Abandon all hope

I fear that Richard North at EU Referendum is right when he says:

As election fever intensifies over the weekend, however – with a torrent of coverage expected in the Sundays, an air of gloom descends on the Tories in the certain expectation of two things: an early election, and a complete wipe out. We would like to think that the Tory support for a referendum could make the difference and salvage Cameron's declining fortunes, but life ain't like that. The Boy has completely blown it, as we always knew he would.

But, not only will a Tory defeat mean the end of Cameron, it will also mean the end of any hopes we ever had of a referendum. Not even Lady Thatcher can change that dismal prognosis – it will be the end of hope.

I don't know about anybody else, but the dismal end of hopes that sanity might prevail makes me feel despairing. In particular I feel that a moment of triumph for Antonio Gramsci is upon us:

To few ... is Antonio Gramsci a familiar name. That is to be regretted because the work of the late Italian Marxist sheds much light on our time. It was he who first alerted fellow revolutionaries to the possibility that they would be able to complete the seizure of political power only after having achieved "cultural hegemony," or control of society's intellectual life by cultural means alone. His was an incremental, rather than an apocalyptic, revolution-the kind, that is, that we have been witnessing in the United States, and the Western world generally, since the 1960s. With this in mind, we ought not to treat the contemporary "culture war" lightly; the fate of what remains of civilized life may well be decided by its outcome.

Few Leftists now adhere strictly to the original tenets of Marxism, or even to those of Marxist Revisionism, but, what is every bit as dangerous, they, like Gramsci, often succumb to a temptation that appears to be irresistible to those who dream utopian dreams: the passion for negation that often shades into nihilism. Utopianism and nihilism may seem to be antithetical, but they are not; both derive from the same source-undying hatred of the world as it is.

Brown, whatever his religious background, is a true child of Gramsci. No other intellectual heredity is possible for a man who says that

"We've moved our schools from being below average to being above average. We've now got to make them world class."

when this sort of thing goes on:

The Schools Secretary Ed Balls is writing to all head teachers setting out priorities for the new school year.

Mr Balls says he wants to tackle the "devastating impact" of absenteeism and poor discipline.

and this:

A-level maths standards have dropped to the point where B-grade students score little better in a basic university test than they would if they were randomly guessing, according to a new study.

The study, which monitored the performance of first-year electronics students at York University in maths tests over the past 15 years, also shows that if today's A-grade students had sat the test 15 years ago, they would have come bottom of the class. The researchers said their findings were replicated in York's physics department.

The findings come just a week after A-level results showing overall pass rates of 96 per cent and record numbers gaining A-grades. They will lend weight to claims that A-levels are no longer the academic "gold standard".

and this:

12m workers have the reading age of children

Up to 16 million adults - nearly half the workforce - are holding down jobs despite having the reading and writing skills expected of children leaving primary school. MPs on the Commons Public Accounts Committee claim that a major government scheme costing billions of pounds has done little to improve the quality of adult literacy and numeracy teaching.

These all say to me that Brown is talking through his hat. Again.