UK General Election : The Clown vs. the Cold Warrior

I've only just moved from the UK to Australia, but I spent 14 years living there and so have been through three general elections, and the EU referendum.  The 2019 general election wasn't meant to happen, but it was inevitable after the 2017 general election that didn't need to be called, because the 2015 general election gave the Conservatives a majority for the first time since 1992 and the UK has five year electoral terms.

Most coverage will claim that this is a Brexit election, and although it is a major factor, for me it isn't the number one factor.  Sure, if you want Brexit done you'll vote Conservative (except for a tiny handful of seats where the Brexit Party has a much better chance than the Conservatives), given Labour is campaigning on a second referendum (where it will negotiate a different deal with the EU, and then Corbyn will be neutral on it) and the Liberal Democrats are campaigning on remaining in the EU.

However, to me although that is important for many reasons, it is much less important than what SHOULD be the biggest issue of this election - stopping the election of a hardcore socialist and his team, who are fundamentally opposed to capitalism, individual freedom, property rights and highly sceptical of the values of the Enlightenment and Western liberal democracy.

I wont say much about Boris Johnson because I don't like him.  He's a flake, a showman and a clown.  He is enthused about vanity projects (there were plenty when he was Mayor of London) and when he isn't interested in anything he wont worry about detail and wont focus.  An entertaining raconteur and journalist, a great philosopher he is not.  He lies and obfuscates, and changes his position to suit whatever is popular.  There are many reasons why he didn't proceed to be a candidate for leadership in 2016, but he is the man of today - and he is beyond doubt profoundly preferable to the entity on the other side.

Corbyn is a mediocre mild-mannered pathetic little man, who has surrounded himself with sinister flunkies who range from the moronic to the despicable.  His record on openly supporting the IRA, including inviting senior members to Parliament days after the Brighton bombing, is well known.  You can almost guess his position on every single international conflict and issue by working out which side is supported by the West and be sure he is on the other side.  He did shows on the Iranian propaganda TV channel Press TV, his first instincts are always to believe the side that isn't a member of NATO, which isn't a Western liberal democracy and always isn't Israel.  He even backed General Galtieri - the Argentinian military dictator - over Britain in the Falklands War. 

His most senior advisors are not just Cold warriors but actually pro-Soviet and in one case pro-North Korea Marxist-Leninists (Seamus Milne and Andrew Murray).  He himself bemoaned the fall of the Berlin Wall because of the loss of the "achievements" of the German Democratic Republic (not those shot dead trying to cross the Berlin Wall of course).  Corbyn cheered Venezuela's Chavez regime as being a model for the world, and he openly celebrated the Cuban regime as well.  This was quaint and vile as the MP for Islington North, as potential PM for the world's fifth largest economy, NATO's second most powerful member and a nuclear power, it's simply scary.

The anti-semitism is well known, as his Labour Party has sheltered and selected candidates who have openly anti-semitic views.  At best he has a blind spot and doesn't know what is anti-semitic, at worst he simply thinks Jews aren't an oppressed group because, of course, they tend to be wealthy and successful, but worst of all, Israel - a country he has spent his political life campaigning against.

Beyond that are the policies his Labour Party are promoting this election.  Not just higher taxes and more spending, but a quantum leap in spending every year.  Some of the more sinister policies include requiring all businesses with 250+ employees to hand over 1% of the company shares to employees each year, over ten years.  Effectively a form of confiscation of the business.  There are mass nationalisations, with the Government deciding how much it will pay for them, no negotiation, effectively a third world style confiscation of businesses (and the reasoning behind it being that they are "profiting too much" from consumers, except that energy prices are capped, water prices are regulated by Ofwat and rail prices are determined by the Minister - none of the nationalised sectors bear much resemblance to a free market).  Labour wants to exchange shares in private businesses for newly issued public debt - because that's what you want, a promise from a socialist government with its heavily devalued currency, to pay you. 

For those who say there is nothing to worry about, let's be clear what a vote for Labour is in this election.   It's a vote to say:

• Capitalism should be overthrown;
• Private property rights are worthless, the state can take businesses off you to give to whoever it wants or take for itself;
• The Government should monopolise education (no private schools)
• Businesses should get permission from government to open (any business with at least 50 employees will need state certification for being gender neutral)
• The media to be "fairer" to the policies, politicians and opinions of the Labour Party and its ginger groups;
• Israel shouldn't exist;
• Russia, China and Iran are morally equivalent to the United States at best, and morally superior at times;
• State control of prices is good for everyone;
• Calls for Islamist government aren't to be feared (just blank out the misogyny, homophobia and anti-semitism)
• Identity politics is central to public policy (all business will have to report their sex and race pay gaps and explain themselves to a bureaucracy why they are apparently sexist and racist)
• Jews should just put up and not complain, because the anti-semitism they say they get is just because they back Israel (which is an apartheid state little different from Nazi Germany).

I didn't mention Brexit because honestly, it pales into insignificance.    Yes it is an opportunity to free the UK from the EU's overweening control, and its commitment to a fortress against free trade from the outside, and protection of sunset industries.  However, as good as that opportunity is, the UK doesn't have a major political party willing to take advantage of much of that, in fact the Conservatives are promising to maintain and enhance labour and environmental laws, and beyond opening up trade to the world, there is little sense of the opportunity to liberalise domestic laws outside the EU.

Moreover, the Conservative Party under Boris Johnson is centrist, it is promising to spend billions more and has abandoned fiscal discipline in favour of trying to compete modestly with Corbyn's absurd levels of promises of spending.   Anyone who claims Boris and the Conservatives are far right, are either ignorant or just revoltingly minimising what actual fascism is - because there is little difference between the Conservatives and Blair's Labour - the main difference being the end of the EUphilia of the Blair era.  The Conservatives are still regulating the energy market to raise prices for a transition away from fossil fuels, they are still planning to ban the sale of fossil fuel powered motor vehicles and they are unrepentent about supporting more money for the world's biggest civilian bureaucracy - the NHS.

Yet don't think it can't happen that Corbyn can win.  He raised Labour's vote in 2017 to 40% from 30.4% in 2015, primarily by raising turnout.  The great failure of the Conservatives (and indeed the Labour right) has been to not confront, challenge and undermine the philosophy of socialism and Marxism, in fact the UK education system has been a vehicle for some to promote it, and this has been reinforced by the broadcast media (especially Channel 4 and the BBC, both state owned) and universities.  The Conservatives, by and large, don't push more trust in individuals and markets, they embrace interference, tax, spending and regulation.  So why be surprised when the party that BELIEVES in central planning, control, socialism and a big state is more convincing, especially to the young.

Realistically if Boris doesn't win, it is more likely the UK has some cobbled together coalition of the left, with Labour, the Liberal Democrats, the SNP and a handful of others maybe able to create a majority government (but they wont get support from any Northern Irish MPs, because Sinn Fein refuses to sit in the House of Commons - that so many of its members at one time wanted to blow up).  If it does, it will be because of Boris and because of a long legacy of failure to communicate and present a clear choice.  In 1983 Margaret Thatcher took on Michael Foot's socialist Labour Party, and won convincingly, because it was a fight between a similar level of Marxism as Corbyn, and Western liberal capitalist democracy.  Sadly in this election, Boris is no Margaret Thatcher and more frighteningly Corbyn is no Michael Foot (at least Foot was no anti-semite)

UK General Election: A choice between uninspiring statism and barely concealed evil

There is nothing to inspire me to vote Conservative in the UK General Election.  Theresa May is an unreconstructed statist big-government conservative.  She is instinctively authoritarian.  She advocated for the security and police wet-dream on surveillance as Home Secretary, so that UK ISPs and telcos now keep a record of every single website visited in the UK over the past 12 months - because somehow what you read should be able to be accessed by the state when it sees fit.  She is pushing further, driven by concern over terrorism, but wanting to sanitise the internet to make it "safe" - the state working with parents, parenting us all.

Yet, it was all known that she takes a "trust me with your private information" approach to surveillance, rather than focus on the real issue, which is Islamism.  She explicitly says that we should remember "the good that government can do" and then outlines plenty of areas the government intervenes extensively in, such as energy, but instead of blaming virtue signalling policies like the Climate Change Act (which has seen the UK Government guaranteeing to a French led consortium that it will ensure it gets paid a price for electricity generated at its forthcoming nuclear power plant double what is the current market price for electricity).  She thinks libertarians are atomistic and people who seek to take advantage of others and thinks she is as distant from that as she is from Jeremy Corbyn.

That may well be true.  She said this:

We do not believe in untrammelled free markets. We reject the cult of selfish individualism. We abhor social division, injustice, unfairness and inequality. We believe not just in society but in the good that government can do. Paying your fair share of tax is the price of living in a civilised society.

Tom Harris in the Daily Mail said she was a real socialist offering left wing policies.

I couldn't vote for her if she was my Conservative candidate, like I couldn't vote for Amber Rudd (who thinks a solution to terrorism is to "make" WhatsApp end encryption, yet stands on a platform with a known Islamist because the UK Government is too ignorant to call them out.  Fortunately I have a tolerable choice and it is a safe Conservative seat.  The Conservatives have pledged not to increase VAT, unlike the previous election when there was a pledge to not increase income tax and National Insurance (another form of income tax), because the Chancellor of the Exchequer wants "more freedom" but pledges the Conservatives are still the "low tax party".

It's nonsense.  The Conservative manifesto could almost be one from any of the Labour leaders since 1997, except the current one.  It's a cynical move to move to the centre-left to try to hoover up votes from the middle and to destroy the Labour Party, but there is one problem.  It has backfired due to ineptness, a lack of enthusiasm from the rank and file of many Conservatives and the simple fact that May does not ooze authenticity.  That doesn't mean Labour will win, thankfully, because it isn't just led by an inept naive idiot, but a nasty hater of capitalism, individual freedom and even Western liberal democracy.

I disagree with most of what the Labour Party advocates, and accept that it holds a fundamentally different view as to the role of the state from me, but Jeremy Corbyn and his closes allies are not like that.  Jeremy Corbyn has never, repeat never held any office of significance in Parliament under any Labour Government.  He was never an under-secretary, nor Chair of a select committee, although he has been on select committees.  He was never trusted with power by his colleagues, he was no Michael Foot

Corbyn invited senior members of the IRA to Parliament three weeks after the Grand Hotel bombing in Brighton which targeted the Conservative Party conference, both killing and maiming people.  His history in supporting the IRA and campaigning for those who had killed for the IRA, is brushed aside as saying he wanted to talk to "all sides", but no one can recall him ever meeting Unionists. Corbyn opposed the Anglo-Irish Agreement (which set out between the UK and Ireland how devolved government would work in Northern Ireland) and his right hand man John McDonnell opposed the Good Friday Agreement in 1998 (which ended the terror campaigns from both sides).  

Corbyn opposed the UK ejecting the fascist military dictatorship of Argentina from its invasion of the Falkland Islands.  He has called Hamas and Hezbollah "his friends" (although has apologised for his use of words), but spoke on a platform with Islamists who were calling for war with Israel.

His Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell called Lenin and Trotsky his greatest influences and stands on a platform alongside Stalinists.  Indeed Andrew Murray, a Stalinist open supporter of north Korea (which he calls "People's Korea"), is now helping Corbyn with his campaign.  The same man who after the Paris terrorist attacks said:

“The barbarism we condemn in Paris is minute compared to the barbarism wrought by imperialism across the planet in the last 13 years and we must condemn that… It is a sad lesson we have to re-learn from the attacks in Paris, it needs bringing home again and again.”

Of course Corbyn blames the US for "escalating tensions" with north Korea, not the totalitarian police state that has developed nuclear weapons and keeps testing missiles whilst uttering bombastic rhetoric about attacking the United States.  You see Corbyn was Chair of the ironically named Stop the War Coalition.  An organisation that has never once campaigned for any anti-Western regimes or militant groups to stop waging war.  It never took on Russia, Hamas, the Assad regime, Al Qaeda, ISIS, north Korea et al.  Stop the War is only too much in favour of war, as long as it is waged against any Western liberal democracy including Israel.

Corbyn claimed that 9/11 was "manipulated" into blaming Al Qaeda.  He has been paid by Iran's international propaganda TV channel, Press TV, to appear, but not, of course, to criticise human rights in Iran, but to criticise the West.  

Corbyn has admitted that he would never use nuclear weapons, effectively making the UK's nuclear deterrent worthless.  He has long campaigned for unilateral Western nuclear disarmament, including during the Cold War.  Was he a pacifist who just believed the USSR would follow, or was he not too fussed if the Red Army had rolled its way across Europe to "liberate" it from capitalism and "US imperialism"?  In any case the British Communist Party wont be fielding candidates in this election, but is uncharacteristically supporting Labour.

Corbyn is a strong supporter of the Chavez/Maduro authoritarian socialist disaster in Venezuela, but you can't be surprised at that.  After all, he says Castro was a champion of social justice, what with all those opponents he got murdered.  Corbyn also seems to attract anti-semites, not just Ken Livingstone's obsession that the Nazis were in cahoots with Zionists and Jews, but supporters.

These people appear again and again.  However he does join in on Quds Day rallies organised by the Islamic Republic of Iran (yes that bastion of peace, diversity and human rights) to criticise Israel and call for it to be pushed into the sea.

Corbyn is a sympathiser of Russia's position on Ukraine and Georgia, presumably because it is the opposite of the US and European position.  He blamed the Russian insurgency in Ukraine on "NATO belligerence".  After all, how dare Ukraine dump mother Russia led by such a nice liberal democratic regime to embrace the evil West right?

Shadow Home Secretary Diane Abbott said on balance Chairman Mao did more good than harm, which will be news to the tens of millions murdered or starved by his policies, with the bizarre justification is that he left China on the verge of a great economic boom (even though China's economic success has been because the Chinese Communist Party abandoned socialist economics).

So as awful as Theresa May is, and corporatist and centre-left as they may be, it is not a party led by IRA sympathisers, appeasers of Islamism and sympathisers of Stalin. 

The moral turpitude of these entities is utterly beyond contempt.  Corbyn refused to condemn the killing of Osama Bin Laden (much better to put him on trial, give him the benefit of the doubt), he has linked terrorism to British foreign policy (but doesn't explain, of course, why neutral Sweden and non-interventionist France get attacked).  

He and his ilk have spent decades on the backbenches campaigning for "understanding" for just about every group that sought to wage war with the UK, whether the IRA, fascist Argentina or Islamists.   He has campaigned for the UK to be disarmed, to withdraw from NATO and to distance itself from the US.  He allies himself with political leaders that torture and murder people, and who use violence.

Of course many Labour MPs know and hope he loses, just that they don't lose their seats.  It is because of them that Labour remains committed to NATO and the nuclear deterrent, both positions Corbyn opposes.

He isn't a nice guy, despite his softly spoken manner.  

He is an advocate of political violence who has appeased and turned a blind eye to brutal murderers, because he shares their political ambitions.  He supported the IRA because he believed in a united Ireland by all means necessary, and to hell with the opinions and concerns of Unionists (whose views he never courted and sought, presumably for a Marxist they were the hated bourgeoisie).  He supported the Galtieri military dictatorship, the same one that imprisoned and tortured socialists in Argentina, because it dared take on the bigger evil - Thatcher's government (hence why he didn't care less than the IRA tried to murder her and did kill several Conservatives) over the Falklands.  He is warm towards Hamas and Iran because he supports the Palestinians and supports just about any regime that dares take on the hated United States and its ally Israel.   I understand concern for the plight of the Palestinians (although keeping Hamas in power is shooting yourself in the foot), but to treat Iran as a partner is morally bankrupt.

He is without doubt the worst candidate for Prime Minister put up by any major UK political party in modern times.  Those who stand with him should be ashamed of him, and the ONLY reason to vote Conservative is to send the strong message that Corbyn and his group of violence touters have no place in government.