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| Ultra-wealthy, establishment London remained loyal to Labour and its betrayal of Workingmen |
This is not a political blog, but occasionally, I find it necessary to comment on politics. Most readers will be aware that through the night the Labour Party was obliterated in the British General Election. For a long time I was well aware that the Labour Party that had since betrayed the British workingman, was going down to defeat for its refusal to accept the Brexit referendum.
It was bizarre to see the commentators on the BBC mentioning the Labour defeats in northern constituencies that were held for decades, simply because of Labour fanaticism to remain in the EU. Seats were lost simply because the myopic addiction to neo-liberalist globalism was too consuming to break. It was their addictive narcissism that workingmen are but simpletons, narrow-minded "bigots", "homophobic", "transphobic" and had to be "guided" into the utopian brave new world that inhibited Labour MPs from following their constituents demands to leave Europe.
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| Identity and sexual "politics" are Labour's obsession |
The war on social media is foreign to the workingman. Workingmen's lives do not evolve around Twitter or Facebook. The workingman (or country farmer) do not have the luxury of the elitist urbanite to be spending hours on social media. They live in the real world, not virtual reality. These men form their ideas on the factory floor, in the fields as they work, and in the pubs where they meet - face to face - with their friends. They knew and discussed only one thing: Brexit. They knew that since joining Europe the steel industry was destroyed, the coal industry was destroyed. The great northern industrial heartland was destroyed by EU regulations and crony, protectionist capitalism. Pride in making something, pride in providing for family with an honourable, decent paying job was gone.
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| The Bentley Factory in Crewe. Workingmen are interested in honour and hard work, not ideologies. |
The economy was (and is) driven by an artificially inflated repo-equities market that is an illusion of wealth. Quick, and obscene fortunes were made in the City by speculators, but the workingman suffered. Labour (just look at the election map and see how Labour swept the ultra-wealthy, multi-millionaire saturated constituencies of north London) not only was detached from the daily toils and care of the workingman, but had grown to distain him as well.
The words of the erudite political thinker, and maverick man of the left, George Galloway, should be carefully studied. His observations about the election have been prophetic. I have followed him closely over this past year and every prediction he made has come to pass.
Not since the election of 1935 has the Parliamentary Labour Party been so small. When political dinosaurs roamed the earth a split Labour Party collapsed to the challenge of the Great Depression and seemed bound for extinction.
Ten years later they had their biggest ever election win sweeping Mr Churchill the War Leader from office.
My point is not merely to put in scale what happened in the British general election but also to illustrate the famous truth that there is no "final victory," and no "final defeat" either. It's never over.
I consistently predicted, on RT and everywhere, that Labour seats would go down like dominoes, that Labour would lose dozens maybe scores of seats throughout the Midlands, the north-west and north-east of England, and in Wales. All my expectations came to pass as counting continued into a real-life Friday the 13th for Labour.
It was Brexit of course – only the foolhardy deny their own electorate on such a matter, and so brazenly and for so long – but not only Brexit. In former premier Harold MacMillan's words "it's never one damned thing, it's one damned thing after another."
Labour's defiance of its own supporters behind its 'red-wall' – seats in some cases it had held for a hundred years, seemed to put the tin-hat on things for the British industrial and post industrial heartlands. For American readers, imagine Michigan, Connecticut and Pennsylvania.
And that's after many years of amused bemused tolerance of an increasingly metropolitan liberal Labour Party – which regularly parachuted in such liberals in Labour livery into what were until now safe Labour seats. So, for example, that well known coal-miner Tony Blair dropped in for a while as the MP for the mining town of Sedgefield with his fancy London Barrister ways…
Read the entire article HERE.
But after Brexit, what next? That is the question, to paraphrase Shakespeare.
Wakefield in the North of England repainted bright Tory blue! One of 59 lost Labour seats!
ReplyDeleteBrexit divided every family, region, class, and social grouping.
Ten years of harsh austerity measures (imposed by the Tories) changed the social landscape.
The old Labour movement (and the influence of the trades unions) died with the end of the heavy industries, coal mining, engineering and steel, and all the jobs in the manufacturies, which gave men and women a decent wage.
So there is no social cohesion as there was in my day.
In its place came populism, jingoism, and an ugly anti-immigration movement.
Jeremy Corbyn was not popular on the street with natural Labour voters; his attempt to build a Left social movement (a kind of Popular Front) failed, at least outside London; Labour's hard-bitten realists regarded him as a disaster, playing student politics.
There was a strange reversal of political identity with working-class people in the North and Midlands switching from Labour to Tory; while Lord Heseltine, a Europhile and a lifelong Conservative, was saying *Don't vote Tory!*
The men of substance like Lord Heseltine and Ken Clarke now have to watch as Boris blunders his way into a brutally hard Brexit. He is not up to the job and neither are his facile team.
Theresa May failed to get a Brexit deal while being harried by the right-wing; years that could have been spent fixing the economy, the Health Service and schools.
As Tony Blair said, the one thing Boris feared was a second referendum, for that would have given the British people an opportunity to think about all the serious implications of leaving Europe.
The legal negotiations will take years, because we have had decades of integration.
Consider our fate, Barona.
We have left the biggest trading block in the world.
The EC consisted of 28 parliamentary democracies living in peace, the dream of war-ravaged Europe after 1945.
Yes, there were aspects of the EC that I disliked, including the power of unelected officials.
But Britain has lost its voice in Europe and will have no real voice in the world.
The National Health Service will be no better off for leaving Europe.
Outside of the EC, workers' rights will diminish as will environmental standards.
What happens when food prices rise, shortages appear in the shops, and people wake up and see how alone and unimportant we are in the world?
Scotland is now closer to independence. There is a widespread mood that the United Kingdom, in which I always believed, is broken and dysfunctional.
Yes, *we've got our country back* as the English Brexiteers (only 52 per cent of the referendum vote) keep saying.
But where will England be ten years from now?
What hope for the children?
I understand your concerns and position. However, the answer to this is to honour the referendum, and then, if people so choose, after accessing the results of Brexit to organize a referendum to re-apply. Had the referendum been cancelled (as referenda were cancelled or overridden in the Netherlands and France) any pretext of being "democratic" would have collapsed.
ReplyDeleteIt could be said, as Galloway has said that the NHS was being privatized under the EU watch. It can be said that there is nothing to stop Britain for having even higher standards on the environment than the Eu has. All my English relatives were strongly opposed to the EEC (at the time) and then the EU. Britain should, rather than close itself off in a enclosed EU market, reach out and begin trading with the Commonwealth, with Brazil, Russia, India - on equal terms.
But all of this to one saide, as the real issue is: where is Jesus Christ in all of this? This actually is the key probelm with the EU. Its subtle transition to an unelected, undemocratic crony capitalist Super-State which is anti Jesus Christ is the real problem.
The focus of my post was, the blindness of the Labour Party to the real life of working class Britons who have seen their industries raped and destroyed within the EU. So, naturally they want out.
Britain imports 48 per cent of the food we consume, and that figure is rising. Food and drinks prices will go up, once we are out of Europe.
ReplyDelete*Food shortages could hit within days of no-deal Brexit* by Anna Stewart (CNN) 2019.
That EC membership hit what is left of the steel industry (and destroyed the fishing industry) is the case made by former Thatcher minister, John Redwood. *How Joining the EU Led to a Decline in UK Industry* June 16 2016.
Taking the longer view is economic historian Robert Skidelsky (he wrote a brilliant biography of John Maynard Keynes) - *Meeting Our Makers: Britain's Long Industrial Decline* New Statesman January 2013.
Also, *The EU has destroyed some of our most prosperous industries* by James Bartholomew, The Daily Telegraph 2016.
Larry Elliott, economics editor of The Guardian, writes that *The crisis in British steel has been 40 years in the making* March 2016.
The literature on Britain wanting to join the EEC (we were then at the start of our decline) and being rebuffed by De Gaulle the first time, is vast.
*Why did Britain join the EC? A new insight from economic history?* should kick off discussion. It is by Nauros Campos and Fabrizio Coricelli (Vox).
Jesus said *Blessed are the peacemakers.*
The idea of a peaceful unified Europe was in the minds of Churchill, Eisenhower and Harold MacMillan. And of course Jean Monnet, the high international French civil servant, who had worked with the Americans, and had close links with the Soviets.
Soon Churchill's speech, *An iron curtain has fallen on Europe* made the need for European unity all the stronger; and there was need to keep Germany and France from each other's throats.
Read *Why Britain Really Joined the EEC (and why it had nothing to do with helping our economy)* by Alan Sked, London School of Economics, 2015.
The comments below are interesting especially one from Newsfactory.
The Cambridge historian who likes to take her clothes off (I have forgotten her name but you will find her on Vimeo) argues correctly I think, that globalisation caused wages stagnation, and not the EC.
Many decent people in England felt their neighbourhoods were changing because of immigration. But the Brexit Party exploited these fears by exaggerating the number of economic and political asylum seekers.
A Swedish postgraduate student I spoke to said that the topic of immigration in his country cannot be discussed in public. He was a liberal, studying in Scotland, but he described racial tension in Sweden as the elephant in the room.
Douglas Murray's book *The End of Europe* was dismissed by The Guardian reviewer as the gentrification of racism.
I thought this was offensive and irresponsible, since Murray's argument has always been that the problem is one of numbers, not a matter of racial politics. You can see him on YouTube.
Boris Johnson has an enormous task ahead and no one wants to see him fail.
I doubt whether he is really for or against Brexit.
That we can just *begin trading* with Russia, Brazil, India, is a fantasy.
It will take years and what happens in the interrum?
We kicked our Commonwealth partners like New Zealand in the teeth when we joined the EEC, and they will not take us back after such betrayal, as they see it.
*New Labour does not love the working class and the Conservatives do not love their country* was what romantic Tory Peter Hitchens argued.
People I talk to say the Labour Party disconnected from the working class as long ago as Tony Blair.
This is what Jeremy Corbin was trying to fix, and yet he was unpopular on the streets as Caroline Flint (she lost her seat) and many other Labour candidates are now saying.
Yet why would working class people vote Tory when it is against their interest?
And how can Labour ever hope to win back Scotland which has backed the Nationalists?
We are in a disorientating place and we need to keep our heads.
There has never been a better time to ponder Kipling's poem *If*.
*A lavishly funded eurocratic state ... a fantastically financed pseudo-parliament.*
ReplyDeleteThanks for this show of fireworks from George Galloway!
As a man without allies even in his Labour Party days, Stand Alone George may be playing to the Brexit gallery, as if in need of friends.
But who could say he doesn't touch a nerve?
There is enough truth in his portrait of Brussels for anyone with even a slight knowledge of the EU to recognise.
What we dreamt of, and what we actually got, is the anguish of Europhiles.
One can almost hear Joan Sutherland singing *I dreamt I dwelled in marble halls.* Waking up is the hard part!
*The people of England have not spoken yet,* wrote Chesterton.
He said he did not fear Little Englanders; it was the Big Englanders who scared Chesterton; and perhaps the too confidant English Europhiles, not least Tony Blair, had a bit of Big England in their global ambitions.
The English people spoke a second time at this General Election, and the elites will have to come to terms with their decision.
As for Scotland, we march to a different drummer.
Worth watching on YouTube:
ReplyDeleteLabour's Jess Phillips: *I never expected it to be this bad.*
The Telegraph 12 December 2019.
A woman close to the lives of her constituents, Jess Phillips retained her seat in Birmingham Yardley, polling 23,379 votes, with the Conservative candidate in second place with 12,720 votes.
Ms Phillips believes the Labour Party is still *the greatest single vehicle for social change.* Like many of us, she is shocked by the fact that Boris Johnson has been given a blank cheque to do as he likes by a sweeping majority.
Although I have never been a member of the Labour Party or any other party, Jess Phillips gave me a flashback of old Labour's great government minister, Barbara Castle (1910-2002).
If Barbara Castle had been Prime Minister instead of Margaret Thatcher, the United Kingdom would be very much more united today.
Instead we have beggars in the streets; millions unable to buy a house or rent one at a fair price; and many desperate people working on a zero-hours contract, not knowing how much they will earn from one week to the next.
My own doctor said the Tories don't really believe in the National Health Service (they all use BUPA) and have been privatising it by stealth.
Baroness Castle became MEP for Greater Manchester.
Her published diaries make fascinating reading in these Dickensian times of stupendous wealth and scrabbling poverty.
R.I.P.
Commenting on Barona's post, "workingmen" are also not self-styled intellectuals. While many are intelligent, the abstract arguments and causes the intellectuals tend to busy themselves with are largely foreign to the working people.
ReplyDeleteHaving watched the George Galloway speech a second time, I have to recognise its historic importance. Britain ceded the right of immigration control to the likes of Romania, as George stated.
ReplyDeleteBrexit divided the nation, but it caused deep division within at least one individual as well: myself.
We were told that belonging to the EC had to mean open borders, and that this was an article of faith, rather like the Creed.
Anyone who questioned this was dubbed *racist*.
Immigrants who committed murder and rape in Britain could not be evicted owing to the European Human Rights Act.
Even Guardian writers were saying this was wrong.
It was years before BBC Television allowed a debate on immigration, so controversial was the subject.
In 1975 I voted to join the EEC, but never imagined we would get a federalised Europe by stealth.
Or that it would one day tear the United Kingdom apart.
Now I would like to face the future with as much hope as George Galloway.
George had the guts to stand up against the Scottish Nationalist juggernaut, when other left-wingers like the late Jimmy Reid and William McIlvanney, made their peace with the Nationalist cause.
The Cambridge economist who opposed Brexit is Victoria Bateman.
ReplyDeleteSee, *Dr. Victoria Bateman. Brexit: The Naked Truth (Cambridge 2019)* on Vimeo.
I fear Dr. Bateman is both brilliant and quite batty, like a character in a Nancy Mitford novel; novels which Evelyn Waugh enjoyed.
I am rereading a Mitford classic *The Blessing* published in the year of my birth, 1951, which provides much laughter in these worrying times.
Nancy Mitford is buried in a lovely Oxfordshire cemetery, not too far from one of my sisters.
Unity Mitford, who worshipped Hitler, committed suicide.
The British entered the common market fore trade, not political union. The EU has steadily moved in an undemocratic direction. f the EU wants to transform itself into a United States of Europe (as Tony Benn once said), let it. It will be unwieldy, but at least it would be democratic. But again, the problem is ultimately a spiritual one. As Bishop Williamson said, the British will leave Europe, but then what? The population is materialistic, atheistic, so whatever venture they strike out on will fail. Just as Norway and Switzerland are not in the EU, but remain steadfastly anti-Christian. Let us listen to George Galloway today on his MOATS show for a full review of the election.
ReplyDeleteIn one of his later public addresses C.S. Lewis spoke of the *de-christening* of Europe; a haunting phrase, considering that many Catholics do not have their babies christened. The diabolical process was well underway by the 1950s, when Lewis gave his talk.
ReplyDeleteIt would be hard to think of a European politician standing up for faith and declaring *Christ is the Lord* which you can hear the Cambridge Singers proclaiming, in their Cantique de Noel, *O Holy Night. YouTube.
How many Christian role models can the young look up to, in the field of the arts: Music, film, theatre, painting etc?
Western intellectuals and artists, with a few exceptions, turned their backs on Christianity.
One reads their obituaries every day; godless men and women who went into the valley of the shadow of death, without the Lord.
Think of that death video by David Bowie, a man trapped in the occult, and unable to free himself of its deadly embrace.
One exception is Scottish composer James MacMillan, who saw that he could not reconcile his Catholic faith with his youthful socialism.
In 2003 N.T. Wright published a monumental work, *The Resurrection of the Son of God*; here was a New Testament scholar, at the top of his game, putting his credibility and scholarship in favour of a historical bodily resurrection.
Is it on the syllabus of any philosophy course?
Is anyone even aware of the book, outside of a smallish group of theology students and committed Christians?
Jean Guitton, the Catholic philosopher, counselled Francois Mitterand, who in his last years was afraid of death and judgment.
I pray that more politicians will start to think about their eternal welfare, and the example they leave behind for the next generation.
It is worthwhile reading Eliot's *Journey of the Magi* and thinking about the last lines, because Europe now is a godless place, its people clutching their pagan idols.
Douglas Murray's book is titled *The Strange Death of Europe* and not as I described. He authored *The Madness of Crowds*.
ReplyDeleteOn YouTube, you can see Mr. Murray interviewed by Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institute (Robinson also has an interview with Sir Roger Scruton, *How To Be A Conservative*) and more recently Murray debated Sylvana Simons on *Political Correctness*.
Douglas Murray defends language, identity and liberty against the assaults of the neo-progressives, rather like Jordan Peterson, though Murray's background is journalism and not clinical psychology.
On YouTube you can watch David Bowie's *Lazarus (official video)* which asks to be read as a blasphemous version of Christ's miracle. Bowie's Lazarus walks backwards into a wardrobe, an upstanding coffin.
Some Bowie fans said it was his last confession, an admission that he had sold his soul to dark forces, and that the video plays with occult symbolism, like his final album, *Dark Star*.
My own interest even in youth was jazz and not rock. I would like to see Toronto's young jazz singers and musicians, and visit the grave of Oscar Peterson.
But I see now how rock music altered the consciousness of all post-Sixties people; it created a filter in so many minds; minds indifferent or hostile to Christian revelation
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I wish someone would explore this idea in a book. For rock music is an idol that tolerates no cultural opposition. Say what you like about Jesus, but don't dare knock the bands.
Mick Jagger like other rockers got his knighthood from the Queen.
Watch again: *MPs are servants of the people*, Boris Johnson gives speech in North East. The Telegraph. 14 December 2019. YouTube.
ReplyDeleteIt's pie in the sky - Lord Heseltine abandons Remain fight. 14 December 2019. Sky News. YouTube.
UK working class voted for an idea of Britishness. 16 December 2019. CNBC TV International. YouTube.
The man being interviewed is Will Hutton, author, social thinker, and entrepreneur.
Thanks, Toronto Catholic Life for caring what happens in Blighty. You have a young, vibrant, self-supporting, and ravishingly beautiful country.
God bless the people of Canada.
One last plug Barona, then I will shut up about Brexit, Boris and Britain.
ReplyDeleteRead *Boris: The New Blair* by Peter Hitchens. 12.14.19. First Things.
I would rather read Peter Hitchens than any other English newspaper columnist or blogger. There is no one like Hitchens left in Britain.
When I was young I loved Keith Waterhouse's twice-weekly column in The Daily Mirror. Waterhouse wrote brilliant novels, *There is a Happy Land* and *Billy Liar* but never gave up his day job in print journalism.
His memories of growing up in Sheffield, Yorkshire, where he was born in 1928, were worth their weight in gold bullion.
*The past is another country; they do things differently there.*
I am no fan of Johnson. I am aware that hi, not being a Catholic, does not understand the issues. I support Brexit to the degree that it is a reaction against the imperialistic, protectionist statist EU. The real question is after Brexit. The Europeans are aware that they are disunited. They are aware that Europe once used to be united. However, they have rejected the source of unity. As such, the EU is built in sand.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is much, much bigger than the EU or Britain.
The new British Workers PArty would argue that all the misery in Britain has been achieved under the EU.
ReplyDelete