It is time to grasp that we will never get what we want from our politicians. Once, there were parties that actually stood for what normal humans believed and liked. But they have vanished. Instead, we have carefully programmed propaganda machines, fuelled by hair gel and hot air. They bellow slogans which have been devised to please us by artificial intelligence.
The real programmes of the parties are more to do with building millions of horrible box homes, and in starting vain and silly wars. Or with placing us under the permanent rule of Left-wing lawyers. But at Election time they hire propaganda wizards and voice coaches and pretend they are just like us. This is all bilge.
Many tell me they will refuse to vote at all. Or they will refuse to vote for the Tories. I understand this. For years I urged patriotic, sensible people to dump this miserable party. I would still cross the road to avoid it if I saw it coming down the street. But conditions change. The country is now back roughly where it was in 1997, though far worse off. It is worse off because in 1997, far too many sensible people did not see the danger facing them from the Blairites.
The Tories should plaster this photograph of Sir Keir and his deputy, Angela Rayner, taking the knee at every crossroads in the country. It is the truth about them, writes Peter Hitchens
If only, back in 1997, conservative people had held their noses and voted against the Blair project. Yes, John Major’s government was ghastly and feeble. But we would have dodged many terrible things.
Blair’s victory meant the total triumph of political correctness in the Civil Service, in schools and universities and in the courts. It began the great wave of mass immigration which transformed the country. It broke up the United Kingdom. It wrecked the House of Lords, kicking out the hereditary peers who were the most independent and honest people in it.
It politicised the police. It banned by law the founding of new state grammar schools. It scared the monarchy into becoming the wretched green, multicultural remnant it now is. It dealt appalling blows to the armed forces. It debauched what was once a superb private pension system. And it turned this country into the compliant sidekick of the USA, in any war it cares to start or fan into flames.
Its crowd-pleasing promises on crime and education were, of course, never kept. Its direct lie, in a TV Election broadcast, that the Tories would abolish the old age pension, remains one of the most outrageous pieces of dishonesty ever used in an Election.
In fact, there was hardly any link between its campaign and the truth. Yet millions felt it was ‘time for a change’. Some wanted to ‘punish’ the Tories. But most Tory MPs, as now, were happy to go off and spend more time with their money. The best way to punish them would have been to force them to stay, rather than slink away into the luxurious worlds of the lecture circuit, hedge funds and paid lobbying.
Now, many are making a similar mistake. They think there is nothing to lose by letting Sir Keir Starmer enter Downing Street. They could not be more wrong. Sir Keir is a dedicated dogmatic Leftist. The Tories should plaster that photograph of him and his deputy, Angela Rayner, taking the knee at every crossroads in the country. It is the truth about them.
In any case, do you think Sir Keir’s government will go away when you get tired of it? People have got used to the ease of sending back unwanted goods, thanks to internet shopping. But if you buy a Labour government on July 4, you won’t be able to send it back.
Like some horror-film pet or plant, it will grow and grow and refuse to leave, as it takes over your life. Votes at 16, no doubt followed by votes for EU nationals, will cement it in office. And those who voted to punish the Tories will find they have punished themselves for many years to come.
This is why everyone has to discover the key to being a modern voter. Learn to vote against, rather than for. Manifestoes are mostly lies, or deliberately disguised. You will not get what you vote for, ever. But you do still have the power to prevent what you do not want.
I wouldn’t ask anyone to vote for the Tories. But I’m ready to take the knee to you, to beg you to vote against a Starmer government.
The BBC needs to rediscover South Africa
Perhaps, like me, you recall the days when the BBC devoted hours every week to the protests against South Africa’s evil apartheid regime. Quite right, too. It was a huge convulsion with enormous world importance. But since the takeover by the African National Congress (ANC), BBC interest in South Africa has faded. Why?
The ANC is still influenced by one of the world’s last significant Communist parties, the SACP. (It emerged after his death that Nelson Mandela was a secret member of the SACP and sat on its central committee.) The ANC has wrecked the economy. It has failed even to keep the lights on, and permitted an endless festival of corruption. Now a new crisis threatens, as the ANC is menaced on the Left by people even worse.
This is the trouble with treating the outside world as a stage on which we can exercise our consciences. It just refuses to be that simple.
Every media commentator who lazily claims this Election is a foregone conclusion is doing Keir Starmer’s work for him. The BBC should ban its presenters from saying this. It is blatant bias and could persuade people to stay at home when they could vote and change the fate of the nation.
The truth is, nobody really knows. In a world where many people are reluctant to answer the doorbell or the phone, polling is getting harder, not easier. This is why I went to the archives to look out newspapers from the General Election of June 1970, above. On June 18, polling day, the front pages predicted an easy Labour victory. The next day’s papers recorded the beaten Labour leader Harold Wilson sneaking out of No10 by the back door. It has happened before and it could again.