The Tory Party Should Examine Itself Before Accusing Others of Lying

How funny it is to see the Tory Party’s screeching, Stalinist response to the latest defection by one of its MPs. For years, they happily held Mark Reckless to their bosom. He passed through their horrible anti-thought selection process.

 

He trotted into the lobbies for them and did all the other humiliating things that backbenchers must do to keep their jobs – for of course the big parties have now (disgustingly) turned membership of the House of Commons into paid service to 'The Party' rather than duty to the country and the voters.

 

They were happy with that.

 

 

But as soon as Mr Reckless woke from his long political sleep and actually started describing the world as it is,   we saw Mr Grant Shapps, the Party chairman, squawking that Mr Reckless is guilty of ‘betrayal and lies’

 

'I share your deep sense of betrayal and anger. We've been repeatedly let down by someone who lied to his constituents and you.’, Mr Shapps told the elderly and bewildered remnant of loyalists, interlarded with heavily-gelled young careerists, which now forms the audiences at Tory Party annual rallies.

 

'He lied, lied and lied again.'

 

 

 

Well, if lying is counted such a terrible offence in Tory circles, few shall ‘scape whipping.

 

The Tory leadership have known for years they were lying about almost everything they told the country. They had no plans to control immigration, but pretended they had. They had no idea what to do about crime, or health or schools.  But they claimed to do so. They have no intention of releasing this country from the EU – but they pretend they have.

 

Far from solving the economic crisis, they have made it worse, borrowing more every week, pumping funny money into our balloon economy.

 

They have covered the gap at the centre of their policy  with a thick, brittle,  sugary icing of lies and slogans, and pretended there is a cake underneath.

 

Actually there is a terrible void.

 

Even before the ‘recovery’ is officially revealed to be the fake it is, the growing economic crisis is already sucking people into a new world of permanent low wages, threadbare welfare, untrustworthy health services, cramped, jammed-together housing, overcrowded and useless schools, devastated savings, and mounting disorder.

 

Soon the catastrophic effects of Mr Cameron’s half-witted and delusional Libya policy, the most desperate wave of economic migration ever to hit Europe, will begin to make itself felt across Southern England (the first signs are already evident as the authorities run out of places to put the new migrants).

 

Readers here will know that I have little time for UKIP, and I can’t claim to be an admirer of either Mr Reckless or of Douglas Carswell, the two recent defectors. 

 

Even so, by comparison with the fake moralizing of Mr Shapps, both UKIP and its new MPs are praiseworthy and honourable. They are groping towards the truth about this country, and they have been prepared to undergo risk and abuse to do so.  Much as I wish this long overdue crisis had come five years ago (when we could have been saved from so much) I am glad it has at last arrived.

 

The media political commentariat, so long complacent and sycophantic towards the old parties, are beginning to realize that their lunch partners and fellow careerists may actually have had it. In which case, what’s the future for them?

 

As for Mr Brooks Newmark, I will only say that I do not much grieve over his downfall, and hope only that it eventually makes him a better man. A year ago, he suggested in the Commons that my opposition to the plan to aid the Syrian rebels was ‘in support of the Assad regime’.

 

See http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2013/10/brooks-newmark-mp-the-syrian-regime-and-me.html

 

I showed beyond doubt that this was not so. I took every possible step to ask him politely to withdraw, including enlisting the non-partisan and effective aid of my own MP, the Right Honourable Andrew Smith. Mr Newmark would not withdraw. Now I no longer care if he withdraws or not.  Since he has turned himself into a figure of fun by his own efforts, I no longer need to care what he has said, or now says,  about me.