BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN
There are some things in life that are obvious. You drop litter – you pick it up. You bump into someone in the street – you apologise. You see someone being bullied – you jump to their aid. Let’s call these actions instances of civilised pragmatism.
In general, Brits are a decent and empathetic bunch. We’re civilised and we’re no-nonsense pragmatic. We don’t ask for much from our Government – a sound economy, solid growth, security for our families and a health service we can fall back on when we’re genuinely sick. We begrudgingly pay our taxes even though we know we are increasing the waistlines of far too many Government and Council-paid jobsworths. We don’t like incompetence or waste. And we detest spin – talk less, do best.
In return we get on. Largely, peace reigns. If we dislike something enough, like the poll tax, we’ll soon let the Government know about it and many of us will simply refuse to pay it. Governments tend to understand when we’re genuinely riled and turn on a sixpence when their future is at stake.
Brits are also a very proud bunch. We’re proud of many things from our Olympic Golds to our Nobel Prizes; from Rowling to Adele to London Fashion Week. We have lots more to be proud about than most.
So, criticism from foreigners tends to annoy us. We hate the idea of being ruled from abroad (hence brave battle after brave battle and now Brexit). Perhaps most of all, we hate being told what we are not.
What riles us most now?
The EU. The absurd BBC license fee. Goofy Guy Verhofstadt. Wine-soaked Juncker. The sneering liberal elite, especially. The list is a long one with the word liberal featuring a lot in it (the current, stolen version of the word liberal, as opposed to the reputable Burkeian one).
Currently, after a decade and a half of spin, we’ve had it up to our eyeballs with people who say they’ll get things done, win elections, and can’t get things done because lawyers say no or foreign, unelected elites block them.
And now many are openly rebelling against a license-fee / state-funded BBC that gives us smears, hard multiculturalism and a PC monologue – delivered by presenters and newsreaders who seem to want to condescend to us with odd hand movements and deliberate delivery (as if we were in a cage like some troop of lip-reading monkeys). A PC circus too big for the tent that was conceived for it – paid for by a license fee that a poor single Mum in Glasgow scrapes together in fear of jail only to be spent later on a pedicure for Brexit-sneering millionaire Graham Norton or on a programme glorifying the life and times of repulsive BBC paedophile Jimmy Savile.
Perhaps what riles us most right now is the liberal elite’s misappropriation of words. We (where We are All Brits, white, black and other) ask for logical, pragmatic and civilised outcomes. We request the crushing of Radical Islamism in the UK so our kids don’t get slaughtered, a fair playing field for our boys and girls, British control of immigration, housing for Brits first, support and treatment for our brave army veterans and the removal of certain disgraced, corrupt MPs like Keith Vaz from our House of Commons.
What do we get accused of in return? Populism, Sexism, Racism, Islamophobia; sometimes a lack of multicultural sensibility and – the accusation that makes me chuckle most – Imperialism. We get called Right Wing when we’re clearly centrists, Radicals when we’re just common-sensers, Neo-conservatives when we’re right of centre and Fascists when we call out Corbynistas as nuts (the latter accusation matters somewhat less as Corbynistas are nuts).
Hang on a minute, we reply, we’re not sexist, racist, or scared of Islam in the slightest and, while we have major doubts (mostly brought about by extremist Islamists) about hard multiculturalism ever working, we can scarcely be blamed for the imperialist adventures of our Great Great Grandfathers. Expressing majority feeling is populism? Really? In which case The Crown bypassing a generation, Winston Churchill being a national treasure and puppies being soft and cuddly are somehow evil populist stances?
Had enough?! Feel like it’s time for a change? (I am not suggesting revolution here, as I am a conservative. I am merely suggesting just a little progressive, civilised and pragmatic adjustment – using the real meaning of the word progressive and not the misappropriated one, meaning socialist)
There are solutions. Three of them with which to start.
And they’re all peaceful ones.
First, we could all stop paying the BBC license fee. After Brexit, the license fee is the next target for lovers of freedom in the UK to go after. The BBC will be forced into a new market-driven model – their market happens to be us. If we don’t like them, we won’t subscribe to them. If millions en masse stop paying the license fee, the Government will finally get the message and the BBC will be forced to fight for its life in the private sector, where it will do very well indeed without its sneering liberal baggage and its unrepresentative stance. The best bits of the BBC will thrive. The BBC should not be given time to change. It should be given a short, sharp shock so its sneering, liberal elitists fall off the public teat – they should be forced to look for a job in the real world where they will find they are not very popular or marketable at all.
Second, we could expose the proselytising Marxists at Britain’s universities. For far too long UK universities and colleges have been a safe refuge for proselytising Marxists who couldn’t get a job anywhere else, frankly. If those who pay the fees – including many Chinese, Indian and other foreign parents of students – knew that a certain professor or lecturer at the university they planned for their child was a proselytising Marxist waiting to brainwash their child (and likely set their child’s chances in the real world back by at least twenty years) they’d soon choose universities that do not employ Marxists. For many decades, Britain has been at the global core of brainwashing students by Marxist professors. It’s time a big spanner was stuck in the workings of that particular conveyor belt. The more like businesses universities become and the more open to scrutiny their employees are (including their layer upon layer of Marxist apparatchiks), the better prepared their graduates will be. By parents keeping their kids away from Marxist-employing universities they will have to reform or simply go bust under the sheer force of the market. A sneering, liberal elite will die out – replaced by well-educated, open-minded, civilised and pragmatic common-sensers in search of realistic progress.
Finally, build an investigation unit that the Charities Commission of the United Kingdom merits – one that is fit for purpose. The British public donates a lot of its hard-earned cash to charities. Why should we innocently give our money to charities who are using it for political gain or, as in the case of multiple Islamist-run charities, to fraudulently and illegally fund terror often in the guise of assisting refugees? Charities are the soft underbelly of Britain – exploited by the Fabians, Radical Islam and others with a less than philanthropic motive, who use them as safe refuges when they are not in power or need cover to hide. Charities have especially proliferated around the NHS – they drain funds away from the NHS front line in the millions; in the form of useless advocacy groups, patient care and watchdogs which fight against the NHS rather than bettering it. So many charities currently stink that there needs to be a thorough clean-out. Just take a look at Save the Children and David Miliband’s International Rescue Committee.
Do these 3 simple and achievable things and Britain will be a fairer, more meritocratic place. In time we might actually start seeing things get done by Government – assisted to a far greater degree by a pragmatic, civilised and representative market – rather than creating yet more jobs and safe spaces to sustain regressive, sneering liberals. We don’t need to drain the swamp – just take away the safe refuges where those who hold us back hide out. I could extend the To Do List with multiple policies – like bringing corporation tax radically down to attract foreign business, making the over-meddling Department of Education independent of government – but these 3 actions will do most to radically improve Britain overnight.
Media will undergo a renaissance and once more come to represent its buyers and users or go bust. Governments will finally be held to account. The worst of the Leftists will be exposed and have nowhere to hide – as fresh-faced recruits run out they’ll be drop-kicked into everlasting minority. And Radical Islam in Britain will soon have its cash dry up. The inflow of dinosaurish radical imams will cease; extremism will be exposed and come under a huge, unsurvivable strain. And maybe then we can give multiculturalism a definition that works for all of us.
That’s how to put the sneering liberal elite on its knees – back to working for us rather than sneering at us. Take away their safe refuges. Quantify the public teat. Make them see they sneer for a small minority of public opinion and not the vast majority of common-sensers in this pragmatic and civilised country.
Such a time for change has been long overdue in coming. Now the British Lion stirs.