Liberals confounded as world rejects their 'values'

By Damian Thompson Politics
Last updated: March 23rd, 2012

The UK Telegraph:



Liberals of various descriptions make so much noise in British public life that it’s easy to overlook the fact that liberalism has run into deep trouble on the world stage. For an illustration, consider a joint interview given this week by Tony Blair and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, president of Liberia and Nobel Peace Prize winner.

Mrs Sirleaf is asked about the fact that homosexuality is illegal in her country. She replies: “We like ourselves just the way we are.” Pressed on the point, she confirms that she will not sign any legislation decriminalising “sodomy”.

Mr Blair is a champion of gay rights, so you’d expect him to take issue with this statement. Not a bit of it. “The President’s given her position, and this is not one for me,” he says.

Here’s another interesting vignette, again involving a Labour politician, but this time on his home turf. This week Ken Livingstone was accused by Jewish Labour supporters of telling them at a private meeting that since Jews tended to be rich he wasn’t expecting them to vote for him. In a letter published in the Jewish Chronicle, they also accused Livingstone of using the word “Jewish” in a pejorative manner. And this just weeks after he described the Tories as “riddled with homosexuality”.

The Ken of the 1980s was painful to listen to, but I don’t remember him dog-whistling like that. In those days he was an ultra-liberal politician, the whining incarnation of rainbow ideology. What has happened?

Call me a cynic, but one possible explanation is that, 30 years ago, Livingstone wasn’t chasing a Muslim bloc vote influenced by raging anti-Zionists and homophobes.

A mixture of demographic crisis and the loss of economic power is turning into a disaster for Western liberalism. Left-wing politicians are adjusting their principles rather than offend the world’s conservative non-white majority. Right-wing politicians and multinational corporations are no better: they turn a blind eye when confronted by the brutal ethnic nationalism of East Asia.

Not only do the Han Chinese subjugate their own minorities, but they also treat their African employees like children. Time to call in the Western race-relations police? I think not. Because if there’s one thing Chinese and Africans have in common, it’s contempt for degenerate Western values. In the words of Mrs Sirleaf, “We’ve got certain traditional values in our society that we would like to preserve.” Which, as it happens, is precisely Beijing’s view.

For international liberals, the 21st century has been a sequence of distressing setbacks. Europe has absorbed the unprecedented immigration of deeply conservative Muslims. The new regimes of the Arab Spring are planning even more effective suppression of women’s rights. Russia is run by the corrupt and illiberal remnants of the KGB. And, as I’ve said, neither the exploiters nor the exploited in the Sino-African empire give a damn about the progressive agenda of the BBC or the Guardian.

To be sure, there will be gay weddings in Britain and other European countries, but the idea that they can be marketed to other cultures is fantasy. Most of the developing world isn’t interested in Enlightenment-inspired human rights, which it regards as cultural imperialism. If liberals want to preach against Zionism, that’s fine; foreign aid is welcome, too. But when it comes to sensitive questions of faith and culture, the only message non-Western leaders want to hear is the one offered by brave Mr Blair: “This is not one for me.”

An excellent idea for 'His Excellency’

Last week I wrote about Anthony Bailey, the PR man who’s a big cheese in the “Sacred Military Constantinian Order of St George”, which knighted President Assad of Syria. No sooner had my item appeared than it was announced that Assad had been stripped of his knighthood. What a coincidence! But I’m still curious. What will “His Excellency” Mr Bailey do with the Syrian Order of Outstanding Merit granted to him by the butcher of Damascus? It might be tricky to return. Here’s an idea: perhaps His Excellency could persuade the Bishop of London to swap it for one of his honorary doctorates.

Was the Duke lost for words?

I treasure my battered copy of The Wit of Prince Philip, a sycophantic collection of mildly amusing remarks made by the Duke of Edinburgh, published in 1966.

For example, when he found himself stuck in a lift after opening an extension to Heriot-Watt College in 1958, he quipped: “This could only happen in a technical college.”

Alas, the Duke doesn’t appear to have cracked any jokes when he and the Queen were stuck in a lift after the Diamond Jubilee address on Tuesday. Presumably he was still speechless with rage, having listened to the Speaker of the House of Commons deliver a speech aimed not at her Majesty, nor at the assembled peers and MPs, but at his ghastly wife’s Twitter following.

The red-hot Rev must rule

In Beyond the Fringe, Alan Bennett created a naive vicar who famously compared life to a tin of sardines. “There’s always a bit in the corner you can’t get out,” he simpered.

Now Radio 2 has found a worthy successor. “You know what it’s like when you listen to an album but you never take any notice of the song titles? Well, I was getting an Eric Clapton album onto my computer and, apart from the epic 'They’re Red Hot’ (er… let’s not go there), the one that caught my eye was the intriguing Milkcow’s Calf Blues. I still don’t know if this refers to the baby cow born to the milkcow, or the lower rear leg muscle of the cow itself. The thing about the blues is that they always dig deep into human experience and the everyday stuff of our lives. Like the Psalms of the Old Testament…”

The author of this monologue? Step forward Nick Baines, the deliciously right-on Bishop of Bradford. There are rumours that he may succeed Rowan Williams. Please, Lord, let them be true.

For my next trick, I’ll do Beethoven

The superstar pianist Lang Lang has begun his cycle of Beethoven piano concertos, and the critics are unhappy. “The only sense of forward planning came in the lapses of engagement as he pondered his next trick,” wrote The Daily Telegraph’s Hugo Shirley. I’ve heard Lang Lang play once: Chopin’s First Piano Concerto. It was so enchanting that I bought a couple of his CDs, only to be turned off by the aforementioned trickery. As a French pianist explained to me: “It’s not that Lang Lang can’t play with intelligence. It’s that he chooses not to.” Or, to quote the late John Drummond (Radio Three controller) on Nigel Kennedy: “If he wants to be Liberace, let’s buy him a pair of candelabra and we can all go home.”