George Monbiot, who writes for the deeply subversive Guardian, has
recently voiced his concern about the array of right-wing think tanks and
lobby groups that attempt to influence the Tory Party, and traces the history
of the Adam Smith Institute, that well known museum of economic thought that
has fraudulently appropriated the name of the founder of economics, from
initial openness to a current refusal to say who pays.
Monbiot also name-checks the IEA, although to those two he
could easily add the CPS, IOD and TPA, plus Policy Exchange. What he has missed
is the role of bodies like the Young Britons’ Foundation (YBF) in training what
it terms “reliably conservative”
activists, which it seeks to place within receptive organisations. And then
there is the Freedom Zone.
This is a recent creation, the brainchild of Simon Richards
of the Freedom Association, whose
recent anti-EU drivelfest I filleted recently. It brings together all of
those apparently disparate groups already mentioned in one area outside the
secure zone at the Tory Party conference, and has
recently been plugged by one of its fans, our old friend Dan, Dan the Oratory
Man.
Hannan – full time MEP but seemingly only occasional Tory –
will be speaking at many events there during this year’s conference. I heartily
endorse this move, as the more Dan speaks, the more glaringly obvious and
jaw-dropping whoppers he utters, and the more his credibility declines with
those who inhabit the real world away from his adoring fans among the Tory
right.
Dan, for instance, asserts that at a Tory conference, “speakers find themselves addressing an
essentially Centre-Left audience”. So, while Monbiot rightly identifies
those groups and their supporters as attempting to “break” the political system, the vision they are trying to sell the
wider electorate is undermined by the rank dishonesty of its proponents.
Moreover, it is further undermined by the unwillingness of
that wider electorate to go along with cutting back the public sector to the
level of 1939 – or before. Enough people still remember not being able to
afford to visit the doctor, or have heard those stories first-hand. Others have
heard tell of what life was like on the 30s level of safety-net provision. And
this is why Monbiot need not worry so much.
The bodies he correctly identifies are indeed increasing
their influence on the Tory Party, and spreading the Government-bashing,
Europhobic and state slashing creed through its ranks. But this will only drag
the party away from the centre ground, on which all elections are fought, and
make it ultimately unelectable. The Tory Party will become ideologically
acceptable to the right, but not to the country.
Thus a lack of effective opposition to the centre-left, but that’s a different problem.
No comments:
Post a Comment