Theresa May is completely unfitted to answer the national demand for change, Peter Hitchens writes

So 17 million people voted for a revolutionary change in the way we are governed, and the result is going to be Theresa May. These ignored multitudes were not, I think, hoping for yet another Blairite robot, a living symbol of everything that is wrong with our political system. But this is what they are going to get.

I am sure Mrs May is a perfectly nice person and an ideal neighbour. But this is not the point. She is completely unfitted to answer the national demand for change.

She is a conventional Left-wing liberal. She wanted, for heaven’s sake, to stay in the EU, though she lacked the nerve to campaign actively for this. Given the growing campaign to overturn the referendum by guile and fear, can she be trusted not to fudge us back in?

Look at her. Trevor Phillips, when he was boss of the HQ of Political Correctness, the Equality and Human Rights Commission, said in 2011 that Mrs May was ‘just as aggressive as Harriet Harman was on women’s equality’.

She is keenly politically correct. She mysteriously converted from opposition to all-women shortlists for parliamentary selections, to support for them. As Home Secretary she has done little to reduce or control the mass immigration which worries so many.

She also prefers not to mention in reference books that she went to a girls’ grammar school, strange behaviour for someone now alleged to support such schools. She is even quieter about having attended a private school.

Her most important political act was her speech in October 2002 in which she described the Tories she now seeks to lead as ‘the nasty party’.

Incidentally, in the same speech, she specifically endorsed Anthony Blair’s Iraq War policy, perhaps the single stupidest act in modern politics. Her only criticism of Mr Blair was about his ability to deliver on policies she supported.

Crucially she demanded that the Tory Party should adapt itself to Blairism. ‘Twice we went to the country unchanged, unrepentant, just plain unattractive. And twice we got slaughtered. Soldiering on to the next Election without radical, fundamental change is simply not an option.’

The Blairite insider Steve Richards has written about this era, saying that, in the 2002 Election, the Blair entourage were often in an exasperated fury. ‘You don’t get it,’ they would occasionally scream. ‘The Election is a historic referendum on a Right-wing Conservative Party. If we win a second landslide, we would kill off Right-wing Conservatism for good.’

'She is a conventional Left-wing liberal who wanted to stay in Europe and is keenly politically correct'

To do that, a Blairite fifth column was needed inside the Tory Party – ably aided, as Blairites always are, by media allies.

This first ran the putsch against Iain Duncan Smith. Then it arranged the amazingly prolonged leadership election which allowed the unknown Blair clone David Cameron to defeat the far better qualified David Davis.

You know the rest, in all its ghastly detail. Now it’s going to continue. The Tory Party will be shored up once again by billionaire cash and broadcasting rules which give it airtime worth many millions of pounds and deny it to any rival.

Oh, and if you thought Michael Gove was any better, never let it be forgotten that in 2003, under the headline ‘I can’t fight my feelings any more: I love Tony’, this supposedly ‘Right-wing’ great hope garlanded the grinning Blair creature with words such as ‘right and brave’, ‘impressive’ and ‘resolute’.

Having dug our way out of the dungeon, we find we have merely reached another dungeon, just as deep and just as dark.

A FOUL-MOUTHED PROPHET OF OUR CALLOUS FUTURE Any fool can break a taboo, and it’s gone for ever. In the same way, any fool can cut down a tree that has taken three centuries to grow. Later we find out what we have lost. And I continue to wonder why there’s so little concern about the breach of the old taboo against public swearing. The singer Adele Adkins (right) swore repeatedly on live TV, as she performed at Glastonbury last weekend. What effect will this have? Those of us who have already lived long enough to see the country transformed, and know that nothing that seems permanent will necessarily survive, are perhaps better able to imagine how far things might go. Those who are relaxed about this might wonder how they will feel when they start hearing teachers using the f-word in class, nurses using four-letter words to patients, see the strongest words used without asterisks in newspaper headlines, or politicians using them in major speeches. This will happen. I wouldn’t be surprised if some future archbishop didn’t decide to pander to the spirit of the age by swearing from his or her pulpit. Some may say they wouldn’t care. But that’s half the point. A thick-skinned society is also a callous society. Advertisement

Here's to Corbyn, the lonely hero

I will not join in the gang attack on the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. I disagree with much of what he says, but any free Englishman ought to defend, fiercely, his liberty to say it.

This is partly because of my pre-revolutionary schooling, in which I was taught to admire lone figures who stood against overwhelming force. We used to recite Macaulay’s wonderful poem about ‘How well Horatius kept the bridge in the brave days of old’ – one man defying thousands to save Rome. ‘How can man die better,’ it asks, ‘than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers and the temples of his gods?’ A good question, I always thought.

But it is partly because of a growing fury against the whimpering, snivelling legions who won’t accept votes and seek to overturn them.

In this case, those picking on Corbyn and those trying to discredit the outcome of the referendum are the same people, the Blairites. Not only are they seeking to undo the referendum, they are trying to bypass the awkward fact the Labour Party, according to its own rules, elected Corbyn as its leader by a large majority. In actions plainly co-ordinated with media allies, Mr Corbyn’s enemies have tried to scare their foe into quitting. I very much hope he doesn’t, and that he beats them because this is now a matter of honour.

These people deserve to be in the fix they are in. They clubbed the Tory Party into becoming just like them. Thanks to this, they have no purpose left. If the Tories won’t have them, there’s a vacancy for another futile ‘centre’ party, now that the Lib Dems are all washed up. They can fill that.