Ian Hamilton QC

By Ian Hamilton

We Scots dearly love a loser. That’s why we’re so fond of Alan Cochrane. He’s the Bonnie Prince Charlie of Scottish journalism. As Westminster meets its Culloden the pipes in Alan’s mind are playing the sad tunes of failure. At MaCrimmon No More he shakes his head. For Lament for the Children he squeezes out only the briefest of tears. The whole cannon of Jacobite songs scarcely reaches the depths of Alan’s misery. ‘Will ye no’ come back again?’ he sings hoarsely into his drink but there’s no one to join him. He needs a piper of his own. He needs someone to strut before him into Holyrood playing a single note in a minor key. But it will not help. All is forlorn! Forlorn! The very word is like a knell! All is lost. All is gone. Yet once it looked so great.

To paraphrase a line from a dead poet the theme of Alan’s columns in the Daily Telegraph may be summed up thus.

                                His hero worship for things long past,
                                Fighting for Westminster right to the last.

Mock not Alan Cochrane for doing his bit. He is a fighter. He will go on fighting. He follows in the great tradition of Scottish men at arms. There is no redoubt so hopeless, no position so utterly surrounded, but what the Alan Cochranes of  Scotland will defend it to the last man, or in Alan’s case to the last word. I do Alan an injustice. He is not merely the Bonnie Prince Chairlie of Holyrood. He is its William Wallace. See his great, proud  bearded head flung back in defiance of us all. Wallace himself never put on a better show. But don’t have Alan dragged away on a hurdle to be disembowelled. Be kind to him. Buy him a drink. He sadly needs one. Life may have passed him by but remember how it once was.

In his youth he wore the brave kilt of Tory Unionism, unassailable in all its splendour. Oh the brave tartan sheen of it! Oh the proud wonder of it! See the Tory banners swaying in the wind in all their majesty! Remember the Young Conservative Clubs where boy met girl and a proper sort of person was conceived. Oh the brave Highland balls they had! Tartan kilt and tartan sash and the heichs and the hochs of the eightsome reels! Hear, hear the pibroch cry! From John o’ Groats to Isle of Skye, we’ll bravely fight and bravely die. We’ll fight and die for London.

Now it’s all gone. Forgive Alan. He was so very young once. He was carried away by it all. He chose the path of valour. He chose the forefront of the battle to preserve the status quo. ‘Everything is perfect,’ he wrote in column after column. ‘Who could do better with our affairs than Westminster?’

‘Give that man a medal,’ shouted his general, but Alan modestly turned it down. He knew that serving the cause of the Union would bring its own reward. It has. Carve his name with pride. We Scots love a glorious failure.

Alas poor Alan! I knew him well.

This is the text of an email I sent to answer queries from a friend.

I rejoice at Michael Martin’s downfall. He has supported the flood of dishonest money to MPs. Name one thing he has ever done for the weak and the poor. His politics have made him a rich man with a pension many times that of an OAP.
 
Nor do I mind that it is mainly English MPs who attack Michael Martin. Better an honourable Englishman than a degenerate Scot.
 
You ask where Brown was. He was present and ran away after the Speaker’s statement. He’s afraid of leadership. He should have been there to say that next day the Government would give time for a debate on the motion of no confidence in the Speaker. Cameron was strategically fomenting trouble elsewhere. There is a time to be absent. Then you can blame others.
 
Then there is impeachment of the dishonest MPs. Impeachment is possible but clumsy. An MP has to be tried before the whole House and it could vote on Party lines. The system is corrupt. It always has been. Take the Whips for example.

The formal name for the Whips is the Curators of Patronage. They deal out the patronage, ie the jobs, to ensure a corps of MPs will always vote for the Government. They have been doing this for three hundred years. Half the governing Party is on the payroll. If a vote of confidence is taken those on the payroll will vote the way the Whips tell them. Don’t be taken in by the words ‘A FREE VOTE’. The only free vote is the secret ballot for the election of a new Speaker. This is so new that the next vote will be the first time it’s ever been used.

The record of the House of Commons on votes of confidence is not good. Look at the so-called Norway vote in 1940. Germany was bashing in our front door. Chamberlain and his feeble government won a vote of confidence by a sizeable majority. It was the press and the public who did for him as they will do for Martin and many others. The press is doing a splendid job. The chance of a hack getting on the Honours list is at present pretty low.

You ask about prosecution of individual MPs. The PM will hold off the police until after the election. The police can investigate an MP but the governing class won’t want to set such a precedent. Very few MPs would like to think their affairs could be the subject of a police investigation, and quite rightly. If I write to my MP to complain about being assaulted by the police I don’t want my letter to fall into their hands. The Civil Service is also involved. Senior civil servants should be beyond the reach of the police unless the Speaker gives permission. The police will grab any extra power and are not to be trusted. The whole system depends on the honesty of a few people. At present they are hard to find.
 
That doesn’t mean there are none. There ARE some honest MPs, maybe quite a few. The honest ones will be outraged at what has happened. Here is my forecast.
 
The worst offenders will be deselected. The next worse will be voted out by the public at the General Election. Then we will have a Puritan House. Its leaders will encourage the police to go after the ex MPs who will now no longer be covered by Parliamentary privilege. Their blood will flow.

When England is outraged there is always a blood sacrifice. Have you forgotten Steven Ward? He committed suicide while on trial for procuring Christine Keeler for John Profumo MP. At that time Profumo was War Minister. Very generously he shared his prostitute with the Russian military attaché. Profumo had to resign from Parliament but ultimately got a CBE. After all, he had been to Harrow and Oxford.  Ward was different. It’s all right to bribe MPs as the whips do but to find them a girl is going too far. Before the end of his trial he had taken a massive overdose of pills and was on a life support machine. They tried to wake him up to tell him he had been convicted but he died too soon. The chap wasn’t a gentleman. Michael Martin isn’t one either but the office of Speaker will give him immunity.

Just as someone had to be found to divert attention from Jolly Jack Profumo a blood sacrifice will be found to divert attention from many of the senior MPs who have been at it. There will be a suicide this time round too.

The English love a classical Greek ending.

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NEXT ENTRY.

What is your MP for?

Why do we need MPs if we have ombudsmen?

Has your MP ever done anything for you?

Why are MPs and government all mixed up together?

Would we not be better with MPs kept separate from the Government as in the United States?

ALL THESE QUESTIONS ANSWERED.
 

By Ian Hamilton

Amid cheers and the waving of order papers the Foreign Secretary rose to her feet.

‘I am happy to announce to this Honourable House,’ she said, ‘that as a result of the Prime Minister’s recent tour of the world and the worsening financial situation the British Empire is to be reformed. Everyone wants back in.’

Amid unprecedented scenes of clamour David Cameron rose to congratulate Gordon Brown who sat modestly with a fixed rictus on his face. Nobody noticed that he had been dead for some time.

Meanwhile across the water in Dublin the Taoiseach rose to address the Dail.

‘Everything’s OK, bhoys,’ he said. ‘The financial crisis is so great that they’re going to let us back in. Youse can all go back to your pigs and your bogs. Auld England’s a generous country.’ Meekly the TDs left the Chamber, tying their trouser legs into nicky tams as they went.

United in prayer the Pope and the Reverend Ian Paisley knelt in the Gaza strip. Above them, far, far above them, Tony Blair read from the great Book of Isaiah.

‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, oh my people, sayeth the Lord. Speak ye comfortably unto Jerusalem that her warfare may be accomplished.’

In Whyte’s Club in Pall Mall the Lord who had spoken said to a flunky, ‘Send in the fleet! Bombard Tyre and Sidon! That will teach these wogs and Jew Boys where their loyalty lies.’  

Not far away in Downing Street another scene was taking place. Haggard and unshaven from waiting two days for an audience with the Queen’s First Minister Barrack Obama looked around him.

‘Mr President,’ said an aide.

‘Don’t call me that,’ snarled Obama. ‘Since the dollar collapsed we’re  finished. I’m just another piece of black trash to these people in there.’

‘Will they really not let us back into the Empire?’ asked Hillary. ‘What’s the sticking point?’

‘I’ve conceded taxation without representation. I’ve sunk our fleet. I’ve given them back all the bases we took from them. Now they want us to pay for the tea we threw into Boston Harbour.’

‘Oh for any sake,’ said Hillary, ever the practical housewife. ‘Let’s just pay for the damned stuff. Who drinks tea anyway?’

At these words the door to Number 10 swung slowly open. Chanting,‘Tax us. Tax us. No representation; just tax us,’ the American delegation marched in.

In Scotland the lame, the meek and the halt were led out of an empty Holyrood by Alan Cochrane of the Daily Telegraph. Beside him trotted Bendy Bracken the former Labour leader, brought out of retirement to carry Alan’s brief case.

‘I told you all along I was right,’ said Alan modestly. ‘We Scots aren’t fit to rule ourselves. We need two suits from London to watch over us.’

‘Oh we do! We do! We do!’ cried Bendy looking up adoringly into Alan’s face. ‘The Scottish Labour Party will always go along with the Daily Telegraph,’ and then she added thoughtfully. ‘Provided it doesn’t mean bringing Helen Liddell back from Australia.’

In the Great Hall of Westminster Elizabeth sat upon her throne. The Imperial State Crown was tilted on her head. It gleamed with the spoils of Empire. There was the Koh-I-Noor from Pakistan, the Culinan Diamond from Africa, the rubies from Burma and many more. Beneath her was the Coronation Stone. All was right with the world.

Before her the lesser breeds beyond the law, the black peoples upon whose countries the sun never sets, abased themselves in homage before their Queen Empress. Behind her stood David Cameron and his serried ranks of Public Schoolboys.

She turned and addressed them thus:-

‘Pick up the white man’s burden. England is proud of her sons.’

Far, far away from civilisation, here at Lochnabeithe in the West Highlands of Scotland, the little dog laughed to see such fun and the dish ran away with the spoon.

More news as it happens.

By Ian Hamilton

There’s a photograph going the rounds of a baby girl kissing a pig. If this photograph were circulated when 100,000 people a day were dying then it might be a fine piece of gallow’s humour. Today it’s not gallow’s humour. It’s a token of the silly ignorance of the ill-educated masses. ‘We’ve heard it all before,’ they say. ‘You can’t fool us. There’s no health crisis. The papers are at it again.’

Of course the papers are at it again. Threats of epidemics sell newspapers. That doesn’t mean that an epidemic can’t come. Remember the boy who cried wolf. The first time he cried a warning there was no wolf: there was a wolf the second time and no one paid any attention. They were photographing their daughter kissing a pig. Influenza will come again. It always has.

Last century Spanish flu killed an estimated fifty million people. The interesting thing is that it only killed fifty million. Why did it stop? The virus, like any other living organism, had adapted to survive. It had mutated into a form ideal for penetrating the immune system of our own species. Then it died. Its death seems to contradict Darwinian Theory. It was successful. It should have gone on until it killed us all. Myxtimatosis nearly wiped out the entire rabbit population but it was too slow. Rabbits built up an immune system. They also worked out that myxty was caused by a flea that lurked at the entrance to their burrows. I can remember a generation of rabbits in Scotland that didn’t burrow. They stopped going underground until the fleas died out. That, combined with their improved immune system, saved their species. Could humans do the same with flu? How would you start?

We humans think we’re God’s chosen species. That doesn’t mean we can’t become extinct. Species die out daily. What saved the rabbits was time to adapt but Spanish flu didn’t give us time. It just killed and went away. Flu will come again. It always has. Some of us may be preserved for a little time by the medicines which allow us to think we can shout defiance at a catastrophe. We are shouting in the dark like children shouting for a mother who’s down in the pub. A determined and intelligent virus can overcome the immunities conferred by the pharmaceuticals as surely as it can overcome our own immune systems. The man with the scythe and no flesh on his face has passed slowly by before. He has had a good look at us and knows the way back.

Furthermore we have quite casually built the most defenceless system our species has ever known. We have gathered most of us into vast agglomerations of people. In these great cities there are no food stocks. Food is brought in daily by the great lorries you see on the motorways. The water coming out your taps was piss a few hours ago. It was purified by the water companies and they need power to pump it back to you. The waste products of your bodies also need power to pump them along the sewers. A few hundred key workers down with flu will stop the power. Don’t count on the ‘emergency services’. They have the flu too. Gone will be power and lorries and water and waste disposal and electricity and public transport and the undertakers and the grave-diggers. What you do with your dead bodies is your personal problem. Ordinary civilisation might survive but not with the flu. Our great cities, robbed of their utilities are wonderful killing grounds for the flu virus. There will only be one winner. Do not try to flee your cities. The roads are already blocked by crashed lorries with the drivers dead inside them. Besides: there’s no help in the countryside. It’s full of empty holiday homes and little else.

You will notice with what apocalyptic glee I write this doom. I am eighty-three and soon I will die. If this flu virus mutates you’re all coming with me.

Including the little girl who kissed the pig.