What seems unimaginable in our leftist world is doable; all you have to do is—do it

Peter Davies, the mayor of Doncaster, a city of 67,000 in South Yorkshire in northern England, is doing something that is unheard of: he is, without ceremony or handwringing, dismantling the bureaucracy of inclusion and other leftist and fashionable idiocies in his city. Gerald Warner has a stirring column about him in The Telegraph:

You do not have to go all the way in supporting the English Democrats party, whose silly proposal for an English parliament would add another superfluous layer to already excessive government, to raise a glass to Peter Davies, the party’s elected Mayor of Doncaster. Davies, the father of Tory MP Philip Davies, is one of just 11 directly elected mayors and he is enjoying increasing media exposure because of his outrageous agenda which, against all the tenets of consensual British politics, consists of doing what the public wants. [LA replies: England, the cradle of liberty, has only 11 elected directly mayors, how pathetic.]

In his first week in office he cut his own salary from 73,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds, which is putting one’s money where one’s mouth is. He also scrapped the mayoral limousine. He is ending Doncaster’s twinning with five towns around the world, an arrangement which he describes as “just for people to fly off and have a binge at the council’s expense”. He intends now to reduce (that’s right, reduce) council tax by 3 per cent this year.

The “diversity” portfolio has been abolished from the council’s cabinet. From next year no more funding will be given to the town’s “Gay Pride” event, on the grounds that people do not need to parade their sexuality, whatever it may be, at taxpayers’ expense. Black History Month, International Women’s Day and the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender History Month are similarly destined to become history.

Council funding of translation services for immigrants has been scrapped because he believes incomers should take the trouble to learn English. Officials have been ordered to abandon bureaucratic gobbledegook language. Davies is saving the taxpayers 80,000 pounds by disaffiliating from the pointless Local Government Association and the Local Government Information Unit. He aims to abolish all non-jobs on the council, as epitomised by “community cohesion officers”. He is taking advice from the Taxpayers’ Alliance and the Campaign Against Political Correctness.

Davies’s views are calculated to put Harriet Harridan into intensive care for six months. [LA comments: I think Warner is referring to Harriet Harmon, the Labor Minister for “Children and Equality.”] He disregards all “green claptrap”, is creating more parking spaces to encourage traffic in the town for the benefit of business (“I’m not green and I’m not conned by global warming”). He has asked the Electoral Commission to reduce the number of Doncaster’s councillors from 63 to 21 (“If Pittsburgh can manage with nine councillors, why do we need 63?”). [LA replies: A small city of 67,000 has a governing body of 63 members!]

You may be feeling disorientated, overcome by a surreal sensation, on hearing such extraordinary, unprecedented views. They are the almost forgotten, forcibly extinguished voice of sanity which most people had thought forever excised from British politics. These policies are common sense, which is something we have not experienced in any council chamber, still less the House of Commons, in decades. The establishment is moving heaven and earth to discredit and obstruct Davies. He is that ultimate embarrassment: the boy who reveals that the Emperor has no clothes.

If it is good enough for Doncaster, it is good enough for Britain. Our effete, corrupt, politically correct politicians must be compelled to follow suit. Once upon a time, such policies would have been axiomatic in the Tory Party. In the Cameron-occupied Conservative Party of today they are regarded as anathema. There has to be an inflexible public will to enforce the country’s wishes on the political class under pain of ejection from public life. That is the sole agenda for the next general election. The mainstream parties, as currently constituted, are no longer electable.

[end of article]

Clark Coleman, who sent the article, writes:

At least, not all mayors are Dead Mayors like Boris Johnson.

I found it interesting that England has an organization called the Campaign Against Political Correctness.

Do you remember when several European countries rejected the EU constitution by referendum, and you noted how it suddenly became acceptable in our news media to criticize it? You pointed out that it seems that liberalism is a house of cards that demands lack of dissent, cowed silence, intimidation. When one courageous leader (or a voting public) suddenly stands up and says NO, the house of cards starts collapsing. What will happen if Britons start rallying around leaders such as Mayor Davies?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 13, 2009 08:20 PM | Send