Home - Politics - The modern right - Who would I vote for?

Who would I vote for?

I agree with the right on economics, foreign policy, and violent crime.

So who would I vote for?

In Ireland:

1. PD
2. Fianna Fail

• The ideas of the PDs have made Ireland rich, and done more to end poverty in Ireland than all the work of the left-wing parties since independence. Indeed, Ireland's history seems to suggest that right-wing parties end poverty, while left-wing, statist parties cause it.
• Fianna Fail have sensibly adopted the PDs' ideas on economics. And on foreign policy, they may not share my ideals, but they can be trusted to do the right thing. They are a sensible, pragmatic party, and will never offend our western democratic allies (Britain and America) in order to make some stupid point. They haven't the slightest interest in standing with Chirac's France (or anyone else) to make a point against America.

• The Dail debate on the Iraq War (from here to here) illustrates clearly why I can now only vote for the PDs and Fianna Fail. The Opposition in this debate come across as anti-American undergraduates. The PDs and Fianna Fail come across as adults, supporting our democratic allies.
• Why I like Fianna Fail - "I had the pleasure of watching John O'Donoghue, a government minister, lambast a political opponent, John Bruton of Fine Gael, when Bruton demanded to know whether there were any circumstances when the government would deny use of Shannon. O'Donoghue told Bruton the government would not let Saddam Hussein use it."

• Irish politicians and parties

• The only thing that would make me not vote for Fianna Fail would be if Fianna Fail were willing to go into government with the communist gangsters of Sinn Fein.
  • A Fianna Fail - Sinn Fein coalition would wreck our successful economy, undermine law and order, and alienate Britain and America. It would be a disaster for the country, but above all it would be a disaster for Fianna Fail. It would destroy Fianna Fail, as hundreds of thousands of the sensible tax-paying middle class deserted it forever, and it would lead to the permanent rise of Fine Gael as Ireland's dominant party.

2007 general election

• 2007 general election
• Some observations:
  1. SF-IRA have peaked already. The Republic will never be like Northern Ireland. Marxist-Leninist gunmen from the 1970s have limited appeal to the prosperous middle-class voters of the South. SF-IRA are past their peak. The South has never voted for communists, and never will.
  2. Pat Rabbitte and his Democratic Left style, Old Labour have a limit to their appeal in the South. Dick Spring's Blairite Labour had a broader appeal. Time for Labour to change, and follow the lead of Blair.
  3. Nor did the other major left-wing party - the Greens - make any progress. One wonders if it would be possible to have a Green party that wasn't extreme left on economics and foreign policy?
  4. And the hard left Socialist Party even lost their only seat. It was a bad election for the left. Truly left-wing parties will, it seems, never get more than 20 percent of seats in the Republic.
  5. Finally, I guess I just disagree with the people's verdict on the PDs. The PDs may be a psychological scapegoat for some of the voters and the media, but the fact is the new Fianna Fail government will be implementing PD policies. Which is what we want. We just don't want them to be so honest about it.

• The new coalition government, June 2007:
  • Unfortunately, the anti-American, anti-Israel, anti-GM, anti-free trade, anti-capitalist Green Party are now going to be a minority partner in the government. Fianna Fail and the PD's will stop them wrecking the economy. But there is a real danger that they will have an influence on foreign policy. In particular, there could be a threat to the use of Irish airports by the U.S. military.
  • Fianna Fail are not allowing this as part of their deal, though. And the anti-war left are horrified (and here and here) by the Greens' "betrayal". The Irish Anti-War Movement chairman said: "I am very disappointed ... We worked very closely with the leadership and the rank and file of the Greens since 2003 on the issue of Shannon and Irish neutrality. ... As recently as May 22nd, we had a message from Mr Gormley assuring us that the Green Party would always have the issue of Shannon in the forefront of their political agenda." Anti-War Ireland urged Green Party members to vote down "this shameful deal". "The alternative is to have your party co-equally responsible for the US military presence at Shannon". Richard Boyd Barrett said it was "a tragic betrayal of the anti-war movement and many of those who voted for the Green Party". So maybe it's not all bad.
  • PANA's Roger Cole says: "A FF/PD/Green Party supported by a range of independents including Finian McGrath totally committed to actively supporting President George Bush's Imperialist war to gain control of the oil of Iraq and to consolidate US/Israeli military domination of the Middle East for years to come, will be elected to run the country for the next 5 years." Let's hope so!
  • So foreign policy may not actually change much. But it does mean that Irish foreign policy, which is already far too pro-UN, anti-Israel, and pro-appeasement of Islamism, is unlikely to improve as I would have hoped. As I say, Fianna Fail are hardly my heroes on foreign policy. I have few real heroes in Irish politics.
  • At least the PD's are back in as well. Hopefully, this government will be much like the last one.

Bertie Ahern, the best Taoiseach ever

If I ranked the Irish heads of government since 1919, I think I would choose:

Best:	Bertie Ahern	Made Ireland rich. Privatisation (especially of airlines and telecoms). Low tax. Ended unemployment. Ended emigration. Ended poverty. Helped US and allies in War on Islamism. Ended NI conflict. Established power-sharing in NI.
2nd best:	W.T. Cosgrave	Set up a democracy. Defeated violent anti-Treaty forces. Ended the 1916-23 violence. Stabilised relations with Britain. 1922 constitution. Peacefully surrendered power when lost 1932 election. Today, only 10 countries in the world have been democracies as long as Ireland.
2nd worst:	Charles Haughey	Crap economy. State monopolies. Sexual repression. Catholic Church rule. Neutrality. Opposition to Falklands War. Entrenched partition. Personal corruption.
Worst:	Eamon de Valera	Crap economy. Protectionism. State monopolies. Economic War. Sexual repression. Catholic Church rule. 1937 constitution. Irish language compulsion. Censorship. Neutrality. Treachery in WW2. Sneering moral equivalence. Condolences on death of Hitler. Entrenched partition. Personal corruption.

Best UK Prime Minister ever	Winston Churchill	Saved Britain. Saved Ireland. Saved Europe. Saved the West.
Best US President ever	Ronald Reagan	Won global war without bloodshed. Destroyed Soviet Empire. Destroyed communism. Liberated Europe.

In the UK:

1. Labour
2. Tory

• In summary:
  1. New Labour supports the War of the western democracies against the global jihad.
  2. The Tories blow hot and cold on the War when in opposition. But in government they could probably be trusted to do the right thing.
  3. The Liberal Democrats are dhimmis and appeasers, or even actively pro-jihad.

• Who Should You Vote For? - quiz. My answers say I should vote Tory.
  • Summary of policies

• UK Political Survey 2005 - another quiz. My answers say I am:
  • Centrist on their crime/international axis (probably because I am broadly pro-immigration and pro- aid to the third world).
  • Far-right on their economic/pro-war axis.

The Liberal Democrats

• The Liberal Democrats' appalling position on Iraq (also here).
• Liberal Democrat MP claims the Taliban were peaceful

• Liberal Democrat MP Jenny Tonge
  • Jenny Tonge "understands" the suicide bombing of Jewish civilians
  • Ideological apology for terror (and followup). More discussions here and here.
  • Doctor Death by Frank McGahon, who sums up my views here about the pointlessness of trying to "understand" the hallucinatory, hate-filled killers of innocent women and children: "a serial killer may have any kind of half-baked ludicrous "rationale" for his murders. Pehaps they were inspired by listening to a Beatles LP: who cares?. It is of little use in preventing future serial killers to examine in minute detail the "reason"s proferred by such a killer. There will always be crazy people. The first priority is to protect yourself against crazy people. Getting sucked into the crazy worldview is a very good way of losing sight of that priority."
  • Jenny Tonge Is a Disgusting Woman. She says: "Civilian targets are chosen because there is no way of getting at military targets."
  • Jenny Tonge stands for two minutes' silence in memory of Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, the butcher of children.

• The Lib Dems' lowest moment. Even worse than Jenny Tonge:
  • Sir Menzies Campbell, Liberal Democrat leader and Chancellor of St Andrews University, to honour Iranian enemy leader Khatami, 2006.
  • Executing homosexuals and killing British soldiers are apparently now ok with the new Liberal Democrat party.
  • Khatami receives honorary degree from Scottish University. He is the first senior Iranian to visit Britain since the 1979 revolution. "It is disgusting that St. Andrews university is conferring an honor on this man, he is responsible for more than 1,300 deaths during his presidency," said Maryam Namazie, of the Iranian Women's Liberation group. "This regime was responsible for the oppression of people that I knew and loved."

The Tories

• Labour has Tony Blair. The Tories have Michael Gove.
• The Resentments of Old Europe - William Hague on Europe and America.

• I initially liked Michael Howard:
  • Michael Howard's speech after Madrid
    • On Madrid: "Let me use this occasion to make one point absolutely clear. If the terrorists hope they can gain their ends by perpetrating in Britain a similar outrage to that in Spain, their wickedness will be in vain. Whatever my disagreements with Tony Blair, any government that I lead will not flinch in its determination to win the War against Terror, wherever it has to be fought."
    • On Iraq: "The British Conservative Party has been consistent in its support for the British Government, and for our armed forces, over the war in Iraq. Indeed Tony Blair would not have won last year's vote in the House of Commons .. which gave him the mandate to go to war, without the support of the Conservative Party. ... The war against Iraq was necessary. It was just. It was, indeed, arguably overdue. And, let us not forget, it was overwhelmingly successful"
    • "We won the Second World War because we fought side-by-side with America. We won the Cold War because we stood side-by-side with America. And we will win this war on terror if we wage it side-by-side with America."
    • On Europe: "it is true that there are some who see a European State as a partner of America. But many have as their main motivation the desire to establish a rival pole of power in Europe. If their views were to prevail many of the achievements we value would be at risk. I shall do all I can to resist their ambitions."
    • He is pro-capitalist and pro-free trade, and correctly links it all to helping the Third World. He quotes Hernando de Soto. Good stuff.

• Then I went off Howard:
  • Howard keeps being tempted to make capital from Blair's troubles on Iraq, despite the fact that he agrees with Blair and would have done the same. This achieves nothing except making the Tories look unreliable and unprincipled - in contrast to the honourable, principled Blair, who many conservatives now admire.
  • Michael Howard - worse even than IDS? by Stephen Pollard - second thoughts about Howard.
  • Howard should start caring about Bush - Mark Steyn on Howard's idiotic and unnecessary alienation of Bush by trying to make capital over Iraq. Or consider his unnecessary alienation of people like me. I have never supported the Tories in my entire life. I have actually voted for Blair (when I lived in the UK, general election 1997). After 9/11 I was just, after all these years, for the first time stumbling towards the view that the Tories weren't so bad after all - because they are strong on the defence of the west. And Howard is telling me no, that's not true actually. If you want really strong in defence of the west, vote Labour.
    • "Despite the great gaping nullity of the [Conservative] party this past decade, there was still one thing it stood for: like the Republicans, the Tories were the party that took foreign policy and national security seriously. That's what Howard threw away when he chose to repudiate his own Iraq-war vote, accuse Blair of "dereliction of duty" and demand his resignation."
    • "how stupid do you have to be to kick away the party's last remaining leg, the one that still seems relevant to the world we live in? If the Conservatives are no longer credible on foreign policy, what's left?"

• The Tories do have a problem with the conservative pessimism, that allowed them do nothing as the Bosnian genocide raged in Europe in the 1990s. This Tory isolationist tradition is exemplified by:
  • Douglas Hurd (Foreign Secretary, 1989-95)
  • John Major (Prime Minister, 1990-97)
  • Malcolm Rifkind
  • Kenneth Clarke
  • Alan Clark
  • Norman Lamont
    • The voice of British appeasement - Melanie Phillips on Norman Lamont.

UK election 2005

• On the one hand, I'm a great fan of Tony Blair, the great liberal internationalist who understands the post 9/11 world - but the problem is I don't like much of the Labour party. I worry that after Blair goes, Labour will revert to its old anti-American self. If only one could vote for Blair without voting for Labour.
• On the other hand, I like Tory policies, and I think most of the Tory party are sensible, but I was turned off Michael Howard by his shabby, second-thoughts opportunism on Iraq. Howard is an alienator of potential new Tory supporters like me. I far prefer Blair to Howard.
• So I'm happy with a third Blair win. Maybe now the Tories will realise the kind of things that attract conservative voters to Blair.

• Oliver Kamm sums up the election result: It's not quite a win, not quite a loss.
• It is interesting that Bush, Blair and Howard - the three leaders of the Iraq War of 2003 - all won re-election in 2004-5. Sure, the war was unpopular with some people. But the war's unpopularity has clearly been exaggerated. Much of the media bought into the "Bush lied. Blair lied." rhetoric. But most people didn't. They either supported the war, or opposed it but didn't care that much compared with other issues. The media's "Conventional Wisdom" version of history will forever portray this as an unpopular war. But the less dramatic truth is that it was not very unpopular.

David Cameron

• I think I like David Cameron, who seems to represent optimistic, neo-con conservatism.
  • Cameron is supported by Michael Gove (and here), who I really like on foreign policy. Michael Gove for Foreign Secretary!
  • "A new approach to foreign affairs - liberal conservatism", Cameron's foreign policy speech, Sept 2006, is somewhat mixed-message. Pessimist Melanie Phillips puts the most negative spin possible on it, saying it looks like Cameron will cool things with America. Bizarre Tory isolationist Geoffrey Wheatcroft enthusiastically agrees (and, unlike Phillips, thinks that would be a good thing). I suspect both of them are wrong. I think Cameron is a neo-conservative, no matter what he says. He's not afraid to say openly he agrees with much of neo-conservatism, which hardly anyone in Europe says. He then claims his is a slightly different form, and perhaps it is, but not that different.

• Cameron stands encircled by zealous Anglo-neocons, Geoffrey Wheatcroft, March 22, 2007, has second thoughts about Cameron's Tories. Hurray. If Wheatcroft doesn't like him, then Cameron is definitely safe to vote for.
  • Wheatcroft compares Britain's support for America in the War on Islamist fascism to Vichy France's support for Nazi Germany in its war on democracy and the Jews. Again, one always has to wonder if whining isolationists like this would have really supported the troops in the second world war. Whereas it's obvious that the "Anglo-neocons" would have.
  • Wheatcroft mentions the admirable Douglas Carswell, who says "it is in our national interest to support Israel". Carswell apparently says he does not like to criticise Israel "because I believe they are a front-line ally in a war against people who wish to destroy our democratic way of life." The weirdo Wheatcroft describes these unexceptional views as "extreme", "plainly absurd" and "terrifying".

• On the other hand, David Cameron talks rubbish about Islamism, May 13, 2007 - "First, a concerted attack on racism and soft bigotry. You can't even start to talk about a truly integrated society while people are suffering racist insults and abuse, as many still are in our country on a daily basis. ... many Muslims I've talked to about these issues are deeply offended by the use of the word 'Islamic' or 'Islamist' to describe the terrorist threat we face today. We do need greater understanding of the true nature of the terrorist threat. There's ... too much denial of it in the Muslim community. But our efforts are not helped by lazy use of language. Indeed, by using the word 'Islamist' to describe the threat, we actually help do the terrorist ideologues' work for them"
  • For heaven's sake, the word "Islamist" is used to allow some clear water between the jihadi Muslim terrorists (Islamism) and moderate Muslims (Islam). "Islamism" describes accurately the popular philosophy and world view that motivates jihadi terror around the world. Cameron is missing the point that all Muslims should reject Islamism and not be offended by insults to it. Any Muslim who defends Islamism is not someone whose opinions we should care about.
  • Maybe Cameron will be useless on the war after all. Can't we get Michael Gove instead?

• The Tory party I dislike is the party of these people:
  • Geoffrey Wheatcroft
  • Simon Jenkins
  • Matthew Parris

• The kind of thing that makes me go Tory:
  • Blair's Religious Hatred Bill to criminalise criticism of Islam.
  • Blair's grasp of the War on Islamism is better than almost all leaders in Europe, but it is still sometimes confused with the stale conventional wisdom of his wife and his centre-left peers. He says: "Unless we re-appraise our strategy, unless we revitalise the broader global agenda on poverty, climate change, trade, and in respect of the Middle East, bend every sinew of our will to making peace between Israel and Palestine, we will not win." In reality, not a single one of these 4 issues will make any impact on stopping the global jihad against us.

In the US:

1. Republican

• Essentially, because the Democrats cannot be trusted on the War on Islamism.

U.S. elections

• U.S. election, 2004
  • Bush wins

  • Will the Democrats ever win again?

  • Flash animation "When the Man Comes Around"
    • lyrics

  
  

• U.S. election, 2008

Other U.S. parties

• Even though I describe myself as a libertarian, I would never vote for the Libertarian Party since they are isolationists.

U.S. election, 2008

Voting is not for idealists

There is so much space for a party I would prefer to any of the above parties. Why can't I find a party that is secular, anti-drug war, anti-censorship, pro-gay rights, tough on real crime, pro-capitalist, pro-free trade, pro-West and pro-War-on-Islamism? Why does such a party not exist?

Postscript: But you don't have a vote! What is the point of this?

1. Well, first, I do have a vote in Ireland.

2. Second, I used to live in the UK, and I had a vote there (I voted for Blair). Indeed, this website used to be in the UK. Some immediate family are UK citizens, and it is possible I may live there again in the future.

3. I have also lived in the US (and paid taxes), but never had a vote. Again, some immediate family are US citizens, and I may have permanent family ties there. I thought of moving there once myself, but it didn't happen in the end. This website is actually hosted in the US.

So I'm hardly from another planet. In fact, if current trends continue, about half of my children's 1st and 2nd cousins will be British, Australian or American.

And two more general answers:

1. It is reasonable to be interested in foreign policy and what other countries are doing. Apart from anything else, our country could help (e.g. we let America use our base at Shannon for the Iraq War). Therefore it is reasonable to be interested in figuring out what policy you would like other countries to adopt and who you would like to see in power. Who is in power in the UK and US most certainly affects my world, but I don't have a vote to influence it. Nor should I - but it is not unreasonable to be interested.

2. Finally, my ideas - if people like them - may be worth as much as a vote.

   Several thousand American and British readers come to my website every month. No one forces them to, and no one forces them to stay. Many will disagree with what I say of course. And all get information from a million other places. But if I influence just one or two readers a year, then I do in effect have a vote in the UK and US.

   You may call this "foreign meddling" in your election, but the fact is such influence has always been there. If you allow your citizens read material written by foreigners, then it can affect their thinking and their votes. This is as true in the 18th century as it is today. It's just normal.

And in case you think that, being Irish, I know nothing about US politics:

• I took this Pew test and I knew more about US and international politics than 83 percent of Americans.
• 9 of the 12 questions were about U.S. politics. 3 were about international politics. I scored 10 out of 12.
• I got it wrong on who is the majority leader of the U.S. Senate, and who is the chairman of the U.S. Federal Reserve. I got the other 7 questions about U.S. politics, and all 3 questions about international politics, right.