Unlikely to make all that much difference

At the time of the European election campaign last year I seemed to attend the launch of yet another party every week. None of them, I predicted, would come to anything as none of them had the slightest idea of what it is they were trying to achieve in politics. You do not get votes by not having anything to say, however loud you are in not saying anything (and Declan Ganley was very loud, indeed). I was proved right: neither Libertas nor the Jury Team managed to save a single deposit or come anywhere near it. Libertas is now the stuff of history but the Jury Team is carrying on, still proclaiming the need for ordinary people to become politicians, whatever their views or abilities might be.

We now have a new entrant: the Trust Party, set up by the multi-millionaire former Conservative donor Stuart Wheeler. As parties go, this will have a small presence on the scene. Mr Wheeler is standing against Greg Barker, one of the Boy-King's chums in Bexhill. There will be two other candidates. Even the Anti-Federalist League, the precursor of UKIP managed more than that in 1992.

Mr Barker is, Heaven help us, the Shadow Climate Change Minister but that is not what is bothering Mr Wheeler, who seems not to be very interested in political issues, not even in the EU in any sustained fashion. The issue is expenses.

Mr Barker, the Shadow Climate Change Minister, was accused of pocketing £320,000 from buying and selling a flat he bought with the help of expenses.

He owned a home in Pimlico, near the Commons, for 27 months before selling it and moving back to his old address.

The most cursory knowledge of British history would tell one that the question of fiscal dishonesty in politicians is hardly a new thing. Are these people worse than their predecessors or their colleagues in other countries? I hardly think so.

There are two reasons why this has become such an issue. One is that there is a general disenchantment with politicians, their constant attempts (often successful) to grab more power from people paralleled by their complete inability to manage anything they take over. There is a vague understanding that with the EU and the various quangos real power has been given away at about the same rate that the MPs have demanded money and greater perks. The question of expenses is merely the symptom not the cause.

This was something Libertas failed to understand last year. They were convinced that people were voting UKIP or, perhaps, BNP solely because of the expenses scandal. So they spent a good deal of time trying to prove that UKIP MEPs were no better than the others, ignoring all suggestions that people might decide to vote for UKIP for some other reason. We know what came of it all.

The other reason is a little more complicated. Mr Wheeler and many others keep telling us that they want to restore faith in politics and politicians. Those are two different issues and one often precludes the other.

Certainly, it is time the people of this country grasped that politics is not a spectator sport. If you don't get involved it will come and grab you. This notion that somehow politics has nothing to do with us is a relatively recent one in Britain and has grown in tandem with faith in politicians. Leave it all to them and they will sort it out. Unfortunately, instead of sorting it out the politicians have brought this country to a point of destruction and the expenses scandal was, in a way, a wake-up call for many people not to trust those b******s any longer. In my opinion, that is an entirely healthy attitude. The last thing we want is a return to the somnolent attitude of the people trusting politicians.

So, while I am highly amused by Mr Wheeler's campaign to discomfort his erstwhile party, I shall not be supporting his rather strangely named Trust Party. Not because it bothers me that he is wasting money on a pointless campaign (Jimmy Goldsmith, whom he undoubtedly wants to emulate made no secret of his political views) - after all, it is his money. I shall not support it because I think the whole idea is silly and pointless. If we really do want to have grown-up politics in this country then we must go on distrusting the people who tell us they know best, that is the politicians.

Intellectual drift

Yesterday evening I attended the launch of Professor Jeremy Black's latest book, The Politics of World War Two, published by the Social Affairs Unit. [There appears to be no link yet. Professor Black is clearly far too prolific for the internet to keep up with him.]

In his introduction, Professor Black spoke of the differences between conservatives (though he is also a reasonably stalwart supporter of the party with a capital C) and the socialists. Without being anything like a socialist Professor Black expressed som sadness at the thought of the modern Labour Party's intellectual rudderlessness. The cause was that they had abandoned history. The party of Major Attlee and Ernie Bevin, he said, had a clear idea of British national history and traditions. Their understanding was not the same as that of people on the other side of the political spectrum but it was real, nonetheless. There is nothing like it in the Labour Party of today.

That is very true and it is what makes NuLab such a tiresome bunch of utter bores. The trouble is that Professor Black then proceeded to explain that conservatives were very different. To be fair, he did not say that the modern Conservative Party was different but there was a strong implication of it. That, I fear, is simply not true. NuCon, just like NuLab is intellectually rudderless with no understanding of its own or the country's history.

Of course, I am rather looking forward to reading the book. It has a long chapter about World War Two in subsequent history and perception.

Always good to see ...

... a rational analysis by an American blog of politics in some European countries. Not European politics, because that is a completely separate issue and has to do with the European Union. In fact, as I have tried to explain to my friends from across the Pond, there really is no such thing as European politics.

It is natural for people to image, that is to see other countries' politics as a mirror image of their own. Many do it here about American politics and get things badly wrong; many do it in America about politics in Europe and get it badly wrong.

For example the row between Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch and Charles Johnson of Little Green Footballs that went on and on about parties like Vlaam Belang left me cold. American commentators, I opined, should leave European political parties alone.

However, I now amend that opinion. Here is an excellent analysis of the real fascism in European countries by Paul Mirengoff of Powerline. Possibly, it is a warning for his American colleagues not to rush into judgement on the basis of completely erroneous analysis that the MSM tends to produce (a warning we should take to heart as far as American politics is concerned). But it is well worth reading.