The Last Ditch by Tom Paine

So much political debate now is tribal. Any idea that originates from a political “foe” will instantly be opposed. It’s almost as if no thinking is going on at all.

To some extent, I suppose, this has always been true. My first political act as an adult was to vote to remain in the Common Market. I remember asking my Dad his opinion. He said he didn’t really know what to think but that as Tony Benn was against the Common Market, he’d vote for it.

“Tony Benn is never right about anything, son.”

Sadly, that proved not to be true. Economically, Benn was an idiot but he was clear-sighted about how democracy worked. Unlike Fabians such as Starmer, he didn’t want to sneak in Socialism by stealth. He naively believed he could sell it.

That would make him a moral giant in the Labour movement today.

Neither Dad nor I had studied the founding documents of what we (and almost everyone else) then thought of just as a free trade pact. The sinister “ever closer union” aspects were there from the outset, but we had lives to lead and hadn’t read them. For myself, I was 18 and couldn’t afford nice wine. I figured free trade with France might make it cheaper! My analysis was no deeper than that.

I only came to oppose the Common Market when I practised international law in Continental Europe and finally saw the whole thing is a monumental scam. It was designed ab initio to maximise opportunities for corruption. None of the Brussels offices of the major law firms actually practise law. They’re there to lobby the Commission for laws and regulations that favour their big corporate clients.

I know of a decade-long monopoly secured for a manufacturing client by such a firm. It drafted environmental regulations only its client could comply with. I heard the client boast about selling those draft regulations to the Commission staff and felt physically sick that it had worked. All of you overpaid for an everyday product for years because of that ploy.

There’s a reason there are so many wonderful restaurants in little Brussels. Lavish entertainment of EU officials is its main economic activity. Corruption is not an error in the EU system. It’s the whole point of it. Everything the Commission does makes sense once you stop kidding yourselves that it exists to make your lives better. The people whose lives it actually seeks to make better are very happy with it indeed. Trust me.

Similarly, if you look at what political parties say they want and compare it with what they actually do, it seems they must be idiots. The Labour Party (as its name suggests) is supposed to serve the interest of working people. Yet the very first act of the current government was to increase the tax employers pay for employing such people! If they want you to drink less, they tax booze more. If they want you to smoke less, they tax tobacco more. So why did they levy more tax on employment? It makes no sense, right?

However, once you accept their stated objectives are fake, all can be explained. Who funds the Labour Party? Mostly, the Public Sector Unions. Who pays the national insurance contributions on public sector jobs (for both employer and employee?) The taxpayer. What did the Labour Party immediately do with the money raised? They increased the pay of public sector workers.

You funded our election campaign. We won. Here’s your reward.

Perfectly logical and sensible. No moral contortions required because – no morals.

When I worked in Moscow my teacher interrupted a Russian lesson to call a friend the moment she learned I had been a communist in my youth.

You believed that stuff?! No-one here did! Not even Stalin.

She and her friend giggled at my idiocy. In fairness I was 16 when I was a Communist. By the age of 20, I was Chairman of my University Conservatives. But they were not wrong to laugh at me. I deserved it.

Stalin knew Socialism – as sold to the masses – was bullshit. He personally handled the envelopes of cash handed to senior Party people to supplement their “equal” pay. He was well aware of their perks and privileges. He rode in limousines and special trains. He lived in luxury houses. His knew that his KGB Chief Beria had agents snatch young women off the street for him to rape. Read here about “Beria’s flower game” and prepare to be revolted at the depths of human depravity.

They all knew – what nonsense the “brotherly love” shit was. The depravities of their own people were fine. The depravities of opponents were concocted as required to justify their elimination.

Compare that with the modern Left’s different reaction to a porn deepfake online made with an opponent’s AI and the mass rapes of thousands of innocent minors by some of their supporters. Or their jubilation at the death of Charlie Kirk versus their performative “horror” at the death of a woman shot in self-defence by a law-enforcement officer she was driving her car at. Both deaths are tragedies to a moral person. To a Leftist the death of a foe is fine and the death of an ally is fuel for propaganda. In either case, metaphorical omelettes require metaphorical broken eggs. There’s no real concern for life per se.

Socialists are constantly saying, when this kind of evil is uncovered by time, that

It wasn’t real socialism. Give us another chance. Next time it will work.

No it won’t – and (useful idiots apart) they know that full well. The whole point of socialism is to transfer economic power from markets to politicians. History shows that the effects of that transfer are completely consistent.

Stalin, like Lenin before him and Mao and Castro after him, made zero contribution either to the advancement of human knowledge or the production of wealth. Like my local Labour MP, none of them ever held down an honest job. They were mediocrities in every field except violence. Yet they enjoyed immense wealth and unconstrained power. Their peoples’ lives were theirs to take or play with and they could help themselves to anything – or anyone – they fancied.

Economists contrast “stated preference” with “revealed preference”. Asked on a doorstep if they want a new shopping centre nearby, your average Joe will say no. Those developing the centre know full well that once it’s built all those Joes will use it. It’s the preference revealed by expenditure that’s the truth, not the stuff said to sound cool or hostile to “the Man”.

Similarly, we must stop listening to what politicians say to us and look at what they do with the power they have. What such people say to you – as long as your democracy survives – is just a means to the end of getting their hands in your pockets and around your throats.