Johnson’s Westminster Cabinet is Far to the Right of Thatcher 406


I can only imagine that the media people who are saying this is the most right wing cabinet since the 1980’s were not sentient in the 80’s. Thatcher never had a Home Secretary remotely as illiberal as Pritti Patel, never had a Foreign Secretary remotely as xenophobic as Dominic Raab, never even had a Chancellor as anti-State intervention as Sajid Javid (though came closer there) and never had a Defence Secretary as bellicose as Ben Wallace.

Even Thatcher’s final and most right wing Cabinet contained figures like Ken Clarke, Chris Patten, John Major, Virginia Bottomley, Douglas Hurd and William Waldegrave. All Tories with whom I have fundamental disagreements, but every single one of them is far, far to the left of virtually all of Johnson’s appalling cronies.

Thatcher deliberately and cruelly wrecked the social democratic society in which I grew up, with the aim of destroying any ability for working people to be protected against the whims of the wealthy. But Thatcher never introduced privatisation into the NHS or state schools – that was her acolyte Blair. She maintained free university education in England and Wales. That was destroyed by Blair too. We should be more rigorous than to accept Thatcher as the definitive most right wing government possible. It is not only lazy, it obscures the fact we now have the most right wing British government since 1832.

Pritti Patel is a Home Secretary who admires the approach to law and order of Benjamin Netanyahu and voted against a measure to prevent pregnant asylum seekers being slammed into immigration detention pending hearing. Savid Javid is a Chancellor who materially caused the problems of British Steel by, as Business Secretary, vetoing in Brussels tariffs against dumped Chinese steel. Dominic Raab is a foreign secretary who negotiated a deal with the EU then resigned because it was so bad.

This is the biggest political shock to hit the UK in my lifetime and it is potentially worse than Thatcher. Here in Scotland, we need to move immediately for Independence. The time for talking really is behind us.


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406 thoughts on “Johnson’s Westminster Cabinet is Far to the Right of Thatcher

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  • mog

    I have in the past spoken against Scottish nationalism, as generally I believe in a universalist politics and also, struggle to imagine any genuine independence down the road for a seceded Scotland in globalised world.
    Now, I think, well what the heck, go for it. Britain is being taken down by zionists who effectively have a controlling influence on everything from Corbyn’s Labour to Tommy Robinson and the EDL, so you Scots mgiht find a way out no matter how slim.

  • David Allan

    Unfortunately, the more I see of the control-freakery of the office managers in the SNP, the more doubtful I become of the leaderships’s commitment to independence. They are very quiet on the mechanics of the means. Silence alternative opinions put up for discussion at the A.G.M., and seem to be falling into the mind-set of the Blairites. To whit; the party comes first.

  • Ultraviolet

    The time for talking’s over now,
    I think it’s time to let you go;
    But I don’t, no, I don’t mind at all.
    It’s getting so you never know
    When things are better left alone;
    But I don’t, no, I don’t mind at all.
    It’s important to me
    That I don’t see you laughing at me.
    But I’m smart enough to know
    That I’ll have to let you go.
    But I don’t mind at all.

  • Heather Stroud

    I wonder could we drag the Scottish border down to south of York so that we could join with the Scottish people in a campaign for separation and independence from the London centric Johnson regime.

    • Simon cook

      Why not as according to the current political and media definitions “the north” is Manchester and Birmingham. Sorry Carlisle, Newcastle, York and everyone else beyond midlands you don’t exist.

    • Vivian O'Blivion

      I’m afraid that would have to be done on a federal basis. There is a distinct variance between the Scottish psyche and that of the English. Have a gander at the Brexit vote by constituency.

      https://images.app.goo.gl/gCc9P9THwbuydSs6A

      400 years of Pax Romana has left an indelible, cultural inheritance defining how the two nations regard relations with continental Europe in an incompatible way.

  • michael norton

    Looks like Jeremy Corbyn has his dander up, he wants a general election as soon as September.

  • michael norton

    Writing in The Sunday Times newspaper on Sunday, Michael Gove, who Boris Johnson has put in charge of “No-Deal” preparations, said the government would undertake “intensive efforts” to secure a better deal from the EU.

    “We still hope they will change their minds, but we must operate on the assumption that they will not … No deal is now a very real prospect and we must make sure that we are ready,” Gove wrote.

    “Planning for No Deal is now this government’s no. 1 priority,” he said, adding “every penny needed” for No-Deal preparations would be made available.
    https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/07/uk-government-working-assumption-deal-brexit-190728085027307.html

    Well that seems very clear,
    planning to crash out is their number one.
    But have they got a back up plan if the E.U. crumbles?

  • Jo Dominich

    I think we need to leave the issue of Scottish Nationalisation aside from all of this at the present time. It is not important at this crucial time in our history. I agree with you, that Bojo is our Prime Minister without having been elected on any Manifesto, that he is already doing a Trade Deal with Trump as we speak which will see the loss of millions of jobs in the UK to the USA and an American style health system, the looming reality that, probably, by the end of next week, he will have entered into an electoral pact with Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party, the fact he has promised the rich a £10bn tax cut, the fact that he is the most corrupt, immoral, lying, thieving, cheating Politician currently around, the fact of all the lies he told about Skripal, the fact he cares not a jot about the British Nation or hasn’t got a clue as to how to get us out of the economic mess these past two successive Tory Government’s have got us into, increasing poverty, a serious recession and significant loss of jobs following a No Deal Brexit and so on and so forth means that, more now than ever, we need to stand together as a Nation, Welsh, Irish, Scottish, English, we need to come together under the national flag to get out there on the streets, as the Scots have so brilliantly done the day after Bojo’s appointment. The Tory Government is one of divide and rule – now, more than ever, we need to stand together to fight this Fascist Government who is going to enter into an electoral pack with another Fascist Party, the Brexit Party. We need to protect our Nation now for the sake of the future of our children, their children and for the sake of democracy.

    • Dave Lawton

      Jo Dominich
      July 28, 2019 at 12:46
      You must be talking about the fascist European Union.It was fascist CIA spymaster Allen Dulles who did a deal with Gehlen because Gehlen stashed in a cave files on all the communists.Gehlen went on with Dulles blessing to create the German BND.It was Dulles with money from the Ford foundation brought certain players together to create the European project.The first president of Europe was a ex Nazi and a lawyer fro IG Farben now Bayer/Monsanto.It was also ex SS officer who switched sides Prince Bernhard of Lippe-Biesterfeld (They did try to clean his image up) yet he was still was a crook and part of the post war Gladio army which was behind false flag attacks which they could blame on the communists or the left.Dulles hated the left.It was Prince Bernard who was co-founder of the Bilderberg group which run the EU today.
      It was the Ford Foundation which put up the funds to start the EU which was supported by Hitler in the 1930`s and Hitler awarded Ford with the Nazi silver Eagle.So even after Hitler died his plans for a unified Europe went ahead and now there are plans for a new Pan European Army which Hitler created during WW2.
      https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/pais/people/aldrich/publications/oss_cia_united_europe_eec_eu.pdf

      • Jo Dominich

        Sorry Dave Lawton, was talking about this Tory Government more so now under BoJo and his far right cabinet!

    • Vivian O'Blivion

      The results of the latest YouGov poll are stark.
      For the UK as a whole: Con – 31%, Lab – 21%, LD – 20%, Brex – 13%.
      Johnson aims to either nullify the Brex support by pinching their policy or form a formal / informal pact. This would get him 44% and a Westminster landslide.
      The Scottish sub-sample numbers are astonishing.
      SNP – 47%, Con – 21%, LD – 12%, Brex – 5%, Grn – 3%, Plaid Cymru (bizarrely) – 1%
      On those numbers perhaps Alister Carmichael holds on to his seat, otherwise it’s an SNP whitewash.

      You can extoll for “let’s get the old gang together for one last gig” all you want but the boat has well and truly departed.

  • Philip Townsend OBE

    “Dominic Raab is a foreign secretary who negotiated a deal with the EU then resigned because it was so bad.

    Oh come on Craig, that’s a bit of cheap shot isn’t it? OK so you don’t like Raab but under May, he never really had any authority to negotiate anything and, ultimately, had the integrity to resign because of it, Senior EU Officials are now on the record as saying 1) May never actually asked for any concessions and 2) May always wanted to remain in the Customs Union, despite her public statements and the Conservative Party Manifesto to the contrary.

    In the face of such duplicity, how much freedom do you believe Raab (And Davis before him) actually had? This was very much a solo act by May on behalf of the instructions from her Globalist masters.

  • Durak

    So Boris shutdown the enquiry.. you know the one that found….

    The committee found UK intelligence agencies to be complicit in hundreds of incidents of torture and rendition, mainly in partnership with the US in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Britain planned, agreed or financed 31 rendition operations. British intelligence officers consented to or witnessed the use of torture on 15 occasions. On 232 occasions the intelligence agencies supplied questions to be put to detainees whom they knew or suspected were being mistreated.

    And the one Jack Straw knew…. as he said NOTHING….

  • Luftwaffe

    I hear what you’re saying, but I’m finding Boris and his government exhilarating – I’m loving it!

  • Mike Daffern

    I always find Craig Murray’s concise writing formed by an accute and well informed mind well worth reading – although his Scottish nationalism seems to me to be a bit ostrich head-in-the-sands; an emotional attachment which defies his social democratic rationalism, and echoes Johnson’s own penchant for flag waving (bizarrely the Union Jack in his case as he steers us towards UK disintegration).

    The fundamental issue for me is nationalism, and beyond that, relations between states. It seems to me that in the modern era, the concept of a Hobbesian nation state, free of all external law, pursuing its own laws and norms, is as untenable and undesirable as the Greek city states found theirs to be in the face of Macedonian expansionism. (Interestingly, I once asked the I Ching what was the best size for a state to be and got Modesty –neither too big nor too little –very droll, very accurate, I though) Personally I think it’s time to leave the nation state behind, except as a unit of organisation, administration and identity within a collective world governmental system. My problem with Europe is it’s petty minded regional exclusivity; that and its dominance by national interests – Germano Franc at present.
    In the face of unfettered private capitalism in an era of mass extinction and global warming, in my view the sooner we get to a semblance of world order the better.

    • Garth Carthy

      Henry Kissinger and his Neo-con pals wanted a World Order…as long as the US – with the help of Israel – controlled that World Order.
      Now, look at the result: Millions of innocent civilians killed as a result of US and UK illegal wars started in the name of “democracy”.
      The obscene irony is that our Western so-called “democracy” often overthrows administrations in countries that have democraticically elected leaders.

  • peter mcloughlin

    The problem is the political extreme denies the political position of the opponent. The new British government wants the Northern Ireland Backstop removed, that it undermines the integrity of the United Kingdom. But if Brussels allowed British goods to cross the border without effective checks, which Westminster seems to be suggesting, there would be an open border between the EU and a non-member state. That could undermine the integrity of the EU. Both positions are legitimate, logical and intractable. It shows the dangers that arise when problems are not compromised on before they get to that state: because the logical next step is war. The logic applied to Brexit can be applied to the dangerous movement towards world war between the US and a growing Sino-Russian alliance over Iran, stormy waters that the British government is already sailing into. When core interests clash there is no solution but conflict – even nuclear. The point of no return has to be avoided.
    https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

  • michael norton

    Nicola Sturgeon: No-Deal Brexit ‘almost inevitable’
    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-politics-49154491
    Boris goes to Bute House for tea and cake

    Mr. Johnson said he was “very confident” that with “goodwill on both sides” a new agreement Brexit could be drawn up.
    Ms. Sturgeon said it was clear to her that the U.K. government was on a “dangerous” path to a “catastrophic” exit from the E.U.

    So, no meeting of minds then.

  • michael norton

    As Labour slips below the Conservatives in the polls in Wales, a Boris bounce will come to the By-Election being held on Thursday in Brecon and Radnorshire

    The LibDems are also hoping to take back control, here is no “Bollocks to Brexit” on any LibDem leaflet,
    nor any mention whatsoever of leaving the EU at all.
    This constituency voted 52% Leave at the 2016 Referendum.
    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/29/lib-dems-quiet-bollocks-to-brexit-brecon-and-radnorshire-byelection

    • Glasshopper

      The Lib Dems are a total farce. I’m a Lib Dem voter. Or was. 30% of Lib Dem voters voted Leave and have now been dumped by the party. I know several Greens who are Leavers too. Of course many Scottish independence supporters are in the same boat, having found themselves cast adrift by Sturgeon’s Scottish Globalist Party with nowhere to go.

  • different frank

    Dr. Lawrence Britt has examined the fascist regimes of Hitler (Germany), Mussolini (Italy), Franco (Spain), Suharto (Indonesia) and several Latin American regimes. Britt found 14 defining characteristics common to each:

    1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism – Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.

    2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights – Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of “need.” The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.

    3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause – The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.

    4. Supremacy of the Military – Even when there are widespread
    domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.

    5. Rampant Sexism – The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.

    6. Controlled Mass Media – Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.

    7. Obsession with National Security – Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.

    8. Religion and Government are Intertwined – Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government’s policies or actions.

    9. Corporate Power is Protected – The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.

    10. Labor Power is Suppressed – Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.

    11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts – Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.

    12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment – Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.

    13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption – Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.

    14. Fraudulent Elections – Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.

  • China Visa Service

    We fully agree Mr. Murray and thanks for saying so. We, as Chinese in Europe prefer any form of deescalation and peaceful negotiated solutions in conflicts rather than military !

  • michael norton

    “In the topsy-turvy political landscape that is Cliff Edge Brexit, the LibDems are now in the midst of a major comeback that could decide who takes No. 10 at the next election. With talk of an early election, the party has an opportunity to become an influential force in British politics once again. Swinson may be unlikely to make it to No. 10 anytime soon but she could play a crucial role deciding its next incumbent.
    Liberal Democrat success could be the Tories’ best hope of winning an election.” Spectator

    That’s an interesting take.

    So for Boris to win a general election, Labour have to hold on to Jeremy Corbyn and the LibDems have to do very well under their new leader.

    • michael norton

      The LibDems have been declared the winner in Brecon, this means that Boris has the slim majority of one.
      My M.P. is threatening to join the LibDems.
      General Election must be on the cards before Halloween.

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