Tory essay is blueprint for destroying bedrock of democracy

On the same day, an essay appeared on the Conservative Home website that reveals a blueprint on how to destroy the structural foundations of British democracy which has every chance of success.

This is the Tory way: quiet, unheralded and sinister, designed in the first instance for the select, for those to whom the destruction of British democracy is appealing and who have the power and influence to ensure its success.

The essay is by Daniel Hannan, the arch-Brexiteer Tory MEP who has recently been made a peer, was one of the principal architects of Brexit, and whose essay is a call to radically deregulate a whole raft of existing consumer and employee protections and rights. He presents a blueprint on how to enrich the Tory elite whilst impoverishing and imperilling the mass of the population. This is the real legacy of the Tory Brexit, and if you want an argument for independence, this is it.

Britain is, according to Hannan, “utterly skint”, and needs to be “fitter, leaner and more globally engaged”. The solution is to use our new-found freedom to remedy this. The problem is that his new-found freedom will mean a new form of servitude for the rest of us.

I have always argued in this paper that the Tories utilised naked racism to achieve a Brexit which would be the instrument they would use to achieve their goal of destroying our rights and freedoms, thus removing all obstacles to enable them to loot the national treasury at their will and establish a Tory form of dictatorship. Hannan here demonstrates this as he insists that the only way forward is through economic growth that is to be achieved by fiscal and deregulatory methods that will “stop putting barriers between businesses and their customers”. Therefore, fiscally, we must lower taxation, stop increasing the minimum wage, lower wages in general in order to “spread the pain of lower wages” and abandon all plans to increase health service salaries whilst cutting taxes and suspending others, especially taxes on investment and employment.

For Hannan, all of Britain’s faults lie with the public sector which stifles the private sector with “Stone Age instincts”.

Hannan’s regulatory solutions involve removing regulations protecting workers rights, such as the Temporary Workers Directive which guarantees agency staff equal pay and conditions with staff in the same business, and health and safety protections such as the Reach Directive that outlaws chemicals linked to health problems whilst lifting the ban on products made from genetically modified crops. He lists more, but admits that his list is only a guide to what is possible under the “freedoms” we now enjoy outside the EU.

Again as I have warned in this paper, freedom to a Tory is freedom to do whatever he or she wants regardless of the consequences for anyone else, and make no mistake, this is what is coming and what has been the Tory plan all along. Hannan’s essay is simply laying the groundwork for the justification of future atrocities.

The English electorate, with their customary cap-doffing servility voted for this, but we did not. Where Trump failed, the Tories will likely succeed and we must avoid the English future like the plague it most assuredly will be.

Peter Kerr

Kilmarnock

THOUGH agreeing wholeheartedly with Alan Hinnrich’s letter regarding the Trump-inspired attempted insurrection of American democracy on January 8, I do feel that he has been a tad harsh on the response of the Democratic Party and, in particular, that of Joe Biden.

To accuse the president-elect of cowardice and incompetence is wide of the mark when you consider that only vice-president Mike Pence and a majority of the Republican cabinet could invoke the 25th Amendment to relieve President Trump of his position at present.

Furthermore, Mr Biden is not presently in a position to bring Trump to justice, though Nancy Pelosi, as leader of the House of Representatives, has called for a second impeachment for the disgraced president which would be unlikely to be successful in any case without substantial Republican support.

The failure of security cannot be attributed to Mr Biden or to the Democratic Party. This unprecedented, but hardly unpredictable, attack by a group of right-wing thugs was orchestrated by Trump, his minions and all those who have enabled his pseudo-fascist presidency to continue. Joe Biden spoke precisely and well following the shocking scenes in Washington and I sincerely hope that his presidency will bring some much-needed stability to the USA in the months and years ahead and that the outgoing president will be brought to justice for his attempt to subvert the democratic will.

Owen Kelly

Stirling

IT has been interesting to listen to Republican politicians now attempting to distance themselves from the man they unquestioningly endorsed throughout the previous four years.

Not one seems to accept any individual responsibility for sustaining that arrogant megalomaniac in presidential office.

One wonders how many of our current Scottish Tory, Labour and LibDem politicians will have the personal integrity to honestly take full responsibility for their many years of support of the current constitutional arrangements that have subjected people across the UK to the rule of a perhaps more amiable, but equally anti-democratic, “leader”, once Scotland becomes independent?

Stan Grodynski

Longniddry