How the world looks this week to a swivel-eyed loon

Despite the denials, I feel sure that David Cameron and his Cabinet cronies would have no hesitation in categorising me as a “mad, swivel-eyed loon.”

The face and voice of sanity

And I must swiftly concede that they may well have a point, as I was mad enough to vote for their party at the last election. Though I foolishly thought of it at the time, as for the previous 40 years or so, as MY party: the one most closely aligned to my interests and ideas.

In much the same way, I suppose, as thousands of ex-miners and former shipyard workers across the North East kept voting for the Labour party of Tony Blair under the delusion that it might be on their side, rather than that of the international bankers.

David Cameron truly is the fabled “heir to Blair” in his belief that the way to get and cling onto power is to stick up two fingers at his natural supporters. At least it can be argued in his defence that the energetic pursuit of gay marriage is doing rather less practical damage than cynically engineering mass immigration or invading foreign countries on contrived evidence of wrongdoing.

And who can blame him? The focus groups make clear that “the young”, after the benefit of years of state school brainwashing on the merits of diversity, are all for homosexuals gaily tripping down the aisle together. And “the young” equal “the future”, while all the old fogies like me will soon be dead.

The only snag being that the elderly will, in the meantime, probably go on voting, while the young will be far too busy with their Xboxes (or whatever the 2013 equivalent of those may be). The traditional argument that we have nowhere else to turn also looks a bit threadbare when the affably blokeish Nigel Farage seems to pop up every time we turn on the news.

Now I, as it happens, am a libertarian, who could not personally care less about gay marriage unless they decide to make it compulsory. But I find it surprising that a supposedly Conservative administration should be expending so much political capital on a contentious piece of modernisation that was not proposed in their manifesto.

I would be equally surprised if they suddenly brought forward a Bill to abolish the monarchy, because it would not fit with what I consider to be a “conservative” view of the world. Making the schoolboy error of confusing the word, which accurately describes what I am, with the radical party of professional politicians that has usurped the name.

But if you really want to see swivel-eyed lunacy, take a look at last week’s EU directive banning olive oil bottles and dipping bowls from our restaurants. Observe the views you have cherished all your life being wrecked by all but useless wind turbines, or watch HMS Ark Royal being towed off to a Turkish scrapyard.

Consider the fact that we cannot afford to fill the potholes or repair the landslips on our roads, subsidise rural buses or provide adequate seating capacity on local trains. But we can apparently find £35 billion to build a new high speed railway that will suck yet more economic vigour out of the English regions by bringing more of them within the London commuter belt.

The worst of all this is the feeling of impotence: that “nothing can be done” because “they’re all the same”. As, in truth, the pole-climbing lifelong political monkeys of our major parties appear to be.

Change must come. I shall welcome the chance to vote “no” to European Union membership if a referendum ever comes, which I very much doubt, but why waste yet more time legislating for that theoretical possibility?

Focus on the needs of the people that elected you. Get on with fixing the economy and the infrastructure we have already got. Forget about huge vanity projects. Try treating ridiculous EU directives with the same contempt that you currently reserve for your own most loyal supporters.

Unless you do that, Mr Cameron, you certainly will not deserve to be re-elected in 2015. And if you really want to take a close look at swivel-eyed lunacy, you’ll just need to invest in a mirror.

www.blokeinthenorth.com

Originally published in The Journal, Newcastle upon Tyne.