A cosy, narrow and self-serving clique

In the 21 May edition of The Daily Mail , the political commentator, Simon Heffer, said this:

“A measure of the bizarre political times in which we live is that the Prime Minister and Leader of the Conservative party felt yesterday that he had to email his dwindling band of activists and urge them to believe how much he values them… 

His defensive remarks were prompted by the disgraceful observation by one of his cronies, possibly Lord Feldman, his tennis partner and Tory vice-chairman, that the rank and file were ‘swivel-eyed loons’…

Lord Feldman, if, indeed, it was he, is in a distinguished line of Tories who hate their party. And they hate it because on a range of issues, Europe, same-sex marriage, the family, immigration, law and order and selective education, the mass of Conservative Britain obstinately refuses to think like them and their pals in the expensively educated metropolitan elite.

The sneering started when Mrs Thatcher became leader, embodying the traditional middle-class virtues that would win her three elections. She was seen as ‘the little woman’ or ‘the housewife’ who would be in charge temporarily. Those who supported her to the hilt were patronised as unsophisticated and reactionary.

As is the case today, the Tories in the Seventies were led by a cosy, narrow and self-serving clique and they wished to preserve their power and their way of doing things irrespective of what most of their supporters actually wanted…

Anyone at Cabinet level who sympathised with the majority view in the party that the Maastricht Treaty gave away too much sovereignty were branded ‘bastards’ by the leadership. Those activists who supported the ‘bastards’ were dismissed as stupid.

But it was the leadership that appeared stupid. Not least after the debacle of Black Wednesday in 1992, when Britain was forced to withdraw from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, a forerunner of the euro, because it was driving us into bankruptcy.

Yet still the sneering leadership didn’t get it. Instead of accepting that the voters were appalled by economic mismanagement, they blamed defeat instead on the Tories’ supposed social attitudes.

This is why Theresa May christened the Tories ‘the nasty party’ at the Conservative conference in the autumn of 2002.

She was referring to the party’s perceived ‘intolerance’ of homosexuals and ethnic minorities...

The relentless disdain for true blue Tories continued with Michael Howard’s leadership in 2003. In fact, things took a turn for the worse.

Failing to understand why many Tories backed UKIP’s aim for a referendum on Europe, he branded that party one of ‘cranks, gadflies and extremists’.

But it was when Mr Cameron ran for the leadership that the sneering went into overdrive… Unfortunately for Mr Cameron… we did not disappear. We simply grew in number and stopped supporting him.

This is why Mr Cameron felt compelled to sneer once more at us when he joined the Michael Howard bandwagon to insult UKIP, branding the innumerable Tories who voted for the party as ‘loonies, fruitcakes and closet racists’.

Once Mr Cameron won the leadership, his rarefied henchman Oliver Letwin was charged with finding ‘new’ policies that bore only the faintest resemblance to traditional Conservatism. It was the only way, Cameron believed, to win back the public.

When he was warned that the party’s core vote was shrinking as a result of this shift from traditional Toryism, he countered that it wouldn’t be until the core vote was down to 20 per cent in the polls that he would really have succeeded in transforming the party.

In other words, he wanted traditional Tories out. The leadership sneered at decent, Middle England Conservatives because they no longer felt any need for them…

A month ago, Kenneth Clarke lost the Tories tens of thousands of votes by sneering at UKIP supporters as ‘clowns’.

Now we have the ‘swivel-eyed loons’ incident: not a shock, but part of a pattern that has run for more than a quarter of a century, in which grand Tories dismiss the deeply held convictions of those to whom they owe their places in politics.

Where that leaves Mr Cameron’s promise not to have around him those who sneer is anyone’s guess. Mr Osborne, Mr Clarke, Mr Letwin and Mrs May all attend his Cabinet. And Lord Feldman, innocent until proven guilty, of course, does his bidding in Central Office.

The fact is the Tory establishment has long despised the truly Conservative people who are the backbone of the party and whose only crime is to love their country and its traditional values and culture. All that has changed is that their supercilious contempt is out in the open."

Of the alleged sneering and contemptuous nu-Tories mentioned in Heffer's article, Lord Feldman, Michael Howard and Oliver Letwin are Jewish. Kenneth Clarke, Theresa May and George Osborne are not.

If you wonder why I mention the ethnicity of the above, as the assorted grandees appear to demonstrate a parity of contempt, it must be remembered that only 1-in-200 Britons is Jewish. Thus, in the above essay at least, the Jew is represented 200 times more than he ought to be according to his incidence in the general population.

Statistically speaking, the Jewish over-representation is even more marked as David Cameron himself has a Jewish great-great grandfather.

As for the 'supercilious contempt' of the Tory elite, New Labour demonstrated much the same disdain when they were in power. Apart from Blair and co. lying us into a war almost no one but them wanted, many dispirited commentators have gone on record to spell out their anger with the previous government's attitude to the general public.

On 9 March 2009, Sir Andrew Green, the Chairman of MigrationWatch, was quoted thus by The Daily Star:

"The government has held public opinion in contempt for years. Despite having dismantled border controls, they deliberately encouraged immigration... 

The Conservatives handed over border controls to the EU but all the other factors are down to New Labour."

On 5 January 2008, George MacDonald Fraser, author of the Flashman novels, was quoted thus in The Daily Mail:

"The philosophy of political correctness is now firmly entrenched... No generation has seen their country so altered, so turned upside down, as children like me born in the 20 years between the two world wars. In our adult lives Britain's entire national spirit, its philosophy, values and standards, have changed beyond belief... 

The United Kingdom has begun to look more like a Third World country. Shabby, littered, ugly, run down, without purpose or direction, misruled by a typical Third World government, corrupt, incompetent and undemocratic. 

My generation has seen the decay of ordinary morality, standards of decency, sportsmanship, politeness, respect for the law, family values, politics and education and religion, the very character of the British... 

We did not know the stifling tyranny of a liberal establishment, determined to impose its views, and beginning to resemble George Orwell's Ministry of Truth... 

There may well be more who think like me than the liberal Left establishment likes to think... Among the middle-aged and people in their 20s and 30s there is a groundswell of anger and frustration at the damage done to Britain by so-called reformers and dishonest politicians who hardly bother to conceal their contempt for the public's wishes."

On 10 November 2008, Leo McKinstry said this in The Daily Express:

“The question was put to me with stark simplicity. ‘what was it all for?’ asked the elderly lady, a wistful look in her eyes. ‘The country that they died for has gone,’ she continued, glancing down at the red poppy on her lapel... 

She explained that she had lost close relatives in both world wars and as a teenager had endured the horrors of the blitz. Mixed with her admiration for family heroes who had lost their lives in conflict, she also felt utter despair at the state of Britain and a profound sense of betrayal... 

She now felt like an alien in her own land, living in constant fear of crime and surrounded by foreigners with whom she had no sense of mutual belonging or trust... 

In this remembrance week we hear our political leaders mouthing platitudes about the debt we owe to the fallen. They ostentatiously parade their poppies and bow their heads in silence at the appropriate moments but all their words and gestures are hollow. Behind the week’s front of piety they have shown contempt for British nationhood, crushing it with their ruthless obedience to the ideologies of diversity, globalisation and European integration… 

Patriotism is now a dirty word in too many of our civic institutions, where the union flag is seen as an offensive symbol of xenophobia."

Perhaps the most telling commentary on New Labour's time in power came from one of its own.

On 23 October 2009, Andrew Neather, a former government advisor to Tony Blair, Jack Straw and David Blunkett amongst others, dropped this revelatory bombshell in The Evening Standard:

“The deliberate policy of ministers from late 2000 until at least February last year… was to open up the uk to mass migration… I remember coming away from some discussions with the clear sense that the policy was intended… to rub the right's nose in diversity… 

There was a reluctance... in government to discuss what increased immigration would mean, above all for Labour's core, white working-class vote. This shone through even in the published report: the ‘social outcomes’ it talks about are solely those for immigrants."

When Neather said this, he wasn't expressing guilt or shame for the way the party elite ignored the needs and wishes of the party's 'core, white working-class' vote.

He was gloating.

Here is Peter Hitchens' take on the 'loons'/elite contempt situation:

"Political journalists have known for years that senior political figures in all parties despise their own supporters, while seeking their votes and money. They don’t say much about it, because they are themselves part of the establishment." (The Daily Mail:) 

Anyway, the lack of respect that the elite of all three parties have shown for those who elect them is now so obvious that even the sheeple are beginning to notice and resent it.

This would, perhaps, explain the rise of UKIP.

Nigel Farage doesn't, at first glance, have much in common with the British working man but there does appear to be one crucial factor in his make-up that, in the sneerers, is missing.

In these fashionably unpatriotic times, he appears to be quite happy to wave the flag for Britain and the British.