Blow to UK Conservatives: Liam Fox Resigns
Never mind making a great Tory prime minister for Britain; had arch-Atlanticist Liam Fox been born on the other side of the pond he would have made a pretty good Republican presidential candidate. Sadly for conservatives in both Britain and the U.S., any lingering hopes Fox may have had of one day leading his party have evaporated after he was forced to resign as secretary of state for defense.
Fox quit after several days of revelations about his dealings with close friend Adam Werritty. Werritty styled himself as Fox’s advisor although he held no official post, and established a network of think tanks and lobbying organizations which were funded with tens of thousands of pounds in donations from conservative businessmen and lobbyists. Most of them had links to American and Israeli business and security interests. Much of the money was used by Werritty to fund trips around the world, during which he met up with Fox. (The current coverage in the UK is focusing on the latest developments — a good background is here.)
Central to the affair is the Atlantic Bridge organization. This was set up by Fox in 1997 with the aim of strengthening the “special relationship” between Britain and the U.S. It had links to think tanks including the Heritage Foundation and the Center for Security Policy. Atlantic Bridge was later registered as a charity, but was closed down last month after an investigation concluded that its political activities disqualified it from enjoying charitable status.
Fox and Werritty have also been accused of pursuing private interests in war-torn Sri Lanka, in conflict with official UK policy.
Few would argue that Fox did not have to go. At best, he allowed the line between his official duties and his personal interests to become blurred, and at worst he stands accused of promoting a shadow national security policy. Werritty now faces a possible police investigation; further revelations are likely, and colleagues who initially stood by Fox have given up defending him. But Fox’s resignation is a setback for the Tory right, which feels that Prime Minister David Cameron has allowed his party to drift too far to the center in order to get elected and has conceded too much ground to his center-left coalition partners, the Liberal Democrats. It’s also a blow to those who advocate strong ties between Britain and the U.S., particularly in matters of defense, and between Britain and Israel.
While there’s no suggestion of a conspiracy to oust Fox, his principled and uncompromising conservatism and willingness to take on the vested interests in the vast and dysfunctional bureaucracy of the Ministry of Defense ensured that he amassed a wide-ranging list of enemies. These lived within his department, the Cameron government, and the political and media establishment. All were happy to get out the daggers at the first opportunity.
Within his party, Fox was widely viewed as the keeper of the Thatcher flame (the ailing Baroness Thatcher made a rare public appearance at Fox’s 50th birthday party recently, a sign of the high regard in which he’s held by the right). This put him at odds with Cameron, to whom Fox lost the battle for the Conservative leadership in 2005. While taking an admirably conservative line on the economy and education reforms, Cameron has in other areas — notably climate change and Britain’s relationship with Europe — pursued liberal policies unpopular with grassroots Tories, obsessed as he is with presenting a kinder, gentler face to the British public (“decontaminating the brand,” as he has called it).
As defense secretary, Fox stood up to Cameron by warning that proposed defense cuts were too severe, opposed the setting of arbitrary deadlines for withdrawing British troops from Afghanistan, and criticized plans to increase Britain’s foreign aid budget, claiming the money would be better spent on defense. He also opposed proposals to expand military initiatives between European Union states at the expense of NATO, epitomized by a ludicrous plan for Britain to share aircraft carriers with France. Fox upset the civil servants at the MoD from day one, pledging to tackle waste, overspending, and a culture of resistance to reform.
Too bad for Mr. Fox and Great(?) Britain. Based on what I’ve read and seen it doesn’t look hopeful for the birthplace of Edmund Burke. Perhaps it would be best if the most productive and freedom-loving Brits were to emigrate to the USA ASAP. We could use the reinforcements.
Sorry to disappoint, Edmund Burke was born in Ireland in Dublin not in the UK.
But your point on emigration is well made, having just had a read of Bat Yeors book on ‘Europe , Globalization, and the coming Universal Caliphate’, however ‘sustainable development’ and Agenda 21 is part of the same problem.
Close but no cigar. Edmund Burke was born in Dublin in Ireland, which strictly speaking was a separate kingdom under the Crown until 1801. However JeffP did not make the mistake of saying that Burke was born in the UK. He did not even really claim that Burke was born in Great Britain. So you are tilting at a straw dog. Burke was a very British politician and was born a British subject in the British Isles. Would you dismiss the comment if he had been born on the Island of Man or in the Channel Islands or in Scotland before the Act of Union? Certainly it is a sad day for the legacy of Edmund Burke. The wiki does note that Ptolemy referred to a “Little Britain” that meant the island of Hibernia or Ireland but the term Little Britain otherwise refers to the peninsula of Brittany in France.
Will Fox now abandon politics? Will he come out of the closet and become a darling of the Left? Will he become a pro-American version of Enoch Powell and isolated curmudgeon beloved by his constituency?
You’re welcome to the pair of them. The sooner the better. Doubtless you’ll be able to find room for them in your somewhat bulging prison population.
A well deduced article. True Brit conservatives are alive and suffering, similar to those of us in the States but with less ability to mobilize and break out of the atmosphere and image from a highly ambitious controlling media. Their sense of identity even amongst themselves seems to always be an issue. And they don’t have Europe proper, America other than limited friendship, nor most of Scotland Ireland and Wales. I agree with you if this was a high ranking politician with ties to causes on the left they may have gotten kid gloves. But that’s been the double standard against conservatives here too.
“It’s hard to believe the same fuss would have been made had he been a more moderate Tory, and had those from whom Werritty took money been seeking to increase awareness of global warming and pushing for closer ties with Belgium.”
Yes. If he had been a doctrinaire Labourite, his “excesses” would have made him the darling of Fleet Street, with the possible exception of Rupert Murdoch. And he would have been hailed as the second coming of, if not Clement Attlee, at least Harold Wilson.
As it stands, Cameron looks increasingly feckless at roughly an Arthur Dent level, and his most likely successor, Labour’s Ed Milibrand, makes about as much sense as Zaphod Beeblebrox at any given moment.
I won’t say “England is lost”, but it’s not at all well.
clear ether
eon
The burgalry at his flat sparked it all off. The statement he gave to the police was passed onto the Meeja who sank their teeth in. Do any of you know the biggest crutch Fox had in all of this? He wasn’t a Liberal Democrat, else he’d be relatively bullet proof.
Guardian Media Group has ties to Soros. What was exposed about Fox is the double standard for soros and company who are busy running shadow governments in various countries through NGO’s(non governmental organizations), the United Nations; and control of the media.
WND just did an article about the ties of Soros to oil interests in Uganda, the United Nations, and the reason Obama just sent 100
U.S. Troops there.
What Fox was doing in Britain was no different and tiny in comparison to Soros and the world. Since the majority of news media is left leading lberal, he will not be exposed for his manipulations of governments.
There isn’t a Conservative party in the UK anymore. They suffer from the “Joe Clarke Syndrome” that long afflicted Canadian Conservatism. Now we have a conservative leader … Stephen Harper … I only hope he can overcome the bureaucratic opposition of the federal government. They are the resistance, along with the taxpayer funded CBC and public worker unions.
…the ties of Soros to oil interests in Uganda, the United Nations, and the reason Obama just sent 100 U.S. Troops there.
Undoubtedly to help protect said ‘interests’. As Kurt Jr. used to say, ‘so it goes’.
Thanks, now I understand why my local government-funded left-liberal media (ABC radio/tv australia) is running so much coverage on this relatively minor story, which would never rate a mention if it were about some center-left pol.
Global Climate Fraud
When 31,487 American environmental and climate scientists, 9,029 of whom hold PhDs, agree that ”limits on greenhouse gasses would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology and damage the health and welfare of mankind,” can they all be wrong?
If they are, that would mean the cockamamie claims of Al Gore, the IPCC, and the whole horde of “greenies” who have been claiming for years that CO2 emissions are hazardous to the planet are a crock.
When those scientists subscribe to the view that, “there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth,” it would mean that Gore and Company should be branded as criminals for knowingly advocating a plot which would deprive mankind of those benefits.
(See the petition which includes the identities and qualifications of the signers at http://www.petitionproject.org/.)
In point of fact, the global warmists/coolists/changeists–they and their ilk have pushed all of those senseless panics over the past three decades but will be referred to here as simply the warmists and their cause as global warming–are responsible for perpetrating a scam so massive that Bernie Madoff would blush for not thinking of it first.
The immediate occasion for citing The Petition Project, which began with some 17,000 signatories in the late nineties and which has, of course, been dismissed by the warmist lobby as fraudulent despite the identification of every signatory, is the recent brouhaha over what scientist said what and what did he mean about global warming.
UC Berkeley Professor Richard Muller, member of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project (BEST) team, alleged last week that he and his team had concluded Mother Earth was indeed warming and temperatures had increased by almost one degree centigrade over the course of 60 years.
As the warmists exulted over that announcement, made just in the nick of time for the gathering of the U.N.’s climate summit in Durban, S.A., a BEST colleague of Prof. Muller’s took issue with his opinion. A day later, Britain’s DailyMail.com also rained on Muller’s warmist parade by pointing out that his fellow climatologist had basically called Muller’s claim bunk.
Professor Judith Curry, chairperson of the highly-prestigious University of Georgia’s Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, said Muller had made “a huge mistake,” prof-speak for, Muller, you’re a ninny and/or a shill for the warmists. Curry also corrected Muller’s conclusions by adding factual analysis that there has been no global warming for at least ten years . . .
(Read more at http://www.genelalor.com/blog1/?p=5918.)