disowned him and blocked his inheritance, despite what must have come as a terrible traumatic shock for them) .

However, having survived being 'repeatedly mugged by reality', Douglas was now a neoconservative. Having bravely 'come out' to his parents about his shock transformation, he decided to bravely 'come out' to the world. Can you imagine how brave a decision that was - given the climate of fear after September 11? I mean to declare openly that you shared the same ideology as the most powerful man in the world, the most powerful government in the world, and the most powerful people in the world?

Douglas bravely wrote a book. He had the courage to give it a stirringly powerful title: Neoconservatism: Why We Need It (you don't go to Eton and study literature at Oxford and not be able to come up with a thought provoking and imaginatively evocative title for your book). He wrote lots of articles for various publications. He got to give speeches in the White House. For a time things were not so bad. Douglas looked like he might pull through in the end after all.

But then something terrible went wrong. After being declared 'The Right's answer to Michael Moore' and 'A brilliant young British intellectual', people who were not neoconservatives simply didn't buy his book or his arguments. Something perhaps about the title - and seemedly something about him - put people off. But without reading him, they remained wedded to the idea that maybe neoconservatism had some flaws and maybe, actually, 'they didn't need it' after all.

Douglas tells us that sales of his book fell after the 'War or Terror' began. As Douglas remembers, 'we were accused of killing hundreds of thousands of people'. He became an outcast in Britain - the country he loves almost as much as America and Israel.

[Douglas] is known on the British television chat show circuit as 'Britain's only neoconservative.'

But with your help there is hope for Douglas. He tells us he is going to be brave and summon up the courage to write another book.

I ask him what his next project will be. A career in politics perhaps, I suggest. He laughs and says he's not sure they'll have him. For the moment he's working on a book on Europe, which, he is at pains to stress, isn't lost just yet.

Yes, Europe is 'not lost yet'. Nor with your help is Douglas. Can you help?

£100 can ensure food for one day for Douglas Murray.
£50 can buy one hardback copy of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.
£25 can buy one second hand copy of Neoconservatism: Why We Need It.

If you can't spare money, Douglas tells us he needs help thinking of a title for his forthcoming book on Europe as he is suffering from writers block of all things. He is currently tempted to go with Europe: It's Not Lost Yet but he is not sure whether this will sell. He is also considering the titles Europe: We Don't Need To Bomb It Yet and Europe: Lets Bomb Some of It But Please Don't Hit Me Or My Friends and Family. Douglas needs to sell books if he is to survive as an 'author and broadcaster' and he tells me he currently has rather a lot of unsold copies of Neoconservatism taking up room in his garage.

Can anyone help?