The Edge of England's Sword

The end of an era

This blog has been meandering directionless for some time as the various contributors have found better things to do with their time than post here.

I think the biggest indication of its peripheralness in my life now is that I could not find it in my heart to post anything about today's events here. I am grateful to K-Lo for allowing me to post at the Corner, where at least my thoughts will be more widely read.

So I am going to close this blog, although it will remain up as an archive for the time being.

But I am not giving up blogging. This blog has become directionless for a variety of reasons, but I have a pretty good idea of a useful direction for a blog that I shall be interested in again. I am going to firm that up over the next few days and announce something about it here. I hope that some of my old contributors will be willing to help, and that some others will get involved too.

In the meantime, all our thoughts and prayers are with my people. Those responsible for today's atrocities had better be praying hard too, for the vengeance of the British people when wronged has always been terrible to behold.

Tagged

The estimable laird Adam Bruce has tagged me with a wee quiz. This seems like as good an excuse as any to start blogging again, tanned (well, not really) and refreshed (erm, nope, not that either) from my trip to the UK. So here goes:

. How many books do I own? Goodness. That's a difficult one. Most of my college library was dispersed to, erm, buy beer. I lost a lot of my London library when I moved here, but between Kris and myself we must have well over a thousand. Kris just won about twenty editions of Shakespeare plays from an online sweepstake...

2. What’s the last book I bought? Last book I ordered was Pasteur's Quadrant by David Stokes (I'm researching the distinction between basic and applied science for a paper):

Last book I physically bought was Andrew Robert's Napoleon and Wellington, a great read that I left in England, grumble grumble.

Last book I was given was The Gallifrey Chronicles by Lance Parkin (thanks, Chad!), which I devoured in one sitting but found ultimately unsatisfying:

Three for the price of one. I feel like a book megastore.

3. What’s the last book I read? Arthur Hermann's To Rule the Waves, a history of the Royal Navy and how it changed the world (Edward Vernon, the father of grog, was opening up Spanish ports to free trade 50 years before Adam Smith). A fantastic book, which has made me buy some rum. Arrrr.

4. What are the five books that mean the most to me? In chronological order of authorship:

Homer: The Iliad. I had to read it in the original without having read it in translation first. I have never been more amazed by a work in my life. Fagles' translation captures a lot of the feel of the original.

Cicero: In Catalinam. Not exactly a book, but a collection of four of the masterpieces of political invective. Inspired me to become a debater.

I'm ruling out Shakespeare, where I'd probably nominate Henry V, but it's really a play that you should watch (you can't really recreate the Catlinarian Orations, so I'm happy to regard them as more a book now). So I'll move forward quite a bit to Jerome K Jerome's Three Men in a Boat. The only thing to make me laugh so hard I fell off a chair before Terry Pratchett.

In similar vein, A G Macdonnell's England Their England is probably just as funny, and contains the best description of a cricket match as seen by a bemused foreigner (a Scot, in this case, Mr Bruce will be glad to hear). I'm so glad to see it back in print.

Finally, to finish on a slightly depressing note, I'll nominate Myron Magnet's The Dream and the Nightmare. No work better summarizes the disastrous failure of the 60s social experiment and why the left are wrong on everything. Things that work well in theory are often disastrous in practice and that we should tamper with age-old ways of doing things at our peril. It's recognizing that that makes a conservative, I suppose.

There we are. I don't believe in passing on chain letters, so I won't invite others, but those are my answers, for what they're worth.

Got A Taste For It Now

Well, now. Looks like the elitist EU boneheads got a little egg on their faces while we were away.

Vive la FRANCE!!!

GO Dutch Boys GO!!!

I tell you what. Calling the Dutch a democracy when this was the first time in 50 years that they've gotten a chance to vote on anything EU related is an insult. No wonder they voted no.

Europe does not exist as a cultural identity. Europe is nothing but a geographical term. Why is it only the everyday people who know this while power-mad socialist bureaucrats continue to force this EU disaster-in-the-making down their peoples throat.

Or have I answered my own question with the phrase "power-mad".

At any rate, it will all in in tears.

What I want to know when the dust settles is what the EU is going to do about defense when they realize the US might actually be serious about pulling its army bases out of Germany? They might have to stop spending on welfare and actually defend themselves. And what about the income drain from no longer having thousands of Americans living in and around those bases, eating at their restaurants and shopping at their stores. Might be interesting. Not a huge national economic impact but for a nation having enough problems as it is, this could be interesting.

Finally, Germany never gave it's own people a direct referendum on the EU constitution. I wonder if they sensed that they would have gotten the French and Dutch result if they had and didn't want to be the first of the founding countries to reject the treaty. Just musing aloud.

Kris Murray
Iain's Wife

While We Were Out

Ummm. Sorrry.

I think Iain forgot to mention that we left America on May 17th and only just got back in late May 31st.

We visited Great Britain. Brought the kids round to the 'rents, aunties, and uncles. Explores the glories of England in the spring. And vowed never to travel with small children again.

Until next year.

In short, great trip. Completely exhausted.

Kris Murray
Iain's Wife

Post-Mortem: Conservatives

The Tories have no real reason to be disappointed. They won the plurality of the vote in England, something that calls into question the legitimacy of any measure effective on England that is passed only with the help of Welsh and Scottish members. They have a great deal of recognized and young talent among the 50 new members, areas where the party has been noticably lacking. They have dispelled the myth that they cannot win in cities any more with their advances in London. They have seen off the recent challenges of the Lib Dems in many areas. And they took control of 3 more county councils on the night of the election, something that is always good for local parties.

And yet they could have done so much more. They failed to win too many seats by fewer than 1000 votes. That bodes well for next time, but it is a bitter pill to swallow this time. The suggestion that the failure to make Europe an election issue led to them losing about 25 seats because of the number who voted for UKIP or Veritas in those seats will nag them for a while yet. The fact that the polls, which did turn out to be quite accurate in the end, much to my surprise, showed that the Tory momentum stalled when the campaign started concentrating on Tony Blair's character will be frustrating to many.

Yet these are all "might-have-beens" and not worth dwelling on. The worst possible thing for the Tories is for them to cry woe and to descend into some futile search for a Conservative philosophy or to blame established principles like the free market. As John O'Sullivan has pointed out, the Tories are on the verge of becoming the party of the working class given the other parties' preoccupation with the obsessions of the middle classes (which includes quite a few stinking rich types these days). That will be a good thing and it should be allowed to happen, however much the Guardianistas might sneer at the unsophisticated nature of the policies that appeal to the working class.

There are also rumblings that the Tories should embrace PR. Why ever should they? If the Tories can't win with the current biased system, they certainly are never going to win under PR, which will impose a permanent Lib-Lab pact on the country (at least until there is a quiet revoloution and the Tories get in on a platform of abolishing PR).

The problem the Tories face is not an electoral one, it is a cultural one. It is the tragedy of the Thatcher years that while Mrs T was rebuilding the country's economic self-reliance, the welfare state and its apparatus were allowed to stand virtually unmolested. As a result, too many individuals still believe that when there is a problem, government is the one that should sort it out. This cultural teat-suckling threatens even the Thatcherite economic settlement. If most people believe the railways would be better off run by government, despite a generation's evidence to the contrary, what would be next? Regulators are seen as good guys, not re-tape wielding bureaucrats. This is the problem the Tories need to solve.

I could go on, but I have to be up for my flight to the UK at 4am EST. I'll try to post more on the Lib Dems and minor parties when I next have internet access in about a week's time.

Post-Mortem: Labour

In a brief interlude between things settling down and me jetting off to England for some work-related business, I have a few minutes to mention what I think of the election results. While commentators have been casting gloom and doom on the prospects for their opponents, I think every party involved in this election will have some degree of satifaction.

For Labour, Tony Blair can be happy that he saw off the greatest electorate threat to his position - the Iraq war - with comparative ease. He has been returned with a majority he would have been ecstatic with in 1997 and even 2001. To be sure, he has lost some ground to the Liberal Democrats in areas where the public sector middle class is strong and some to the Tories in their former South-Eastern stronghold. "Redistricting" will lose Labour more seats next time, but that won't be his problem. Electorally, Tony Blair remains strong.

Politically, however, Tony Blair is much weakened. The early days of the cabinet reshuffle showed the cack-handed management style that has been his trademark for some time. There are suggestions that John Prescott was seen shouting in the street into his mobile phone in protest at losing half his Department to David Milliband. The Blunkett re-entry was also handled badly. Moreover, with the loss of many Blairites and the survival of the left wing, he is faced with the likelihood of a far more fractious party. The chances of anything like Foundation Hospitals getting through are pretty low. In that sense, the election saw the end of the New Labour experiment. Expect this government to look far more like a traditional Labour government than the last two have.

Moreover, I expect Blair to start hitting what the late Thatcher and Major governments called "banana skins." The European Constitution referendum is a huge problem that Blair will be hoping to avoid. But I don't think France will actually reject the Constitution, just as she failed narrowly to reject Maastricht. The Dutch may also fail to come to Blair's rescue, especially if France votes yes. Then the elephant in the living room will begin to trumpet loudly. And all this will happen when Blair is President of the European Union.

At about the same time, the G8 summit could be a disaster. Most chairmen of G8 summits choose nice touchy-feely subjects to discuss so that they can all come out with a nice glow. Blair, however, has chosen to devote this one to climate change, so that he can show he has spent a great deal of political capital in getting the US on board. Iraq was worth it because we are going to have market mechanisms for emissions trading! Huzzah! The trouble is, it ain't gonna happen. Bush will refuse to sign up to at least one of the statements Blair thinks he will embrace and the PM will have egg on his face and Chirac smirking behind his back. Unless Blair is deliberately planning this as the moment when he delivers High Grant's speech repudiating the US President from Love Actually, then this will be a fiasco. Actually, delivering that speech would be a fiasco too. What is the point of annoying the most powerful country in the world and single-handedly destabilizing the Atlantic Alliance? Whatever happens, this is going to be a mess.

So it is quite possible that by the end of the Summer, Blair could be fatally wounded. He has to pull off two more miracles to get through the Constitution referendum and the G8 summit unscathed. I wouldn't put it past him, but this Summer may be his greatest challenge yet.

Working on a chain gang?

Those outside the UK who want to understand a little about how the country's public political sphere is steadily disintegrating, need look no further than the musings of Home Office Minister Hazel Blears on making yobs wear US-style chain gang uniforms (sadly minus the chains) when on community service.

Here we have an eminently sensible idea, that would be wildly popular (certainly if Sky News's unscientific poll is anything to go by), that would help restore public faith in the judicial system just a tiny little bit; and what else do we know about it?

• That it won't happen. Not a chance - even if by some miracle the sandal-wearing ex-academics and union timeservers who make up the modern Parliamentary Labour Party were to vote for it, you know that the judges would find a way of throwing it out.
• That all coverage in the media of the idea is dominated by outraged squeals from the dozens of pressure-groups which exist to further the interests of criminals
• That the Conservative party is too busy with its favourite internal pastime to apparently make any comment on the proposals
• And, most telling of all, that in spite of the fact that they know it will never happen, the Labour leadership makes the suggestion at all: they have no intention of implementing it, but it won't hurt them to sound tough.

A government that cynically suggests something that it knows its own chums in the establishment won't allow to happen just to sound good to the voters while the opposition won't call them on it (or even, gosh, push them to go ahead and introduce it) with the criminal lobby dominating the airwaves. Is it any wonder people have lost faith in the political and judicial systems?

Brief Update

I've been intending to write a detailed post-election wrap up, but have been too busy at home, I'm afraid. And tonight's the CEI Annual Dinner, so look for it tomorrow night, by the grace of God...