SilverFalcon

You've just gone up in my estimation of you.

Mikeuk

To do that we would need large numbers of totally-committed bedsit-brigaders. Family men with a mortgage haven't the time or the inclination to get involved.

The last time anti-progressives were able to mobilise footsoldiers in large numbers was back in the '20s and '30s. That's just a comment - I'm not saying we want to revisit fascism. We need a new motivational ideology of the right.

I thought I say the stirrings of this in the 'Libertarian' movement in the 1980s but that all went very flat.

Unfortunately we can't be forward-looking until we have some idea of what we are looking forward to.

SilverFalcon

Agree with you and Libertarianism has gone way out from where it was headed in terms of people like me. It now seems to be full of people like "them". The "new right" also went belly up. Full of flaky individuals whose description often rhymes with "tankers". Most people have become tired of listening to them bang on in their own separate heavens about things not of this world nor of any use to those of us still living it.

As for infiltration, most people you would want in your movement or cause or party do not fit in ethically with those who like to sneak in the back door and win people's trust while conniving to undo them for the presumed good of the cause. I could never act like this even if I were terminally ill and it didn't matter whether I was discovered or not, or if no one depended on me to make dinner. I couldn't infiltrate and deceive. It's not cricket and never will be.

And still the need for a new ideology and a party to go with it yawns and still people would rather fight one another than do something about it.

cassie

Perhaps would be radical activists should remember that our prisons are full, the police and armed forces already overstretched, so what could they do to demonstrators apart from kill them?

A reason for opposing the 'integration policies' being applied to recruitment in the forces of 'law and order' perhaps?

arden forester

The LibDems and Tories are completely in the wastelands over English devolution. There are no such thing as "English regions" but there is a notion of the Midlands, the North-West, the West Country, etc. However these notions are just that. It was the EU that demanded fake regions, the so-called South-East being the flakiest fake of all!

We can have a properly devolved Union without any rancour, upset, lack of identity, or anything else - except one thing! THE POWER OF THE EXISTING POLITICAL ESTABLISHMENT!!

__________________
www.ardenforester.blogspot.com
www.westminster-whispers.blogspot.com

cassie

I agree! The failure to deal properly with England seems more likely to build up resentment and, thereby, increase the likelihood of disintegration.

I think there can be little doubt that the political establishment is actively trying to prevent England having devolved powers on the same basis as the other nations. First a referendum in London on a take it or leave it basis (no question of restoring the GLC albeit in a modified form!), then a referendum in the 'north east' of England, but no (definitely NO!) referendum for England as a whole! None of these developments were actively opposed by either the Conservatives or the Lib Dims . . . which brings us back to Cleggie!

Britannist

Good of you to mention the referendum Blair's Lie-bour regime held in London on whether to set up an elected Assembly.

Not everyone is aware of the fact that in that referendum Lie-bour made sure that we were not allowed to choose to set up an Assembly or Mayoralty. We had to choose both or neither (or not vote at all in the referendum - which is what the majority did). Voters could not choose to set up an Assembly but not a Mayoralty. They had to vote for both or not vote at all. Which, of course, means that many people in the capital who wanted an Assembly but not a Mayoralty ended up getting not just the London Assembly they wanted - but europhile Labour Mayor Livingstone too and the accompanying costly bureaucracy which supports him.

Britannist

True. By pandering to separatists (i.e. europhile so-called 'Nationalist' parties such as the Scottish 'National' Party or the Welsh 'National' Party) by setting up devolved legislatures in Edinburgh and Cardiff Labour has now made "the English Question" a mainstream political issue in England.

By refusing to give England constitutional equality with Scotland in the UK, Labour risks the collapse of the UK due to resentment at unfair treatment in England.

It may not just be the Union of the UK which is damaged by Labour's devolution mess - Labour could well come to pay a very high price electorally for their anti-Englishness.