Britain

Why Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Leadership Candidacy Matters

Samuel Hooper9 Comments

Jeremy Corbyn - Labour Leadership - Dan Hodges - Tories4JeremyCorbyn - 1

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You don’t have to agree with Jeremy Corbyn to welcome his presence in the Labour leadership contest

It is a pity that the inclusion of Jeremy Corbyn in the Labour leadership race is pretty much only being discussed in the context of the growing #Tories4Corbyn movement.

CapX explains the phenomena:

Putting Corbyn on the ballot paper does have one unintended consequence, which is amusing the Conservatives greatly. Suddenly, there is great interest from senior Tories in helping Labour to elect Corbyn, because they think, rightly, that it would equal oblivion for Labour and a generation of Tory rule.

There is a practical way Tory voters can help, the Conservatives have realised. For just £3 anyone can sign up as a Labour supporter and a get a vote in the party’s leadership contest. On Twitter, Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, has already described getting the chance to help make the completely unelectable Jeremy Corbyn Labour leader as a notable bargain.

This Tories4JeremyCorbyn movement could take off. How long before someone establishes a website and Twitter account explaining how Tory voters can win it for Jeremy?

This is all well and good, but it is also a distraction, the type of fun Westminster parlour games that the political class like to play to entertain themselves, leaving the vast majority of Britons either oblivious or turned off. Meddling in the other side’s leadership election might elicit smirks and chuckles in the Westminster Arms, but it hardly does anything to improve the reputation of a political class seen as totally cut off from the people.

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There Are Important Priorities Beyond Brexit And The British Bill Of Rights

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

David Cameron - EU Referendum - Brexit - Human Rights Act

 

Janet Daley has a good piece in the Telegraph today, castigating the Tories for the way in which David Cameron’s government is rapidly turning the serious question of Britain’s future in the European Union into a farcical “pantomime”.

Taking the government to task for letting down those people who ‘kept the faith’ and voted Conservative in May, Daley laments:

But what a dispiriting carry-on it must seem to most voters, especially the ones who were really happy that they had kept their nerve and voted Conservative.

But here’s the money quote:

But our EU membership did not create the non-contributory benefit system in which people who have never paid in receive indefinite support. Nor did it give rise to our unique universal, free at the point of use, rationed health care system. And it certainly was not responsible for the poor educational achievements of so many young British people that companies prefer to import labour rather than cope with the shortcomings of our school standards.

This hits at an important question. Why is it that we want Britain to leave the European Union in the first place? And why do we actually want to unshackle ourselves from an international “human rights” mechanism that has been hijacked and turned into little more than a guarantor of social democratic dogma?

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800 Years Of Magna Carta: Still Worth Celebrating, After All These Years

Guest Contributor1 Comment

Magna Carta - 800 Years Anniversary - Human Rights - Freedom - Liberty - Britain - England

 

By Ben Kelly, blogger and editor of The Sceptic Isle.

15 June 2015 marks 800 years since a rather famous charter was agreed by the unpopular King John at Runnymede, under pressure from a group of rebellious barons who had backed his failed war against the French and now sought to constrain him.

The severely weakened king had no choice but to bear witness to the sealing of what many now perceive as one of the world’s most important documents. It has become iconic, but it has its detractors. It is a favourite pastime of dry historians and politically motivated lawyers to pick the myth apart and express their disdain for the reverence shown to the old document.

It is quite true that we tend now to view it through rose tinted glasses after much historical revisionism and the creation of a national myth around the event.

The details of the actual event and the passage of the charter into law are often oversimplified or caricatured. The date which we will this year mark, and the document we celebrate, is revered in part because of the manner in which it has been used by those with a political agenda.

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If Barack Obama Likes The EU So Much, America Can Take Britain’s Place

Samuel Hooper5 Comments

Barack Obama - EU - Britain - Brexit

 

The harshest critics of President Obama like to complain that the 44th president of the United States does not believe in American exceptionalism.

But today Barack Obama proved these fears to be unfounded – he does indeed believe that America is different and better than all the other countries of the world. And he did so by using an intervention at the G7 summit in Germany to pointedly suggest that a diplomatic settlement which the United States would never accept for itself (membership of a supernational body with sovereignty over the US government) is perfectly good enough for Britain, America’s closest ally.

From the Huffington Post:

Mr Obama’s comments came as he met Prime Minister David Cameron for talks in the margins of the G7 summit of world leaders in Schloss Elmau, Germany.

They are the strongest indication yet that Washington wants a Yes vote in the referendum which Mr Cameron has promised by the end of 2017 on whether Britain should stay in the EU.

Greeting Mr Cameron at the start of the bilateral talks, Mr Obama said the US-UK relationship remains strong, telling reporters: “We have no closer partner around the world on a whole host of issues.”

And he added: “I would note that one of the great values of having the United Kingdom in the European Union is its leadership and strength on a whole host of global challenges, so we very much are looking forward to the United Kingdom staying part of the European Union because we think its influence is positive not just for Europe, but also for the world.”

It should be noted that by making these pro-European interventions, President Obama is only repeating the longstanding American diplomatic position, which is that Britain should remain part of the European Union, come hell or high water.

Unfortunately, both hell and high water are now nearly upon us thanks to the suffocating economic and political embrace of the Old World, and it is high time we stopped giving any weight or consideration to American entreaties for us to do what is most convenient and beneficial for their own foreign policy over and above what is best for Britain. The United States would certainly like for Britain to remain in the European Union. But don’t take this as a sign of some overriding concern for the future of the UK’s economy or the health of our democracy – far from it.

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The Soft Bigotry Of The Left: UKIP Banned From London Gay Pride March

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Pride In London - UKIP banned - Gay Pride March - 40 Year Pride Anniversary

 

When is it right and proper to ban a group of people from participating in what has traditionally been an inclusionary and proudly non-partisan public event?

The answer, according to the organisers of the Pride in London gay pride parade, is when those innocent people just happen to be affiliated to UKIP, the pariah party among Britain’s political class.

There had been rumblings that this might happen for a few days now. When it was discovered that an LGBT delegation from UKIP planned to join the march, thousands of virtue-signalling left-wing keyboard warriors took to the internet in self-righteous fury, signing a petition to have LGBT UKIP members and other sympathetic Ukippers purged from the event.

The online petition (change.org petitions now being the preferred medium for the new middle class clerisy to purge opposing thought from the public sphere) raged:

Nigel Farage, leader of UKIP, clearly does not support the values of acceptance that Pride promotes, and UKIP is an inherently homophobic, transphobic, xenophobic, racist and misogynistic political party.

UKIP’s inclusion in Pride has already caused public outcry and many have stated they would feel unhappy and unsafe to have a UKIP group included in Pride 2015’s march, being that they are from an organisation that inherently does not support the values of acceptance and inclusion that Pride promotes.

To their partial credit, the organisers did not back down immediately. But now it seems that the anti-UKIP heat became too much for the Pride in London organisers to withstand. So great is the level of hostility and opprobrium showered on Ukippers – as well as on those others perceived to be going too easy on Nigel Farage’s party – that the banning of UKIP from the parade was sadly inevitable.

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