kensalriser
pfm Member
The lack of self awareness is extraordinary. They don't seem to realise their popularity declines with every extra waft of publicity.
Tory leadership failure Part V: Rishi ‘Infosys’ Sunak
- Thread starter Tony L
- Start date
paulfromcamden
Baffled
Still Rishi said today that beer has got cheaper since Brexit which is great news!
Someone should tell the pub that charged me £21 for three pints of Amstel the other night.
Someone should tell the pub that charged me £21 for three pints of Amstel the other night.
sideshowbob
Champagne fascia aficionado
Amstel isn't proper beer, and is also FOREIGN
paulfromcamden
Baffled
What can I say. I hate my country and want to destroy Western culture.
Agree with you on your first point. It was piss.
Seanm
pfm Member
Yes, same as far as I’m concerned, certain features somewhat sharpened, different media environment, the economic programme no longer providing much in the way of support, animation or restraint. But then I don’t really see any difference in kind between conservatism as such and fascism, it’s gloves on or gloves off in pursuit of the same basic goals, and that goes double for British Conservatism since Thatcher: always a radical right wing project IMO, utterly ruthless and murderous.
martin clark
pinko bodger
Oh - on this point , this made me giggle today ('matt' being the only plausible excuse to even glance at the neuer Nat-C shell of the (former) Telegraph)
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
You can judge Thatcher and Thatcherism by the company it keeps
This picture is from a Tory Party Conference. Pinochet is literally the poster boy for Tory ideology
Quite how we have adopted such a murderous ideology is baffling. If ever we needed proof of where Tory ideology leads, it is written very clearly in history.
It is wrong to liken far right Tory ideology with Germany in the 1930’s, because it is only a loose association whereas the blueprint, the actual blueprint, for our current ideology was written much later and put into practice in Chile in 1973. Chile under Pinochet was the laboratory, the testing ground for Thatcherism, that is where it came from and that is where it would like to return.
“If Pincohet's friend Milton Friedman had a theory about cutting food subsidies, privatizing social security, slashing wages or outlawing unions, Pinochet would apply it. The results of these experiments became political ammunition for neoliberal economists throughout the world. Seeing Chile-applied economic theory in textbooks always boggles my mind. It would be like if the American Medical Association published a textbook on the results of Dr. Josef Mengele's work in the concentration camps, without any moral judgment about how he accrued his patients.” https://www.thenation.com/article/a...elebrate-death-margaret-thatcher-ask-chilean/
Pinochet was a “merciless overseer of torture, rapes and thousands of political executions. He had the hands and wrists of the country's greatest folk singer Victor Jara broken in front of a crowd of prisoners before killing him. He had democratically elected Socialist President Salvador Allende shot dead at his desk. His specialty was torturing people in front of their families.”
https://tsd.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine.html
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...veal-details-of-rape-and-torture-1183793.html.
Last edited:
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
No, it’s your heroine and your neoliberalism who is responsible.
Last edited:
Finnegan
I like a bit of a cavort
Oh come on!
Seanm
pfm Member
Admittedly it involves taking a pretty broad view of conservatism, but yeah, in essence all reactionary politics is about the restoration of a fixed, hierarchical order and the maintenance of privilege: that goes for so-called one nation Toryism every bit as much as full-blown Nazism.
You could say, well that's all a bit abstract, but what happens *in actuality* when Decent Conservatism is put under enough pressure is that it cycles through the options including the most extreme without any real internal resistance until it finds something that fits the situation. Nothing's really off limits in terms of principle or fundamental identity, it's just pure expediency.
That's the lesson to draw from these Nat-Cs and their reception, IMO. The Sensible Tories are actually *in charge*: Sunak, as an avatar of Treasury thinking, represents continuity with Osbornomics, New Labour, Major and Thatcher: he's not a "Wet" by any means but he is a mainstream, rational Thatcherite. The Nat-Cs are ostensibly fringe nut jobs, platforming nakedly antisemitic and fascistic sentiments. What's Sunak's response? He openly approves, full support. So where's the contradiction in this movement?
By contrast, look what happened when Labour broke with "soft left" orthodoxy and launched an experiment in mild social democracy: the left exploded, brought down from within. That suggests fundamental differences and tensions that IMO can't really be found in reactionary politics. They can always accommodate anything, however extreme, if it serves the basic function of maintaining hierarchy and privilege.
What role do the voters play in this thought experiment?
Tony L
Administrator
Very little IMO. The problem is FPTP. A proportional system would enable voting on conscience, not on whatever the two-headed establishment beast serves up. FWIW I have far more contempt for Labour than even the Tories. I know exactly what Tories are, and they are honest to their elite imperialist colonial slave-owning landed-gentry feudal elite past. Labour should in theory place power with the masses, and they never do as they are in reality just as establishment-centred and authoritarian as the Tories. They are fundamentally anti-democracy. This is why we are where we are. If Labour weren’t shit Tory elite rule would have been ended permanently many, many decades go. It can only survive in a rigged environment.
palindrome
Thru a hedge, backwards and forwards.
Voters get to play Democracy-Monopoly. Land on Mayfair - you're all right, Jack. Land on Old Kent Road and can't afford a house there; it's your own fault; don't collect £200; go to jail. The board is rigged, the dice loaded. Welcome to Toryland.
John
droodzilla
pfm Member
It's hardly a thought experiment.
gavreid
Pretty Words...
Tory MPs are openly flirting with ideas from the furthest reaches of the right-wing – it’s terrifying
And it’s happening with the full approval and participation of leading members of the Cabinet
"No idea is too lunatic, no notion too fanciful, to exclude it from proceedings. In a wild few days, speaker after speaker has competed to produce some of the most deranged and objectionable propositions available to modern political thought.
Political author Douglas Murray told delegates: “I see no reason why every other country in the world should be prevented from feeling pride in itself because the German’s mucked up twice in a century.”"
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/tory-mp...ches-of-the-right-wing-its-terrifying-2346319
And it’s happening with the full approval and participation of leading members of the Cabinet
"No idea is too lunatic, no notion too fanciful, to exclude it from proceedings. In a wild few days, speaker after speaker has competed to produce some of the most deranged and objectionable propositions available to modern political thought.
Political author Douglas Murray told delegates: “I see no reason why every other country in the world should be prevented from feeling pride in itself because the German’s mucked up twice in a century.”"
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/tory-mp...ches-of-the-right-wing-its-terrifying-2346319
ks.234
Half way to Infinity
You are correct, though I would take a different view of One Nation Conservatism. Yes it is deeply conflicted in its patrician assumptions, but on the other side of that conflict is an accommodation with older liberal values around the greater good.
Thatcher was a decisive break with any notion of the greater good, if we are to repair that break, it might take a coalition of One Nation Conservatism, Liberal Utilitarianism, and For the Many Not The Few Socialism?
Darmok
pfm Member
gavreid
Pretty Words...
much too good for him.
Seanm
pfm Member
Well, good luck! I think 2015-19 offered pretty conclusive evidence as to which way Britain's One Nation Conservatives bend, given a choice between mild social democracy and batshit right wing demagoguery. They don't like the latter but they regard the former as completely illegitimate, beneath contempt, an alien threat to their whole way of life.