One of the few Net commentators on whom I rely for the true inside gen has his moments of unbalance. Here he splutters about the new "right wing" Cabinet, contrasting it unfavourably with the gang of corporatists in Mrs Thatcher's last line-up. Sometimes he simply loses it, like "Attila The Stockbroker" who also uses the term "right-wing" so loosely on Facebook that it might as well mean "occasionally wears a tie."
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2019/07/johnsons-westminster-cabinet-is-far-to-the-right-of-thatcher/
I reply (but what's the point?):
Usually I look to you for information or angles on subjects that are suppressed in the mainstream media, but there are one or two topics where you seem to exhibit a galvanic response. I suppose even the brightest minds have their red-button issues.
Surely you know that the EU is neoliberal in its economics – vide Costas Lapavitsas' “The Left Case Against The EU” – and intent on Empire-building, interfering in countries as far away as Mali (and thereby compromising Ireland’s military neutrality by the involvement there of Eire’s troops, as Irish Midlands MEP Luke “Ming” Flanagan explains.)
Yes, one element among Leavers are “free traders” who are happy to see capital smash-and-grab its way about the world – though on a local scale that is what the EU does also. But there always was and should be a Left vision of a sovereign nation working for the good of all its people, which is not on the menu in the EU as its peripheral members are sadly only too aware.
I suppose this splenetic outburst is related to your hope for an independent Scotland, but in that case why should the UK also not be allowed to desire independence? And how much more wealth and liberty do you imagine Scotland would have in the event (unfeasible I understand) of her being a separate member of the EU?
“Ken Clarke, Chris Patten, John Major, Virginia Bottomley, Douglas Hurd and William Waldegrave” – corporatist anti-democrats: you want “right wing”, you’ve got it there. Guys who despise the people – Major prided himself on "knowing how to talk to the man in the four-ale bar,” like knowing that koalas need to be fed eucalyptus.
Maybe you’re drawing your political graph all wrong – it’s not Left v Right, it’s Horseshoe Theory: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horseshoe_theory
2 comments:
JD comments:
Murray "has his moments of unbalance"?
Rather too many of them for my liking. Why is an Englishman so obsessed with Scottish independence? His father was Scottish (I think) but Murray himself does not have, nor shows any indication of having, in the words of Robert Burns an 'independent mind'.
The horseshoe theory is interesting. Years ago in Spain one of my friends would expound on why fascism and communism would evolve to the point where they met and agreed with each other. I suppose he was explaining that theory but whether he knew of it or just worked it out I don't know. He was half Irish so it may well have been his fertile mind seeing how the world works.
And lo and behold, evidence of the theory appeared last week with the appointment of Munira Mirza as director of Boris Johnson's policy unit in Number 10! She was a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party (UK) and wrote for the magazine Living Marxism which itself evolved into Spiked. http://www.spiked-online.com/
As you say, it's not left v right any more. It is a time of strange bedfellows. Now what was that hysteria about keeping the mad Commie Corbyn well away from Downing Street?
We live in interesting times :)
JD adds:
There is a quote by Robert Anton Wilson which describes perfectly Munira Mirza and the writers on Spiked -
"It only takes twenty years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea"
https://www.brainyquote.com/authors/robert_anton_wilson
Lots of other waspish barbs on that page!
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