20260703 The UK is not ungovernable - it is ungoverned.
Telling the British what's good for them and then forcing them to swallow it is not how they work. It is ironic that so much of the population that objected to Thatcher's approach have willingly accepted it, couched in language designed to obscure its purpose, in a succession of governments since and yet creating a far more authoritarian government than Thatcher ever proposed.
And by "them" and "they" I mean us. Why do I live abroad? There were many reasons but one significant reason is that during the Blair years I could see where we were going and I didn't like what England, in particular, was becoming. That was a heavy counterweight to all the arguments for staying. And as my fears proved founded, through a succession of radical left and left-of-centre nominal Conservatives, that decision has been vindicated over and over. The one bright spot was the UK leaving the EU, but again, that has been undermined by successive governments with stealthy returns to EU law through the back door.
We, the British, that is the Ulsterman, the Scot and the Welshman as much as the Englishman, know what we want, we know what we want our government to do for us. We might disagree, sometimes forcefully, but the general thrust was always common benefit in a rising economy.
That simple message has been lost. Of course we are in rebellion, of sorts. And of course, there is the danger that rebellion will turn hostile.
It's not rocket science but it is common sense that does not want to be lost on the altar of a foreign ideology based in the politics of revolt starting in the late 19th Century.
Why do I say it's a foreign ideology?
Leading Labour politicians are almost always members of the Fabian Society, an English Far Left radical group. In the third quarter of the 19th Century, which was a time of mostly quiet revolution, the Fabians adopted principles similar to those of the proto-communists in China and Russia. In Europe, the most publicly active movement was The Anarchists, which had a tendency to assassination by bomb. The Anarchists were largely a spent force when the century ended and the world prepared for war: a few people wandering around with little home made bombs was a minor issue compared to the mobilisation of troops and weaponry in readiness for the First World War.
But the Fabians kept the faith in their mission and when full-revolution rose in China and Russia, they adopted a different approach: instead of mass murder of citizens who did not accept the new order, they decided to eat away at society from within. They knew it would take longer but they were sure that they would create enough support to ensure that political revolution would overcome objections at the ballot box.
But the actions of the foreign communist revolutionaries were not all dismissed out of hand. One principle, in particular, has guided broad Left policy in the UK and elsewhere for more than 100 years. It can be summarised as "to control the people, sow uncertainty."
In "The Politics of the English Language", (1946) George Orwell (real name, Eric Arthur Blair - no relation) looked at the use of language, The publishers of the current (2013 edition) summaries the arguments perfectly.
'Politics and the English Language' is widely considered Orwell's most important essay on style. Style, for Orwell, was never simply a question of aesthetics; it was always inextricably linked to politics and to truth.'All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.When the general atmosphere is bad, language must suffer.'Language is a political issue, and slovenly use of language and cliches make it easier for those in power to deliberately use misleading language to hide unpleasant political facts. Bad English, he believed, was a vehicle for oppressive ideology, and it is no accident that 'Politics and the English Language' was written after the close of World War II.
This, since the 1980s, has been the deliberate tactic of the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats and the Conservatives have done nothing to redress the balance. Worse, the education system and much of the media, publishing and entertainment industry has conspired to reduce the effectiveness of English, with particular effort being made by Hollywood and the USA's technology industry.
One of the primary targets for uncertainty has been the drafting of laws and regulations and, even, the management of Court proceedings. The "Woolf Reforms" of the 1990s were a watershed moment in the judicial system. Terms that had been defined hundreds of years earlier and therefore had certainty were cast aside in favour of juvenile language. Over time, the judiciary has dumbed down what is says in court to the point where it lacks authority in its style. Woolf's reforms were extensive and covering much more than the terminology but they have been followed up by successive reforms of the structure of the judiciary, the courts system and even the creation of "The Supreme Court" which looks awfully like courts in republics such as the USA.
Constant change without effective improvement is at the heart of Fabian logic: no one can obey the law if they don't know what the law is and if new laws, regulations and amendments come thick and fast uncertainty is created. Job done.
The failure of the education system - reading, writing and arithmetic have been set aside in state schools - and, of course, the current Labour government is using every tactic it can to destroy the rest of them which has resulted in hundreds of special needs children being turfed out of schools and parents finding that the local private school has closed and now they have to travel for perhaps an hour to the nearest state school - if places are available and often they are not.
This failure underpins two things: first we are now several generations into poorly educated pupils heading for the workforce - a workforce which is largely made up of office workers. We knew this in the mid 1980s when schools in the Labour districts of east London were turning out 16 year olds who, literally, could not read and write - we had to teach those basic skills to a new office junior.
Secondly - and this persists well into adulthood - children are taught to not think. This is not new: it was happening in the 1970s so, again, we have generations of people whose inquiring minds have been left at the door of an infants' school and never rebooted.
We see this play out with hashtag campaigns. People who are completely un-associated with the campaign jump on the bandwagon but never stop to think if they agree with what's being said. And I know this is contentious but it is this that Green Parties, which are, often, far left parties in disguise, rely on: fashion not informed opinion.
But the world is changing. And it might be strange to say that it is changing in response to all those failures.
When Hitler, a socialist and Mussolini, a fascist agreed, it was clear that the middle ground might be visible but in the background the forces of extremism were oddly united. Both wanted control of the people - and through that control, control over society's assets. It might have been a queen that said "let them eat cake" (a dubious proposition, incidentally) but it was authoritarian and totalitarian leaders who said they would control the supply of flour, and the wood, coal and labour.
Yet both have been termed fascist. Hitler, in particular, was chief of a fabulously corrupt enterprise, much of which is unlikely to ever be unravelled.
We now hear the term "fascist" bandied around for anyone who appears to be patriotic. Again, the contortion of language is central to the current state of affairs.
Orwell was the definition of "middle England," viewing both the extreme left and the extreme right with equal disdain. But interestingly, it's been the left that have taken the most exception to his works. Communist and socialist governments have routinely banned his work, in particular 1984 which deals with themes of control. It's very difficult to get a copy of the original 1984, unedited and without a foreword by a left-leaning commentator. Orwell would be horrified, knowing how such comments will set the way that readers view the book, tainting his gloriously carefully fashioned prose. The censors have long attacked that which they did not ban outright. See George Orwell and Recent Censorship to see the extent of this and there are rumours circulating that some libraries in the UK plan to remove 1984 from their shelves. The article also demonstrates that censorship is not only by governments but that the media, both traditional and social, either edits or ignores content that does not fit their own agenda or viewpoint. The watershed moment for this, or so it appeared at the time, was an advertisement for a BBC News reporter with the requirement that the reporter would support the BBC's News Agenda. That, in half a dozen words, demonstrated a breach of the BBC's Charter but no action was taken.
In England, the Industrial Revolution undeniably created wealth for a few and a living for many. It's fashionable to criticise those who built up large commercial empires. But the Cadburys. the Frys, the Leverhulmes and more provided housing, subsidised shops and medical care for their workers (or at least many of them) in addition to a salary. Critics say they were poorly paid without looking at the whole package. Yes, some employers were not so good, working conditions were dire, machines were dangerous. But only a few years earlier, those families would have had no means of earning a regular living and nowhere to call home.
We have to bear in mind that this is the country of Watt Tyler and the Peasant's Revolt, of the Luddites and the Poll Tax Riots. England, in particular, has a long history of rejection of change. Watt Tyler was an opponent of Jethro Tull who invented the seed drill, without which no modern agriculture could be sustained. The Luddites objected to factories with e.g. mechanised cotton and wool spinning, without which much of the population would have gone unclothed. Technological innovation then was different to much of what we see today: it increased productivity, it did not reduce labour. Their objections were not communist or socialist, they were ignorant self-interest boosted by a mob attitude. Today, they would use hashtags.
AS Orwell didn't quite say, Politics is a product of language - and language is the product of politics. But perhaps he should have.
Meaningless phrases like "going forward" and pointless slogans like "Keep Camden Nuclear Free" are the opium of the masses since before television. Lies become regarded as truth by repetition. Society has stopped looking behind the statements to see what, if any substance, is behind them.
The persistent undermining of English, much of it started in the Californian media and technology industries, creates constant uncertainty. Just because someone uses English words doesn't mean they are speaking English. We see verbs used as nouns, phrases mangled or reversed (for example, "I could care less" by which Americans mean exactly the opposite) and a constantly changing landscape of buzzwords and acronyms all of which require interpretation.
And behind it all, negative action is dressed up in positive language.
Across the world, the left, in cahoots with the tech industry, just as socialists were once in cahoots with fascists, are pushing what they say are measures to ensure the safety of children on the internet.
It won't work, it can't work and it's not for that anyway.
It is, when we cut through everything, a layer of surveillance that Hitler, Pol Pot, Stalin, Mussolini, Franco and Robespierre would not only recognise, but set the groundwork for.
No, the UK is not ungovernable: it's reaching the point where a critical mass of the population have had enough of being told what to do by governments, through laws and regulations, and companies that exercise control over ever more parts of their lives.
In the UK, security forces are already warning that a super-hot summer might lead to civil unrest. It's not the only long, hot summer that's forecast.
Mel Gibson shouted "Freedom" - now he is increasingly backed by millions of Britons, of all nationalities, looking for freedom not from England but from an oppressive, regressive, authoritarian system of government and commerce which sees wearing an England Tee Shirt or flying the English flag as an act of aggression.
Dictatorship is not governing.



