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By asserting manifest absurdities

Maurice Cousins has a useful Critic piece on the corruption of language as a vehicle for political control, especially as it relates to the manifest absurdities of UK energy policy.


The new “enemy within”

Britain needs clear thinking and cheap energy

During the 1970 general election campaign, Enoch Powell delivered a speech in Birmingham in which he warned that Britain was under attack from what he called “the enemy within”. This enemy, he said, was not a physical adversary but a moral and intellectual one. It operated through ideas, slogans and intimidation rather than armies and violence.

Its weapon of choice was purely linguistic. By “asserting manifest absurdities as if they were self-evident truths”, elites dissolved the public’s confidence in its own capacity to reason. The result was paralysis. Ordinary people began to mistrust their senses, defer to official narratives and police their own speech. He warned: “In the end, it renders the majority… incapable of self-defence by depriving them of their wits and convincing them that what they thought was right is wrong, what they thought was real is unreal.” This was the same pathology that George Orwell had described a generation earlier in Politics and the English Language: the corruption of language as the corruption of thought.


The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how crucial it is to retain free speech as a cultural norm. 

For example, the term 'politically correct' is much more useful than the term 'woke', as 'politically correct' demands 'correct language' in a way that 'woke' doesn't. The covert notion of 'correct language' is where censorship shoves its foot in the door.


I was reminded of Powell’s “enemy within” speech this week after reading Professor Sir Dieter Helm’s latest essay on British energy policy. Helm, Oxford economist, former government adviser and hardly a radical, accused ministers of presiding over an energy system that is “not cheap, not home-grown and not secure”. It was his second broadside in a week. In a recent podcast, he went further, predicting that the government would eventually have to renege on renewable contracts if we ever wish to return to economic competitiveness.

Having to renege on renewable contracts is the big one of course.

Plots

Starmer reportedly facing plots to oust him as PM

Labour MPs are plotting to oust Sir Keir Starmer, reports suggest, even as the prime minister has welcomed rebellious backbenchers back into the fold.

The new intake of Labour parliamentarians are among those said to be discussing the mechanics of a future coup, according to the i Paper.

It comes amid despair about the party’s poll ratings and discontent that the government may break Labour’s manifesto promise not to raise income tax.

It's a good job we have journalists to delve into the political mood, keep their ears to the ground and uncover these stories for us.

Milei criticizes Mamdani

As reported in MercoPress, Argentine President Javier Milei recently made an important point about the damaging notion of capitalism as a “necessary evil” within the developed world. 

Here in the UK, we have major political parties and huge government bureaucracies where that notion is tacitly accepted as a foundational axiom of modern government. 


Milei criticizes Mamdani and praises Trump

In his appearance on Thursday at the America Business Forum in Miami, Argentine President Javier Milei seized the opportunity to lambast New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani, praise his US colleague Donald Trump, and seek investments for his country. Milei described his own electoral victory as a mandate for capitalist reform...

Milei's central theme was an apology of free-market capitalism and a dire warning against socialist ideas, which he referred to as the “Kuka risk” (a pejorative term for Kirchnerism/Peronism).

He argued that Western societies have mistakenly accepted the notion that capitalism is a “necessary evil” that requires state intervention to address “unequal impact” and prevent monopolies.

Milei contended that this justification for state intervention leads to ever-expanding government control, eventually reaching the same destination as those who openly hate capitalism: “the total control of the state, the economy, and people's lives—that is, communism.”

The existence of some mysterious, superior method

Starmer hit by revolts on Lammy's handling of jail crisis and tax

Sir Keir Starmer faced extraordinary Cabinet infighting over David Lammy’s handling of the scandal over prisoners being wrongfully released and a Labour revolt on an expected manifesto-busting increase in income tax.

As he flew home from the COP30 summit in Brazil, the Prime Minister’s grip on his Government and his party looked increasingly shaky.

Ahead of the Budget on November 26, a split has erupted at the top of Labour over breaking its manifesto promises on tax hikes,.

Oh dear, what a rabble they are. I don't think Lammy is the worst of them though, Ed Miliband has done far more damage and he is said to be a popular candidate for replacing Starmer when the absurd muddler is finally shown the door. It's a revolving door though, so he'll be fine - probably better off too.

On a more serious note, it's another reminder of a catastrophically weak and deluded leadership which cannot grasp the essentials of strong leadership. They just don't get it we might say. Or perhaps, as in the Emile Zola quote below, they are dimly conscious of the existence of some mysterious, superior method of leadership, if only...

...if only.

The post title is a phrase taken from Emile Zola's novel La Débâcle and his graphic and poignant description of a catastrophic French defeat in the Battle of Sedan during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870.

Aghast and confounded, having failed so far to acquire the first idea of the rationale of the campaign, he was dimly conscious of the existence of some mysterious, superior method which he could not comprehend, against which he ceased to struggle, although in his dogged stubbornness he kept repeating mechanically:

“Courage, my children! victory is before us!”

Emile Zola - La Débâcle (1892)

The process followed

Culture Secretary breached governance code in appointing football watchdog chair

Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy was found by a probe to have breached the code on public appointments by failing to declare she had received donations from her pick to chair the new football watchdog.

In a letter to Sir Keir Starmer, she apologised for “unknowingly” breaking the rules by not disclosing that David Kogan had given £2,900 to her leadership campaign in the 2020 race to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

The Prime Minister replied that she had “acted in good faith”, but reprimanded her by saying “the process followed was not entirely up to the standard expected”.


It's "the process followed" again, but surely Sir Tier Starmer is being disingenuous here, even while sticking firmly to his own denial process.  

It is clear enough that Lisa Nandy's pick for chair of the new football watchdog was well down to the standards expected from Sir Tier's government.

Sanity Takes a Holiday

Claire Lemaire has a Brussels Signal piece on a familiar EU failure mechanism, its obsession with uncompetitive green rules.


‘Uncompetitive EU green rules’ push bloc’s industry to outsource more

Stricter environmental regulations in the European Union are making it harder for domestic companies to stay competitive.

Firms are now turning to subcontractors outside Europe, where rules are less demanding, to reduce costs. The result: European industries risk losing jobs and expertise, even as the EU pushes to lead on climate change...

Other EU regulations — including the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) and the Deforestation Regulation — also carry major implications for trade but remain external rules, separate from the trade agreements themselves.

Admission incoming - my main reason for the post was an opportunity to make an award , the Loony Nonsense of the Week award, which this week goes to -

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM). 

Not a huge achievement as I invented the award this afternoon as a one-off* for this post. Yet surely the Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism should be formally recognised as an outstanding EU achievement in the arcane field of ludicrously damaging bureaucratic eco-twaddle.

*There are far too many candidates to continue the award beyond this one.