No-one would hang a cat on his word. A Very English Scandal e3, News of the World
I Was Hired To Kill Scott. ibid. Evening News headline
Why were they Welsh? ibid. Mrs Thorpe
Former MP Peter Bessell gave a devastating testimony. ibid. television news
But with Norman Scott it went on for years. ibid. Thorpe’s QC
In 1979 Panorama and BBC television spent months investigating the background to the sensational trial of former Liberal leader Jeremy Thorpe for a special programme … The programme was halted on legal grounds. Tom Mangold, The Jeremy Thorpe Scandal, 1979 & 2018
Today there’s a strong and widespread view that the Thorpe verdict was a miscarriage of justice. ibid.
He left with only a third in Law. ibid.
A side of his character that was to remain hidden from the electorate to the bitter end. ibid.
Just six months after the bunnies letter the relationship between both men had clearly begun to cool. ibid.
In the middle of the last century in Europe saw millions of people embrace the most evil ideology the world has ever known – it was called liberalism. This cancer is making a comeback. There is a resurgence of fanatics spewing their vile doctrine of tolerance and equality. Sacha Baron Cohen: Who is America? VI, Billy Wayne
Michael X realised that what was happening now in Notting Hill was the opposite: people were being treated as subjects to be counted and measured and managed. He became increasingly cynical about the liberals’ real intentions. Michael X had come to believe that the talk of revolution had just been empty rhetoric that disguised something else. The new groups might look like radicals and dance to black music but really they were the children of the colonialists who had run the empire, and they had no intention of giving up their power. That old system of power was simply mutating, morphing into a new form that camouflaged itself in radicalism but still would manage and control. Adam Curtis, Can’t Get You Out of My Head II: Shooting and Fucking are the Same Thing, BBCiplayer 2021
We’re looking at everyone’s political neighbours in the middle of the street … Moderates: The people who reject petty ideological battles, and at the end of the day, just know better. How Moderates Serve the Right, Youtube 17.45, Second Thought 2021
It appeals to our vision of the democratic ideal: a society in which everyone gathers around the table … The centrist stance of compromise and incremental retroactive change allows for politics to jump to the right without ever really coming back … [and] fails to take into account longer political trends. ibid.
The left isn’t prominently represented; the result is the centre conserves far more than it progresses. ibid.
Politicians who call themselves the centre aren’t really doing so in good faith. ibid.
The moderate’s role in politics is to slow things down to a trickle. ibid.
The extraordinary events of the past week in Canberra have left many Australians asking, What on earth just happened? And is our political system completely broken with a fourth prime minister cut down by their own party in less than a decade? Malcolm Turnbull called it, ‘A form of madness.’ Four Corners: A Form of Madness, ABC 2018
The new prime minister, Scott Morrison, attempted a conjurer’s trick at the weekend unveiling his so-called ‘next generation government’ as if all were right with the world. But the fact remains that the government he served last week lies in ruins.
Tony Abbott: a seething anger he would continue to nurse. ibid.
‘We are bleeding votes to the right.’ ibid. Concetta
The white liberal differs from the white conservative only in one way; the liberal is more deceitful, more hypocritical than the conservative. Both want power but the white liberal is the one who has perfected the art of posing as the Negroes friend and benefactor. Malcolm X, speech 1963
cf.
The Liberal posters were not quite so offensive as the Tory ones. They were more cunning, more specious, more hypocritical and consequently more calculated to mislead and deceive the more intelligent of the voters. Robert Tressell: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists
When Jeremy Thorpe strode on to the political stage, many thought he’d be the greatest Liberal leader in 50 years. A dazzling showman, witty and energetic, he effortlessly balanced royal friendships with radical principles. A decade later he stood charged with conspiracy to murder his former homosexual lover, and his public life lay in ruins. Secret Lives: Jeremy Thorpe, Channel 4 1996
The young Norman Scott was a groom at the stables, and Thorpe was a frequent visitor. ibid.
Thorpe denies that he ever had an affair with Scott but his letters testify to a close relationship. ibid.
Thorpe had chosen an unstable lover with a history of mental illness. ibid.
The cover-up was working and Thorpe’s career prospered. In 1967 his talent for campaigning won him the Liberal leadership. He was still only 38. Soon afterwards he decided it was time to get married. ibid.
In 1971 the explosive secret of Norman Scott was revealed to the Liberal Party. ibid.
Ultimately, it wasn’t the shooting [of Scott’s dog] which began to implicate Thorpe but the money which paid for the conspiracy. ibid.
His [Thorpe] friends deserted him one by one and became prosecution witnesses. ibid.
Remarkably, the trial was postponed to allow Thorpe to stand in the 1979 election. ibid.
Thorpe’s fall from grace finally brought him to the Old Bailey. ibid.
The Centre has become this pure set of performative symbols, and at the same time you get to feel morally superior, which is ultimately what Liberal-Centrism is all about: the ability to feel better than other people. David Graeber