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October 31, 2003
So much for the vulnerable
Day two of the brave new Tory dawn, and the not-yet party leader has started to clarify just what he means by 'leading from the centre'. It means, it seems, abandoning the family. Key quote from this Torygraph interview with Michael Howard: 'Influenced partly by his wife, the ex-model Sandra Paul, he has softened his stance on social values - he no longer wants to see marriage rewarded through the tax system, for example, arguing that the Tories should recognise that many cohabiting couples live in stable relationships too'. Oh dear. Ms Paul should go back to modelling. Cohabitation does not produce 'stable' relationships. It produces a significantly higher rate of breakup than marriage, more infidelity, violence and abuse, and most important of all an accelerating rate of fatherless children -- the single most important driving factor behind the crime rate. Howard says he wants to be 'inclusive' and has pledged to help the vulnerable. When I hear the word 'inclusive', I reach for the sick-bag. It's code for abandoning the vulnerable -- such as the children left desolate and crippled amidst the wreckage of family disintegration. Encouraging or conniving at yet more of this social disaster is not 'inclusive'. It's immoral, ignoble and opportunistic. Let's hope this was just a rush of blood to the head in the excitement of the moment, and not an augury of a Portillistic cross-dressing strategy. Posted by melanie at October 31, 2003
Comments
Bravo, Melanie. quite right to. As a lot of commentators have pointed out, this 'inclusivity' is both a soft focus denial of the real world, and, at a deeper level, a way of the well educated 'Metropolitan' middle class of pulling the ladder up after them. Being knowledgable enough to know the superior value of marriage for their own children's development they proclaim the moral neutrality of alternative lifestyles for others, thereby lessening the future competition for their own children. Theodore Dalrymple memorably said in his obituary of Lord Jenkins that he was 'the John the Baptist of the gated community'. What an absolute tradegy for both children and adults if the new Tory messiah forever consigns family life and stable parenting for the masses to the dustbin. Posted by: Andrew Cadman at November 1, 2003 01:50 PM(A version of this post appeared on Peter Hitchen's forum.) This isn't the only worrying indication of which way the wind looks likely to blow in Howard's Tory party. From Howard's interview in today's Sunday Telegraph: "I think the way in which the country had changed was symbolised by its reaction to the death of Diana. We are in many ways a different country from what we were 20 or even 10 years ago. People have a different approach in the way they lead their lives and that's something the Conservative Party has to recognise and embrace." Oh, for the love of cheese Michael :-( Watching Jonathan Dimbleby just now, having been listening and reading bits and pieces of coverage of Michael Howard's impending appointment as Tory leader these last few days. I begin to despair, frankly. Howard's tone thus far - and that of his supporters in the Tory party and (to my dismay) an astonishingly sycophantic Torygraph - points to his becoming precisely another apostle of the bogus centre-ground which our liberal establishment has decreed to be the only acceptable parameters of political opinion. Watching the pundits and politicians on Dimbleby, there seems to an almost universal acceptance of liberal precepts: an explicit assumption that the values and beliefs of traditional conservatism are dead and buried, and that Tory survival depends on their being able to jettison them once and for all. John Bercow waxes lyrical about not being able to "turn the clock back", endorsing gay adoption, "celebrating diversity", "reaching out" to minorities, recognising the embracing the changed "social mores" of modern Britain etc. etc., ad absurdum. - and tries disingenuously then to insist that such an agenda isn't about political correctness. I feel like crying. And when an (Asian) Tory supporter who objected to all-women shortlists received resounding applause, Dimbleby's reply was "Judging from the audience reaction, in which there are a lot of conservatives present, perhaps your problem is that your own party won't let you modernise?"!!! Dimbleby is evidently convinced that "reactionary" opinion, even from his studio audience, is self-evidently absurd and something to be overcome rather than heeded. So which version of "public opinion" is correct? Can we still insist that sort-leftish bias by broadcasters remains unrepresentative of public opinion? This, after all, is on ITV, not the BBC. Perhaps the ethical and intellectual fashions of the last 40 years, and the moral bullying of the left, have finally swept public opinion up with them, so that (Heaven help us) independent thought, intellectual integrity and ancient conservative beliefs are really "unelectable", as Polly Toynbee insists? In which case, is the Tories' craven surrender to leftish sensibilitiies, values and language the only alternative to political martydom for the sake of truths that no one can be persuaded of any more? Not that this makes it excusable for Conservatives to choose their own electoral interests over those of the country, or provides any reason not to hold fast to one's beliefs - rather, the more the world turns it's back on what is true the more necessary it becomes to insist upon what people are reluctant to hear. What I'm puzzled about is how steep the hill we have to climb is, if public opinion really does believe that what Melanie and others have to say is just a fetish of the "right-wing press." http://www.viagra-exchange.com/ (Viagra), please erase this message and you'll never see our ad again. Posted by: Viagra at November 9, 2003 02:06 PMhttp://www.viagra-exchange.com/ (Viagra), please erase this message and you'll never see our ad again. 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