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Thursday, September 28, 2006

How Dave is upsetting Britain's fifth column

Last October, I wrote a comment piece for The Guardian alerting readers to the neo-conservatives behind David Cameron's leadership bid. Realising that the dull-as- dishwater David Davis, or the far-right loon Dr Liam Fox was never going to defeat Ken Clarke, the clear choice of Tory members, the neo-cons threw their weight behind Cameron's bid and must have been feeling fairly pleased with themselves when their man was crowned new Tory leader. The trouble the neo-cons have now though is that Cameron, surprise, surprise, is rather keen to become Prime Minister. And in order to do that he realises that he has to ditch wildly unpopular policies. One of which was the Tory's slavishly pro-American, neo-conservative foreign policy. Here's Geoffrey Wheatcroft's brilliant piece from today's Guardian on how Cameron's ambitions to win office are causing such consternation among Britain's fifth column.


For years, the Tory party and the Tory press have been infiltrated by our own neoconservatives, more determined even than Blair to serve the national interest of another country. Under William Hague, Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard - egged on by Charles Moore, Matthew d'Ancona and Michael Gove - the Tories came close to being what the socialist leader Leon Blum called the French Communists, "a foreign nationalist party".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,1882616,00.html

1 comment:

David Lindsay said...

There were two foreign-nationalist movements in post-War Britain, each a tiny clique of hired helpers surrounded by a larger (though still very small) and exceedingly well-placed band of fellow-travellers.

One could defend even the invasions of Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Afghanistan, so total was its devotion to the Soviet Union. The other could defend even an act of high treason against The Queen, because the territory in question thus became an ally and client of the Boer Republic set up as an explicit act of anti-British revenge in a former Dominion of the Crown by people who had been interred during the War because of their pro-Nazi activities.

Today, Britain is again afflicted with two small but very well-placed foreign nationalisms: neoconservatism and Islam (not "a perversion of Islam", but any religion or ideology deriving honestly from the Qu'ran and the Hadith).