East Worthing and Shoreham Labour Party

Yikes, there’s a Fox in the coop….

One of the attractions of David Cameron in the Tory’s leadership contest was that he definitely wasn’t Dr Fox. That’s speaking in the national interest, of course, not the interest of the Labour Party. The Doctor is a radical of many certainties which even with the helpful and well established advice of Sir Richard bodes ill for the Armed Forces. The Doctor has a curious taste in historical heroes. The Duke of York, for heaven’s sake, forced to resign, publicly humiliated, when his kept woman flogged off commissions, unwitting catalyst for the Reform Act.The irony is that Fox was his nemesis then, and his mistress was named Clark. All of this two centuries ago in an era where the only comparable to today is Privilege’s eternal fight for survival and the Tory Party.

Dr Fox is a standard bearer for the ‘Broken Britain’ school of patriotism. You’d think with such a spread of historical reference, he might concede that Britain had come a fair way since parliamentary seats were bought and sold for sums that even Lord Ashcroft would find it hard to afford. His nostalgia for an epoch when English soldiers were broken on the wheel and press gangs scoured the taverns to get the necessary cannon fodder, an era of poverty, privilege and oppression, seems out of step with David Cameron’s soft focus, one-nation pitch - could perhaps those uncomfortable ‘european’ allies from the far fringes of the right, be less of an marriage of convenience than they would have us believe.  But I personally don’t think all this is out of sympathy for an odious past, just an a-historical lack of principle. The Tories are indeed a One Nation party. Unfortunately, that nation is defined by those it excludes. It is not, after all, Mr Cameron’s or Dr Fox’s Britain they think is broken, it is ours.