10 Comments
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Riddley's avatar

I think the substance of this is correct, but if we abandon the current B2B "tone" then the precise tone of the Right's offer needs some thought (it does have to have a tone, after all). I think Lawrence Newport's "Crush Crime" thing is well presented: it's a clear and memorable slogan but the font used for the logo looks like the Transformers, which probably helps it sneak past middle-class naff-testing quite effectively. A tone which is just ironic enough to say quite serious things would be very valuable.

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Horus's avatar

This is the best critique of Pimlico Journal I've read on Pimlico Journal.

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Jonathan Sidaway's avatar

Thank you for this. Am commenting b4 reading most of it because it is what is on my mind very much at the moment. I can't abide lefties as people, let alone the idiocy (and worse) that informs every fibre of their being. Oakeshott and Scruton always were overrated imo; and can be wholly ignored now.

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Phil's avatar

Very well put

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Donna's avatar

At last, someone gets it!

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fiendish_librarian's avatar

I can replace every specific mention of British conservatism and institutions with references to Canadian ones, and this article would still be one hundred-percent on-target. In both cases, "conservative" parties need to start telling their opponents to go fuck themselves and *do* things. I don't understand why both the UK and Canadian versions aren't learning from Trump's successes, it's maddening.

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Darren Gee's avatar

"a random draw of serving Tory parliamentarians and advisors will likely serve up a sex pest, a drug abuser, or both."

Ha ha.

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bill's avatar

Conservatives don't want to smash socialism, they just want to manage it a bit better.

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Stephen Webb's avatar

Well ok. But there's no point promising stuff you cant deliver 'we'll take away their pensions' or just making random hard line promises. People dont believe politicians and you need a credible plan. Its absolutely doable in the British system, but the more tempted you are instead by a Cummingsesque 'burn it all down', the more you guarantee continuing failure

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Claustrophilia's avatar

"As with most things in British political life, the British Right is around ten years behind the American Right in accepting this obvious truth." So writes Pimlico Journal.

Perhaps PJ could also have added that as with most things in British political journalism, British right-wing journalism is ten years behind its American counterpart. This makes your preachy, finger-wagging exercise in shaming your (admittedly ineffectual) conservative politicians hypocritical and undeservedly self-congratulatory.

You are a nation of imitators. For the last 60 years Britain has been imitating the US, both on the Right and the Neoliberal Center. Enoch Powell struck out on his own as did Tony Benn and Michael Foot from the left. But the rest of the time it has been a grand imitation game, both the way it is played and the way it is reported.

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