A Thousand Years Of History

Our late Indian summer is at an end and the first chilled winds of October bring with them tidings of Ireland’s eventual capitulation to the unceasing machine of European integration.

Despite a valiant rejection of the Lisbon Treaty by the Irish last year in the face of overwhelming opposition from their entire political class, the media and big business, the nation that once sought independence from British rule has been bullied into accepting rule from distant Brussels.

Only Poland and the Czech Republic have yet to ratify the Lisbon Treaty, and it will likely not be long before they do. As the Czech President Vaclav Klaus sadly noted to waiting journalists:

The Irish had the last chance to say something about Lisbon… because after today’s Irish referendum there will never be another referendum in Europe.

And slowly but surely, as day turns to night, the EU’s slow motion coup d’état takes effect. Our sovereignty has been strangled, our independence dissolved. Squandered are centuries of hard won liberties, rights and freedoms – so often without our knowledge or even a care. It is, as Hugh Gaitskell so accurately predicted, to be the end of a thousand years of history.

Yet, there is hope. We, as a nation, are still capable of saving ourselves from the jaws of defeat as we have so many times before. Perhaps it will be that resilience of character and spirit that sees us through again – but only if we will it to be so. For there will be no-one else behind us to catch us should we falter or fall; no foreign intervention to rescue us from our fate.

That decision is up to us now. Either we wake from our delusions of a benevolent European Union, realise that our future as a truly democratic nation lies in grave danger, and resolve to act – or we slowly subside into bureaucracy, and foreign rule by an unelected state, a fate for which we will only have ourselves to blame.

The Cult Of Obama

This will be the first and hopefully last time that I have cause to mention the Democrat Presidential candidate, Barack Obama and anything relating to his campaign – lest he actually become US President later this year which I still doubt he will.

His visit to Germany and much lauded speech in Berlin (in which unsurprisingly he said nothing at all) were met with screaming crowds of zealous fans whose presence did little more than confirm his full transition from man to unthinking cult.

In many ways Obama reminds me very much of Tony Blair when he first became Prime Minister, who arrived in Downing Street to crowds of screaming fans waving Union Flags on a manifesto of ‘hope’, ‘change’ and ‘optimism’. What those words actually meant, nobody was really sure – but it wasn’t long before Blair and his Labour mob had set to work destroying what was left of Britain, and for his once fanatical supporters to slowly drift away.

Similarly praise for Obama has been equally misplaced. Thus far he has cruised along on a wave of meaningless rhetoric and lavish praise from (in this country) the BBC and the types who were so fond of Tony Blair’s comparable variety of emptiness and slogans in the 90s. In the Mail on Sunday, Peter Hitchens asks:

When will Mr Obama’s absurd bubble of adulation burst?

Unfortunately, one has to suspect that the artificial bubble that has enveloped Obama will be sustained by blogs and the media, both in this country and in America, until the Presidential election in November. However, we can, I feel, do the United States and British politics a great service by simply ignoring him altogether.

By continually mentioning his name and his exploits we will only perpetuate or indeed enlarge his bubble of adulation. Deprived of the oxygen of hype and publicity, hopefully the Obama cult may die out and people will, like they did with Blair, eventually begin to see that behind the grand words and spirited speeches there is just a man – not a saviour – with nothing to say at all.

Top Ten Blogs

I have been relatively busy recently so here is a post which doesn’t really require too much thinking (by me anyway).

It is also a rare occasion when I will not in some way directly involve mention of the European Union (oh no, I did it again!) or what I would deem similarly serious political matters or events.

So, as it happens, I noticed that a few of the self obsessed egos who involved themselves in 18 Vanity Street (which amusingly collapsed last year) but chose not to move sideways onto Stephan Shakespeare’s PoliticsHome project have reappeared in the team behind a new magazine called TotalPolitics.

Rather unsurprisingly the TotalPolitics magazine (much like its staff) will really only be interested in the soap opera of the Westminster Village rather than anything that could be even considered vaguely serious. I am not the only one of this opinion.

Yet, despite the magazine being funded in part by Lord Ashcroft and released to much fan fare on some few blogs, I think it may now well be a good time to place your bets on how long it will be before it goes the way of Doughty Street down the pan.

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