Remember 7.10

When I returned to Britain after twenty years abroad, I found myself widowed and living alone in a London very different from the place I was working when I went abroad in 1992. I would ride the 94 bus to town, only hearing the English language on the recorded announcements. Buses and tube trains, which I remembered as being quiet enough to work on, were a clamour of every language but my own. Where, I wondered, were the English?

I had been home for a year before I realised that a good number of people on the bus were as monastically silent as me. Looking around at them I realised we were here. We’re just still quiet. Too nice to say “shush” to the first noisy incomer to ignore our cultural practices, we were now doomed to be inaudible in our own capital. When I had an Indian girlfriend (later, briefly, my wife) I mentioned it to her. The next day she reported that she’d discussed it with all the other foreign students on her masters course and that they’d had an “aha” moment. So that’s where the natives are, they’d said!

I remembered this at the rally in Hyde Park today. On the 94 bus there, I’d googled it and found no sign it was happening. The Met had asked the organisers not to publish the location so that the pro-Hamas “protesters” they so assiduously protect didn’t threaten our (or more likely their officers’) safety. I wondered - denied all modern means of publicity - if anyone would be there. 

I needn’t have worried. There was a large, multi-generational, polite and well behaved crowd to listen to the Israeli ambassador and other speakers remember the pogrom of a year ago tomorrow.

The UK I grew up in is still here, though you’d never guess it from the clamour of the MSM, our terrorist—sympathising government or social media. We’d talked to each other, exchanged private messages and kept the whole thing — amazingly — off the internet. We’d been sure enough we could do it that families had showed up with their grannies and their infants without fear of the swastika-waving “we love Hezbollah” fascistic barbarians who had owned London’s streets yesterday. 

I am not able to stand very long these days and after a short time I needed the loo. I hate being old. Having found relief, I sat in light rain on the nearest free bench to the event and watched Londoners of middle-Eastern appearance and Muslim garb walk by, horrified, at the sight of a sea of Israeli flags in Hyde Park. They’d clearly had no idea it was going to happen.

Part of me hates that secrecy was needed. Londoners should be able to show their support for civilisation as loudly and proudly as our barbarian cohorts show theirs for its enemies.  I just loved the fact that we’d been able to organise in the face of such obstacles — and that so many of us showed up to stand in the rain, remember the victims of a pogrom and — so differently from the pogroms of old — show support for an army of Jews equipped to fight back and defeat their enemies.

I am not Jewish as many of the attendees were but I felt  happy to be among my people. My people in the sense of civilised Londoners, free of hatred and political extremism, doing the right thing for no better reason than that it was the right thing. 

Remember 7.10. Stand with Israel. Because it’s right and because — if she falls — she won’t fall alone. 

PS. It seems I did stay to the end. I listened to the speeches at a distance from my rainy bench and the event is now ending with the national anthem. You won’t hear God Save the King at a pro-Palestine rally, that’s for sure. Israel still exists and so — for now — does Britain. 

A crisis of Britishness

Margaret Thatcher famously quoted Kipling's Norman and Saxon to President Mitterand of France in an EU meeting;

The Saxon is not like us Normans. His manners are not so polite.
But he never means anything serious till he talks about justice and right.
When he stands like an ox in the furrow – with his sullen set eyes on your own,
And grumbles, 'This isn't fair dealing,' my son, leave the Saxon alone.

She was trying, perhaps not as delicately as her diplomats would have wished, to explain how the apparently calm British will react – eventually – to being wronged. 

I spent twenty years in three other countries and worked closely in business with people from many more. I have often smiled to myself since returning when I hear British people speak of our unique sense of fair play. It's not unique at all. Everyone has it. We do not own fairness. We do not own tolerance.

We do, however, traditionally pride ourselves on both and the way we see ourselves has shaped our reactions over the last twenty-five years as we welcomed more immigrants than in the previous two millennia. A few years ago I listened quietly to a Bangladeshi friend – a would-be human rights lawyer – talk about racism in our country. I asked her where in the world was a better place to live as a member of an ethnic minority. On reflection, she agreed with me that there is nowhere.

I am not saying we couldn't treat each other better. Of course we could and should try. But let's take a moment, as our streets burn and our elites condemn us as far-right racists, to be proud of how we've behaved in general towards so many new arrivals in such a short time.

Britain, like Europe's other social democracies, was, when this process began, not producing enough children to maintain our population. That wasn't intrinsically a problem. Depopulation would mean cheaper land and housing, more room for nature and a cleaner environment for example. It was however a major problem for our political elites because of what Nye Bevan called "the big dirty secret about the National Insurance Fund." Which is, there is no f***ing fund.

The "from the cradle to the grave" welfare state was a mis-sold insurance product. We and our employers paid something called National Insurance on our salaries, which was supposed to fund benefits when we were sick, unemployed or too old to work. However, none of that money was ever actually set aside and invested. Politicians spent it in ways they thought would win votes. They counted – like the founders of a Ponzi scheme – on future contributors. When they realised those contributors weren't coming in sufficient numbers, they knew their scheme would collapse. The demographic crisis was theirs.

One day history may reveal which politician in the capital of an old European empire realised there was a ready supply of workers in the former colonies. People who spoke our languages and were familiar with our systems of government – because both had been forced on their ancestors. It was a perilous idea that may yet prove to be the end of European civilisation but he must have looked like a genius to his peers.

The doors were opened and cheap labour flooded in. From the lofty heights where the elites survey us, it looked like a perfect solution. On the ground, not always so much. Mostly we've been welcoming, accepting and tolerant. We've sometimes even gone beyond tolerance and flattered our new arrivals that they've enhanced our magnificent old culture with their jerk chicken and curries. 

Yet already when I was a youngster practising criminal law problems had begun to emerge. A custody sergeant with whom I used to chat when waiting to see clients in the cells told me suicide rates among Muslim girls in our Midlands city were disturbingly high. Asked why that was, he said they were not suicides, but honour killings – the first time I'd heard that phrase. No-one, he said, commits suicide by pouring paraffin over themselves and setting themselves alight. It's just too painful.  Muslim men were killing their daughters and sisters. Asked why there were no prosecutions, he said senior police officers made it clear to their subordinates that it was "racist" to suggest the dead girls' families' stories of suicide were untrue.

Fresh out of my university law faculty, I sneered that his bosses were right and he was a racist. I will never forget the last words he said to me;

Young man, then you're part of the problem.

And I was. In that moment, I'd turned away from murdered women to preserve my smug world view. Just as, decades later, council staff and police officers in cities all over Britain turned away from young girls groomed and raped by Muslim men, for fear of being called bad names.

Decades later, our elites are still sneering. Yes, skin colour is irrelevant to moral worth. Yes, other religions can and should be tolerated. Yes, immigration can be a good thing – if managed properly. Our island story is peppered with immigrants who made this a better place. But flooding the country with people who don't even aspire to share our values and doing so at a speed that gives no chance – even if we were trying – to assimilate them into our society, was always crazy.

We've long been cowed into submission. We watched as our present PM "took the knee" in solidarity with one black American thug who sadly died an unlawful death, when he'd said not a word about myriad British victims of grooming gangs or honour killings. We watched swastika-bearing pro-Hamas protestors be protected by police from "obviously Jewish" passers-by who might upset them. We watched police run meekly from violent ethnic minority protests against children being taken into care and heard our elites make excuses. We watched our authorities cave into that violence and hand those children back.

Then, when three innocent girls were recently murdered by a second-generation immigrant, we watched the ferocity of the police response to protests. We thought they'd gone soft. We thought they didn't know how to respond to illegal violence. We were wrong. They know how to do it but only to those who challenge the state's political narrative.

It's been called "two tier policing." That is a mild term indeed for open, shameless injustice. Call it what you like, to come back to Kipling, it isn't fair dealing. That's why anger – simmering quietly for so long – is boiling over now. Terrible things may be done, which I will not support or excuse. I am not going to stoop to our elites' disgusting level by excusing wickedness on identarian grounds. I will just say the British State created this dangerous situation.

Our country didn't become the best place to be in an ethnic minority because we are bad people. Calling us bad names and unleashing the state's thugs on us for crimes so readily excused in others is unjust. The government never shuts up about equality, but the most important equality of all is equality before the law. When that fails, as it is failing, there is good reason to ask once again what it really means to be British – and this time get the answer right. 

It depends on which immigrants, really.

Politics latest news: People want immigration controls, Tony Blair warns Keir Starmer.

One of the joys of growing up working class (middle class in the American sense) and becoming middle class (in the British sense) is that – from your weird bubble where neither the people you grew up with, nor the people you now live with, quite accept you as fully belonging – you get to see just how little our people know of each other's lives.

 

Take the example of immigration. In the linked article, Tony Blair (who seems somehow to have been re-elected last week, though he appeared on no ballot papers) says immigration is a good thing with the following example;

I think there is a centre ground that can hold which is where people understand there are enormous benefits to immigration, and by the way a lot of what we are talking about, these great AI innovations, look at the people leading them, many of them are immigrants into this country. 

I am more than ready to believe that the immigrants Blair encounters in his high-powered, wealthy life are driving innovations in AI. It's far more plausible than that Blair understands what AI is, for example. The immigrants of his acquaintance are like the immigrant I married. The ex-Mrs P II has a masters degree and pays not only her taxes but all the visa fees and NHS contributions required of legal immigrants pending acquisition of citizenship or legal right to remain. She's responsible, law-abiding and less likely to trouble the Metropolitan Police than the average native-born Londoner. 

 

I suppose that immigrants of that quality might still present a threat to our culture if there were enough of them, but let's face it there just aren't. Even if there were millions whose arrival would instantly raise our GDP, improve our social order and raise educational standards in our schools such people are thoughtful and polite enough to take note of local culture and make an effort to integrate. 

 

Blair and his metropolitan mates however need to understand that if you're a working class person in Luton or Leicester, those aren't the immigrants you meet. You're far more likely to encounter not just un-educated but viciously mal-educated people with attitudes more suited to England's Middle Ages than its 21st century. Mr Blair, there's nothing racist about them noticing that.

 

Here's a link to an account of a pogrom in England. I take no pride in that dark history, but I am delighted it's so far in our past. There have been no pogroms in our country in modern times – yet. The kind of immigrants who cause voters concern are those who are more than likely – I personally fear that it's inevitable – to shatter that proud record of peace and tolerance and sully our history with a modern pogrom.

 

There is a middle ground. Rigorous enforcement of immigration laws, with rapid deportation of illegal immigrants, coupled with a reduction in both the costs of legal immigration and of bureaucratic obstacles to qualified migrants. Making it easier for useful, respectable people to come here, regardless of colour or creed, would confirm (as has long been the case) that Britain is the best place on Earth to be a member of an ethnic minority.

 

We should be proud of being the least racist country in the world. Excluding and if necessary deporting those who demonstrate – by breaking our laws on the very day of their arrival, by upholding doctrines incompatible with our values or by themselves being racist (anti-semitism counts) – would not in any way contradict that. Unless, as would never be the case under our laws, legal distinctions were made based on race.

 

Though it's hilarious he can't see how rarified his example is, Blair is right that there are benefits to controlled immigration. Bringing in people of the quality he describes is a good thing. There are however no benefits to importing ignorant, backward enemies of Western civilisation, whatever colour their skin is.

An election that's hard to bear

As I walked home from casting my vote, I felt sad. I live in a solid Labour seat so had no hope of my vote counting. I am used to that. In my life as a voter, I have rarely – under Britain's first-past-the-post system – been on the winning side. The only big win of my democratic life was the vote to leave the EU.

I watched people passing on their way to the polling station and wondered what they were thinking. This is leafy West London. By any logic familiar to the minority of us who live here who were born in this country, my neighbours are not voting Labour from self-interest. Perhaps I should be ashamed to know them so poorly as to have no idea what drives their choice. I am certainly not ashamed not to know the hundreds of them who celebrated on our local streets last October 7th.

credit: Evening Standard | click to enlarge

It looks like Labour will command a majority of about 160 seats in the House of Commons on the basis of a national vote in England & Wales that is down on last time. They've won no votes from the Conservatives - only from the SNP in Scotland.

They have achieved their majority without disclosing what they actually intend to do with it. The Conservative Party has lost the support of its voters so comprehensively that all Labour had to do was sit quietly and wait.

As an experienced older voter, that's not really a problem to me. I know what Labour will do from a lifetime of bitter experience. Their ideology is envy and their policy is armed robbery. They'll waste money, they'll attack and impede the productive, they'll raise taxes, they'll diminish liberty and they'll subsidise (and therefore encourage) failure.

Labour always leaves both society and the economy worse than it finds them so I know the final decade of my life will be poorer and less pleasant than it would have been. I won't be alone in that. Life will be poorer and less pleasant for Labour voters too, unless they are on the state's payroll.

Labour did not deserve to win this election, but the Conservatives richly deserved to lose it. Labour is the accidental beneficiary of the Tories' national vote losses to Reform UK. The Conservatives comprehensively betrayed their principles over the last fourteen years and have been duly punished by the voters they arrogantly thought of as their own. The one thing they did that "their" people wanted was done with obvious reluctance and under pressure from Reform under its former name of the Brexit Party. They should feel profoundly ashamed for delivering us into the hands of scoundrels. They're to blame for what will follow as Britain lurches left just as the rest of the free world turns right.

Are there any signs of hope in today's results? Perhaps. The Overton Window has moved so far left in my lifetime that the entire national discourse now fits within the policies of the Labour Party when I was young. The Reform Party's vote share suggests this is unjustified. Most people in Britain are some kind of small-c conservative. Most of the time they're not just disregarded by the Establishment, they're sneered at and denounced. That's not going to change anytime soon as the political wing of the public sector unions takes office, but Reform has the chance to give them a voice in Parliament for the first time in decades. Farage is a principled conservative and a skilled orator and I confidently predict he will make some of the most listened-to speeches in the coming Parliament.

I don't yet see any sign yet of the Conservatives understanding what's happened. There must be hope that in the weeks and months ahead, they will work out that Labour only won votes in Scotland from the hopelessly incompetent SNP. In England their vote is unchanged. In Wales, where people have a Labour government, it went down. If the Conservative Party is to survive it needs to win votes back from the right. There are none to be had from the left. 

As I type this, I'm listening to Ed Miliband promising to prove to a disillusioned electorate that Government can do good. That's Labour finally making a concrete promise and it's one it can't possibly deliver. Government is a necessary evil, even when confined to reasonable bounds. Our government burst those bounds decades ago and Labour is not the Party to change that. The evils of government can therefore be expected to grow and there'll be no-one but Labour to blame.

Young voters who don't know Labour are about to learn some very painful lessons that will contradict the propaganda they heard in the course of their education. I place my hope in our young people. They've had a bad deal economically and they're about to get a worse one. If they are shaped by their experiences, rather than by their education, there's always hope.

An enemy of sanity

An Enemy of the People starring Matt Smith extends at the West End’s Duke of York’s Theatre | West End Theatre.

Things are better in my world. The Misses P are back in my life and that was the only real reason (my divorce having gone through with goodwill on both sides) for me to be sad. The ex-Mrs P is remarried and I sincerely wish her and her new husband every joy. 

 

Last night the Misses P took me to the theatre as my birthday present. The birthday was last month. The actor who played my favourite modern Doctor Who, Matt Smith, is in the final week of an extended run of Ibsen's "Enemy of the People."

 

Not that Ibsen had much to do with it, beyond the hyper-naturalism of the acting, the Norwegian names of the characters or the fact that no-one cares what happens to any of the miserable Nordic mofos in the dreary plot.

 

The production was modern, featured some badly-performed Clash and Bowie, and led to a deranged political rant by the leading character to open an audience participation town-hall meeting. 

 

I was not convinced that the audience participants were genuine but my daughters assured me they were. A gent from Northern Ireland immediately behind me launched into a terrifying speech about filthy privatised water versus the angelically-pure stuff that flowed from our taps when morally-flawless public servants were in charge. His thinking was not even reality-adjacent. It sounded like he'd never met a non-Marxist in his life. And he was by no means the wackiest loon to stand up.

 

We're in an election year. I sat with my head in my hands, unable to look at the theatre-going madmen engaged in a Highland Games of lunacy; tossing ever greater rhetorical cabers and cheering each other on while pumping clenched fists in the air. 

 

People like them must find The Guardian far-right. I told myself repeatedly that "nothing is less representative than a West End audience". London's theatre-loving young bourgeoisie could not be less like the British people I keep trying to love. 

 

I thanked the Misses P for their gift as we parted. I had loved being in their presence, even if the play had driven me first to boredom, then to sleep and finally to despair. I anxiously urged them to remember that they live in a better world than they were born into. That life-expectancy keeps rising, poverty keeps falling and that their lives are well worth living and becoming more so by the day. 

 

Then I stood waiting for a taxi on the other side of the street as the actors, including Mr Smith of whom I was so recently a fan, came out to sign autographs for adoring theatre-goers who might as well have been Mao's Red Guards for all their attachment to Enlightenment values and a free market economy.

 

I've never slunk before, but there was no better verb to describe how I went home. What kind of world has such people in it? 

The origins and consequences of “hate crime”

In the wonderful 2006 TV series Life on Mars, Sam — a modern detective inspector — is mysteriously transported back to the 1970s. He finds himself working for tough-guy Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt. Writers intended Hunt as a bad guy example of the horrors of the un-woke past, but his character became very popular. At one point DI Sam uses the phrase “hate crime” and Hunt sneers in response,

“as opposed to what, an I really really love you crime?”

The introduction of hate crimes was a mistake. It requires analysis of a criminal’s intent in order to assess if some opinion behind his actions somehow made them worse. Which in turn requires analysis of which opinions are hateful. Once the principle was established the whole racket becomes a game for politicians to signal their love of community X vs community Y. 

To the victims of a crime, it provides no benefit. If I’m cut and bleeding on the floor after a beating, why would I care what was going through the criminal’s mind? I’m no more or less hurt by his being convicted of assault and battery with hateful intent, than without. I’m with DCI Hunt on that point.

To society in general, the disbenefit is division. If a gay friend and I are assaulted on our way home from the pub, our suffering — and the moral impropriety of our attacker’s actions — is the same. If the attacker is punished more for hurting my gay friend than me, society is saying — in effect — that he matters more. 

The only equality that matters is equality before the law. The concept of hate crime undermines that — and was intended to. It is not a bug but an evil feature. All kinds of scam artists and scoundrels are making good livings by playing on inter-community fears and prejudices. They pretend they're against such things, but in fact they live on them and therefore promote them.

Identity politics is not about righting wrongs — not even in the crude way of collective punishment euphemised as “social justice”. It’s about sowing division and reaping political power.

How can we conquer cancel culture?

I am attending the Freedom Association's conference on this subject at the Emmanuel Centre in Westminster today. I am here in the hope of recovering some optimism on this subject. As I wait for proceedings to begin I frankly despair.

It’s not a good sign that TFA had to conceal the location of the event until the last moment. Nor is the fact that, at 66 years old, I’m one of the younger people in the audience. It looks like a nostalgia-fest for what we’ve lost, rather than a rally to fight the good fight.

The usual suspects are here. David Campbell-Bannerman, TFA chair. Mark Littlewood, outgoing Director-General of the IEA. Baroness Fox of my home town in Wales, Director of the Academy of Ideas. Nigel Farage. Dr David Starkey. I’ve heard them all speak before. Their hearts are good, no doubt, but they (and I, in my tiny way) are the very people who — I fear — lost this battle before we even knew we were fighting it.

Hope springs eternal of course. I have never more desperately wanted to be wrong. Let’s hope I can report something to lift the spirits of the would-be free. Watch this cyberspace.

The Football Association and Israel

The Football Association was asked to light up the iconic arch at Wembley Stadium in the colours of the Israeli flag. They refused. This has been widely condemned. In my view sport should never "do" politics. When a friend asked me to write to the FA in support of the request to light up the arch, I politely refused on those grounds. So, in a sense, I think the FA is right. However, having virtue-signalled relentlessly on other non-sporting issues for years, there is something sinister about the fact that it won't in this case.

The FA had footballers kneel in solidarity with a single foreign criminal who was unlawfully killed, but won't express sympathy with more than a thousand murdered innocents. After the terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, the FA's officials lit up the arch in French colours. They were happy to express the support many of us felt for a nation that, if presented with a big red magic button that would erase England from history, would lose lives in the stampede to press it. Yet they choose to remain neutral between the vicious, anti-semitic, baby-butcherers of Hamas and their victims. 

It was undoubtedly a mistake ever to mix sport with politics. I should not be put into a position at Craven Cottage where the nice young asian guy who sits next to me has to wonder if I am a racist when I don't stand when our players "take the knee." My refusal to acquiesce in virtue-signalling at the behest of the Marxist monsters of BLM isn't racist at all but I am not at the Cottage for a political discussion. I'm there for the joy of sport and an escape from the tedium of my politically-polluted life. I deeply resent the Premier League, Football Association and indeed the club putting me in an awkward political position at a football match.

The truth is that the FA's inconsistency arises from cowardice. On the day of the Hamas invasion, its supporters were dancing for joy (as captured on video by Countdown's Rachel Riley and published on her Twitter feed) on a street 0.6 miles from where I live in West London. According to the 2021 census, our city's cultural diversity is enriched by the presence of 1.3 million adherents of "the religion of peace." Quite a few – it seems from such celebrations – take pleasure in Hamas barbarism. The FA is unsure of how many fall into that category and – given their history of violent response to perceived slights - is afraid to annoy them.

The FA might also be justified in worrying that The Metropolitan Police force service is so afraid of offending British Muslims that – if they did kick off at Wembley in the non-football sense – it wouldn't hold them to the same legal standards as other Londoners. I wouldn't personally be surprised to see the Met – firmly a part of Britain's Leftist Establishment – side with them.

I don't agree with those calling for the police to suppress pro-Hamas celebrations or demonstrations. Hamas is legally designated as a terrorist group in the UK and it is a crime to support them, but I think that's a legal mistake. They are no more revolutionary, violent or bloodthirsty than many social science lecturers in our universities and no-one is calling (nor should they) for their vile Marxist ideology to be suppressed. Besides, I welcome their free speech. As a practical matter, I need to know who are the murderous sorts among my neighbours. I need that knowledge to inform my decisions about my socialising, my shopping and indeed whether I choose to keep living where I do.

I have every confidence in the Israel Defence Force's ability to respond appropriately to Hamas. I am on Israel's side – as every civilised human should now be – and simply wish them (as they would wish themselves) a speedy victory with minimum bloodshed. I am more interested in what I have learned in the past week about the state of my own nation and its capital city. Evil is among us and our response to it is – as evidenced by the FA's pusillanimity – far too naive, timid and weak. I fear we are going to pay a price for that before too long.

Nurse Ratchet

Yes, I know the movie character was Ratched. Bear with me. According to Wikipedia, she is also;

a popular metaphor for the corrupting influence of institutional power and authority in bureaucracies

She's a symbol of what I want to write about today and her name echoes the essential problem. 

Sir Keith Joseph was a key influence on what became known as Thatcherism. He coined the phrase ratchet effect to describe the way in which each new Socialist government moved policy leftwards, whereas a Conservative government never moved it back. If the UK State was a car, then the Labour Party was the accelerator (gas pedal), the Conservative Party was the brake and there was no steering wheel.

The direction of political travel was never in doubt and only the speed could be adjusted by the electorate. Sir Keith's point, well-taken by Margaret and constantly railed at by Tory wets was that the ratchet had to be broken if the Conservatives were actually to move towards their goals. For all that Leftists call themselves "progressives" (perverting the language as they love to do in order to thwart honest discussion) real human progress should be in quite another direction.

Taken to its logical conclusion, the end result of the ratchet effect must be that everything either belongs to the state or is under state control. Democratic Socialists and Communists have always had the same ultimate goal. The former are just more patient. They will cheerfully discuss each step of the journey with the electorate, as long as the planned route never changes. All it takes to see the destination is to zoom out a little and observe the completely consistent direction they and all their predecessors have taken. 

Margaret's achievement in breaking the ratchet was significant. For a while, though she had no such intention, the Left even feared that it had been reset so that the wheel would turn the other way. Tony Blair certainly felt the need to reassure voters that Thatcher's reforms would not be endangered by electing the Labour Party under his leadership. He even claimed to be her ideological heir; a bold lie even by political standards. 

It has been clear for some time however that Sir Keith's ratchet has been refurbished, well-oiled and set back as it was before Thatcher. This is why, as I made clear in my last post, I had no interest in the Conservative Party's choice of new leader. It turns out I was wrong that it didn't matter at all, however. The choice of the political naïf Truss has at least shone a searchlight on the situation. She tried to be a sort of Thatcher mini-me and failed dramatically. At the first hint of any movement rightwards, all hell broke loose. Even though another self-absorbed leadership contest will surely scupper the Tories for the foreseeable future, her position is already in doubt. 

I am not sure if it needs a conspiracy theory to explain why a nation that keeps voting Conservative keeps moving leftwards. I don't believe there are dark cabals planning it. I don't think they're even needed. Someone like me, who believes – along with my namesake – that 

Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.

is simply never going to apply for employment by a state as huge and pervasive as the UK's.

I have horrified state employees in conversation by saying, in perfect truth, that my conscience would not allow me to sleep at night if I had their job. Not because what they do each day is necessarily always bad, but because every penny they are paid to do it has been taken from others by force. My proudest boast is that every penny I ever earned came from contracts freely entered into by clients with choices. If I had ever worked for the state, that would not be true. 

So it's not surprising that, when the state apparatus has grown to be – as it is in the UK – a gorilla in a flea circus, that the people working for it are broadly in favour of a state on such a scale. No conservative or classical liberal could possibly wish for that, but it's the highest aspiration of a Leftist. So the Prime Minister may be "Conservative", her cabinet may have some "Conservatives", and the electorate may be mostly conservative by instinct, but the state apparatus rolls leftwards regardless. It's going to take leadership by someone with more of a personality than Truss to take on that mighty foe and win.

Why I have nothing to say about the new PM

If you're in a minority in cabinet (and, if you're thinking at all, you probably are quite often) you must let your colleagues know about your concerns. However you mustn't say anything to undermine the agreed policy in public. You stand behind the decision. This isn't dishonesty in a broad sense; it's basic teamwork. Most voters have been part of a team in their lives and understand this well. A minister who thinks a policy is very wrong has the option to resign. If it's morally wrong or likely to cause serious damage to voters, that's what the minister should do.

"Cabinet responsibility" is therefore not a problem to voters. We get it. We would probably take against a minister who was disloyal in this way. We might even sympathise (while of course – for we are only human – enjoying the PM's discomfiture) when a dissenting minister briefs the press anonymously.

This is one reason why the recent Conservative Party leadership election has been so problematic for the government. Like a primary in the US, it has provided endless ammunition to the opposing party as candidates tried to differentiate themselves. A bit of Blue on Blue was inevitable. It's an index of the poor quality of the Reds that no more serious damage was done. The fact that modern Leftists seem to look more for opportunities to insult their opponents than to engage them in reasoned argument is a gift that keeps on giving.

Some interesting data emerged – for example as to the COVID 19 lockdowns – but the fact that the people claiming they'd opposed them were in Cabinet at the time – and didn't resign – prevents them gaining the moral high ground. We're still left feeling betrayed that the "the science is clear", "there is no alternative," "Save the NHS"  propaganda was a lie, of course. It just doesn't make us love the people claiming they always knew. And of course it's embarrassing data HM Opposition can't exploit, because its stance on democidal lockdowns was consistently "sooner, harder and for longer". 

As a supporter of Austrian economics and a proponent of minimal Government/maximal Liberty, I couldn't take seriously the various candidates' sloganising about free markets and free societies. The Johnson regime was wrong on pretty much everything but Brexit in ways that suggest that – though the Left can't win an election in Britain because most Brits are conservative – they're winning all the arguments in the corridors of power. Until a "conservative" government actively purges the Deep State including the Civil Service, the police, the NHS and the education "blob", it will always now be conservative in name only. To these "Conservatives", "Liberty" is a nostalgic name to call your daughter, not a principle to die for. 

On such issues, for example, as Net Zero (the ultimate cause of the current cost of living crisis;  the proximate cause being the actions of a Russian leadership emboldened by our suicidal energy policies) this Conservative Government is to the left of reality itself. The Deep State in Britain (the permanent establishment that is merely fronted by elected politicians) is to the left of the Chinese Communist Party. It doesn't care who the Prime Minister is. It doesn't need to. 

So no, I can't get excited about a change of PM. It's as interesting and important as changing the figurehead on a tall ship. The UK Ship of (Deep) State will sail on serenely to the nation's doom. Liz Truss might be slightly more aerodynamic than Bunter Johnson, but not enough to make a difference to a ship so vast, clumsy and barnacled.

Nothing has changed and I see no reason to hope that anything will until it's too late.