Norman Tebbit, Telegraph blogger (Photo: Andrew Crowley)
My goodness how I admire Lord Tebbit! (So too, to judge by the number of comments on his brilliant blogs do many of you). I must admit I didn’t always feel this way but that’s only because in my younger more foolish days I was more easily swayed by the Gramsci-endorsed left-liberal dialectic which dominates our culture. The semi-house-trained polecat? The leather-clad boot-boy on Spitting Image? These were tags that stuck regardless of anything the poor fellow said or did.
Lord Tebbit is that rare thing: a conviction politician. And that even rarer thing in these dismal, heir-to-Blair times a Conservative conviction politician. Of the senior Tories around today, he is pretty much the only one left who speaks up for first principles: limited government; low taxation; liberty. Nor is he afraid to speak up on issues like Islamism and immigration. That’s because he understands that there are far worse fates for a politician than to find yourself on the wrong side of the BBC, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown and the Guardian. Like waking up one day as David Cameron’s entire shadow cabinet have done and realising you have just sold every one of your party’s principles down the river in a tragic, desperate bid for a brief period out of Opposition.
Now Tebbo has got himself in a spot of trouble for re-enacting the put down of the Boxer Rebellion. He has our sympathies and our promise of a serious storming-of-the-Bastille type scenario if he finds himself banged up for this venial slip.
Sure, maybe the Chinese New Year parade which interrupted his peace in Bury St Edmunds was indeed a glorious celebration of the wondrous melting pot that is modern multicultural Britain. But sometimes, I think many of us would agree, it’s possible to have far, far too much of a good thing.
Related posts:
- What Lord Tebbit says: a bit more right-wingness will do Cameron no harm at all
- In praise of patrons – particularly mine
- ‘Budget for growth’? Wot budget for growth?
- Lord Turnbull: the IPCC is useless
