That Howard speech, hey ? What a devil-may-care guy. He's claiming all our problems arise from a lack of respect. Given that he came out with this vacuous guff in the centre of a near-war zone yet still got out without being lynched suggests all too much respect in modern Britain. Doubtless, Howard charged up the base with that speech, but to my own fat self it just confirmed that the Tories biggest problem isn't their name, their colour scheme or bad hair - it's the fact they're completely irrelevant.
Now, for sure there are plenty of other things wrong with the Conservatives, but it is their essential uselessness that makes these other issues loom large. Check out how sleaze was a lethal issue for Major but a non-starter with Lady T (or for that matter, how Blair's travails with Mandy haven't damaged him). At best, Howard's speech merely confirmed that he understands the problem, even while he has no worthwhile ideas on how to fix it.
It is ironic that this event itself provides a text-book example of where we are today. Following on from the day's festivities….. well, read it yourself:
A police chief constable has expressed concern that comments made by the Mayor of Middlesbrough could be seen as an invitation for police to break the law.
In a speech on Tuesday, Ray Mallon encouraged police officers and community wardens to kick down doors and root out the criminals.
But Cleveland Police Chief Constable Sean Price said the force would "not support any transgression of the law".
It need hardly be said that this is a perfect example of one of the Liberals most asinine debating tricks, namely the 'code words' scam, whereby a Conservative raises a point 90% of the population would agree with (ie the Police should enforce the Law) and the L3 claim he actually meant something completely ludicrous (ie the Police should ignore the Law). To claim to take seriously Price's hysterical comment is to claim to see no middle ground between anarchy and Auschwitz.
But look at the wider context: the Conservative leader gives a speech and the local Chief Constable tries to shiv him by proxy. Like, hello ? There are many different interpretations of what the role of the Police should be, but none of them mention spinning for the government. Except, for an increasing number of alleged public servants politics is what their job is all about. It is eminently possible that the Police reacted faster to Mallon's speech than they did to this. The only conclusion must be that if you hear someone breaking into your house at 3 AM you should lean out the window with a megaphone talking about your support for school vouchers and they'll be there in a flash.
I've written before about the influence of Gramsci on modern Liberalism, suffice to say for now that an incoming Conservative Government will face a bureaucracy in the hands of left-wing activists. This is what Howard is not addressing.
Take what happened when Nu Lab introduced the mandatory jail sentence for a second burglary conviction, with a get out clause for 'exceptional circumstances'.In the first year of operation the provision was not used once or, to put it another way, every case was judged to be exceptional. Think that one though. The whole of our nation's judiciary stood up and mooned at Parliament and, by extension, to the whole electorate.
Apparently, Parliament lost the Civil War in the L3 universe. Take this drivel from the Uber L3 Law Commission. They want to abolish the mandatory life sentence for murder, and what justification do they offer for this step ?
The Law Commission said it had found wide support among criminal justice professionals for an end to the mandatory life sentence for murder.
Well, that settles it then. These people can't even conceive of the Law not being their personal property. Hey - they're certain it needs to change so change it already.
The bottom line is that Howard can blather on all he wants about cracking down, but without a determination to clean house that's all it is. Whatever transient headlines Howard can capture, the public at large instinctively knows that the Conservatives just aren't serious about driving through change, and that being so, why should anyone vote for them ?
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