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REVENGE OF PARLIAMENT-WE HOPE THERE WILL BE NO RETREAT -NOW! Daily Mail
Thursday, February 2-2006 by Peter Oborne * Revenge of Parliament Ever since he came To power, Mr Blair has tried to destroy Parliament. NowHistory has comeFull circle…and The Commons is Destroying Mr Blair. * [Provided
there is no backsliding by those honourable members] ON TUESDAY night in
Parliament, something very dramatic and irrevocable occurred:
THE DEATH
OF AN EXPERIMENT IN GOVERNMENT
When
Tony Blair obtained power in May 1997, he self-consciously set out to rule
Britain in a different way than ever before.
He
turned his back on the
TRADITION
of
Representative
Democracy
and
The
British
[ENGLISH]
HOUSE
of COMMONS.
Instead
he sought to rule like a foreign President, directly answerable to the People
without the burdensome restraint of mediating
INSTITUTIONS
Like
CABINET
and PARLIAMENT
Tuesday night showed that Mr Blair’s
presidential project is over. POWER is
back in the HOUSE of COMMONS where it belongs - something which all of us
should celebrate, whatever our political persuasion.
NO
Prime Minister since the post was invented by Sir Robert Walpole almost 300
years ago has ever voted less than Tony Blair.
Even Margaret Thatcher, who was often
accused -not least by Labour- of ignoring Parliament, voted in around 30 per
cent of all divisions. Tony Blair has
struggled to turn up more than 5 per cent of the time.
One very senior official, who worked
closely with the Prime Minister for many years, once told me:
‘Basically, in 10 Downing Street
there is a contempt for Parliament, and that attitude permeates the whole
Government’.
Humiliation
On Monday night, Tony Blair paid a
deadly price for that casualness and contempt. His failure to pay serious
attention to Parliament caused him to lose key measures from his religious
hatred Bill in the Commons vote.
But much more important than the
damage to a single piece of legislation is the grievous blow to Tony Blair’s
personal authority.
Tuesday night’s humiliation follows
the rebellion against the Government’s Terrorism Bill last November. It means
Tony Blair’s Government has been defeated on vital legislation twice in just
three months.
There are now growing doubts about
the Prime Minister’s ability to get his business through the COMMONS.
He is being forced to weaken many
other pieces of legislation- above all, his flagship Education Bill - in order
to avoid similar defeats.
Tony Blair’s parliamentary weakness
now recalls Jim Callaghan in 1978-79 or John major in 1996-97. And yet Blair -unlike Major and Callaghan,
who led minority governments- has a comfortable majority and won a General
Election victory only nine month’s ago.
Blair’s weakness is a direct result
of his long-standing contempt for Parliament.
In all previous administrations,
Labour or Tory, the chief whip has been one of the most senior figures in the
entire government, on occasions more powerful than the Chancellor of the
Exchequer or the Foreign Secretary.
Francis Urguhart in Michael Dobbs’s novel
House of Cards is the model for these traditional chief whips:
Devious-Machiavellian and much feared
by rank-and-file MPs.
By contrast, Hilary Armstrong is just
a harmless drudge. She commands as much mystique as a wet blanket and inspires
as much fear as a tabby cat.
It is the chief whip who keeps the
troops in order, using threats if need be. Poor Armstrong threatens nobody.
It is the job of the chief whip to
act as an early warning system, scenting trouble.
But poor Armstrong hasn’t a clue what
is going on. Even her fellow ministers treat her as an absurdity.
It
was Armstrong who gave Tony Blair the disastrous advice to stand out for the 90
days’ detention without trial in the Terrorism Bill - advice that led to
defeat.
And on Tuesday night it was Armstrong
who preposterously told Blair that it was safe to leave the Commons just before
the Government lost by a single vote.
The recent collapse of discipline on
the government backbenches is, of course Armstrong’s responsibility. But it was
Tony Blair who gave her the job.
Foolhardy
He
did so after destroying the authority of the whips’ office by booting them out
of their traditional and very grand office in 12 Downing Street and replacing
them with his hubristic media operation led by Alastair Campbell.
He would never have made this
foolhardy change if he understood the weight and importance of the British [ENGLISH]
Parliament.
And that lack of understanding
reveals everything about Tony Blair’s attitude to government.
One needs only to look back through
history to realise the astonishing importance of parliament in the creation of
the British nation.
In the 1640’s the tyrannical rule of
Charles I was confronted and defeated through the
[English]
House of Commons.
Two hundred years ago an idealistic
Tory MP named William Wilberforce abolished the Slave trade through persuasion
in the [English] House of Commons.
In the United States this was
achieved 60 years later- and not through debate, but by civil war.
Sixty -six years ago, as the German
bombers roared up the Thames before dropping their cargoes of destruction,
Winston Churchill uttered his great speeches of defiance against the evil
menace of Hitler from the sweaty cockpit of the parliamentary chamber.
Shallow
But New Labour has never cared for
British [English] history. Chancellor Gordon Brown demonstrated this
insouciance in the most dramatic way possible when he delivered his speech on
‘Britishness’ last month.
[Well! it is Mr Brown’s
Government that has been responsible for the break-up of the ‘Britishness’ by the especial treatment of
Scotland with its Parliament and Wales with its Assembly and no doubt later a
Parliament.
It is ENGLAND and its English Constitution
and its English House of Commons, which should be the topic of importance.
It was the Prime Minister Stanley
Baldwin in the third decade of the 20th century who decried the
incoming habit of referring to BRITAIN when in reality it was ENGLAND, which
was in the minds of the majority of people and had been the custom for most of
the history of our country.]
He earnestly sought to define the
British nation [which no longer exists] through abstract qualities like:
FREEDOM
FAIRNESS
RESPONSIBILITY’
There is nothing wrong with any of
these qualities. Yet nowhere in his speech could the Chancellor bring himself
to define our country through our greatest institution of all- the
[ENGLISH
PARLIAMENT]
[NOT]
BRITISH
PARLIAMENT.
[It was a so-called British
Parliament, which has over the last 32 years gradually given away the
Heritage of England over 1400 years in the making.
It was a so-called British Parliament that ignores the
wishes of the people of England and permits Scottish and Welsh
MPs to vote on English matters.
It was a so-call British Parliament that gave its
sanction to an illegal invasion of Iraq.
It was a so-called British Parliament that has shelved Habeas
Corpus the creation of the Magna Carta - for a year.
It was a so called British Parliament with its MPs who
have watched over the destruction of their own House of Commons for almost ten
years and until recently had done nothing to protect their Illustrious House
though they found time to increase their own gilt-edged pensions and salaries
at the same time almost voting their own House of Commons out of existence.]
*
And yet it is Parliament, more than
anything else, that defines who we are and the wonderful things we stand for as
a nation.
Parliament has sat beside the Thames
at Westminster for 700 years. It contains far more truth and wisdom than a
shallow politician like Tony Blair can begin to
comprehend.
It is easy to understand why a
modernising New labour politician fond of vapidly boasting that Britain was a
‘young country’ should have wished to make this greatest of all Institutions an
irrelevance.
It is easy to understand why Tony
Blair should have hated the House of Commons for the irritating way in which it
called his authority into question and opened him up to public criticism.
Almost ten years ago, when Tony Blair
became Prime Minister, he set out quite consciously to destroy the POWER of
PARLIAMENT.
Now history has turned full circle,
and Parliament has come back to destroy Tony Blair.
[Well!
We will have to see-one should remember
that every member of the House of Commons shares the responsibility for the
almost destruction of their House.
Without
them Tony Blair could not have proceeded so far in his plans. Each member of
the Commons who supported him knowing as they must have done of what he
intended are themselves as guilty as the Prime Minister.
We will not celebrate - Yet!
- as we are not convinced that there
is any major change in the Chamber with its in the main out for what they can
get attitude which landed us all in this fine mess in the first place.]
*
Peter
Oborne is Political Editor of the Spectator.
[Font altered-bolding and underlining
used-comments in brackets] FEB/06
*
* 13th October,2007
So You Want Out Of The EU
THEN WHY NOT SIGN THE RENUNCIATION of EU CITIZENSHIP http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/OptoutDetails from petition creator With the signing of the Maastricht Treaty the people of Britain were given DUAL CITIZENSHIP -both EUROPEAN and BRITISH The extra tier of citizenship was thrust upon the people without their consent -and in many cases knowledge. The PEOPLE of GREAT BRITAIN should be allowed the option of opting out of the EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP if they so wish. The GOVERNMENT will then be able to provide those who have opted out with BRITISH DOCUMENTATION -only such as British (not EU) passports, driving licences and other national documents. EU laws will also NOT APPLY to those who HAVE OPTED OUT OF EUROPEAN CITIZENSHIP
[PETITION OPEN UNTIL OCTOBER 08]
* [Latest Addition - June07] * * *
*
Daniel Hannan - Forming an OPPOSITION to the EU
*
VOTE MAY -2007
WITH THE ONLY PARTY WITH A MANDATE TO SET YOU FREE
THE UK INDEPENDENCE PARTY
TO RECLAIM YOUR DEMOCRACY DON'T VOTE FOR THE TRIPARTITE PARTIES IN WESTMINSTER BUT SMALL PARTIES THAT SPEAK THEIR MINDS WITHOUT SPIN AND LIES. *
ONLY WILL BRING DEMOCRACY BACK TO THE ENGLISH PEOPLE * WHY NOT
* MAY/07
[All underlined words have a separate bulletin
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