The Daily Sceptic | Michael Rainsborough
Having lived in Australia for the past three years, I sense that this
country is the least advanced down the road towards the multicultural
dystopia confronting much of Europe. That is not to say there is room
for complacency: Australia has its own canaries in the coal mine,
echoing trends observable across the Western world. Yet relative
prosperity, firm immigration policies, a distinct welfare regime
(mandatory health insurance, means tested pensions), a robust federal
system, and above all a unique electoral framework of three-year cycles
and compulsory voting all help, willy-nilly, to keep politicians on a
short leash and broadly tethered to the popular will.
The
greatest safeguard against social fracture and disintegration in
Australia, however, is not institutional design but rather watching
Britain implode in real time. Many Australians, still bound by ties of
kinship and tradition to the old country, see in the United Kingdom both
a cautionary tale and an anti-role model: a once-settled, relatively
harmonious state busily teaching the world how to dismantle itself
through the enthusiastic embrace of liberal dogma.
As an observer no longer resident in Britain, I am reluctant to
pontificate on the fate of my homeland. Yet it is a sight to behold: an
establishment seemingly bent on self-destruction, clinging to an
incontinent immigration system and an almost devotional attachment to
international and human rights laws that disadvantage its own citizens.
The Epping hotel protests — complete with the Home Office's recourse to
legal appeals — illustrate the point. No doubt the legal complexities
are real, as David McGrogan rightly pointed out in these pages, but such manoeuvres only pour petrol on an already combustible national mood.
One is left to wonder whether Britain's Labour Party, now so hopelessly enthralled by socially progressive ideology, will ever rediscover the ability to represent anything resembling national sentiment — or whether it will, like the Conservatives, simply perfect the art of political self-evisceration.
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