There’s no faulting Spectator
editor Fraser Nelson for being an ostensibly agreeable bloke, nor for his
unshakeable belief that HIV doesn’t cause AIDS, or that man made climate change
is not happening. He even occasionally makes sound decisions, as when he
dispensed with the services of Melanie “not
just Barking but halfway to Upminster” Phillips, after she landed the Speccy with a five-figure legal bill.
But all this pales into insignificance when put alongside
his apparent descent into rank paranoia with a piece in the Maily Telegraph titled “Gordon
Brown’s secret army could defeat the Coalition’s welfare and education reforms”.
Who they? Well, Nelson claims that dastardly Pa Broon stuffed quangos,
charities and the Civil Service with his placemen so that his work would carry
on.
This argument is then undermined as he quotes the so-called
Taxpayers’ Alliance (TPA) and the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), not
exactly the most neutral observers of the body politic, and then inserts a
photo of Iain Duncan Smith, whose DWP Special Advisor (SpAd) is Susie Squire,
who certainly isn’t a Labour plant but came from ... the TPA!
Moreover, Nelson keeps on quoting appointments that have been
made since May 2010, but how Pa Broon can have continued to influence matters
even after his departure from Downing Street is a mystifying one. Perhaps he
has a white cat to sit on his lap while his all-powerful organisation bends the
mind of the legislature to his iron will. But, on second thoughts, maybe he
doesn’t.
What Nelson does
do is assume the ideas put forward by fringe groups devoid of expertise are
somehow right, and that to oppose them makes whoever does so a rotten leftie.
This covers the shale gas issue, which has now become a touchstone for whether
a chap is sufficiently conservative. Economics and environmental concerns need
not enter.
He singles out Education Secretary Michael “Oiky” Gove for having “spent three years building a list of outside
allies”, but all that Gove has done is to butter up the Murdoch press and
those who are of a mind to make a fast buck out of education. The rest has been
accomplished by dog-whistling that part of the Fourth Estate who never went
near a state school, but know everything about them.
What Nelson cannot bring himself to do is admit that the right-leaning
part of the Coalition is all too easily persuaded by the ideologically driven,
whose ideas fail when held up to the real world. He talks of a “battle of ideas”, but this isn’t about
ideas, it’s about fringe lobby groups being the tail that wags the Tory dog.
Young Dave isn’t being scuppered by a secret army of lefties, but by hard reality.
Blaming someone who’s
been out of power for two and a half years is just daft.
1 comment:
The thing that struck me was the claim of "infiltration" of charities, after The Atlantic Bridge "charity" joke, 'e's 'avin a larf.
The Atlantic Bridge.
Now this was the "charity" set up by Liam Fox, which had loads of Republican and Conservative members in 'Advisory Councils' on both sides of the Atlantic that was supported by fellow Torygraph writer Nile Gardiner, (who pulled up Andy Burnham over "anti-Americanism" when he was in Health (around the same time as Dan Hannan was in the USA doing the rounds, saying Labour were "anti-American" and bitching about how bad the NHS was..)
Andy Burnham had correctly seen what the Atlantic Bridge were up to on the health front) was attacked by Mr Gardiner, who supported the aims of the neocon Atlantic Bridge to the extent that he shared a platform with Liam Fox at a Heritage Foundation event.
Why do those "on the left" call it "The Torygraph" again?
Post a Comment