Princess Leia Had The Right Idea

I loved the first few Nightmare On Elm Street films, but I got kind of hacked off with all the sequels. Every time, Freddie was defeated and sent back to Hell only to reemerge a few years later – it was all a bit too much like Ken Clarke leadership bids. Of course, Freddie could draw on the powers of Hell itself, while Ken Clarke has the support of the MSM, so there are other similarities.

Needless to say, it was a tough decision for the MSM whether to support an obnoxious Metropolitan elitist, but they managed to force themselves. Of course, the Left has always talked up Ken Clarke’s supposed likeability, simply so that when the Conservative Party unaccountabtly rejects him, they can use that to claim that it proves how extreme the Party is.

In fact, that’s the only silver lining here. To paraphrase Nixon on George McGovern, now the London media have a candidate who almost perfectly reflects their views, we’ll see who’s really out of touch with the public.

Clue number one is the fact that all the people paying tribute to Clarke’s loveable nature are part of the Metropolitan elite themselves. We’re supposed to admire his common touch when he speaks with the ordinary, everyday, journalist in the street ?

If Clarke has secret reserves of charm, he’s certainly keeping them well hidden. Then again, this wasn’t a man who was just wrong about the Euro, he was blatantly, blusteringly wrong. Here he is attacking – of all people - Tony Blair for not pushing the Euro enough. Clarke was right and everyone who opposed him was a moron, and we’re not supposed to remember that because the MSM assures us it’s all behind him – the EUrofantasism presumably, not the obnoxious bluster.

This appears to be something of a pattern in Clarke’s career. Ferdinand Mount covers some of the high(low)lights of his career here. What Mr Mount is presumably too nice to remind us about is that Clarke is not just a raging incompetent, but a repulsively arrogant one too. Take his comment during his tenure at Health that ambulance crews were just ‘professional drivers’. This isn’t normal political hyperbole; this is a man either stunningly ignorant or utterly mendacious. Either answer is hardly a good qualification for him to be trusted with the fate of the Conservative Party.

Putting up with the blustering buffoon is supposed to be the Conservative Party’s Faustian pact, in return for electability. Huh ? Scott makes the obvious point that the Conservative Party is never going to win elections thanks to the support of the Hampstead set. What the Party needs to do is to energise some of the people who don’t think it’s worth voting, and win back those working class voters who used to turn out for a woman who never got a soft-focus profile in the Guardian. Indeed, the first evidence is in, and it turns out that Clarke’s core support is amongst people who don’t actually like Conservatives – they probably recognise a kindred soul.

The other absurd excuse for the Clarke candidacy is that old one about voters being turned off by the extreme policies on issues such as immigration, crime and the like which the Conservative Party took into the last election. If you can’t remember what these were, just look at current government policy. Tony Blair has many flaws, but he is a master of reading the public mood. No, it wasn’t that the Conservatives went too far in some areas, it was the other areas where they didn’t go anywhere. Conservative MPs talking about public services sounded like Labour MPs talking about punishing criminals: they had the uncertain quality of people who know the public expect them to say something, but they have no idea what.

What the Conservatives really need to do is summed up in one of the comments to this post. Carl reports thus:

When my daughter was in year 1 (thats 5 and 6 year olds for the uninitiated) in my capacity as a volunteer/in-training Teaching Assistant I personally witnessed one little scrote who when disciplined would retreat to the corner of the classroom and yell repeatedly about how much he hated 'this fucking class'. Class was, by the way, being taught by the Deputy Head, whose domineering and authoritrian manner with the staff did not extend to the kids, it seemed.

Or the little charmer who used to scissor kids legs out from under them when they ran past whenever he was bored and liked to write 'Fuck Off' on his hands whenever the teacher wasnt looking and show his friends. He was great fun.

The moonbats have been in control of our kids education for a long time, aided and abetted by parents who think that the best way for their children to be educated is for them to be allowed to run riot, hit, swear and bully to their hearts content just like they are at home. The most unpopular teacher at said school (amongst staff and parents) is also the only one who imposes a proper measure of discipline on her pupils by actually expecting dangerously fascist ideas like actual WORK out of them. Funny that...

Does anyone think this is an isolated case ? Unless, and until, the Conservative Party shows a willingness to grips with this kind of insanity, the public is quite justified in leaving them to their death spiral.

Red On Red

Now do you believe me?

Like I keep saying, Ken Clarke is the John Prescot of the Tory Party. Just like the other fat fraud, we keep getting told that Clarke is in touch with the man in the street, but the only evidence for this is endless columns by media luvvies claiming that Clarke's boorishness is proof of authenticity. Appointing this tool as the voice of the conservative base is just a roundabout way of stereotyping grass roots conservatives, just as Lord Two Jags was a Northern Uncle Tom.

Of course, that's not to say the left aren't full of it too. They're enraged becuase someone tried to excuse evil by coming out with a load of blabber about nuance? And? Did he infringe on their patents or something?

Liberals have spent years finger-wagging about the crudity of the common herd, and their goofy ideas about good and evil. Now they're trying to convince us that they just can't bear to see a felon go free?

Hell, liberals even have a long history of taking out onions for sex offenders, providing the victims are under the age of majority. For proof of this, consider how none of them have found anything exceptional in Clarke's claim that statutory rape is no big thing, if the victim consents.

So the guy running the justice system doesn't understand the concept of 'age of consent' and no one on the left thinks that's a problem? Of course.

For that matter, what's with the femiloons complaining about trivialising rape? These people claim that everything in the whole world is just like being raped. What is the whole date rape thing if not an attempt to expand the definition of rape to the point of absurdity? Meanwhile, the central feature of Clark's plan is to give actual, genuine rapists a cut in their sentences, and feminists have nothing to say about it.

And then there's this....

On Wednesday, Browne, a 45-year-old mother of two who was attacked in 2003 by a serial sex offender freed from prison early, broke down in tears as she confronted Kenneth Clarke....

She's a liberal heroine!

It is significant that her voice cracked with emotion on BBC Five Live, not when she recounted the assault she endured, but when she described her fight to bring her attacker to justice, which, she says, won't be over until Sierra Leone-born Mohammed Kendeh, currently in prison for yet another crime, is finally deported. Kendeh, who attacked her in a park as she trained for the London Marathon, has thus far avoided deportation by claiming a right to a family life under Article 8 of the Human Rights Act – a defence that Browne says is an insult to his many victims, who may never recover.

She's a raycist!

Plus, you'll never guess what....

"My attacker had previously sexually assaulted six other women in the same park, and escaped a custodial sentence. He was in prison for burglary but because he was released after four months of his 13-month sentence, he was free to attack me."

Liberals complaining about the justice system being soft on predators is like Ken Clarke calling people fat.

Zepplin Zapping

Mark Steyn is the latest writer to put the boot into loveable weasel and Jabba the Hutt body double Ken Clarke. Unsurprisingly, I agree with all of it, but he also manages to hit on what the Conservatives really need to do:

But if there's one single thing the Conservative Party's needed for, it's as an antidote to that loss of confidence. The Tories should be the vote of confidence: they should speak, unashamedly, for an optimistic Britain at ease with its past, with its culture, with its unequalled contribution to the modern world.

They should argue that what's in desperate need of "modernisation" are defeatist 1970s theories about the inevitability of European integration, the moral superiority of transnational institutions, and the mostly harmful state usurpation of the family.

Exactly. This is something I've said before: nostalgia isn't just for Conservatives any more. As the sterotype of Conservatives harking back to the Fifties becomes ever weaker, the Left seems determined to fill the void with tear-stained reminisces about the Paradise Lost of pre-Thatcher Britain. Hey, some of us can remember when miners were desperate for their sons not to follow them down t’pit.

As absurd as it to hear people wax lyrical about silicosis, the true weirdness is hearing pillars of the establishment still trying to convince us of their rebel credentials. Even John Lyndon’s moved on, but half the Liberal Establishment is still fantasising about swearing at Bill Grundy. The modern Left has co-opted the language of yoof culture, but when it comes to policy the Left is more ‘The Good Life’ than ‘South Park’.

Of course, the one area where the Left has succeeded magnificently has been in the accumulation of power, but what’s it all for ? Tony Blair has had three landslides in a row, all the time claiming to want to push through an agenda of public sector reform, but where is it ? And, no, throwing money at something doesn’t count as reform. Consider the question of education: we have school vouchers, while the Left’s idea of a bold reform is electronic registers. Remind me again who’s mired in nostalgia ?

The Left’s ideological exhaustion means they can offer Britain nothing more than an absurd mixture of authoritarianism and anti-establishment rhetoric. All they’re really sure about is that the Right is evil. Really evil. Evil like you wouldn’t believe. It’s all they have left.

That’s what’s really wrong with Clarke. To accept the meme that Clarke has some great appeal to the public is to implicitly accept the Left’s charge that Conservatives are, by definition, evil so that only a man who everyone knows is not really a Conservative can get elected. It’s no surprise that Clarke opposed the Iraq war – in foreign policy as in domestic policy, this is a man who worships the idea of stability. Just like Tony Blair’s never-quite-started public sector reform, Clarke offers everything the same as now, but slightly different. Clarke would cast away the greatest advantage of Conservatism – that it works – in favour of…well, nothing. If the public wants a Big Government party, they’ll vote Labour, but a Clarke-led party could offer nothing else: no vision, no ideas, no beliefs. Clarke’s whole philosophy is merely to follow Labour around hoping both that they’ll self-destruct and that when it does the public will turn to him out of sheer exasperation. Conservatives should aim higher.

More Sumo Slamming

Bruce Anderson is the latest journo to throw rocks at the Clarke bandwagon. He hits on two key weaknesses of the Clarke campaign. On one of the key issues of the last thirty years, Ken Clarke has been consistently wrong, while on public sector reform and the like, Clarke can offer abslotely nothing in the way of innovative policy.

Actually, I think this is way too nice. Europe would always be an important issue, but in the Conservative Party it's also an important litmus test. When Jabbah describes holding referendums on important constitutional changes as a 'silly idea', he's telling us something vital about how he views the relationship between the citizen and the government. The EU is not seeking merely to replace the British government in many areas - it also seeks to impose a quite different form of government on Britain. Surely any soi-dissant Conservative must have some opinion on, say, the possiblitity of British citizens being extradicted to foreign lands for things that aren't actually crimes in Britain ?

Equally, the human Hindenburg's refusal to enage with issues like public sector reform reveals a deeper problem with Clarke. These are things which affect the lives of most of the country, yet Clarke resolutely refuses to bother with them. Indeed, there is something of Marie Antoinette in his apparent contempt for public concern with these issues.

In summary then, we are faced with a candidate who displays utter contempt for many of the everyday issues which affect the public, and has no great attachment to the basic principles of Conservatism - other than that he's perfect.

Clarke = Prescott

Never mind Cuddly Ken Clarke's Euro fanaticism, the real problem with him is what he says about the snobbery of the Metropolitan elite.

Here we have a fat, lazy, arrogant, obnoxious, blustering slob, and the MSM praises him to the skies for his ability to reach out to the man in the street. Uh, OK.

Say, when was the last time any of these people ever met anyone out here in the real world?

Of course, the other reason why the MSM loves Clarke is for his outstanding record of throwing the right under the bus. Any nominally right-wing politician can be hailed as a principled maverick just as long as he denounces actual conservatives, but as soon as he comes up against the left.... well, ask John McCain how that works.

Hey, if Ann Widdicombe had ever dismissed ambulance crews as merely 'professional drivers', you wouldn't have to wait for some goofball on a blog to remind you about it. That'll be the 'common touch' the MSM keeps hailing Clarke for.

Clarke Backlash Continues

The MSM - Auntie most of all - are still maintaining their wall of noise tactic, repeating approximatly 10 000x a day that Clarke is a blokey bloke kind of bloke, but some reality is managing to break through the political white noise. STephen Pollard gives the worthless one a kicking here, while David Aaronovitch isn't a fan either. Money quote:

As it happens it was in the early 1990s that Ken was Home Secretary. So one
wonders what he made of this, less bruited section of the Chatham House report.
“By the mid-1990s,” the authors argued, “the UK’s intelligence agencies were
well aware that London was increasingly being used as a base by individuals
involved in promoting, funding and planning terrorism in the Middle East and
elsewhere. However, these individuals were not viewed as a threat to the UK’s
national security, and so they were left to continue their activities with
relative impunity . . .” By Ken, among others. It was, after all, a government
devoted to ignoring the warning signs.

It need hardly be said that neither of these individuals are usually classed as members of the VRWC. Note too though a certain contrast between supporters of the Blob and his opponents. Critics bring forward actual, specific charges, while Clarkites rely purely on blather, whether they're talking about his blokely bloke nature or calling his opponents right-wing extremists. For all the media exposure, there's little actual evidence of any positive policy Clarke wishes to bring forward.

And Talking Of Our Useless Elite...

How useless is the MSM? Well, consider that they keep pushing the line that Ken Clarke is a loveable man of the people when you only have to listen to him for five minutes to realise he's a fascist dolt:

But you have to explain to the sensible public that you can’t give an absolute guarantee.

And there you have it: if you disagree with Fat Ken you're stoopid!

Hey, I don't think it's the right that uses simplistic arguments, and that's without considering the obvious: whether we're talking secure mental hospital or a prison, you really can guarantee a lot less reoffending than if you give them six months aromatherapy and set them loose with directions to the hardware store.

The MSM Is The Typhoid Mary Of Politics

Congratulations to Jess Philips, who's become the latest member of the Ex-Future Prime Ministers of Britain Club. She joins such luminaries as Rory Stewart, Chuckup Ummah and Ken Clarke.

Just like the old line about the operation being a complete success but the patient dying, they all managed to win the support of Fleet Street, but lost the whole rest of the Monopoly board.

It’s the kind of thing that’s rather easier to say when you know you’re not going to win the contest – she had failed so far to secure any nominations from affiliated organisations including trade unions or from constituency Labour parties, which suggested that the membership was not particularly enthusiastic about her, despite apparently recognising her more than rival Lisa Nandy.

Say, it's almost like her media coverage was completely out of proportion to her actual support.

And then there's this bit:

The absence of [support from the shop worker's union], plus information the campaign had gathered privately about the membership’s response to Phillips, meant it wasn’t right to carry on.

Heh. Wouldn't you like to be a fly on the wall at that briefing? I'm guessing she went full Downfall.

But at least her campaign bowed out with dignity and didn't resort to cheap attempts to try and spin her as a victim.

Just kidding!

In a candid video message to supporters the 38-year-old, who has been subjected to horrific abuse from Corbynistas online over the past year or more, admitted that she could not bring the various wings of the party together.

Ken Clarke Was Not Available For Comment

Rehab is science, dammit!

Chutzpah, Thy Name Is Liberalism

It seems like it was only about a month ago the Left’s Insane Clown Posse was all-a-twitter about the Sun running its famous ‘Traitors!’ headline. Oh wait – it was. Doubtless these same folks will be doing their enraged chimp dance again after Princess Tony’s latest effusion. Lest we forget, here’s what he said:

[although you] sit with our country's flag, you do not represent our country's interest.

Yowser. Not much room for misquote there. Doubtless the Left side of the blogosphere will be going to Defcon One even as we speak.

Just kidding.

That jibe was actually aimed at UKIP's MEPs. I guess calling people traitors is OK, if they’re on the Right. Of course, Blair is to be commended for playing to one of his strengths, namely girly hysteria, but the facts are not on his side. Say what you like about the British Right, but we’re not the ones who have a fit of the vapours every time we see someone wearing a Union Flag tiepin. We haven’t all but airbrushed our nation’s history from the school curriculum. We haven’t foisted activist judges on the country so they can take a blowtorch to our constitution. Come to think of it, having one of Britain's most prominent Liberals call you a traitor is like having Ken Clarke call you fat - and that was the sane part of his speech. Try this:

This is 2005, not 1945.

We are not fighting each other any more.

Actually, that was the one thing that always put me off voting UKIP, the fact there three main policies are withdrawal from the EU, support for free trade and carpet bombing Hamburg. Huh ?

How on earth do we get from not wanting to throw £7 billion down the U-bend to wanting to send tanks up the Champs Elysees ? This isn’t an argument, in fact it’s not even any good when viewed as abuse – it simply doesn’t make sense in the first place. He may as well have accused his opponents of wanting to shoot dogs. What is the point ? Really – this is the true measure of Liberal media bias, that this guy can say these things secure in the knowledge that the only people who pick him up on it will be folks tapping away in their spare time.

It's The Ken Clarke Workout Video

Given that The Guardian yaps constantly about unjustifiable discrimatnion in hiring, it's intriguing to consider its own qualifications to lecture anyone about good practice. After all, it's not like they haven't been warned, but no: recruiting the Max Clifford of Jihad wasn't enough of a clue for them. Now, we're informed that it was only after an exercise in creative writing was exposed that they noted one of their staff was hopelessly unqualified. A-huh. Something to bear in mind next time you read one of their 'special investigations' into somebody else's recruitment practices.

UPDATE:

Link now fixed

Hey, Jabba, Does It Look Dead ?

The main excuse for the Clarke candidacy is that the European issue is currently on ice for the foreseeable future. That’s a dubious idea at the best of times, but look at what happened just about five minutes after Clarke’s little speech.

Yes, yes, yes, Mr Pedant, I know the ECHR is formerly separate from the EU but, in so far as it involves Continental philosopher kings plucking bogus rights out of thin air in order to impose foreign standards on our country even in the teeth of opposition from both public and Parliament, all the key elements of Clarkism are there.

This is what I mean about Europe being a perfect litmus test for Conservatism. Here we have a case where unelected members of the Liberal elite claim the right to overrule the freely expressed will of the people. The whole concept is based on the idea of an ever-expanding list of fundamental rights which, by definition, are not subject to democratic review. Add in the fact that we have foreign justices, naturally enough basing their judgements on foreign principles, ruling on cases involving British people in Britain, and this case is practically an ink-blot test for Conservatism.

If you’re Ken ‘referendums are a silly idea’ Clarke or, for that matter, Cherie Blair, then the prospect of rule by an unelected, unaccountable elite of the soi dissant enlightened is no problem. Real Conservatives may have different thoughts about the prospect of the House of Commons being slowly reduced to the same role as the House of Lords, while the courts assume powers that would have awed Charles I. Similarly, if you think ‘Britain’ is just a nice bit of geographical shorthand, who cares if we now have Greeks ruling on cases in Manchester ? Again, real Conservatives would disagree.

As it happens, and despite what the Left would have you believe, the ECHR doesn’t actually have any real legal power. Though an analysis of recent history may lead you to think otherwise, a British government could quite easily tell them where to stick their rulings. So that’s today’s litmus test right there: is there a single Conservative MP who will object to the possibility that Ian Huntley could help him keep his job ?

UPDATE:

I am reminded in the comments that I had my philosopher kings confused. It's the European Court of Human Rights that issues these insane pronouncements. The European Court of Justice is part of the EU, and so has a whole different flavour of insanity all its own.

Our Civilised Neighbours

From France comes news of a unique interpreation of equality under law, meanwhile in Holland they've decide that you can't start the monitoring too early. Read these two stories and remember that these are the people Ken Clarke wants to run our country.

Ken Clarke Launches Exercise Video

Well, it's something almost as absurd. The ever-loveable Muslim Council of Britain has set up a web site to monitor extremists. Which is to say Islamophobic extremists - crazed Jihadis or honour killers need not apply. Isn't it stange though ? These people have to dig deep to try and ensure a continuous supply of grievances, but when it comes to those crazed Islamophobes - nope, we just have to open the paper. What can it all mean ?

Arrogant Elitist Offers Advice On Dealing With The Public

There is no better measure of both the intellectual exhaustion of the modern Left and their grip on the institutions than that they consider it a substantial argument to call their opponents ‘right-wing’. Modern Liberals can seemingly spend their whole lives without meeting anybody who doesn’t experience an almost Pavlovian reaction to the words ‘right-wing’. Equally, if you’re a flatulent fraud whose most visible distinction was being number two in the most despised government of recent years, then it’s always worth knowing that you can burnish your reputation as a fearless truth –teller by attacking your fellow Conservatives for being right-wing. Just look at Jabbah the Hut.

Not to say we couldn’t learn a lot about politics from the guy who once described the ambulance service as ‘professional drivers’, but has this guy given up even trying to make sense ? Apparently, the Tories are both an unelectable rump and too populist. Ah huh. Unsurprisingly, Jabbah doesn’t actually name the policies he thinks are too right-wing. It’s obvious he means Europe and immigration, but can’t say that without some ordinary pointing out that all the polling showed the complete opposite – these were about the only policies the proverbial man in the street agreed with. Apparently, calling people ‘right-wing’ isn’t the trump card the Beeb would have you believe.

But, for now, let’s ignore the fact that the gifted politician Ken Clarke would have had the Tories ditch their two most popular policies, and consider whether there’s an appetite for more touchy-feely policy in less hot button issues. If Liberals have an equivalent of mom, God and apple pie, it’s aid for Africa. What kind of hard-hearted Nazi can object to that ? Well it turns out that – even now in the middle of the Live 8 maelstrom – most of the public is sceptical about aid, while few buy the ‘blame the west’ rhetoric of the Left. Or to put it another way, yet again it turns out that the 'extremist Right' is far more in tune with the public than the supposed elite. Note too that while the public has a far more sophisticated understanding of the issue than you would ever guess from the BBC, it is our alleged betters who can conceive of no policy more innovative than doing what we’ve done for fifty years, but more so.

In its own way, this question of foreign aid may be as significant as the excesses in privatised industry were for the Major government. What had previously been a vote winning policy became a massive embarrassment for the Tories, as board members awarded themselves huge pay rises for successfully competing in monopoly markets. These excesses not only besmirched the concept of privatisation, they also became fixed in the public mind as symptomatic of a wider failure of the Tories to deal with the proverbial ‘unacceptable face of capitalism’. So it may be with foreign aid. After all, virtually all of ZaNu Lab’s reforms turn out to be, at heart, just variations on throwing money at the problem. If the public is now sceptical about this strategy in Africa, there’s no reason at all why they should necessarily buy it in the classroom.