J. Sorel has argued, influentially — it has been an argument taken up by Peter Hitchens, David Starkey and others — that Labour’s constitutional document of 2022 entitled 'A New Britain: Renewing Our Democracy and Rebuilding Our Economy: Report of the Commission on the U.K.’s Future' will destroy Parliamentary sovereignty. It will involve, he wrote in July 2023, "the subordination of Parliament to the judiciary; universal English devolution; the reorganisation of Britain as a multi-national state; and the enshrining of the current social order as a constitution".
On the other hand, David McGrogan has argued in the last few days that we ought to pay less attention to the supposed content of this document — which he suggests Gordon Brown has probably never read — and instead look at its form. It "stuns us with its incompetence". It is "shoddy, slapdash, riddled with grammatical and syntactical errors, and in places incoherent". It was written by "people of the profoundest mediocrity".
Well, in the spirit of Hegelian logic — which always tries to count up to three (and, indeed, add up 1 and 2 so that they make 3 and not some other worse number) — I would like to suggest that both Sorel and McGrogan are right. 'A New Britain' "will strengthen the forces of bureaucracy", and will perpetuate "an oligarchy that is genuinely perplexed and enraged by the concept of political opposition" (Sorel). But it also is "not a serious document". It has been written by people who are "playing at government",
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I am sure for many, ie the sheep, badly written drivel matters little. Personally, anything badly written antagonises. An inability to use language correctly is an insult to the reader. I make allowances for those of my associates who were not the beneficeries of a good education but those are exceptions.
Current educational standards are so poor that even recent graduates struggle to put together coherent sentences.
Well written articles are a pleasure to read. Badly written rubbish as referred to above is tiresome and never worth the effort. Always an insult. And that I believe sums up the Labour Party’s view of the people of this country.
The document is offensive and intended to be so.
This ‘Tridentity’ is present in the quote from Anniliese Dodds that J K Rowling used in her recent renewed criticism. Accordingly, a person can be biologically male and at the same time legally female.
In the Unherd event the week before the general election, Mr Hitchens used Lord Salisbury’s view that what comes next will always be worse to argue that the election of a Labour government should be prevented. When the anthem ‘Things can only get better’ was chosen for New Labour in 1997, this was a conscious reversal of Salisbury in favour of the view that Utopia can be created.
Parliament isn’t sovereign, the People are – Magna Carta.
This is confirmed on Parliament’s own website when it says no later Parliament can be bound by a previous Parliament. If this were not so, no Act could be amended or repealed. Ergo Parliament cannot be sovereign.
It is why the whole Net Zero nonsense could have been ended by repealing the Climate Change Act.
So..’New Britain’ – whatever constitutional vandalism Labour inflict can be reversed by Nigel… if he so wishes… later on.
Magna Carta did not ‘give’ us ‘rights’, it simply codified the fact that we have no rights beyond those which some higher authority will concede to us.
“Does anyone think that Scotland became freer or more local under devolution”
Or Wales for that matter. Essential Items Only….We’re all essential was on UK Column T-Shirt.
Or under PR?
This is basically the same point, but much better articulated, as the my single criticism of the McGrogan article: malevolence and stupidity are not mutually exclusive.
The Be Kind Brigade at it again:Hotel owner, 57, fears for family’s safety after threats to destroy his business simply for advertising on GB News (msn.com)
Inquisitions and witch trials are conducted, not by the malicious or malevolent, nor by the ignorant, but by Good People in the pursuit of goodness.
The is the signal fact of human nature. An observation made long ago but consistently misunderstood. Especially by moderns.
It was a lawyer – a man who was passionate about equality, and who wanted the abolition of slavery – who was the chief motivator of the Terror in Revolutionary France. He wanted virtue to reign but argued that terror was it’s co-partner. In the 1938 film, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Robespierre declares that, “I do not torture. If I kill it is to improve humanity.”
The long ago observation was made in the Bible, the Gospels. The metropolitan elite who were the leading council of the Israelite nation were all good men. Highly educated, living morally unimpeachable lives, experts in the moral and ceremonial law.
One element in this council were the Pharisees. Jesus of Nazareth denounces them as hypocrites. To moderns this is taken to mean that they were bad men. Whereas the Greek carries no such connotation.
The Pharisees were those good people who conspired to have Jesus tried on the grounds… Read more »
How seriously should we take ‘Labour’s New Britain’?
Answer: (sound effects of strong winds blowing across the Mojave desert) Tumbleweed…
Is it worth analysing any sales brochure? It’s a list of desirable bullet points, and not much more than that. And it’s similar for other Parties.
I presume you endorse it as I believe you voted for them?
Well, I guess that this is the reason that the Blob is so keen on Artificial Intelligence – there’s a terminal absence of the real old-fashioned sort.
Unfortunately, AI imitates Blob Intelligence.
Or is it vice versa?
The only feeling I have about this is that if carried out it will be a disaster, but that our government stooges of all colours are SO incompetent, it won’t happen.