Religion and Politics Blog

A reminder that when it comes to stupid bigotry, it’s difficult for anyone to beat conservative white men. Meet Professor Nigel Piercy of Swansea University.

Professor Piercy, whose time at Swansea has been marked by a series of conflicts with staff and students, had written that among those “claiming the right to censor and veto” academics’ pronouncements were “unpleasant and grubby little people, who purport to represent others because they have persuaded a tiny number of people to elect them to office in trades unions and the like”.

Such “creepy little people” were “usually distinguished only by their sad haircuts, grubby, chewed fingernails and failed careers”, he wrote. Another characteristic was “straggly beards”, “half-way between designer stubble and a real beard” and “probably indicative of a hormone deficiency”.

When the university’s pro-chancellor has to apologise for the bollocks he’s been spounting, you wonder if he should move to Goldsmiths College in London. I’m sure he and Bahar Mustafa would get on really, really well….

The Tories are imploding again. Michael Portaloo is having another go at their nonentity of a leader, Ian Duncan Smith. Read about it here and here.

Reading this article from Samizdata.net suggests the problem with the Tories goes much deeper than the personalities of the leadership, but a fundamental split in Conservative voters. There’s one group (who I’ll call Daily Mail readers) who are nationalistic, deeply socially conservative and hostile to immigrants and minorities, and there are a second group who are socially liberal but believe strongly in free markets. It’s increasingly difficult for a single party to appeal to both groups; any policy that appeals strongly to one will alienate the other.

I think Britain is due for another political realignment, along the lines of the one which eventually saw the birth of New Labour. Under our first-past-the-post electoral system such things are messy, which means we’re likely to be stuck with New Labour until the dust finally settles on the centre-right, which may take another ten to fifteen years.

It’s impossible to predict what will eventually happen; maybe the Tories will split and fight it out directly in the polls. Maybe the Daily Mail readers will win the internal struggle leaving the social liberals to drift away to the Liberal Democrats. Or maybe the social liberals will win out, leaving the Daily Mail readers to drift off, perhaps to the openly fascist British National Party, which is a scary thought. Or perhaps a charismatic leader will emerge and somehow unite the two wings.