St George, pray for us

It’s St George’s Day today, and we must all hope that the saint hasn’t yet withdrawn his patronage from England.

This is sorely needed, for the country is under attack from all sorts of dragons. This format doesn’t allow compiling a complete taxonomy, so I’ll just focus on the political monster.

Mrs May has called a snap election, which she, along with just about ever pollster, confidently expects to win by a landslide. She probably will at that, but not on the strength of what she is.

Mrs May’s principal attraction is what, or rather who, she isn’t. She isn’t Jeremy Corbyn, which is a gigantic feather in her cap.

One can safely assume that the average intelligence of the electorate is abysmally low, but, even if it were even lower, it’s hard to imagine anyone but a misanthropic, subversive retard wishing to install Corbyn at 10 Downing Street.

I’ve watched two of his recent interviews, and the man stakes a claim to the same political territory that is in France occupied by Mélenchon, a plot overlapping with Kim Jong-un’s holdings.

Jeremy wants to tax the rich (anyone earning the middle-class income of £70,000 year) into poverty, increase public spending and foreign aid, nationalise the economy and keep Britain’s borders hospitably open to all and sundry.

This take on domestic policy is exacerbated by his plans for foreign relations. Jeremy is in favour of unilateral disarmament, abandoning our nuclear deterrent and leaving NATO. Should the USSR be restored, I’m sure he’ll want to join it.

Scoring a landslide over this Marxist loony is almost unsporting. Yet Mrs May is desperately trying to meet him halfway in her policies.

This strengthens my belief that real conservatism is no longer possible in the West, certainly not in Britain. All Western states are socialist now, and the difference is only that of degree.

Mrs May has set out to vindicate this melancholy assessment by announcing her intentions should she continue as PM.

First, she has ‘refused to rule out tax rises’. Allow me to translate from political to human: this means she’ll definitely raise taxes. She also keeps her mind open on raiding our pension funds yet again, meaning she’s guaranteed to do so.

She has also gone back on her promise to abandon Cameron’s commitment to spending 0.7 of our GNI on foreign aid. This includes hundreds of millions going to such global nuclear powers as China and India, along with a more modest but no less reprehensible £20 million contribution to the Palestinians. You know, the multi-culti gentlemen who the other day murdered a British subject.

She’s committed to Brexit in a way that resembles a young girl who’s in love with a dashing swain but is forced by her family to marry an ugly old man. Mrs May campaigned for Remain before the referendum, yet laudably stated her intention to abide by the result.

This intention is good, but one hopes it won’t be yet another flagstone on the road to hell. Mrs May clearly wants to remain of the EU even when Britain is no longer in it.

She obviously lacks the clarity of thought so epigrammatically communicated by (the actor!) Sir Michael Caine: “I’d rather be a poor master than a rich servant.”

In other words, leaving the EU shouldn’t boil down to petty haggling about the exit fee or anything else. Nor should we ponder the economics of it too much. The issue is freedom and, like pregnancy, it isn’t quantifiable. We either are free or we aren’t.

I’d submit that continuing to pay money into EU coffers, obeying most of its laws, following most of its policies and failing to regain sovereign control over our borders – not to mention dragging on ‘the negotiations’ indefinitely – compromises Britain’s freedom almost as much as full membership in that vile contrivance does.

Such seem to be Mrs May’s plans. I don’t know by what part of her anatomy the EU has grabbed her, but her heart is clearly following. She’s decent and astute enough not to abandon Brexit altogether, but she may well dilute it to a point where the mass is no longer worth the candle.

Her commitment to the referendum result was partly forced by the political pressure exerted by Ukip that threatened to bite into the Tories’ slim majority. Alas, Ukip seems to be in meltdown, which isn’t really surprising.

Whatever some of my Ukip friends are saying, it’s a single-issue party. Now that the Tories seem to have appropriated the single issue, Ukip has lost its raison d’être. In every sense other than leaving the EU the party is too broad a church, bringing together roughly equal swathes of true blue Tories and true red Labour.

One would hope Ukip will still have a role to play in enforcing compliance with Brexit. But it takes power to enforce anything, and Ukip’s appears to be dwindling away. In has been overtaken in all polls even by the useless, previously moribund LibDems, which is saying a lot.

All in all, we’re badly in need of St George’s prayers – and his help in slaying the political dragons that are otherwise invincible.

Happy St George’s Day!