Dictionary definition of the word liberal

Take a look at this extract from the Electoral Commission’s site on electoral fraud:

‘During our wider review of electoral fraud last year, specific concerns were also raised about whether people in British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities were able to exercise their right to vote and participate in elections on the same basis as other voters in the UK….we have today published two research reports looking at this…[it] takes a closer look at whether there was any evidence to support claims that people from British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are more vulnerable to electoral fraud….One of the main findings from the research was that while strong community networks provide valuable support to people in many areas, the nature of those networks may also mean that pressure could be put on people to vote in a way that limits their individual choice.’

It’s a prime example of what The Slog has always called ‘bollocks’; but it is also a deeply insidious and cowardly bit of reportage in several ways.

You could, for example, be forgiven for imagining that this was a case of nasty white people bamboozling immigrants into not using their vote. The Electoral Commission’s mealy mouthed effort above uses words and phrases such as ‘were unable to exercise their right to vote’, ‘support claims that people from British Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities are more vulnerable to electoral fraud’, and ‘pressure could be put on people to vote in a way that limits their individual choice‘. All these are completely misleading, and suggestive of institutional racism. The truth, of course, was the diametric opposite of that: some 50 cases of fraud were investigated by the police at local and national level in 2010, and almost all concerned minority community Labour candidates in places like Bradford and Tower Hamlets stuffing ballot boxes with false Indopak names…who turned out not to exist at the address concerned.

The body of the research report in the end admits that ‘reports of significant fraud are focused in communities with roots in parts of Pakistan or Bangladesh‘.

Lutfur Rahman, for instance, became elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets amidst swirling rumours of fraud: he was later revealed to be an Islamist activist inside the notorious Islamic Forum of Europe, from which he had allegedly signed up fake members in order to win the selection. The Labour Party abruptly dumped him, but he ran as the Independent and won anyway.

Now in theory, just by clarifying these established facts, I could be accused of inciting racial hatred. What I am actually doing is pointing out that there is an ethics problem in that culture when it comes to electoral politics. Failure to point out the sexual problem with children in that same culture led to Labour and the Police turning a blind eye to the Yorkshire taxi-driver paedophile scandal for years. And therein lies the fundamental problem with all things liberal: they prefer to ignore uncomfortable facts rather than face the Truth of corruption and depravity.

The other truly appalling misuse of the term ‘liberal’ lies within that mysterious economic creed referred to routinely these days as neoliberalism. It’s a terrific wheeze: if one talks about ‘liberating’ business, the image of plucky entrepreneurs breaking free from the chains of Whitehall is conjured up. Such people are free at last to make us all richer and more employable: hurrah, put out more flags! Neoliberals, do you see, are for deregulation, cutting red tape, taking up the State’s role in philanthropic endeavours, and trickling lots of money down to the poorest and most vulnerable people in our society.

But it’s tommy-rot, and all of us with an objective outlook know as such. Neoliberalism is an extreme form of capitalism which has, time after time, failed to do anything but widen the gap between rich and poor, encourage foul greed, cheat the entrepreneur, favour the multinational, and land the Sovereign State in a level of debt from which it can never escape. It requires illegal drugs and prostitution to be added to gdp calculations in order to make things look vaguely alright. It’s short-termist, Bourse-focused demands for instant ROI directly discourage investment in favour of false stock valuations and personal profit.

In the end, the only way to bail out the commercially inbred antics of investment banks is QE: a ridiculous idea that takes public money and helps banks to remain vaguely upright after they’ve already been bailed out with….public money. And then demands that the further taking of obscene bonuses must be tolerated “because otherwise these hugely talented nitwits will go elsewhere”. Then guess what? Even the QE is added to the gdp figures. Unbelievable.

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What makes these two examples peas from the same pod is the insane belief system that must be maintained in order to keep the impression of levitating lead going. I’m beginning to wonder if, for our species, it is a ‘must-have’: the USSR lived on a cock-eyed view of its world for seventy years (as did its supporters) and now it’s gone, other equally twisted views have taken up the slack. The once laudable desire of women for legal and political equality has been hijacked by extreme feminism, and resides most implausibly at a site called…you guessed it, liberal conspiracy.

All such potty ideas use disguise, and yet remain blatantly phoney to the discerning observer. The USSR always called itself ‘peace-loving’, North Korea prefixes its madness with the word ‘Democratic’, and Greenpeace must be without question the most radically violent of all ecological activist clans. The European Union guarantees freedom from anything and everything that progressives deem ghastly – but studiously ignores every last rule of its own Law from the ECB downwards.

Perhaps the worst hypocrisy is closest to home for this writer. We are called the ‘United Kingdom’, but we are hopelessly fractured on myriad levels, and a growing majority would now prefer to be a republic.The Scots are going to leave, but the economic argument for independent viability is risible. Good luck to them, I say…and in some ways, good riddance. At least we will be rid of the legislative surrealism via which, in May 2015, we could easily deliver them freedom by the use of Scottish MPs in an English Parliament.

Our ‘English and Welsh’ Government, meanwhile, claims to be tough on terrorism, and – in order that such murderous lunatics should be stamped out – urges a clampdown on non-violent extremism. That should do the job. It’s pure Orwellian doublespeak, but it’s being lauded as for the protection of our liberties. Aaah, there’s that Latin derivation again, twisted entirely out of shape.

We are witnessing – around the world it seems to me – the dash from reality, the pursuit of the unnatural, the Moonyism of the cult, and the triumph of the material. In order to succeed in this bizarre chase into self-styled Utopia, we must pretend and pretend and pretend. That all disabled people are nice, that all men are rapists, that all immigrants are honest, that women can have it all, that money is the only human goal, that anal equality can be achieved, that the euro can be saved, that a dysfunctional economic system is the only way forward, that education is as rigorous as it ever was, and that a fascist crypto-royal line is a People’s Democratic Republic.

And increasingly these days, it makes me want to retreat for good into the Liberal Democratic Roost of The Slog. Population, 1.

Earlier at The Slog: What is Herr Weidmann cooking up at the Bundesbank?