Sixty Joyless De-Britished Uncrowned Commonpoor Years (1949-2009)

Elizabeth II Vice-Regal Saint: Remembering Paul Comtois (1895–1966), Lt.-Governor of Québec
Britannic Inheritance: Britain's proud legacy. What legacy will America leave?
English Debate: Daniel Hannan revels in making mince meat of Gordon Brown
Crazy Canucks: British MP banned from Canada on national security grounds
Happy St. Patrick's: Will Ireland ever return to the Commonwealth?
Voyage Through the Commonwealth: World cruise around the faded bits of pink.
No Queen for the Green: The Green Party of Canada votes to dispense with monarchy.
"Sir Edward Kennedy": The Queen has awarded the senator an honorary Knighthood.
President Obama: Hates Britain, but is keen to meet the Queen?
The Princess Royal: Princess Anne "outstanding" in Australia.
H.M.S. Victory: In 1744, 1000 sailors went down with a cargo of gold.
Queen's Commonwealth: Britain is letting the Commonwealth die.
Justice Kirby: His support for monarchy almost lost him appointment to High Court
Royal Military Academy: Sandhurst abolishes the Apostles' Creed.
Air Marshal Alec Maisner, R.I.P. Half Polish, half German and 100% British.
Cherie Blair: Not a vain, self regarding, shallow thinking viper after all.
Harry Potter: Celebrated rich kid thinks the Royals should not be celebrated
The Royal Jelly: A new king has been coronated, and his subjects are in a merry mood
Victoria Cross: Australian TROOPER MARK DONALDSON awarded the VC
Godless Buses: Royal Navy veteran, Ron Heather, refuses to drive his bus
Labour's Class War: To expunge those with the slightest pretensions to gentility
100 Top English Novels of All Time: The Essential Fictional Library
BIG BEN: Celebrating 150 Years of the Clock Tower

Wednesday 28 February 2007

Whatever Happened to Britain's Conservatives?

This is the most devastating critique I've read so far, not because it's particularly devastating, but because it's looked upon with something approaching sorrow and pity from someone who has had it in for the Tories all of his political-commenting life.

THE KINDER, GENTLER TORY PARTY

by Christopher Hitchens

Britain's obituary pages are almost designed to bring back memories of a lost or forgotten world, but the news on Monday about the death of Earl Jellicoe was remarkable, at least to me, for recalling an utterly vanished time that elapsed a very short while ago. The late earl was one of those men who used to make the Tory Party formidable: a solid member of the ruling class with a strong sense of his family's obligations. His father had commanded the British Grand Fleet at the Battle of Jutland in 1916 (being described by Winston Churchill, then at the Admiralty, as "the only man on either side who could have lost the war in an afternoon"). That's where the original earldom had come from. George, the first earl's eldest son, had succeeded to the title as he was about to go to university and had gone on to earn several military decorations in the Mediterranean theater in World War II. Before entering politics, he had served as a diplomat in many capitals, including Baghdad, where he'd been secretary to the short-lived "Baghdad Pact," under which Britain and the United States had attempted to shore up a version of constitutional monarchy in Iraq.

Continue weeping through Whatever Happened to Britain's Conservatives?

3 comments:

The Monarchist said...

Hitchens has moved at least as much as the Tories have since the glorious period of that once great party. But the fact that he no longer feels intimidated by it (we are all intimidated by greatness), is proof of his words that it is now "an utterly vanished time".

Lord Jellicoe, rest in peace.

mrcawp said...

I'm afraid - in this Democratic age - that if we dislike a *successful* party's makeup, we have no-one to blame but the public itself. For this new, wimpy, statist Tory party is calculated to appeal to the average British voter, and recent polls show it works.

Anonymous said...

Any parallels to the Ontario Progressive Conservatives under John Tory (who is far from being a "Tory")? Everything I've heard, is that the only thing he would do differently than the McGuinty Liberals is to "manage better"...