Time to take the mobs, pitchforks and torches out of political life
WE live in the days of impossibilist politics on almost every major question the country faces – from a second independence referendum to the future of the Labour Party to Brexit.
The bigoted seems to beat the rational almost every time. The myth triumphs over fact. Prejudice trumps practicality.
After a career in politics that lasted from the 1920s to the 1960s, including holding every great office of state apart from prime minister, Rab Butler wrote a memoir describing politics as the ‘art of the possible’. Not any more. Impossibilism is today’s fashion.
The toolbox for this new politics is simple: appeal to the prejudice of your targeted clique and tell them what they want to hear, no matter the truth of what you say. Encourage them in myths and if anyone opposes you with rational thought, drown them out, belittle them and decry their motives.
This week, Nicola Sturgeon will launch her ‘listening exercise’ on why people voted No in the independence referendum. But she will do so while failing to address one of the greatest reasons – by her own figures, Scotland benefits from being in the UK to the tune of £15billion a year.
Our deficit is twice that of the UK’s. Did she engage with the issues raised by her own Government’s figures? Not a bit of it. Instead, a hastily pulled together paper was published claiming Scotland could lose up to £11.2billion by 2030 if we leave the EU – or are ‘dragged out’ against our will, as she puts it.
You can see what she is doing. We will be £15billion down if Scotland leaves the UK but £11billion short if we leave the EU. And what’s £4billion between friends?
Indeed her own MPs and nationalist commentators were encouraged to rubbish her own figures about Scotland’s deficit with the UK.
Then, with the myopia of stage four terminal arrogance, one of her MEPs, Alyn Smith, said that this ‘listening’ exercise was to ask why ‘decent’ No voters believed promises made by David Cameron and Gordon Brown in the referendum.
If Mr Smith’s condition has left him with the ability to read, I would suggest two reasons. One, the promises of Mr Cameron and Mr Brown were fulfilled. Two, Scotland didn’t believe the promises made by Alex Salmond and the SNP.
Those No voters were at one with proindependence campaigners such as Alex Bell, Mr Salmond’s former head of policy. He thought the infamous White Paper was drivel and the SNP should apologise for it.
I don’t think Mr Bell’s opinion on independence has changed but he clearly despaired at the arguments put to try to achieve it. He wanted a rational, warts and all, case put forward. He was – almost – shut up, a victim of impossibilist politics where the truth cannot be addressed.
The viral nature of this movement was seen in the Labour Party in Glasgow last week, when Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale was booed by Jeremy Corbyn supporters.
Ridiculous
She has a different view from them so must be embarrassed and decried. Mr Corbyn advocates the kind of ultra-Left policies that can be forgiven if they are a student phase but which the UK public have never voted for – and which haven’t worked where they have been tried.
His inevitable victory as leader will ensure that the very people he claims to champion will be left without a voice – and the Labour Party destroyed with it. But that doesn’t matter to Mr Corbyn. Polls show he won’t win an election – that is someone else’s fault. Impossibilism at it most virulent.
When Sir Richard Branson exposes as a ridiculous stunt Mr Corbyn’s claim that he couldn’t get a seat on a Virgin train, the Labour chief’s henchman, Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, demands the businessman be stripped of his knighthood.
As a frequent user of, complainer to and compensation recipient of Virgin Trains, I am firmly of the belief that Branson has done more good for our railways than Mr Corbyn and Mr McDonnell ever could. Nonetheless he is to be rubbished for his inconvenient truth.
The Labour leader should use St Francis of Assisi’s prayer, as Mrs Thatcher did, but paraphrase it: ‘Where there is harmony, may we bring discord. Where there is truth, may we bring abuse. Where there is faith, may we bring a fanatical mob. And where there is despair, I’ve only just started.’
Mr Corbyn’s lukewarm support for the UK’s continued membership of the European Union was one of the contributory factors to Brexit. That result is most informative of where impossibilism leads.
People were told an extra £350million a week could be spent on the NHS if we left – simply untrue – and that we could leave the EU but stay in the single market without having free movement of people.
I voted to remain in the EU but I respect the result. I’m a democrat. However, in part, the impossibilists who cannot respect the Brexit result appeal to me: the idea that we can stay in the single market, with free movement for me but not for the other peoples of Europe. But how can we have full access to the market without contributing large sums to it and accepting free movement?
That’s when I wake up and part from them and the impossibilist thinking of the likes of Miss Sturgeon, Mr Corbyn, soft Brexiteers and hardline Remainers.
I cannot see how it could possibly be true. We cannot have our cake and eat it.
It is wrong when people argue that Parliament could block the referendum result as it was purely advisory. There may be a case for a second referendum on the final deal but that would be to hope that people voted on the actual issues, which they tend not to do.
For Remainers, Brexit was lost on the issue of immigration, something which politicians ignored for years. Perhaps that is where this impossibilism started. You cannot hope to make the world as you wish it, unless you recognise what it is. Face the truth.
Corbyn’s Labour will fail to be an adequate opposition and has no chance of being in government. Let’s hope Scotland never has to face the consequences of the SNP’s impossibilism that we could cope with a £15billion cut in public spending in one swoop and join the EU despite our deficit being three times its rules.
We need to take mobs, pitch forks and torches out of our politics; to accept facts – however inconvenient they are – and recognise our prejudices are to be challenged not embraced. That shouting someone down is not the same as defeating their arguments. Then we might get back to real politics – the art of the possible.