FAITH is a wondrous thing. It is capable of moving mountains. But as Arthur Koestler, an early and courageous apostate from the radical left dryly commented, faith is also capable of making otherwise rational individuals believe that a herring is a racehorse. Or, in the case of Bermuda's Premier, of thinking that a political red herring like Independence will miraculously transform his scandal-battered Government into a warhorse.

Objective truth seems to undergo a near-death experience everytime this Premier opens his mouth on Independence. His wishful thinking on the subject is now as acutely embarrassing as it is politically naive.

His comments on Independence make clear he still pays enthusiastic lip service to the ideological hooch of Third World Socialism, the they-lived-happily-ever-after fairy story creed Moscow exported to the developing world in the 1950s and '60s.

Take socialism, substitute an oppressed colonial people for the customary oppressed working classes of Marxist theory, and you have the core of this crossbreed dogma. Once practised from India to Jamaica, this doctrine provided the ideological framework Alaska Hall was built around in the early 1960s but which the Progressive Labour Party seemingly all but abandoned in the run-up to its victorious 1998 election campaign. The fact the PLP's very first election win corresponded precisely with former Leader Frederick Wade's decision to drop doctrinaire socialist values and instead edge towards the political centre was almost certainly not coincidental.

Bermudians should certainly hope the Premier is just paying nostalgic lip service to this discredited and long abandoned political moonshine. If he actually does believe all of the miracle-working properties he publicly attributes to Independence, then Bermuda is in considerably worse trouble than even the most sceptical among us might have thought.

"(After Independence) our soccer team will be better, our businessmen will be more effective, our teachers will teach longer and they will be doing it ? yes ? for self and country," the Premier waxed rhapsodic in an interview in July. "And probably will come a point where they will be doing it for country first. The employer will get a better employee. (The reporter interviewing the Premier) will perform better if he was writing for an Independent Bermuda . . ."

. . . And presumably the streets of an Independent Bermuda will be paved with gold as well. They had better be regardless of whether or not the Premier actually subscribes to his own fairy-tale philosophising. At the accelerated rate his Government spends money, the costs of Independence under the Progressive Labour Party ? the foreign representation, the multiple layers of new bureaucracy, all of the other mink-lined trappings of sovereignty ? would easily outstrip Bermuda's current ability to pay for nationhood. But then maybe the Premier has already decided some streets are indeed tiled with gold bullion ? Bermudiana Road in particular. That would explain his Government's ongoing quest to collect and quantify private financial data, data that's only practical use is to provide the basis for a graduated form of income tax.

It's not at all clear if the Premier believes the populist drivel he speaks about Independence and any number of other subjects. He could be a true believer. Or he may simply be exploiting socialist canons for reasons of political expediency. But he undoubtedly believes that Bermudians still believe there is some substance to the myths and mirages he traffics in. The Bermudianised version of Third World Socialism clearly remains the lodestar of this Premier's thinking. Like all socialist creeds, his diluted brand is entirely faith-based ? a secular religion rather than a coherent and workable philosophy. Since it deals in comforting illusions rather than hard realities, it's no wonder he embraces it. This Premier is far more comfortable managing ? or mismanaging ? perception than he is at directing reality. And rather than accept the indisputable reality that he leads a sophisticated 21st-century multicultural community and discharge his responsibilities accordingly, this Premier believes there's ongoing political advantage to be gained by exploiting the island's racial demographics.

For the central article of faith in Third World Socialism is an insidious type of racial intolerance ? scapegoating and stereotyping a common racial or cultural enemy for all of a society's failings. Problems and failures always stem from without, never within: they are always laid at the feet of those deemed to be outsiders, never accepted ? let alone dealt with ? as a direct result of an administration's indifference, incompetence or ouright corruption.

Those brandishing the banner of cultural exclusivity are the perpetual victims of skulduggery, never the perpetrators. Inclusiveness is condemned as a retrograde step, tantamount to going back to the plantation (as the PLP's 2003 election campaign bellowed). So the Premier continues to use the intrusive wedge of race-based politics to divide, distract and destabilise Bermuda while simultaneously ignoring mounting public anxieties about both the credibility and direction of his Government.

The strong emotional appeal of such a strategy is self-evident. All people, regardless of race or cultural background, cast votes at elections for those parties or candidates who represent perceived self-interest and self-advancement. But the superficial appeal of the Premier's variety of socialism can never withstand the twin tests of time and experience.

An intelligent electorate like Bermuda's eventually tires of the grotesque distortions and dissembling, the patently absurd excuses and rationalisations. Last week's feeble attempt to shift responsibility for the Berkeley fiasco to the United Bermuda Party was a case in point. The failure to accept any responsibility for the Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal is another.

But such misrepresentative propaganda is necessary ? even indispensable ? for political survival in a hostile environment according to the Premier's way of thinking. So the result is a steady stream of what are considered to be necessary distortions and slanders; necessary deceptions of the electorate to prevent voters from making short-sighted mistakes like throwing out a hopelessly divided PLP at the last General Election; necessary rewrites of history to justify otherwise inexplicable positions and programmes. It is all so very fantastic ? but it can all be so glibly explained away by politicians with vacuum-sealed mindsets like the Premier's.

It has been said that adherents of socialism inhabit worlds of perpetual ambiguity, worlds as self-contained and murky as a fish tank, and soon lose the ability to distinguish between shadow and substance. The distinctions between truth and untruth ultimately become meaningless to an incessant and tireless propagandist like the Premier, a man who inhabits a political and moral shadowland darkened with what Raymond Chandler once famously termed "something more than night".

So it's almost certain that even what he would like to portray as his giddy idealism on Independence is as entirely contrived as his self-exculpatory statements on the scandals he presided over. It's more likely a political lure intended to dazzle and attract vacillating or hostile voters rather than a genuine statement of his core beliefs.

Sadly, almost every major policy position this Premier takes seems to utilise more false fronts than could be found on a Hollywood soundstage. Is it any wonder so many people are now wondering out loud if the values he espouses are equally false?

His incessant attacks on the constitutional system of checks and balances that stabilise this Government ? the bloody and mindless forays against Government House and the Auditor ? suggest this Premier would be happier with what amounts to an unchecked and unbalanced form of governance.

An increasing number of Bermudians are concluding his Independence initiative has less to do with instilling national pride and achieving national self-determination than it does with ridding his Cabinet of the few remaining restraints on its freedom of action.

A Premier who deals in bootleg slogans and counterfeit ideals in much the same way black marketeers deal in imitation name brand products believes the public's thirst for his ideological rot-gut remains undiminished. That's how he proposes to sell Independence to a public he wrongly views as easy marks.

But Bermudians are no longer quite as guileless as the Premier would like to assume. His faith in his own propagandistic powers of persuasion may be undiminished: but he'll likely discover these talents are no longer sufficient to move Bermudians, let alone mountains.