Why I've stopped Caring about British Politics, and Only Laugh at It

This is an extended version of a couple of replies I have to contributors on an earlier thread. I think quite a few of my readers have failed to grasp just what a significant moment the election result was for me. For some time I had listened to appeals from readers to ���get involved��� in politics.

 

I had explained laboriously to people who think you can just ���stand as an MP��� and expect to be chosen on your merits, that MPs are in fact selected by parties and then ritually approved by voters at elections where reason and thought are minor influences. Even at by-elections, where tribal voting is less marked, it is almost unknown for a genuine independent to be elected.  Yet I still get almost weekly enquiries asking why I do not ���stand for Parliament���.

 

I had explained equally laboriously that an individual MP has as much influence on affairs as the lady who hoovers the House of Commons carpets when MPs have gone home. Without a party in which he or she is broadly at home, is listened to and has some hope of ministerial office, an individual MP can do no more than  make unreported speeches to an empty chamber late in the evening, ask questions which will almost certainly remain unanswered, and vanish into the obscurity of committee work.

 

And I had explained what was necessary and possible (within the law and without violence) to open the existing system to people such as me.

 

These careful, reasoned explanations mainly produced anger and frustration from readers who either had an unswerving loyalty to the Tory party or who insisted on seeing UKIP as a viable party of government.

 

But I continued to hope that, just possibly, they were having an undetected effect elsewhere.

 

The result of the 2010 election showed that even a fourth Tory defeat in a row (which I had desired and predicted) could not by itself destroy the attachment of tribal loyalists to that ghastly party. The formation of the Coalition was so swift that many Tory loyalists thenceforward forgot that their party *had* been defeated and were often shocked to be reminded that they were governing in a coalition. They were not, on the other hand, shocked by how easily the Tory Party meshed with the Liberal Democrats, by how little real dissension there was, by how readily, even anxiously, the Tory Party pressed concessions on the Liberal Democrats to obtain agreement. This process, of course completely confirmed my view that the Tory Party is not in its nature conservative at all, and is in many respects the most left-wing of all our major parties in practice. Witness especially the enactment of same-sex marriage when it had not even been in the Tory manifesto, and the devastation of the armed forces, reducing them to levels that might have worried George Lansbury.

 

The 2015 election underlined the failure of my plea. It showed that left-wing voters care much more about betrayal than conservative ones.  The Liberal Democrats were unjustly punished for having gone into coalition with the Tories, even though they had by doing so achieved many of the desires of their supporters.  The Tories were not punished at all by their voters for joining a coalition of anti-British leftists and pursuing their aims.

 

It was plainly impossible to take this seriously any more. The whole thing is an irrational farce in which millions vote merrily against their best interests. Were I to carry on caring about it, I should only make myself very unhappy for no good purpose. I had pretty much resolved on this position after 2010, but the success of UKIP during 2014 caused me to harbour foolish hopes. These might have been fulfilled had the Labour Party not collapsed in Scotland, but it did, and so we are where we are.

 

And that along with a deep loathing of plebiscites as manipulative and biased in favour of power, is why I decline to get involved in the doomed ���No��� campaign . (This, by the way is not ���hesitancy��� as one contributor describes it, but hard undiluted determination to take no part in a wicked deception). It is doomed not just because it will lose, but also because it would not succeed in its aim even if it won.  In the absence of  a political party committed to British independence, with a Commons majority won on that policy, the United Kingdom will not leave the EU.

 

Mr Brooks Davis thinks there is ���still a chance���. He is welcome to his belief. But I do not think any rational person in possession of the facts can actually believe that. And I believe that in temporal matters, facts and logic are indispensable.

 

Mr Belcher writes : ������you admit you were wrong about The Conservatives winning a majority this last General Election - so don't you want to be wrong again in your prediction about the E.U vote in 2016 ? ���

The very reasons why I was wrong about the election are the reasons I am right about the referendum. In the election I underestimated the power of money, which will be crucial in the referendum, and which, as I wrote last Sunday, will be heavily weighted towards the ���Yes��� side. I also underestimated the credulity of voters repeatedly told a blatant falsehood. If the British public and media can be persuaded to believe that George Osborne has achieved an economic miracle (and they can be) , they can be persuaded that David Cameron has returned in triumph from Brussels with a package of reforms he can ���wholeheartedly��� recommend to the voters.

 

 

 

Is my turning aside, in amused disgust, a moral failing or a dereliction of duty?  It might be if I had never tried, but, having tried, I do not think so. I have tried quite hard (as I note below) to put across a coherent and civilised case against the modern consensus.  I have pretty much completely failed. Why pretend otherwise?  My arguments are unwelcome both to my opponents and to my theoretical allies. I think it safe to assume that this is because, whatever they may say, my theoretical allies prefer the apparent (if illusory) comfort and stability of the status quo to the uncertain shadowy paths of resistance. Their unwillingness to risk what I most urgently sought ��� a Britain without the Tory Party ��� seems to me to show that,  above all things. Their inability to accept that it might (horrors!) be *up to them* to build its replacement was always one of the most striking things about those who rejected my case for boycotting the Tories.

 

By the way, w ell-meant advice about alternative methods of publishing, websites etc is obviously kindly meant, but such things have a tiny impact, and are trivial compared with access to the public mind granted by mainstream book publishing and terrestrial TV and radio, both increasingly closed to me.

 

I don���t think the moral law obliges us to thump our heads against stone walls. We should mainly be concerned with reforming ourselves anyway, and there���s never any shortage of work to do there.

 

This brings me to those two replies.

In reply to Mr 'Of' (who rightly complains that I misattributed his words to Edward O��� Hara, possibly because it was a more credible name)who wrote ���I assume that PH does not want to legitimise this transparent stitch-up by contributing to a high turnout.��� , I wrote ���That is a pretty good summary of my position. I never wanted a referendum, I cannot see why any secessionist viewed it as an object worth pursuing and I don't greatly care what the result is (not that I think it is in doubt) as no conceivable British government will take us out of the EU. If other people wish to be played with and mocked in this fashion, that is up to them. I prefer to remain undeceived.

 

In reply to Mr���Topper���, who wrote: ��� Despair is a strong word, which few people will genuinely understand, and many will disparage and scoff at. That you find this situation funny I find amazing, since I can only see despair as producing sadness. But perhaps this is because I still have not experienced it in its fullness. However, like you, I am glad that I voted no in 1975, and I even worked hard for the "Get Britain Out" campaign before the referendum.���

I wrote : ���My despair is purely temporal. I still hope for the eternal triumph of truth and justice. It is also rational. I felt, during the last two elections, that I had a moral duty to advise my readers on the best course of action. I did so, in the simplest and clearest terms, explaining my reasons repeatedly and in detail, meeting all objections with careful rebuttal. Most of them, despite constantly saying how much they valued my views, quibbled, pretended not to understand, asked daft questions about what would happen *after* a Tory collapse, as if I could possibly know, or made silly requests to be told exactly how not to vote Tory, as if it mattered which dustbin they tossed their votes into. I might as well have said nothing at all, and saved my breath and my fingertips. The opportunity which existed in 2010, for real political change, has now gone forever. I am relieved of any responsibility for what happens next, and untroubled by any hope of improvement in that or in any of the other major issues on which I have campaigned. The invariable reaction to my careful research and reasoned arguments has been that I have been ignored or abused. I now face growing limits on what I can even get published ( my broadcasting appearances dwindle daily, I can no longer publish three-dimensional books). What to do? Rational despair, and laughter, while recording the absurdities of the age, seems the best arrangement.���

 

The more I think about it, the more sure I am that this is right.