Stubborn, thick, petulant Theresa May has decided what her legacy is going to be: she’s going to poison the wells, salt the earth, and make damn sure that her name lives on through all eternity as the stroppy cow who cost the UK economy £1 trillion.
That’s her Chancellor Phil Hammond’s estimate of how much it will cost to implement her legally binding ‘Net Zero’ commitment — to be passed by parliament on the nod, apparently with no scrutiny whatsoever — to 100 per cent decarbonise the UK economy by 2050.
Previously — under the terms of the disastrous and pointless 2008 Climate Change Act — the target was an 80 per cent reduction. Since this was largely a virtue-signalling exercise in the dog days of the last Labour government, dreamed up by an activist called Bryony (now Lady) Worthington from the hard left Friends of the Earth and Environment Secretary Ed Miliband, many thought that this would be one of the first things a Conservative government would repeal when it got into power.
Vote Conservative, get Labour. This was one of the salutary lessons of the Peterborough by-election in which Nigel Farage’s insurgent Brexit Party was narrowly beaten — by just under 700 votes — by Labour.
Labour got 10,484 votes
The Brexit Party got 9,801
Conservatives got 7,243
If these vote ratios are replicated in a general election, then Britain will be in serious trouble. It will mean that, just like has happened in New Zealand, the votes of the majority right will have been fatally split so that the party of the minority hard-left ends up in power.
So how do we avoid the terrifying prospect of Jeremy Corbyn, PM?
Now that Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party has cleaned up in the EU elections, its 29-seat victory making it the joint largest party in the entire European Parliament, the message about the political mood in Britain could not be clearer: Britain MUST remain in the EU.
At least that’s the conclusion currently being touted by the losing Remainers, who appear to be having a bit of a Downfall moment, as they attempt to move their non-existent divisions across their imaginary sand table in pursuit of the victory their loopy, deluded brains imagine is now inevitable.
I’m keeping a completely open mind on the Tory leadership contest. So long as it’s either Priti Patel or Steve Baker, I really don’t mind who wins…
As for the more favoured candidates (at least as far as the bookies are concerned), what I’m really not seeing so far is much evidence that any of them has quite woken up to the existential threat facing the Conservative Party.
Perhaps the results of the European Parliament elections will concentrate their minds. But I doubt it. The Conservatives have already priced in the inevitable fact that the Brexit Party is going to be the runaway winner of the EU elections and that it will mark the biggest electoral defeat in the Conservatives’ 185-year history.
Yet still, from what I’ve seen from their interviews, statements to the press, and campaign slogans so far, they all still think it’s business as usual.
Tories believe in a society that is built from the bottom up where the state is there to help and protect, not to order and direct…
and
The object of a Conservative government is to allow people to lead the lives that they want, while trying to take obstacles out of their way.
and
The best interests of the collective are served by the free choices of individuals, rather than the socialist ideal that the best interests of the individual are served by the orders of the collective.
Yes! Imagine what an amazing, prosperous and free place Britain would be if its next government understood these basic principles. What I like about them is the way they put clear blue water between the ideology of the left and the ideology of the right – but without coming across as off-puttingly ideological or too constrictingly party political.
BIRMINGHAM, England — I’m at Britain’s Conservative party conference, testing the water to see whether Brexit is ever going to happen or whether it’s all over and we might just as well kill ourselves now.
Do you want the good news or the bad?
I’ll get the bad out of the way first, which isn’t really news because you know it already. Britain is currently being governed by a bunch of muppets.
They are useless: Conservatives in name only. Timid, entirely lacking in principles, and led by undoubtedly one of the feeblest, most uninspiring, most excruciatingly dogmatic and wrong prime ministers in British history.
Do you like the meat in your hamburgers pink in the middle?
Look, I’m not judging you if you don’t. If you like your burgers tough, chewy, tasteless, sterile, then you go, girl!
All I’m saying is that for those of us in Nanny State Britain who like their burgers underdone properly (ie pink in the middle) these are difficult times.
There are loads of fancy burger joints opening up all over the country, but most chefs insist – quite belligerently in some cases – that they will not serve their meat cooked any less than medium because Health and Safety regulations forbid them from doing so.
Yes, yes, I appreciate that under-cooked minced beef can indeed harbour a variety of unpleasant bacteria; that when you consume this stuff, you are taking a risk.
But that surely is the blessing of being a grown up in a free country. You – not the state – decide what is and isn’t good for you. You make the trade-off – delicious, melt-in-the-mouth, unctuous pink minced steak v the risk of a bad tummy – not some finger-wagging bureaucrat. This is what freedom means: the ability to take calculated risks – risks which, by nature, will on occasion lead you to come unstuck. But that’s OK. Life’s like that. That’s the deal, for better or worse. No one gets out of here alive. But that’s no reason for us to stop doing everything that is fun while we’re waiting for the worst to happen.
This is why my favourite new Conservative is Liz Truss. She has just given a brilliant speech at the London School of Economics on the subject of liberty. And burgers.
Here is the relevant passage:
Or take burgers. I keep being told by excellent burger producers, whether it’s the Burger Shop in Hay-On-Wye or Bleecker Street in London, that there are strict restrictions against selling medium rare.
Why can’t I as a consumer decide, as I would be in most parts of the USA, or France?
Regulations against my tastes in burgers may see a little trivial, but they are symptomatic of a broader malaise.
Unnecessary red tape restricts business and consumer freedom, so I believe we should cut it wherever we can.
Dear President Trump,
It is being reported in the UK media that you have grown tired of Prime Minister Theresa May’s “school mistress” tone.
Join the club, Mister President. You only have to put up with her briefly, at events like today’s G7 in Quebec. In Britain we have to endure her pretty much 24/7 and she’s a national embarrassment. The last thing we’d want you to think is that she is in any way emblematic of English womanhood; or indeed of British conservatism.
Theresa May is what we call over here a frost. It’s not about you: she’s like this with everyone. Anyone who has had dealings with her will tell you the same. She’s prim, distant, cool, earnest, faintly disapproving. And don’t be misled by the slinky fashion she sometimes affects – the leather trousers, the flashes of (admittedly very well-turned) leg, the designer leopard print shoes: it’s an aberration, not a reflection of some inner funster just waiting to burst out. No one has ever accused Theresa May of being fun. Because she isn’t.
UK Environment Secretary Michael Gove has declared war on crony capitalism.
He won’t get any credit for this – not while we are (quite justifiably) hating on his dog’s vomit-pool of a government for its despicable failure in implementing Brexit. But he should because what he’s saying is important.
Here is what he told the Policy Exchange think tank:
Economic power has been concentrated in the hands of a few and crony capitalists have rigged the system in their favour and against the rest of us.
Over recent decades, debt has fuelled growth in an unsustainable fashion – indeed growth has been built not just on irresponsible levels of borrowing but an unsustainable approach towards natural resources.
‘Our politics, culture and regulatory models have worked against innovation, indeed have been pushed in that direction by powerful incumbents.
‘Many of our fellow citizens, especially those without the qualifications and connections to work the existing system, have seen less and less value placed on their work and themselves.’
I didn’t mean to insult all Cocker Spaniels. Of course, I recognise that with the right training their natural intelligence can be channelled and they can be made into the most excellent gun dogs. But as anyone has ever owned a spaniel can confirm, they are also prone to being quite exceptionally idiotic and useless.
Nowhere near as idiotic and useless as Britain’s current prime minister, especially where Brexit is concerned.
Every now and then, I find myself having to explain to Americans what has become of the amazing Brexit revolution, which they heard about a lot at the time (the vote was in June 2016) because in many ways it was the precursor to the Trump revolution.
When I tell them that virtually nothing has been achieved in the two years since, that the Remainer establishment has been doing everything in its powers to frustrate the democratic will of 17.4 million Leave voters, they’re astonished.
