Generalissimo Dave and his Il Duce decrees

SINCE the term ‘fascism’ already ranks as the most misused or howled word in the English language, there is no need for Government ministers to make it worse.

Our Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt wants the Olympics ceremonies to remind visitors of, among other things, how Britain stood ‘alone against fascism in the last war’.

Apart from a certain uneasiness this might arouse among some of our now much-loved European neighbours, Hunt’s claim is a misuse of history — perhaps what you would expect from someone with the ghastly title of Culture Secretary, so redolent of totalitarian regimes.

Britain stood ‘alone’, though with the energetic support of our vast empire, and made our stand against Germany’s territorial ambitions, not ‘fascism’. Had Hitler limited his greed to eastern Europe, we would have kept our peace with him, whatever the -ism he embraced.

Indeed, up to the moment before war broke out, we did our damnedest to make an alliance with another fascist country, Italy, and throughout the war we kept sweet- talking Spain’s General Franco, also a declared fascist.

As late as 1939, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax visited Rome to seek the friendship of Mussolini.

They wanted to beef up the AngloItalian Accord, which had already been signed, to stabilise the status quo in the Mediterranean and recognising the Italians’ newly acquired African empire.

Wise try. But it was hardly fighting fascism. As defined by its inventors, apart from glorifying violence and abolishing class differences (that rings a bell), its economic policy called for business and the unions to obey the state on prices and incomes. That also rings a bell for those around during the Wilson and Heath periods of power. When it comes to constitutional methods as laid out by Mussolini as early as the Twenties, we might also note David Cameron’s continued determination to have more women in the country’s boardrooms.

He wishes to achieve this by making threatening speeches — at least shorter than Mussolini’s — and the reaction of industry’s socalled leaders has been to mutter about needing time to fall in with the Prime Minister’s aim.

They should tell him to push off. Unless Parliament passes a law on it — and what a row within his own party such a Bill would provoke — Cameron’s wishes matter less than the weather forecast. Much less.

His campaign on this score has arisen from polls showing that women do not much care for him. Neither do I. But so what? This still does not absolve him from following the proper constitutional route. He has also held ‘summits’ at No 10 about drink, insurance and the drought, preceded and followed by intense publicity. He feels our pain, you see.

This won’t do. We do not want government by press conference.

Il Duce and Der Fuhrer loved making laws by personal declaration — the Generalissimo, too, in quieter tones.