I wonder if Labour’s governing generalissimos, Morgan McSweeney and Pat McFadden, watched much Christmas telly this year. They might have recognised the strong manly relationship at the heart of Gone Fishing on Christmas Eve. Or shed a tear watching the community spirit infusing Gavin & Stacey: The Finale. But I’m not sure they will have caught the one with the most important lesson about modern life and government today. No, not Die Hard: Tiddler.
In this adaptation of Julia Donaldson’s children’s book, an imaginative little fish is saved by the “tall tales” he makes up to keep him out of trouble. “I was lost, I was scared, but a story led me home again,” he declares. Donaldson describes her story as a celebration of childhood imagination, which encourages kids to lose themselves in their dreams. Yet it strikes me that there’s something deeper going on. Donaldson has written a modern fable of sorts. Across the West, we are more than a little lost. The stories we once told are no longer believed and those we need to tell new ones have lost their power of imagination.
The central conceit of much political analysis today is that there is something called “populism” which tells tall tales to gullible voters in order to win power. Opposing the populists, in this telling, are the “centrists” who deal in facts and figures. We might call this the Alastair Campbell account of modern politics. The irony of this view, though, is that it has become the very thing it thinks it opposes: a comforting but ultimately hollow fantasy.
In one sense, it is possible to understand 2024 as the year the hollowness of this centrist fantasy became so obvious voters couldn’t take it seriously any longer. In France, the story of Emmanuel Macron’s Jupiterian competence is no longer believable even for those who want it to be true. In Germany, meanwhile, the idea that Olaf Scholz could possibly lead a Zeitenwende looks just as ridiculous, as he clings to power desperately casting his opponents as warmongers. In the United States, meanwhile, the extraordinary reality is that Donald Trump cut the more substantive figure in their presidential election than his opponent by having actual policies. Has there ever been a more vacuous candidate in modern presidential history than Kamala Harris? Is anyone today able to say what she actually stood for other than her own ambition and the interests of the Democratic Party?
Here in Britain, meanwhile, the hollowness of our order is exposed by the simple fact that it is simply no longer believable that we are a well-governed country. The deterioration of living standards and public services are too obvious for anyone to be able to make this case with any degree of sincerity. However we define the status quo, it is surely failing. The last time there was a similar breakdown of the legitimacy in our governing order came in the Seventies when a series of crises exposed its failings. For Starmer and his government, the great fear is that the turning point in this story — the 1979 of our own era — was not the election in July, but the one yet to come.
Part of our current dilemma lies in the fact that our world no longer bears witness to the wisdom of the old solutions. On economic questions, for example, the idea of free trade in the era of Chinese industrial power looks increasingly sado-masochistic, especially when shackled to our drive towards Net Zero. There is real panic today in Whitehall at the prospect of imminent industrial collapse which risks fracturing the entire governing consensus around our decarbonising commitment — much as the post-Brexit immigration boom under Boris Johnson similarly robbed the Conservative Party of its legitimacy on that subject.
Standing ready to benefit on both of these counts is Nigel Farage, the populist Grendel stalking Westminster’s imagination. Johnson was once the figure who was supposed to have slayed this Kentish monster with his promise to Get Brexit Done and “level up” the country, only for the hollowness of his commitment to be exposed, allowing Farage to return stronger than ever. Since then, Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak have come and gone, each slain by their own inadequacies, leaving Starmer with the sword of state tasked with defending the Mead Hall. But within a matter of months, his government is also in trouble.
With his noble missions as his guide, Starmer hopes to demonstrate to voters that he can deliver tangible improvements to their lives in a way that the populists Boris Johnson and Liz Truss never could. The strategy behind this is to paint Farage not as the solution to today’s crisis of government, but as a return to the populist chaos of the Tories. There is merit in this approach, but in the end, if a wave of car plant closures is blamed on Ed Miliband’s drive to Net Zero, the debates about Liz Truss, Boris Johnson and George Osborne will feel as irrelevant as the figure of Ted Heath did in the aftermath of 1979’s Winter of Discontent.
The danger for Starmer is that trying to defeat populism through “delivery” not only leaves him at the mercy of forces he cannot control, but also ties him inextricably to a system that voters have already rejected. This, in a sense, was the story of the American election, in which a party with an apparent record of delivery was defeated by an insurgent populist. To win, Starmer needs more than a spreadsheet with the figures moving in the right direction. He needs a story about what went wrong before and why his government is different. He needs a story about what his government is for, morally and ideologically.
Unfortunately for Starmer, there is a concurrent shift in attitudes across the Western world which Starmer also needs to contend with. As a senior diplomat put it to me, the mood in European capitals has dramatically shifted since Trump’s victory, embracing his power in a way that indicates a new and far more cynical Western zeitgeist. “So many have now embraced the world of Game of Thrones, Billions and Succession,” this official said. “A world in which power is the only currency and morality is most likely to be a flaw.”
In this view, to be seen attempting to play by the rules of the game while everyone else takes advantage of you is not noble, but contemptible. Having recently found myself invested in the TV series Yellowstone, this observation struck me as highlighting a key element of our modern psyche. In Yellowstone, the anti-hero is the patriarch of the family doing everything and anything to keep hold of his family ranch. Much has been said about Yellowstone’s distinctly conservative vision of America. Yet, in a more profound way, it is actually offering a vision propounded by the Left, which long ago rejected the idea of a noble America born in liberty seeking an ever-more-perfect union. Instead, America was cast — correctly in many ways — as a slave republic which came into existence through violent colonisation.
The irony here, though, is that this successful challenge to the foundational myth of America has given rise not to some pained wish to repent among today’s newly enlightened generation, but a deep cynicism about the nature of the world, which has only served the interests of the Right. If there has never been a moral mission in the world — if it is all just a made-up story — then why create one now? Might is right, after all. No matter how many people the patriarchal rancher must kill to keep his land — or what was done to win it in the first place — he remains the hero simply by dint of striving to keep what is his.
This story does not bode well for those like Starmer who are seeking to defend the decency of the old order. In this world, little is to be gained by giving away sovereignty in the Indian Ocean or sticking to your climate commitments. What voters want, it seems, is for someone to protect their inheritance; their prosperity; their country; their land. Of all the characters in British politics, the one who clings closest to the Yellowstone version of morality is, of course, Farage. The point about Net Zero, for him, is not who is to blame for climate change, but who is going to defend British prosperity.
If Starmer or, indeed, Kemi Badenoch, is to counter this story of modernity, then both will need a better story than the one they are telling us. It will need to capture the public’s imagination as much as Farage’s tale; to explain, in moral and ideological terms, what has gone wrong and why only Labour can fix it. It will need to explain the collapse of the old order’s legitimacy and work with the cynicism of our new age. Ultimately, it will need to be more political: to be for some people and against others. McSweeney and McFadden need a new story. It can be tall or otherwise, but it can no longer be as hollow as the one we have lost faith in, otherwise we will not find our way back.
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SubscribeThat’s a very interesting article, imo.
The author’s allusion to the TV show “Yellowstone” resonated with me.
As the author notes, ultimately the show is about a rancher fighting for what’s his, and the sacrifices, and moral compromises, he makes along the way. The underlying premise, that to fight for what’s yours is justified, is never questioned.
The show is not, however, without its nods to progressivism. One of the rancher’s sons loves a Native American woman, and there are several scenes that serve no other purpose than to allow her to deliver a lecture based on progressive sentiments (I won’t call it progressive morality). In one scene, the story literally stops while the young woman delivers a clunky rebuke to a white, male college student for his purported insensitivity toward native Americans. The sudden rift in the narrative flow is jarring, and the fact we’re now listening to an ideological lecture is unavoidable.
But after the obligatory progressive diatribe, the story continues as if nothing has happened. I wonder if that scene tells us much about the fate of progressivism?
Perhaps we’ve reached the stage when even Hollywood can tacitly acknowledge the performative, insubstantial nature of progressivism, and the ultimate primacy of reality and the competition of life.
I’m enjoying Yellowstone as well, and I wouldn’t describe the John Dutton character as an anti-hero. He is portrayed as being strongly moral in his personal relations; and he is not preserving the ranch for personal gain. He was offered an enormous sum, many times the land value, to sell it to the airport developers. His decision is to prefer to maintain the wilderness of Montana rather than developing it into condos for Californians.
Thus contributing to the severe housing crisis in this country, helping increase honelessness and deprivation. Pardon me if I’m a bit sick of Hollywood going “developers always bad everywhere!” In the end, man is more important than nature and man needs a home to live in.
Kayce’s wife, Monica is certainly the least likeable character in the whole show. A po-faced moralist, never happier than when she’s whingeing about something not being fair. Worthy of Starmer himself.
As alluded to above, it seems almost deliberate to cast her as so unlikeable. The other native Americans portrayed are gritty realists, who might bemoan their fate, but are not averse to resorting to any means necessary to get their way.
Very well said. Nobody is buying what the globalist blob is selling, but they have nothing else to sell and don’t even seem to be able to come up with a new sales pitch. A failure of imagination indeed. Unless someone comes up with something new, unapologetic nationalists like Trump and Farage will shape the future. Smart people like Musk and Ramaswamy have already noticed which way the wind is blowing and gotten on the winning side of history. The number of these sudden populists will continue to grow as more and more of the wealthy and powerful conclude they have little to gain by keeping a sinking ship afloat and much to lose if the hammer of nationalism falls unexpectedly and they lose their assets on the wrong side of an international conflict overnight. The world is waking up from the dream of global unity and getting back to business as usual. Bout time.
At the moment, and for the last couple of decades, there’s been a move to globalism (free markets, free movement of labour) driven by business/the right and supported by centrists/left because they believe it brings wealth, and opposing free movement is somehow evil. And at first it does bring wealth, until you find out that ‘economic efficiencies’ are just you getting less money in your wages, your countries wealth has evaporated and only the debt remains.
I’m honestly not sure the global growth neoliberalism has provided us in the West since the 80s has been anything other than racking up debt. Though I suspect ‘populists’ like Trump and Farage only get part of that story, at least that is more than most politicians do.
Good article, though not having seen Yellowstone that part passed me by.
If Musk can reduce US Government spending by $2,000,000,000,000 a YEAR then that will make a big hole in their debt!
Let’s hope he can and export that here!
Yes, but it is an if. Why was Trump trying to get the debt ceiling abolished? I didn’t really care to follow that particular charade in any depth, but it is not obvious to me that someone who wanted the debt ceiling abolished will be cutting spending.
Plus, it is not just Govt debt that has been accumulated.
One born every day. It’s about Elon funnelling even more of the £700b spent on defence and defence procurement his way. And then where he can funnel other elements of expenditure towards his interests.
You are about to witness one of the greatest surges in corruption in recent US history. What happens when a Kleptocracy uses populist tropes to gain power.
Fortunately the margins in the House remain v tight so poss the corruption is mitigated a little.
You really are extraordinary. We’ve just witnessed the greatest surge in corruption in US history and you defended every scam and every lie in the cover-up. You don’t have the moral authority to make the above claim.
It matters not if the House margins are tight. The House has for decades been the most corruptible part of the US political system. And on both sides of the aisle. The seniority system, the closed dictatorial nature of the committees through which all legislation including taxation and spending must pass, the need to raise money for elections every TWO years.
Why do you think, Watson, that the great progressive FDR never challenged segregation? Because the House committees through which the New Deal had to pass were all run by Southern Democrats (ie segregationists). As was the Rules Committee which, along with the Speaker, controlled the passage of all laws and budgeting.
Oh the growth has been real, but it’s been distributed fairly evenly between the super rich global oligarchs and multinational corporations on the one hand and low wage countries on the other. In other words, the corporations and elites transferred manufacturing capacity, assets, wealth, and national power to other countries with poorer populations, lower environmental standards, lower taxes no labor laws, etc. in exchange for immediate profit and financial gain with no consideration of the long term effects.. The business practices that were eliminated in the west over the first half of the twentieth century as workers, environmental groups, and democratic peoples unionized, went on strike, lobbied, and petitioned the government for laws to protect people and the environment were just reinstated in places that hadn’t made those reforms. They couldn’t exploit westerners anymore so they went to exploit somebody else.
To justify this, they told two sets of half-truths. The first set of lies was told to western working classes and the media who were told that closing factories and outsourced jobs were necessary and a sign of economic efficiency, and the losses would be offset by lower prices on all goods. What they failed to mention was that the losses would be geographically concentrated in a few places and on a single social class while the benefits would be distributed evenly and very difficult to measure in any empirical way. This is the free trade dogma that dominated both parties from the Reagan administration all the way up to 2015. Both parties and the media bought into this and enjoyed the favor of the super wealthy oligarch class and the MNCs. This was basically believed by most people at one time, though there were always questions. As early as 1992, third party candidate Ross Perot won a significant share of the popular vote on his opposition to the NAFTA treaty on grounds that it would cost the jobs of American factory workers. His objections were ignored and mostly forgotten. The benefits of globalism happened fairly quickly, aided by the internet revolution. The costs accrued slowly, one factory at a time, one depressed Rust Belt town after another.
The second set of half-truths was the set they told themselves, their aristocratic friends, their colleauges in academia, and the subclass of occupations like accountants, economists, lawyers, that orbit and depend upon the aristocrat classes. This is where the globalist plan really reaches the zenith of its hubris. They shrugged off the return to a massively exploitative economic model by ignoring the people left behind (western working classes) and focusing on some of the people benefiting, that is workers in low wage countries. The claim that globalism ‘lifted millions out of poverty’ is based entirely on the notion that paying Chinese or Indonesian workers ten dollars a day is morally superior to paying Americans or Germans ten dollars an hour. Yet, they claimed exactly that, with straight faces, for the better part of two decades. Obviously, that wouldn’t do, so they needed something else to really hammer home the point that the white working class deserved to be left behind and impoverished for the sake of third world laborers. Enter identity politics to resolve this complication. In its American form, it took on a white/colored dynamic in keeping with America’s history of slavery and in Europe it took the form of a colonizer/colonized dynamic. In each case, the overarching theme is one of collective national and racial guilt over historic injustice and an implied obligation of the guilty to the innocent. It’s essentially a rationalization after the fact. They had already moved the jobs into these places based on free trade dogma out of basic profit motives and when it started to look like things weren’t going quite as well as they’d hoped, they had to come up with some reason to satisfy themselves so they could sleep at night. Personally, I think the worst offenders of the globalist era have earned a few sleepless nights spent in contemplation of their choices.
This is the globalist scam, and it is a scam. It has always been a scam, from the time it was hatched in corporate boardrooms in the 70’s and 80s’. It was a scam in 1992 when most people believed the lies and it’s still a scam now that nobody does. The thing about scams is once they come to light, the people that came up with them had better be long gone and far beyond the reach of the people that got scammed. They’re not. Their attempt to rule the world through money and economics and slowly push elected governments into irrelevance has failed. Now the people are angry, and it’s spreading. The smart ones are jumping on board with the reformers in hopes of escaping the people’s wrath. Musk and the tech moguls have many purposes for joining up with Trump but self-preservation may be the biggest. My guess is that as Trump’s promises become policies that are widely supported and deemed appropriate by the people, the trickle of aristocrats fleeing the sinking ship of globalism will become a flood and they’ll be fighting each other for a place on the new bandwagon.
The consequences of globalist mistakes are far from over, and nobody is going to want to be holding the grenades that haven’t exploded yet, but somebody will be, and whatever the establishment politicians and old guard may think, it won’t be Trump. He and other populists won’t take the heat for things that happen even if their actions are a proximate cause. That’s because they’re a quasi-revolutionary reform movement. They exist because people already think things are bad and have already placed blame. People don’t vote for radical change because they expect everything to get better immediately. They vote for radical change out of desperation to change the overall direction of the country. I gather there are a cadre of globalist holdouts who think the people will turn on Trump once his tariffs cause an uptick in inflation. I’d advise they think again. Too many people already believe the populist narrative. They won’t change their minds because a policy change causes a short term disruption. They’ll just keep a running tab open for the people who they already blame for getting them to the point where Donald J. Trump seemed like the better option. What the establishment has never understood is that by the time revolutionary and reform movements start to win elections, it’s already too late to stop them. By the time the Tea Party movement was defeating establishment Republicans in primaries in 2010 and 2012, it was probably already too late. It’s definitely much too late now. The best thing Trump’s enemies can do is go back to square one and come up with their own new plans and new answers. People won’t go back to the old ones, not now that the scam has been revealed.
Thanks for the reply. I agree with much of that, and the consequences of the last decades are certainly far from over. However, I would suggest Trump may well end up holding the grenade when it goes off – grenades go off when they go off.
It’s conceivable, but people like narratives. That’s the them of the article actually The author’s original point is that the globalists are pushing a dead narrative that nobody, not even themselves, even believe anymore and that even if they have a temporary political victory in this or that election, they can’t actually do anything with it because they have failed to capture any public support for the kinds of policies or sacrifices it would take to implement that vision. People aren’t going to impoverish themselves to decrease the temperature in Brazil. Nations aren’t going to play nicely in a ‘rules based international order’ and refrain from taking advantage of one another and using economic leverage to accomplish political goals. Nations will weaponize their economies, their currencies, and their resources when it suits them to do so. The observed reality is simply not consistent with the globalist narrative, and there’s nothing they can do to change that.
The important battle, the narrative battle, is already over. The globalists have lost, past tense. There’s nothing they can do at this point to change what’s coming, that is a multipolar reality and a time of renewed geopolitical competition along all dimensions, military, economic, technological, and industrial. The author is basically saying that the only alternative vision we have at the moment is the nationalism/populism of Trump, Farage, and others. The globalists are riding a dead horse in a two horse race. The other horse can be slow, lame, blind, and deaf but I’m still not betting money on the dead horse to miraculously rise up as a zombie and overtake the living one, but hey, anything can happen right?
Even if the economy collapses and we enter a new Depression, then what? What’s the alternative to Trump and MAGA. Who’s telling a competing story that leads us out of this mess. Trump and the populists can at least claim that the globalists have failed us so completely that this is their fault and we have to tighten our belts and press on through a needed period of reform and difficulty. I’ve often seen European governments debate how to ‘sell’ austerity. Well here it is. Have a story where the sacrifice means something and goes somewhere and isn’t just a function of global finance. The former brings people together in a common cause and shares the burden. The latter is a yellow brick road to class warfare and persistent civil conflict. Trump and the populists can survive almost any possible crises, because their narrative will probably still make sense with a couple of adjustments. The other side can’t really, because they can’t dodge responsibility. They’ve been in charge for too long. Ultimately, ruling classes will be held responsible for the fate of their societies, one way or the other. There are no exceptions.
Good post again, though there are still plenty that believe the globalisation narrative yet and many of them will choose to believe that the harmonious global future they dreamed of was taken from them by ‘the populists’, ridiculous though that may seem. And as the future gets tougher, which it will in the short to medium term at least, whoever is in charge at the time will blamed by the former globalists, and many other people will jump on that wagon.
Good posts but not the writer of the article not any of the comments seem to mention that the wealth we enjoyed was due to cheap and abundant energy and other resources. Their availability is slowly diminishing which will make that economies will have to rely more in the development of ‘new things’ (whatever that means) not needing as much cheap and abundantly available energy and resources. Also, the inequalities you mention Steve are principally due to the fact that money (=power, often initially obtained from abundant energy) rules everything. Unless ‘we’ (again, whatever that means) change what we want from ‘money’ to something that has to do with ‘wellbeing’ the inequalities will grow (and cause masses to stir?) Interesting thoughts on this here (https://www.marcluyckx.be/the-author).
Unless growing the economy changes into making a country were more people can find sufficient wellbeing happens, the same stories will come out, and we continue to be run by the money that loves feeding us lots of sugar (=as bad as alcohol if no worse) and poor quality food so we have lots of sick people that need to pay for the disease-cares-systems that pay money to the same people that feed us the sugar and other rubbish.
Unless we as a society can wean ourselves off sugar and start value wellbeing as a great asset nothing will change…..
The immigrants we unarguably need right now to plug Labour gaps create their own future markets for public services. And so the Ponzi scheme continues.
Depends how one defines it but many on the ‘Left’ would contend they never supported Neo-Liberalism and it’s ended up exactly where predicted. The Left would say likes of Clinton, Blair and their successors are v far from Left.
The problem for the Right is it’s doyens of virtue, the likes of Reagan and Thatcher, unleashed Neoliberalism and it remains the bedrock of so much of what they think. This is why fractures in the Populist Right are inevitable once they have to assume power and make choices.
I’d say some older people on the left are opposed to neoliberalism, but younger people just don’t know any different – it’s the system they were bought up in and is therefore ‘natural’ to them.
For me the problem with neoliberalism is that it has gone on too long and no longer operates the way it did originally (which is overlooked by the modern right). It was a solution to the problems created by the previous system, but now needs something else to replace it.
So tax cuts for high earners stimulate growth when the tax rate was over 90% as it was at times in the 70s, but have little effect when tax rates are much the same (if not less once you take avoidance into account) for high earners as for the middle classes.
Or another example, lending deregulation to open up house ownership is great for the working class when houses are reasonably priced, but once house prices have risen to such an extent that the working (and middle) class are excluded without parental wealth, deregulation is a hindrance.
Much in that I’d concur with DR.
But you’ve been defending neo-liberalism on here every day for years. What is ‘free movement of labour and capital’ if it’s not the most basic tenet of neo-liberalism?
And you’ve only been half listening HB. Moving to any form of nuance or complexity not often your strong suit. That said some of the your Marxist leanings are occasionally quite attractive.
Free movement – I think we needed to apply the article options that were available in the EU to place some limits and certainly we had no need for lots of non EU migration. We’d chosen not to apply the rules we could, especially the Right, and instead weaponised the issue. Capital – we’ve allowed far too many of our best companies to be purchased by others and got our model of investment capitalism in the UK badly wrong.
Whereas I think you remain stuck repeatedly going on about middle class property value inflation as the worst sin of all. It’s a symptom of our form of investment capitalism not the cause.
The likes of Elon and Vivek have grasped the opportunities are great if they can acquire some of the levers of power, much as the other Billionaires in the background along with Trump himself. The belief they doing this to help the ‘little guy’ and the ‘left behinds’ just shows credulity has v few bounds.
You aren’t capable of understanding what motivates a man like Elon Musk.
It’s no real surprise you’ve not grasped Elon and Vivek v much globalists (Steve Bannon has grasped that) yet that being something you tend to rage against. Eventually it’ll dawn but apparently not quite yet.
“McSweeney and McFadden need a new story. It can be tall or otherwise, but it can no longer be as hollow as the one we have lost faith in, otherwise we will not find our way back.”
So….our best hope is that Labour turn into Reform UK?
If only I could think of a more plausible course of events.
Excellent essay. I only take exception to the notion that Starmer is trying to defend the old order. Starmer, and his many compatriots across the globe, have abandoned pragmatism that used to define western liberal democracy, and traded it in for ideological adherence to blindingly obvious irrational policies.
Exactly. Just how did all of the alleged “centrists” go dangerously stupid all at once?
Because they collectively fell for their own lies.
You can argue that people live by the stories or narratives they believe. There are archetypes which are categories of observed patterns of individual behaviour and egregores which arise from the collective thoughts and emotions of a distinct group of individuals.
But archetypes and egregores are abstract, not concrete things. Abstracts are mutable and free to change but people still hang on to the the old narratives as they were once useful fictions.
If you are being charitable then Starmer is just one of the politicians that are hanging on grimly to how the world once worked.
“Egregores”. With a little work you could have found a better way to say what you meant.
Because Conservatives, Liberal Democrats and Labour all accepted the Blairite consensus: transfer of power from Parliament to quangos and supranational bodies such as the EU, de-industrialisation and dependence on financial services, mass immigration, US policy in the Middle East balanced by privileging the Muslim population in the UK, open trade.
No political formula can address declining western work ethic and unrealistic expectations, combined with fallout from global events: UK the GFC, Covid, the war driven energy crisis – and – global emissions which render UK’s escalated Net Zero policies as ineffective self flagellation
Add to that, the immigration surge driven by the first two factors happening too fast to assimilate and you have no cohesion or political consensus with which to govern.
You could say we get the government we deserve. We stupidly gave Labour a blank cheque on a promise of change and growth, without any indication of how this could achieved. So far, you don’t need an economics degree to know that their actual policies are actually anti-growth. They simply don’t know what to do, because no-one addresses which ear of the declining productivity elephant to eat first.
You’ve got it in one. This transfer of power was never agreed by the electorate and has weakened Parliament almost to being an irrelevance.
“…. privileging the Muslim population in the UK”.
Another story or narrative the people believe today, and live and vote by?
How?
Donald Trump.
Half of the electorate went bonkers in 2016. Didn’t you notice? And they’re still running around shouting.
The rest of us are hoping for/working towards a better thing. You should get on board.
What elements of remaining in the EU would’ve fixed Britain’s or global problems today? I voted Remain, because I thought Brexit was unnecessary, but I can’t see many headwinds facing Britain being caused by Brexit, other than it has destroyed the Conservative Party.
£27b less in trade not a helpful tailwind.
Where did you get those Stats from ,the guardian?
I’m all for the Leave side. Always was. The EU is an evil organization, intent on squashing democracy. As an American, I’m happy to see that our best ally quit that club.
My point was about Trump, populism, the collapse of civility, etc. And Brexit, too.
“Excellent essay”?….I have to disagree. Talk about fairytales! In this telling, Rightist populism is juxtaposed with “moral” (but currently failing) Leftism. Leftism has never been moral; not even remotely….just self-servingly sentimental. https://grahamcunningham.substack.com/p/the-madness-of-intelligentsias For huge numbers ‘on the Right’ a moral crusade is precisely what they do want! And the Left is bogged down in “facts and figures”…. Really?
Starmer doesn’t know what he is doing or the scale of the challenge he faces. He is a public servant but not a statesman and he will never be one.
Also, “…embracing his power in a way that indicates a new and far more cynical Western zeitgeist”
What can be more cynical than Blair, Cameron and Johnson, unless you believe telling people the truth and implementing your manifesto commitments is cynical
What could be more cynical than asking the public to give you a blank cheque, based on a growth platform that you knew you wouldn’t, and couldn’t deliver.
Same same
British (and worldwide) consensus is built out if an anti-scientific claptrap consensus. This makes delusions like net zero, which will never work in any positive sense, possible. And then there’s immigration. And censorship. And law enforcement. All disasters built on bs.
This consensus highlights just how poor most people’s knowledge of basic Science has become.
Not only that, but they don’t even understand what Science is, a mode of enquiry. It requires Informed Discussion and an accumulating body of knowledge that is at a low (or is it high) enough level, like Ohm’s Law, that is beyond the reaches of Politics, and other emotional ideologies.
This knowledge would trash any notion of ‘The Science’ being credible. Pronouncements, handed down by transient interested parties, devoid of any STEM knowledge, and with a political agenda, are worthless, if only because informed discussion with the ignorant is a fruitless task.
It’s up to scientists and their backers to make the their findings and their case understandable to people of average intelligence, otherwise there can be no real progress.
Will look carefully for the science (and not pseudo-science) behind your comments in future. As it should I’m sure you’ll concur.
Unfortunately the problem is not the science but the scientists. In a world where you get grants from government based on certain results, the scientists will always become dishonourable. This is especially true of Social Science, which is not even a science but merely a convenient name.
Yet another great article from Tom McTague. Back in the day, Tony Blair’s spin machine used to bang on about “Progress”. Somehow they were able to reify this utterly vacuous term to make it their very own narrative. This con worked, in terms of allowing Blair to win three general elections in a row. But, that kind of spin ain’t gonna hack it today. Only zombie institutions like the BBC and the UK civil service still believe in it.
Blair just bought his success on the never-never. Starmer will try that, but there is so much less to hock. The leftist narrative which has been thrust upon us all is obviously such garbage, and that Starmerism is so blatantly authoritarian and repressive that finally Leftism will be driven back to the evil shadows from whence it came.
Hooray
“Zombie institutions”
I like it!
Interesting point.
I think Progressivism is the great evil of our time, having totally replaced [Enligtenment] Liberalism across the west. The left have be completely subsumed by this new movement, and the right see it’s flaws but often misdiagnose them, saying that “Liberalism has gone too far” etc.
There are certainly contradictions and excesses arising from Liberalism, but Liberalism is not what we are living with. Liberalism in the developed world has given way to Progressivism, and it would be helpful if more people could recognise that this is a totally different philosophy.
The problem with making “progress” into guiding moral philosophy is that it has no limiting principle. You’ll just keep going — all the way to the gates of Hell — if nobody stops you.
So, under Liberalism the goal would be a liberal principle, perhaps free speech, and there is a clear end point when you have achieved such a clearly defined goal (perhaps by making a law to protect speech)… and then you can stop.
Progressivism lacks any limiting principle — the GOAL of progressivism is “progress” …forward motion. To keep going.
Push on the door for gay marriage > achieve that. Should we stop, and celebrate this? NO > we should keep going, keep kicking new doors down because we have to keep moving forward! *Progress* is the goal.
Any philosophy or idea that lacks a limiting principle will become destructive, especially when moralised in the manner that modern progressivism has been. It lurches us all forward, demanding more and more action, but toward goals we have not all agreed on, and that are not being guided by fixed principles. The sense of motion and action is seductive, but the moral emptiness of the ideology is dangerous.
Essentially, progressivism is a destructive philosophy from the outset because the guiding principle is defined as an action rather than a principle or moral ideal. Blair was indeed the King of this ideology of style > substance; motion > moral aims.
Good observation. Reminiscent of that old phrase from the left: “Hasta la Victoria Siempre”. The same leftists have just rebranded it as progressive.
That is exactly what I think, but you have expressed it much better than I could have done!!
Err I read that thinking at some point this chap is going to really define what he means by ‘Progressivism’, but no just a vacuous use of the phrase into which all woes can be poured. Trying to be too clever there JJB. Beyond Gay marriage there was nought and you like many others choose to forget Right been in power for 14yrs prior to last 6mths. You also opt to not state your ‘fixed principles’. Happy to enlighten?
I did define it.
Unlike Liberalism (which is centred around venerating and promoting specific liberal principles), Progressivism venerates and promotes an action (moving forward, aka ‘progressing‘) rather than a fixed principle or a moral idea.
Which raises the question: Progressing towards what? …what is the end goal? What is the limiting principle; how will we know when the cause has been successful and we can stop?
This is the problem with Progressivism that I’m pointing out. It is a hollow ideology that elevates an action (pushing forward) rather than an ideal, and it therefore lacks any limiting principle.
Progressivism is a parasitic ideology (in that it has no moral root of it’s own, so wherever it springs up it builds onto the existing framework, and then takes things to extremes, because: progress. In the west, the ideology it parasitised was Liberalism.
Gay marriage is clearly not the only example of progressivism blowing right through a liberal goal and then going full reductio ad absurdium.
The feminist movement grew out of a liberal principle — the aim for equality of opportunity, as best we can manage it. Rooted in this moral reasoning good progress was actually made. But then progressivism took over and demanded MORE action, more motion, more progress. And unbound by a limiting principle this train blew past the station and has arguably gone right off the tracks.
It’s happened with gay marriage (a discrete goal) becoming hijacked for ever more extreme identitarian demands around sex, even the ‘trans’ing’ of little children.
It’s happened with immigration. Liberalism (and Christianity) challenged us to open our hearts to those in dire need, and think of them as our brothers and sisters. Foreign Aid was given, and refugee programmes set up. But then progressivism took over and now we live in clown world on this issue.
If immigrants are good …then infinity immigrants must be better! And immigrants must be even better than natives! Bring more > oh the natives don’t like it > well too bad, we must progress > set up global level structures to force thru the progress > oh the natives are getting angry > but we must still progress, we must push forward! > silence and arrest those people complaining, we can’t have them impeding progress > and bring more immigrants, more!
You see what I mean? …any ideology that venerates an action rather than a principle / moral ideal is dangerous. There is nothing that roots it, or acts as a stopping point. That is very different than Liberalism, or even Communism / Marxism, which are built around clear goals (collective ownership of the means of production; Communism) or moral ideals (equality before the law; Liberalism). Progressivism is a parasite that jumps on the back of an existing power structure, seizes it’s machinery and starts driving. But the destination is not clearly outlined (as in other ideologies), only the need for action, for driving forward. Dangerous, and the root of a lot of what seems like anti-common sense, radical insanity engulfing the civilised world. This is what it feels like to be a tornado of ‘action’ unrooted by clear goals or principles aside from ‘keep moving!’.
So it’s about Migrants, Gays & Trans. Hmm I thought you might have a bit more substance behind the pseudo stuff, but no.
Progressivism does not have a moral core, and a clear set of aims. That is why it’s destructive.
You’re not grasping this. You keep saying ‘Yes, but what does it stand for?’ …and I keep trying to explain that it stands for nothing other than motion. Forward movement, that’s it. That’s the problem.
Progressivism just parasitises whatever ideology is ascendent, grabs the machinery and starts ploughing forward under whatever auspices are needed to maintain the power that propels. There is no ‘essence’ — no set of principles guiding it. There is only motion. Which is the problem.
If it stands for what you suggest then I suggest you stop worrying about it. It’s so vague and nebulous nobody is following it.
It does come across though as a classic Strawman.
I never see you posting anything but criticism of other’s posts. It’s such a bore, haven’t you anything better to offer? I’m sure that you wife must love living with you.
I must be doing something right as wife lived with me for 38yrs! And it’s certainly not my money or looks.
The point you appear to struggle with is an alternative view or critique of a view you favour. Be careful you don’t grasp at an echo-chamber. It rapidly weakens neurons. If you can’t handle a bit of criticism you might be being as snowflakey as worst Woke child. Instead come back on the point with something of substance. Who knows you might change a view?
Very good, not seen such a good description of progressivism. As many have exclaimed about the various changes that have come about as a result of this philosophy, what next. When challenging and disrupting established norms is of itself considered a virtue nothing is safe. Some of these “progressive” ideas seem to me a regression to a stage that existed in pre-civilsed society and appear to become prevalent in the decline phase of previously great civilizations.
Whilst I agree that the ‘centrist fantasy’ can no longer hold in many ways, i’m not sure I agree with your reasoning of people going against it. With reference to France, Macron has tried to increase the French retirement age to something more in line with the rest of the first world in order to help fix France’s annual reliance on budget deficits, ongoing since the early 70’s. Of course, this is intolerable to the public at large.
There is much excited talk of a return to Thatcherite policies and this golden era, you reference 1979 above. Annual spending on the NHS under Thatcher was 4.5% of GDP vs 10% today and there were no triple lock pensions. UK pensions were dire. You could also call Thatcher’s cost cutting exercise using the mining communities as a similar exercise to what needs to happen today to the welfare system. So lets see how the public at large react to the ‘populist reality’ when those sort of corrective measures need to be put in place to achieve their populist fantasies. I doubt they will be quite so popular.
Along with there undoubtedly being a centrist fantasy of sorts, there is also a voting population fantasy of being able to have low taxes and low state intervention whilst retaining current NHS spending, current pension triple lock levels and government bailouts which everyone also seems to think are their god given rights. Much like the French have their own ‘fantasy expectations’, maybe a large part of the problem lies with the population’s fantasies, not just those of the ‘centrist government’, whether its Tory or Labour.
So Starmer is playing by the rules is he? Which ones would that be: following lockdown rules? Being able to count how many people are in a row with you? Accepting gifts from donors and not declaring them correctly? Lying to get elected leader of the Labour Party and then the country. Sorry, but if you think Starmer follows any rules then you are very much mistaken. He sees rules as something to be bent and ignored as he chooses.
Yes, his behaviour is not what anyone apart from this writer would claim represents ‘decency’.
Living in a Rules Based World doesn’t mean you have to live by them, if you are one of the chosen few.
It’s almost as though the rules are for the little people (us), taxes are for the little people (us) and free gifts are for the chosen ones.
” On economic questions, for example, the idea of free trade in the era of Chinese industrial power looks increasingly sado-masochistic”
Definitely true. If the effects weren’t so sad it would be funny how supposedly free traders ended up being the useful idiots of an actual Communist regime.
Ironic that free traders like to pose as anti-Communists when Karl Marx favoured laissez-faire to the extent it destroyed borders, national differences and particularities.
Britain created the doctrine of free trade in an era when Britain was the industrial powerhouse China is today … and had the navy to assist in the conversion of apostates to the True Faith.
Exactly. When Britain was industrialising it did so with the Navigation Acts and Royal Navy massively protecting British trade and industry. When Manchester Liberalism became fashionable Britain was already an advanced power, and Manchester Liberalism declined as newly resurgent protectionist powers like the United States and Germany rose.
Noble but contemptible indeed……. I cannot help being invested in the parallel between the required story and that of he who most closely represents the Beowulf of the recent American triumph : Trump. ; who has inter alia destroyed the same false religions that also must be vanquished by our very own Beowulf to unite our kingdom ;
MacPhersonry – NCHI hit list
BLaMic – DEI, sick lame and lazy welcomed
Multicountry – sharia for all
Translie – denial of sex
BBC – antisemitism
Asylumgee – whatever floats your boat
Drax – trees across the seas
WindEVil – candle power
Started ok then is all over the place.
“Defend the decency of the old order”? Well that hasn’t been evident at all.
What is evident is that the majority of the population know that politicians are liars, that they haven’t a clue how to put things right, that they will benefit themselves and that they carry out the orders of others, not the people who elected them.
The disconnect of the rulers from the ruled is now massive and obvious. At least “the old order” had the political nous to understand when it had gone too far…not any of this lot.
There is no ‘back’ to get back to. There is only the future and that will be dog eats dog and those who have betrayed us will pay a heavy price.
It is, and always has been, all about immigration. Fancy writers tell fancy stories (which as a fancy reader, I enjoy) but they miss the point. Mass immigration is not like any other policy in that it cannot be undone. Once you have changed the population of your country, it is changed irrevocably. Everyone knows this. That is why the public hate it. And that is the reason for Brexit, Donald Trump, Meloni, Le Pen, the AFD, the fall (death) of the Tories and the rise of Reform. It will cause the fall (death) of Labour in due course and quite possibly, the premiership of Nigel Farage. And if he can’t deliver very low immigration, then he will go too.
In a nutshell.
Exactly, mass immigration is terminal for any country or culture. I went into London yesterday for the first time in a while. I realised I was a ghost both figuratively and literally the world I knew no longer existed and that I no longer existed for the new people who lived there now.
Now how did the USA come about?
Immigration had nought to do with it?
And if you were a native American your way of life was destroyed…..
Now that is v true.
Example of the Tories should be a warning to anyone who tries to pretend to be populist but then brings in mass immigration under the guise that we are only letting in ‘high skilled’ immigrants. It’s a con, and voters will act accordingly. Trump should get Musk, Ramaswamy and H1 enthusiasts back on a leash.
Ah you’re beginning to notice the Populists want to protect their advantage and billions? More will wake up to that. Just going to take time.
Well…… I can’t disagree with you in relation to today, where this immigration is the product of misuse of the original intention of Asylum – post war idealism – see also UN etc. But the US was built on immigration, though with people with ambitions to go through terrible danger and hardships to build something new for their communities and families, who all adopted the American culture.
what we are suffering now in Europe (not qualified to comment on US), is an immigration into a utterly failed Blairite (that man has a great deal to be held account for) ideology of multiculturalism, which in effect is the clear future of British culture being dominated by elements of alien and hostile culture – viz boys names last year – rather than ambitious newcomers striving to better their lives as part of British culture.
impossible to reverse I fear.
There is a world of difference between a country that has absorbed small groups of persecuted Immigrants from time to time -and a country with foreign millions trying to get into it.
There is nothing that cannot be reversed if the will is there
In the US we have the Constitution. Once you’re in, you’re protected.
Not sure what the Brits do. Trial-by-combat? A bake-off?
Your US Constitution is a useless piece of paper and it is hilarious how much store Americans put by it. It means what anyone wants it to mean at any point in time.
The Supreme Court decision of Plessy v. Ferguson established the “separate but equal” doctrine, which allowed states and local governments to enact segregation laws. It used the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution to justify racial segregation.
And the 14th was subsequently used to justify the out-lawing of segregation.
Frankly, a bake-off would have much more credibility.
Of course US has often failed to live up to the ideals of the Founding Fathers. But it isn’t the most powerful and successful Nation in History for no reason, and the form of Govt created and sustained a major reason for that.
And where do you see as better?
Most of Europe is superior to the US. The US is only great if you’re able to make money.
If you’re born poor it’s little better than the developing world in many inner city places.
What’s more, no politician seems overly concerned about fixing those inequalities.
Personally I could never live in the US.
Agree with much of that HM. Point I was making wasn’t about where I’d like to live though. I think I’m with you on where is better.
The ideals of the founding fathers were to retain slavery.
Yes it is a continent with a continent’s resources, no viable enemies on its doorstep and, in relation to it’s size, a large but still relatively sparse population, not to mention being the overwhelming beneficiary of 2 world wars
You would have to be really stupid not to succeed with those advantages, but they seem to be throwing it away
You’re not understanding how legal issues work. A very successful lawyer/friend of the family was fond of saying “A contract is just an excuse to get in front of a judge”. The fact that these cases were brought and changes were made is a victory. In most nations they never would have been heard.
Of course, a bake-off would result in cakes and cookies; also a very noble outcome.
I think it is your misunderstanding.
Whoever has the political power to load the supreme court wins the day since the constitution can mean whatever you want it to mean.
Hence you got segregation, desegregation and then resegregation (affirmative action, DEI etc.) all under the same constitution
The US Constitution only has value in as much as many people believe in it. As lefties like to say, it’s a ‘social construct’. Change the people (through immigration or change in values among the natives) and it’s meaningless.
Biden in last year where data available returned c740k. That’s more than in any year under Trump (although illegal crossings were higher under Biden).
The ‘protections’ don’t extend to right to stay for many.
The USA has the best legal and healthcare systems money can buy. Yet it was odd how many with the money avoided Vietnam. The wealthy appear to be reluctant to die for a country which enables them to live in luxury. In WW1 20% of the British aristocracy died. What percentage of the wealthiest 1% died in Vietnam? Harrow School holds the record, 27% of it’s old boys who fought in WW1 died.
It is worth listening to Stephen Ambrose on WW2.
World at War Last Episode with Stephen Ambrose
During the building of America, immigrants assimilated, and adopted the existing culture. That is no longer true.
A figment of your imagination. In the early Colonies communities separated and headed off in different directions establishing separate States primarily because of religious differences. Things were pulled together later.
Then the waves of mid 19thC immigration, esp from Ireland and Europe created considerable tension and violence in many areas.
Don’t be ‘rose tinted’.
Pretty much all of the immigration to the US in the mid and late 19th century was from Europe and many were welcomed especially the Germans, by far the largest group, who came with tools and skills for the most part. The same with the Scandinavians and the Dutch. We badly needed craftsmen such as carpenters and masons, etc.
The Irish and Italians had a hard time for a while because they, were considered Papist. Catholics had a hard time in England too (Jacobite uprising, the Popery Act of 1698 etc.)
Any group that came in without any skills with which to support themselves with were not exactly popular with the established citizenry, just as it is today.
The pioneering work to create the USA was largely completed by 1870. Immigrants post 1870 had it much easier. Of the first 10,000 immigrants in the 17th century, 8000 died.
The legal system of the USA evolved from the Charter of Liberties of 1100 drafted by Henry 1 which in turn used laws of Edward The Confessor. The English language is easy to learn. The Protestant Work (described by Max Weber ) meant English, Welsh, Scottish, Protestant Irish, Dutch, German, Scandinavian and Dutch had similar skills, that of craftsmen and merchants and a similar view of the World, namely God rewarded hard work,skill, education, honesty and charity.
This Protestant/ Roman Catholic divided can be seen between Northern and Southern Europe and runs through the middle of Germany.
Britain developed the Industrial Revolution and the USA greatly benefitted from railways, canals and factories. Britain invested in the USA and by 1939 owned 20% of the stock market and 100% f the tool making industry.
Immigrants post 1870s started to have different values.
And it was a mistake
The way I see it, in the USA, as a young country, those waves of immigrants from different places did somewhat assimilate, but I think that maybe even more so they collaborated in building the culture.
The largest immigrant group in the USA are the Germans. The USA would be a different place without the German carpenters and construction workers, brewers, engineers, bakers, butchers, and etc. that came here in the late 19th Century. Much of our food, morality and our language is based on them. The same goes for other minorities, perhaps to a lesser extent.
The English had a huge influence for a start, but soon enough the Spanish, the French, German, Dutch, and Scandinavians added their language and cultural tics. Whereas England was I think influenced mostly by the North men, Danish. Angles and the assimilated Norse from Normandy. Of course the Saxons were Germanic.
The thing is that we all share a European culture and have all assimilated pretty well with each other. It’s not so easy when it we are to mesh with completely alien Asian ways of thinking, or the cultures of the Muslim countries.
What a load of tosh. Blair not been in power for almost 17 years and you are still going on about him. It’s pathetic. Unless you’ve been in a coma for last 14 years (quite poss ) the Right has been in power and got to do alot of things it wanted, including Brexit brainwave.
Suspect you’d last 5mins picking your own fruit & veg. Go and do a day’s work in a field with the seasonal migrants keeping you fed and you’ll see who can graft.
Margaret Thatcher passed on 13 years ago but the left still castigate her. That’s truly pathetic.
Blair is still here and is standing behind Starmer holding the strings.
Thanks Jonny. Deep thoughts. So deep. The best thoughts.
Not impossible, though highly unlikely given the weakness of all British politicians. What is needed is clarity of sight and strength of will.
I disagree with that because it’s not immigration itself that is the problem but the lack of control over the process that is. As a US citizen, I want the process to work to allow people from all over the world to come to our country. Instead, we have an unmitigated flow of people who have no regard for law or process jumping the line. Their history, their capabilities and their ability to care for themselves are complete unknowns. That’s the problem.
It could be undone in theory. But it won’t be.
So said Reinhard Heydrich at a conference in 41. Same language.
Mass immigration has occurred, and it’s irrevocable. Britain will never be the same.
I agree on immigration but there is a second cancer eating at the heart of Britain -staggeringly high and debilitating national debt. As with immigration this has its roots in the actions of a line of hubristic and grossly negligent “Uniparty” politicians , convinced they know best, when in fact they are profoundly ignorant. Silver tongued charlatans selling worthless snake oil – at a huge resultant cost to our economic and social wellbeing.
Yup. When we tune out the noise, we might find that one of the biggest signals is the slow but accelerating sinking of the Titanic welfare state across the economies of the developed world.
The money politicians allocate to the employing family members and putting their pals in nice little sinecures such as quangos and, of course,The House of Lords etc., exceeds the cost of the welfare state which is 10.8% of GDP.
Quangos alone, especially now another 25 have been added, will cost a lot more.
Perhaps if we didn’t need the work done by others?
If this was true then perhaps Labour wouldn’t be in power, with a massive majority and 4 and half years more? Now while the FPTP system did much to create that there were 15+m folks voted Lab/Lib/Green and c11m voted Con/Reform. Pretty big gap that. And whilst many will be disappointed in Lab first 6mths that’s not predominantly because of mass migration.
You see alot of folks have a much more nuanced view of immigration, certainly more than typically conveyed here on Unherd echo-chamber. Vast majority feel it’s too high but they don’t ‘buy’ the populist rhetoric or over-simplification of solutions. Populists if they do gain power soon run into major problems due to this.
More broadly c28% of us now have a non UK heritage, and that is only increasing. Kids mix much more with a diverse range of friends. It’s changing and us older folks ain’t going to hold that back much. That’s not the same as supporting ‘mass migration’ whatever that exactly is (cutely left vague by those who use it).
To me, the problem of mass immigration, the various feelings and thoughts, the lies, the often insulting behaviour – is that nobody who supports it can put forward a cap in numbers. If the cap was 1 million more people, nobody would blink. If 10 million more, the effect would be more mixed. But if it was 25 million more – then we would be going away from multiculturalism back to a monoculture, a completely different monoculture. So anyone with children or grandchildren would have a right to worry.
Who supports it CW? And how much does it have to be for you to deem it ‘mass’?
Comparing previous waves of migration (in the US, for instance) with the present day is a fool’s errand because the lack of a welfare state back then meant that migrants came knowing they’d have to work… or starve. And in those days, there was plenty of work for the unskilled because automation was in its infancy and there were no minimum wage laws, which meant that even people who weren’t very productive could still find employment and get on the skills ladder.
What’s more, government and employers didn’t pander to people who didn’t speak English, so there was a massive incentive to learn the language.
ie, migrants knew they’d be poor until they worked their way to prosperity. So the workshy stayed home in their own countries.
Whereas, in the present day it’s quite possible to leave a strenuous job in the 3rd-world, come to the West, and live a better life on welfare doing literally nothing besides reproducing. While berating your hosts for their racism/xenophobia if they question how sustainable this is.
Mass migration is 7.5 million people in 30 years without electoral consent as you’ve been told repeatedly.
i don’t agree with this at all. There is nothing immoral about regarding Net Zero as an utterly wrongheaded policy which will cause enormous damage and achieve nothing worthwhile; or about rejecting the policy of ceding the Chagos Islands to a country which has never had sovereignty over them in a way which damages national security and goes against the expressed wishes of the Chagossians themselves. The comments of the EU official about the World turning into Game of Thrones just show how the EU regards nation states.
The only rationality I can see behind Net Zero is wind farms acting as an emergency energy stop gap if gas was unavailable due to disrupted supply chains. Of course, as an emergency power source it would be limited in its scope, providing energy only to essential services. That of course if the wind is blowing.
Yes, it’s back to front!
I’ll vote for anyone who gives a plausible impression of intending to govern, in a highly partisan way, with the interests of the U.K. as their sole driving principle. I haven’t had the opportunity to do so since I’ve been old enough to vote.
‘The decency of the old order’??
What was decent about printing trillions of £ and $ and pumping it into asset prices in order to buy graduate class votes whilst simultaneously destroying blue collar communities with open border policies and the hollowing out of the country’s industrial base?
Historians will see the Clinton-Blair project for what it actually was: the most brutal episode of class war since the time of the robber barons.
Oh dear, you forget HB (or are really ignorant) QE and £600b in Covid loans all happened well after Blair and Clinton. Predominantly, lest you forget, under a Tory Govt.
Your point about where that money ended up, with the Rich buying ever more assets and further accelerating inequality and concentrations of wealth, is though v true. And your policy response?
(Slightly separate – Clinton inherited the largest ever debt in US History from Reagan)
Why do you persist with the fiction that there was a change of government in 2010? It’s an entirely self-serving lie. The Cameron, May and Johnson governments were no more predatory than Blair’s. It’s a distinction without a difference.
The crucial act of expropriation was Gordon Brown’s decision in 2004 to remove housing costs from the BOE interest criteria. That is the fundamental cause of the largest upward transfer of wealth in history. And it was done entirely cynically to buy the votes of the middle class.
Something north of £6 billion has been transferred in this way, with £1.5 billion just since the start of the pandemic.
You know what my policy response is perfectly well, because I’ve explained it to you umpteen times: stop taxing productive activity in order to reward rent-seeking middle class freeloaders and replace those taxes with a reformed council tax or, better still, a land value tax. Stop artificially inflating prices by bringing in millions of largely useless, and sometimes highly dangerous people, and dumping them on poor communities in the North and the Midlands.
In short, stop the class war.
Starmer isn’t going to do that because, despite all your faux progressivism, you won’t vote for it. That’s why you persist in pushing all this left Vs right and ‘v Rich’ nonsense. It’s deflection.
‘£6 billion’ should read ‘£6 trillion’.
Whilst I agree that the ‘centrist fantasy’ can no longer hold in many ways, i’m not sure I agree with your reasoning of people going against it. With reference to France, Macron has tried to increase the French retirement age to something more in line with the rest of the first world to help fix France’s addictive reliance on budget deficits, ongoing since the early 70’s. Of course, this is intolerable to the public at large.
There is much excited talk of a return to Thatcherite policies and this golden era, you reference 1979 above. Annual spending on the NHS under Thatcher was 4.5% of GDP vs 10% today and there were no triple lock pensions. UK pensions were dire. You could also call Thatcher’s cost cutting exercise in the mining communities a similar exercise to what needs to happen today to the welfare system. So let’s see how the public at large react to the ‘populist reality’ when those sorts of corrective measures need to be put in place to achieve their populist fantasies. I doubt they will be quite so popular.
Whilst there is undoubtedly a centrist fantasy of sorts, there is also a voting population fantasy of being able to have low taxes and low state intervention whilst retaining current NHS spending, current pension triple lock levels and government bailouts which everyone also seems to think are their god given rights. Much like the French have their own ‘fantasy expectations’, maybe a large part of the problem lies with the population’s fantasies, not just those of the ‘centrist government’, whether its Tory or Labour.
Getting rid of the triple lock might be quite popular aside from with its recipients.
In the last week or so I’ve had to explain to two generally well-educted Gen Z what a state pension was. They had no idea what it was or how you got one. It wasn’t a case of them believing there will be no money left when they retire, they just didn’t know it existed.
Politicians are stuck with decades of trying to bribe voters with terrible policies. There’s no great way out of this as the voters got fat and soft.
As always Tim, beautifully written. As is often the case, I feel the thinking is a bit muddled.
People do not need a better story from their politicians, they need better policies, simple. Contrary to what you write, simply having all the figures on the spreadsheet moving in the right direction would absolutely be enough for Starmer to be considered a legitimate option.
Furthermore, even though you have watched and been moved be Yellowstone, many haven’t. For the average American Republican voter there hasn’t been a successful challenge to the foundational myth of America, they are voting for and supporting Trump out of patriotism and hope for a better standard of living in their country. They still love their founding fathers and their constitution, the only thing they hate are their corrupt vacuous modern politicians and overlords.
It’s Tom.
“What voters want, it seems, is for someone to protect their inheritance; their prosperity; their country; their land.”
And we’ve got a govt that will do none of those things for the next four years. If you love your country Vote Reform whenever you can.
This story does not bode well for those like Starmer who are seeking to defend the decency of the old order. In this world, little is to be gained by giving away sovereignty in the Indian Ocean or sticking to your climate commitments. What voters want, it seems, is for someone to protect their inheritance; their prosperity; their country; their land. Of all the characters in British politics, the one who clings closest to the Yellowstone version of morality is, of course, Farage. The point about Net Zero, for him, is not who is to blame for climate change, but who is going to defend British prosperity.
Absolute tosh!
1. ‘Starmer seeking to defend the old order!’
2.’Sticking to climate commitments’, and, ‘the point about net zero for him, (Farage), is not who is to blame for climate change’.
Point 1 is laughable and point 2 is that my understanding of ‘climate change’ is that it has been happening since the world began and us puny little humans can do diddly squat about it.
How can the writer state with a straight face, ‘what people want, IT SEEMS, is someone to protect their inheritance; their prosperity; their country; their land’. Too right we do!
There is no Climate Emergency, hence no panic required, nor NET Zero policies!
Tiddler is a meandering and shapeless mess that valorises lying, confusing it with imagination and creativity. The denouement, such as it is, demonstrates an inability to grasp how plots work. Rather than suffering for his lies, Tiddler is saved by them, because he belongs to a community addicted to sentimental lies rather than reality (contrast the tale of the boy who cried wolf). But rather than this achieving any real resolution, the rest of the kids still view him with scorn. Only his dim friend still likes his stories, with the teacher authority figure simpering impotently, and we are left stuck in the status quo ante, with no forward movement at all.
In short: it’s an inane story, badly told. In fact, not really a story at all, just a random assemblage of bits. And in each of its parts it is an almost perfect analogy for the dishonest, unpopular self-serving centrists and their lies, the sentimentality of the British media and those addicted to it, and the stasis and division we are trapped in.
If Julia Donaldson has created a story for small children that is also an analogy for ‘the dishonest, unpopular self-serving centrists and their lies, the sentimentality of the British media and those addicted to it, and the stasis and division we are trapped in’, I’d suggest she might be a substantially better writer than you are giving her credit for.
I’m not saying it was intentional. It’s a poorly-written anti-story.
Well it’s not her best for sure, but it is intended for children aged about 5. Are you expecting the story to end with Tiddler coated in batter and eaten with chips and mushy peas?
There are any number of ways to write engaging stories for under fives that charm, provide satisfying plots and don’t inculcate cynicism. And Julie Donaldson is a very talented author, certainly talented enough to do it.
“Yet, in a more profound way, it is actually offering a vision propounded by the Left, which long ago rejected the idea of a noble America born in liberty seeking an ever-more-perfect union. Instead, America was cast — correctly in many ways — as a slave republic which came into existence through violent colonisation“
.
A few days ago I read this:
“Even today, political discourse in Britain evades ethnicity for a focus on race in a way unusual outside America, where it stems from an almost uniquely stratified slave economy, overlaid on a settler colonial society deriving from genocide” (© Aris Roussinos)
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You are doomed, gentlemen. You are pathetic nonentities, incapable of defending your women and your children from the most insignificant aggressor. All your envy of MAGA Americans is evident in these quotes from cowardly men-by-balls-only
It’s Hobbes versus Rosseau, it always has been and always will be.
And Rosseau was a tool.
The faces of those who like Rosseau should rubbed in the dirt of this sociopath’s personal life. But I suspect they will only lick their lips, believing that “geniuses” shіt by roses.
“…the idea of free trade in the era of Chinese industrial power looks increasingly sado-masochistic…”
My admittedly childishly simplistic idea of free trade has always been: free trade only with free nations. And for me, the simplest practical definition is free and fair elections. If an individual populace then picks a government that advocates, I dunno, lawful cannibalism, that’s fine, it’s their choice. The consequence for me means: don’t trade with China or Russia, but also don’t trade with Saudi, UAE, et al, and a host of sub saharan countries, and of course many others. The progressive fantasy is and always has been, that you can bribe or bomb other nations into something better – and you can’t. Let different nations get there for themselves if they can, meanwhile don’t trade with them (buy or sell) or make trading punitively expensive, and just leave them to it.
It’s not difficult to see where our political classes have gone wrong.
They forgot who they serve. In our case, the British people. They want to save the world. In fact everyone outside of the British electorate.
Every now and then we see glimpses of what drives them. With Starmer it was his preference for Davos over Westminster.
The dirty and mundane world of UK politics doesn’t interest these people. They want to save the downtrodden of the world. Not fix the potholes on the A41. Moral superiority is their passion.
I have no problem with people being wanting to make a show of their moral virtue. I just think being an MP has more to do with looking after your constituents and not saving the people of some far flung conflict or crisis.
We are where we are because politicians here and all over the west are confused. And in their confusion they have led us all into a quagmire. It might take an imperfect leader with ideas that seem improbable, even brutal to help guide ourselves out.
A very typical Unherd article. Lots of waffle. Subtle slandering of the Right. Apologist for the Left. Starmer’s government is noble. Really?
UK is a far left experiment. That is the reality and a lived one for you all.
Well played Tinyboner.
Unherd (stupid magazine) you are on a hiding to nothing trying to defend the Left in today’s times.
Albeit it is quite funny for us readers watching you do it.
You cannot write stories in an atomised world. You need to reinstate some landscape (boundaries), characters (defined population), back story (historical context), and plot (synthesised policies) amongst other elements.
The idea that an authoritarian government which espouses broader application of NCHIs, blocked the Academic Freedom Act, and clearly wishes to shuffle in blasphemy laws can achieve this is nonsense. Fortunately we have a natural storyteller in parliament – it may be a fairytale, but it is a story and since the teller has no track record in office to defend, it has its own appeal.
The importance of storytelling and having a narrative that moves people emotionally is something I bang on about endlessly.
In terms of politics, I know the narrative you are aiming for is one on which you can hang actual, practical policies on – the underlying principles and arc that gets you through a period of government.
But in a bigger sense, I honestly don’t know what is wrong with the national story you already have. British history is just so fascinating and rich – you’ve just had any pride in it beaten out of you by miserable technocrats and “progressives” that want to tell you the most depressing story imaginable in any given situation.
I think it’s time for a return to British pride, being confident in the incredible story that Britain already and not being afraid to tell it. And expressing to incomers that if they want to be a part of it, then learn and accept the basic plot. If you can’t identify with it or don’t want to be a part of moving the story forward – off you go.
This approach can be more or less copy-pasted onto most Western countries.
It doesn’t seem to enter the author’s mind that many people simply don’t believe in global warming catastrophism. If you start from that point then all of the incredibly destructive policies designed to ‘fight’ it are just self induced wounds. I understand that parts of Europe are having an electrical pricing crisis because there is not enough wind – and like total fools you shut down your nuclear power plants and replaced them with windmills. You don’t have to be a populist to be upset with colossal stupidity like that.
Agreed. I also think that whatever the reality of the ‘climate crisis’ is, people understand that the western elite who promote climate alarmism are not personally at risk for energy poverty their policies are creating.
Good piece.
But there is no position that Labour can take now that can ever be believed.
They have had four years under Starmer to get ready, the last two of which in the certain knowledge that they would be in power this year. What they have done is what they have got. Their one go.
After this it will be all about reacting to appalled global markets, reacting to recession, reacting to factory closures, reacting to power shortages.
They are lost and hopeless, and these are their ” best” people, the adults we were told would restore order. They believed their own fantasies, appointed a joke figure as Foreign Secretary and a Walter Mitty character as chancellor.
The PM himself is pitifully out of his depth, only looking comfortable when he is abroad, getting a pat on the back from someone. Most leaders end up doing this after a few years, he was at it after a few weeks.
Is there any other country in the world where the media spreads lies to conform with political Ideology as UK does?
It goes to the heart of UK’s decline.
Most of the West, especially Germany and Australia.
I think the USA media does little else but lie to back the progressive ideology. they are not observers and reporters any more, they are simply apparatchiks and Progressive activists.
It disgusts me that Unherd is a political tool.
They have prevailing preferences, that’s for sure. McTague’s slant is a hit here with most who’d bother to read him or comment on this board full of thumbs-up confirmation bias.
So where’s your counter argument? Oh, you don’t have one…
They wouldn’t post my attempt to indulge you—not that I think you’d have received it with much of an open mind, much less been persuaded. I’m not sure why it was withheld as it wasn’t hostile or profane. Maybe because it was longish reply to a short comment? Sometimes it’s best to trade sneers and call it a day I guess.
Try a shorter one.
1) Saying “I alone can fix it “ is an arrogant fiction best left to the man who uttered it, and other egomaniacs.
2) McTague calls for a politics of heightened division and antagonism—an openly dialed up us-vs.-them approach from every side—when we are already choking on that. That claim is self-unraveled.
3) Britain seems determined to have her Farage, or someone like him; France will almost certainly elect Le Pen or someone similar. Then we can all see for ourselves, to the extent we can face and admit it.
4) Pointing out that things are bad doesn’t establish the wisdom of burning them down or breaking them. Nor does your standing behind a polemical article, in which a very one-sided case is made, require commenters to produce a counter claim for every claim an author coughs up. Or make you correct when you pretend that the few dissenting voices on a BTL board where little dissent or even discussion exists are devoid of a counter argument if they don’t get sucked into spending time producing one for an audience made largely of selectively deaf ears and squinting eyes when it comes to their favorite demagogues.
Looks like you project just much as J Watson does. The author is saying very little of what you have written and what he has said is mostly of observation, not approval.
Both you and JW repeatedly fail to offer a counter argument – which is exactly what the author is asking of Starmer in response to Farage. Your answer is the same as Starmer’s, carry on with the same failed policies of the past thirty years.
Your 4th point is rambling nonsense saying the author is wrong because he’s wrong isn’t good enough. If he is wrong, you shouldn’t have any problems pulling the article apart… but you can’t.
Anyone who is critical of the status quo is a “populist’ and supporter of Farage. Farage exists ONLY because of the utter incompetence of the last seven governments. Will Reform be any better, of course not. Will they be worse, yes they probably will but the electorate have simply had enough of the technocratic, patrician “we know best” governance of the “centrists”.
Looks like you use the same cheap form of dismissal for just about everything you don’t like. A few repeated, dull notes. But perhaps neither of us sees the other’s words or intentions through a flawless lens these days. That status quo could improve could change if you didn’t begin by addressing my in a confrontational or insulting tone. Or if we were more than mere men.
What do you read in this direct quote from McTague’s concluding paragraph? As I said in the response that didn’t post (and maybe the problem was on my side of the Atlantic): I don’t pretend to be deeply conversant in English politics, but McTague makes convenient bumper stickers out of the American character (look it up yourself) and references Trump in his endorsement of populism on either side of the Atlantic. And I don’t accept that a politics primarily of consensus-building and unity are some over-precious thing that can no longer be afforded. Of course that’s just about always been aspired to and given lip service more than practiced, but I think McTague succumbs to the cynicism you say he merely observes. Have you?
We can agree that Reform will probably be worse than the failed administrations they succeed. However, it is some form of tunnel vision or false self-certainty to claim that ‘anyone who is critical of the status quo is a “populist” and supporter of Farage’—your exact words. Would you say the same thing of Trump (because that is part of McTague’s ocean-crossing implication, right?)? The intensity of your belief that anyone who opposes the status quo is therefore or must/ought to be a Farage fan or at least willing to tie their fortunes to his reins of chaos is false, no matter how insistently you believe it, Andrew.
Enjoy the rest of the year, unless you have other plans.
My tone is no more dismissive imo than yours is to Tom McTague. I don’t care particularly for Farage or Trump, my anger if you can call it that is aimed toward the patronising, pious attitude of so called “centrists”. These people are not centrists, they are charlatans, just like Trump and Farage, they just think they’re better.
People have voted for Trump and will vote for Reform because quite frankly there’s no one else to vote for.
Enjoy the rest of your year and the New Year too.
Ok perhaps that part is true enough. I’ve never liked McTague’s articles. In my opinion, interpersonal dismissiveness is a bit different from dissenting from the applause of the (un)herd though. My initial short reply was in sympathy with the one of the few other commenters who had the nerve to not have a rah-rah response to McTague and his celebration of populism.
Though I don’t agree with it, I can respect your decision to support Farage or Trump over the weak alternatives you dismiss as non-options. For me, that respect represents progress toward accepting and understanding those I disagree with a bit more. We don’t have to agree with or like another, but we have to live amongst one another, so I hope the antagonism and scapegoating won’t be ramped up, at least not a lot, in ‘25. On either side of the sociopolitical divide or Atlantic.
I appreciate your civil reply. Cheers.
Thank you, likewise.
In the General Election back in July I voted for an Independent candidate affiliated to the county independents.
I see. I wish the US would get a viable third party. It’s one of my repeated notes: Viable third party now!
Agreed
The problem lies not just with the political classes of all and any stripe who have been bankrupt both morally as well in terms of any competent world vision for decades. No, its the fact that the power vacuum left by our politicians has slowly been filled by an equally incompetent Whitehall civil service plus their affiliates throughout the land in local government, innumerable quangos, academia and of course the mammoth NHS. These organisations are self serving power structures whose dominant aim is their own survival while maximising their pension and many other privileges and like the worst kind of tic they are bleeding our nation dry as we head for perdition. No “populist” such as Farage is capable of taking them down without some form of army outside of our democracy behind them.
Farage already has the support of those opposed to climate change measures and who prioritize anti immigration measures, Reform is probably near its peak of support.
Polling indicates large majorities putting net zero and preventing climate change at, or near, the top of their list of political priorities. Similarly most voters see the value of continued immigration, wanting only to see it better controlled. Reforms ” one in one out” proposal has little appeal.
The ” liberal” majority is spread between four ( or six, if you include the SNP and Plaid Cymru) but remains a majority
It’s true that support for measures to combat climate change is strong amongst those who are not significantly affected by their consequences. Once they start to seriously affect the suburban class the picture is likely to change dramatically.
The question presupposes Labour are on Britain’s side. The evidence shows that the Labour top team are on the side of whoever buys things for them. Their default position is anti British virtue signalling – while squirrelling away their loot personally.
“populism” which tells tall tales to gullible voters
At last someone has tried to explain what they mean by populism, which is generally used simply as an easy pejorative. This definition (perhaps a rather grand word for TM’s brief description) covers almost all politicians. They have always told tall tales of prosperity, happiness and freedom, and perhaps worst of all about world peace; and they all use facts and figures (by which they mean cherry-picked statistics) to support their tall tales.
So… once again I ask, what do these writers really mean when they use the term?
I see Farage as a bit like the green party, essentially saying easy things to get votes but they don’t add up.
Whilst reducing immigration has to be done, it has got to be in conjunction with increasing the employment rates of the native population – something Reform don’t have a plan for and increasing productivity.
Cutting net-immigration down to 0 overnight will likely increase labour costs to the point that we’ll get serious inflation, you won’t be able find a carer for your old, shops will be open less ie not Sunday, you can kiss goodbye to speedy same day or hour delivery – not that that is bad. We’ll probably have to increase to state pension age to 72 to compensate.
As for ditching efforts to reduce methane and carbon output, that will warm the earth causing a migration movement to the north of the world.
As for ditching foreign aid – the development of many poorer countries to be developed like china and india sent the birth rate nearer 2. It has not happened yet in parts of Africa meaning that a high birth rate continues in grow populations there. Combine that with increasing temperatures in the tropics means a huge potential for immigration
Therefore ‘net-zero’ and ‘foreign aid’ are both necessary to reduce the potential of immigration yet fantasy farage & co hasn’t seen that.
Therefore the only point of voting reform for me reform is a gesture as they don’t have a joined up plan.
That argument does not stand up.
It is untrue that the UK “needs” net immigration. 300,ooo leave every year. So thats more than enough immigrants for Carers NHS etc without any increase in population.
And immigrants cost a lot . Far far more than the tax they pay.
Unfortunately you appear to subscribe to the ‘story’ that man-made CO² is driving temperature change. This ‘fact’ is far from established. That narrative is defended vociferously by those with vested interests, but it simply isn’t proven.
What is your area expertise on this? I can’t go with the idea that the whole world got it wrong.
Net zero is and always has been a political project, supported by cherry picked science, and wishful thinking around the capabilities of renewables. So much money to be made from it, there is fraud everywhere. Believe it if you will, but many of us, science and engineering in work, prefer to question everything, rather than believe everything we are told. Too many useful idi-ots in support of it and simplistic explanations for it to be the whole story..
Every body, whether solid, liquid or gaseous, including the Earth, emits electromagnetic radiation. The wavelengths of radiation emitted depend upon the temperature of the body. As a relatively cool body, the Earth emits only long-wave heat radiation in the infrared range.
The radiation emitted by one body can be reflected or absorbed by other bodies.
It is primarily the molecules of the trace or greenhouse gases that absorb the long-wave radiation and ultimately emit it again in all directions as heat radiation. They thus trap part of the heat in the lower atmosphere.
https://worldoceanreview.com/en/wor-6/the-polar-regions-as-components-of-the-global-climate-system/why-it-is-so-cold-in-the-polar-regions/the-earths-heat-and-radiation-balance/
A change in the amount of greenhouse gases, provided the amount is not already past that at which the maximum amount of heat radiation is absorbed, therefore changes the temperature of the lower atmosphere.
This is all very basic physics and is very much established.
And if you want to go to the trouble of using sub- and superscripts, the 2 in carbon dioxide should be a subscript. But I’m sure you know that given that you know the above is not proven…
My phone keyboard doesn’t offer the subscript and I think CO² is preferable to typing CO2
As to my expertise, I didn’t say refuted, I said human influence is not proven.
I am highly suspicious, as we all should be, of any so-called experts backed by dodgy money who claim the ‘science is settled’ and our lives need to be radically adjusted because only they can see the truth. We also saw those behaviours in 2020 and it hasn’t aged well at all if you’ve been paying attention.
Roll back the x-axis of the oft-shown temperatue/co2 graphs to cover the last few ice ages and the story looks entirely different. We are in an interglacial period, temperature rises are expected, but whether or not it’s man-made is a highly politicised (and profitable) topic that disallows any form of debate from other experts smarter than you or I.
By all means overlook the impacts of the urban heat effect on the data quality of ground-level temperature stations , ignore the retrospective adjustments to historical data to blur out the obvious very warm periods throughout history (like settlers living on Greenland and the US dustbowl in the 20s), and likewise ignore the inconvenient detail that satellite temperature datasets are not telling the same story. Then take the above alongside the observation that the majority of CO² is naturally created and it begins to look dubious that a trace gas is truly the earth’s thermostat.
I repeat: not proven.
Yes I’m aware CO2 has a subscript ‘2’ but my phone keyboard doesn’t offer this character.
As to my reasoning, I wrote a long reply yesterday which appears to have fallen afoul of the Unherd censors. I don’t intend to type it all again, except to say there’s a great deal of inconvenient evidence to the contrary, which is studiously ignored/suppressed by those with a vested interest in continuing with the status quo.
The usual name calling tactics deployed: “idiot”, “denier”, “conspiracy theorist” etc.
We are unilaterally dismembering the western economic system while China and the rest laugh at our recklessness while using coal energy to provide us with our ‘green’ solutions for a healthy profit.
I and many other, including some well credentialed individuals, smell a huge rat and we owe it to ourselves to be way more skeptical about the snake-oil cure that is CO2 reduction.
And if anyone can look at Dale Vince and hand on heart say he’s a trustworthy person then I have a bridge for sale.
The reason I responded to your post as I did is that you appeared to question the basic mechanism of CO2 being a greenhouse gas. If people want to question climate change modelling, the various feedback loops and secondary effects, how serious climate change will be, or net zero policies and economic impacts, then fine – those aspects are very complex and clearly debatable. But the basic concept of the greenhouse effect (which is not a good analogy but is the term everyone uses) has been long established (19th C) and isn’t in doubt, though a large number on here will contest it. And the name calling goes both ways.
Your reply will likely appear at some point – it’s a weird glitch of this site that perfectly reasonable posts can disappear for a while.
It’s better to write CO2, as you now have, as it implies nothing more than an inability to work the IT, whereas using a superscript makes it look like deliberate choice.
Even if I did believe the global warming narrative, nothing we do on this tiny island will have any effect on temperatures in the tropics, which, as far as I know are the same as they’ve always been. Development and wealth has led to increased migration, not global warming.
Every country has to do something.
Most of the additional heat goes to the poles, so no, probably there is little we can do to affect temperatures in the tropics.
There’s not necessarily a causal relationship between foreign aid and the development of any countries, let alone India or especially China. Could well be an inverse correlation (eg if aid handouts aid ineffective governance, )dampen local initiative or are tied to harmful EDI-type projects). In my experience the prime objective of any large organisation (including the Foreign Office and NGOs) is their own/their employees benefit.
Enough already. Another essay based on analysis of TV shows and other ‘narratives’. BA Humanities fodder nothing more. B+
With convenient black and white divisions where the virtue and logic somehow fall just about exclusively on your side of a painted line, for a favorably disposed readership. C-minus.
Agreed.
Might is right has ,of course ,always been the real principle behind politics and governance but the stories are important nevertheless. He’s absolutely right that the old story of liberalism (based on judeo Christian mythology) is not working anymore and we desperately need a new one. In the meantime we’re just resorting back to cynicism without tempering it with a wholesome narrative.
He’s absolutely right that the old story of liberalism (based on Judeo Christian mythology) is not working anymore
.
The fact that society has abandoned it does not mean that it does not work. Rather, it means that society has become stupid and is trying to screw a round screw into a square hole.
Not sure if stupidity is a useful category. I think it’s just the technological and geopolitical landscape has changed and we’ve got to adapt our story again as we’ve always done or die out
We ourselves are unlikely to die out, but in the hands of these “surgeons” – without a doubt.
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P.S. Can you explain to me what the word “story” means in your comment? I have some difficulties with modern English.
Don’t mean to speak for someone else, but assuming you don’t get a response. He means something like ‘social narrative’ or ‘shared worldview’.
It’s too pompous a word for what is usually called “adaptation”. This reminds me of the favorite expression of Hollywood stars: “You know”
We all use stories( grand narratives, religions, ideologies etc) to explain to ourselves who we are and what’s the hell we’re doing here and how all that is happening around us makes any sense . We come up with approximation the best we can but then of course the situation changes and old stories go to the garbage bin ( Zeus, Maoism etc) so we need new ones
It’s peg.
2024 is not 1979 (which I remember). Britain’s decline has gone too far. Recovery at this point isn’t likely.
“Much has been said about Yellowstone’s distinctly conservative vision of America.”
The usual foolish acceptance of the Left’s deeply corrupt premises about the United States. Nothing produced by Hollywood carries a “conservative vision for America,” but Progressivism’s completely untruthful characterization of conservatism.
“There is real panic today in Whitehall at the prospect of imminent industrial collapse which risks fracturing the entire governing consensus around our decarbonising commitment”
Who actually gives a toss about the decarbonising commitment that was after all sneaked through Parliament.
What do we want “Recarbonization”
When do we want it “Now”
…the idea of free trade in the era of Chinese industrial power looks increasingly sado-masochistic…
Interestingly, Adam Smith argued against free trade with mercantilist powers.
I think that the appeal of programmes such as Yellowstone shows us that people are finally realising that the State and its institutions have no moral legitimacy. It used to be the case that we would look up to these institutions and the people running them, but does anyone now?
Unfortunately all the public have seen is corruption and moral decay, whether it’s the slopy shoulders of Welby shielding paedophiles, or Starmer and his crew happily taking cheap bribes “within the rules”, and the less said about the BBC the better. Even the medical profession has lost all trust after its enthusiastic acceptance of dubious government diktats during COVID.
Against this backdrop the strong moral code of John Dutton appeals. He knows what is right and wrong, and doesn’t need anyone to tell him. This is distinct from purely “following the rules” beloved by the Starmers of this world. As is evidenced on TV and real life, rules can always be changed. Right and wrong can’t.
It’s too late for Starmer. The mistakes are already far too serious.
But they don’t have another story because McSweeney and McFadden are just party apparatchiks not visionaries, burdened by the history of their party and expectations of its clientele, essentially statist reactionaries.
“……otherwise we will not find our way back.”
Why would we want to go back to the false doctrines of socialism if at last there is a way forward recognising the reality of the human spirit?
I’m hoping Musk will write an article for Unherd one day then McTague can resign on principle too.
” Instead, America was cast — correctly in many ways — as a slave republic which came into existence through violent colonisation.” Name a place that wasn’t.
Difficult question … maybe Iceland?
Pedant alert…
“ The deterioration of living standards and public services are too obvious for anyone to be able to make this case with any degree of sincerity.”
Ew! Verb subject agreement please. The deterioration *is*.
The definition of Populism is it latches onto grievances and then it tells a tale that over simplifies, avoids honesty regarding difficult trade-offs and finds scapegoats. Those three elements inevitably have a strong attraction for many. ‘It’s quite easy, it’ll not cost you much and it’s these people’s fault’.
Intoxicating for many without question, but anyone who thinks a little more will realise that whilst the grievances are often legit the medicine is snake-oil sold by snake-oil merchants.
You’ve provided no argument to the article, just more projection and the usual cut and paste. Thirty years of ideological failure, the wreckage is all around but we press on with it regardless. The blame lies with the technocrats and their NGO proxies.
Unsurprisingly you reached for scapegoats fairly quickly AR. Your ability to think a touch more about complex problems not a strong point on here.
Reading’s not your strong suit is it JW or understanding complexity. How about both of them? You’ve still yet to present an argument, a REAL argument only an ad hom.
Give up the gnostic utilitarianism, you’ll feel so much better for it
You’ve just defined politics, not populism.
That politicians and bureaucrats do not have answers to the problems arising these days is painfully obvious to any knowledgeable person. Substituting quasi-religious beliefs for understanding and throwing more and more money down the black hole created by their fundamental ignorance and incompetence is all that any of the traditional parties can offer. The attraction of Reform is that it is trying to attract competent people whatever their background though whether it will succeed remains to be seen. ‘Morality and ideology’ are symptoms of the failure of competence. To take one example… ‘climate change’. Lacking any genuine scientific and mathematical skills, let alone a sense of proportion, politicians have become a uniformly panicky quasi-religious sect for whom economic suicide is seen as a ‘solution’ to something which isn’t even necessarily a problem, let alone a problem for the UK. History will judge this approach to have been insane, but the sane have little voice in politics.
Good essay. Clearly written without pretension. Too many commentators on UnHerd seem to be more interested in showing the reader how many literary flourishes they can make rathercthan making their core arguments clear.
Very good essay. Not confident that either main party will get the message, never mind change things.
I think the most likely scenario will see UK manufacturing and exports crumble, investment into the UK grind to a halt, the price of bonds approach Greece 2010’s levels and the government will essentially go bankrupt. Both the public and private sectors will be greatly reduced.
Food prices will skyrocket, house prices devalue to historic lows, rationing will be brought back, and the scenes we saw in the summer of thugs attempting to burn down migrant hotels will be replicated all throughout the land.
A spate of terrorist attacks will ensue, both islamist and far right, and the security forces – many of whom will have seen their salary’s crumble, will not be able to cope. The entire edifice of the British establishment will be seen as naked, corrupt, and stupid, and many of them will look to flee, rather than face the wrath of the starving and poor public.
The British monarchy will be utterly useless in this time of trial, and the established church will already have been through one crisis after the other. There will be no institution, not even the hollowed out UK army, that people will be able to look to, to save them. The big cities will become balkanised, into ‘muslim’ and ‘non-muslim’ sectors, and you will see foreign entities – Iranians, Saudis, Turks – providing aid, food and finance to those muslim sectors.
Out of this rubble will determine the future of this nation. Whether it is a washed-up, balkanised nation where (even with the ending of mass migration) the country becomes Islamic – as the native birth rate falls past 1.0 and the muslim birth rate stays over 3.4 – the native population will halve in a generation and the muslim will continue to rapidly grow.
But crucially, controlling the cities, they will have enough MP’s to form a government. 70-80% of UK MP’s come from the cities, and anyone who has driven through these cities will know, the school children are not white anymore, they’ve been driven out to the suburbs and rural areas.
Or, the UK will come to its senses. It will rediscover its God again, and turn back to its Judeo-Christian roots. It will have to make some very tough decisions, but potentially, a multi-ethnic, multi-cultural country could be salvaged. Providing of course mass migration ended. Repatriation of all foreign criminals and illegal immigrants ensued, benefits to migrants stopped – so many would return to their country – then out of that, a much poorer, but potentially better off, UK would survive. Either way, dreadful, dreadful, times are coming to this country, and the people responsible for all of this should be treated as the traitors they are.
What will a “far right” terror attack look like?
I’d imagine the targeting of individuals like the murder of Joe Cox. Or ramming of vehicles into groups of people.
Lt Col Mark Teeton, stabbed, 23/7/2024
David Amess MP, 15/10/2021, RIP.
Fishmonger Hall terrorist attack 21/11/2021; 2 murdered
London Bridge ISIS attack 3/6/2017, 8 murdered
Westminster Bridge terrorist attack 22/3/2017 ; 5 murdered
Pte. Lee Rigby , 22/5/2013, RIP
The story that McSweeney and McFadden tell their voters is that they represent the Britain of the public sector, the universities, the civil servants and the trade unions.
This is the cultural bloc at war with the forces of conservatism. They are open to allies – the Greens, Lib Dems, even the SNP – but they are relying on the above groups to come through for them even when the UK economy is completely bankrupt as the British state is on course to be.
In short, they see politics as culture war in which – like the US Democrats – they represent uniquely the liberal graduate middle-class while purporting to serve the interests of the underclass clients of the public sector and welfare state.
Starmer is not a “centrist”, by his own admission he is a socialist and socialists are the worst of all worlds.
Socialists are responsible for the deaths of millions, Marx, Stalin, Lenin slaughtered millions to create a ‘Socialist Republic’ yet they, and socialists generally are revered. why? To be called a socialist is okay apparently, yet calling someone a Nazi is the worst of all insults.
If Starmer believes he’s both a ‘centrist’ and a socialist he incredibly ignorant, if the public believe it this country is in big trouble
Not sure I understand the point to be made. Is it for or against populism?
Saying sir Harmer is defending the old way of life is like saying Hitler was defending Jews.
The American Indians were not peace loving geniuses who regularly came out with profound statements and were slaughtered by aggressive newcomers.
For every battle they lost to the incomers, there were many examples of where they traded freely and got in well. These are documented in both film and still photographs so it’s not just hearsay.
Before Europeans came, they used to happily slaughter each other in inter tribal wars and were certainly not the helpless victims people claim them to be.
Starmer works for the global elite and hates the white population, so I’m not quite sure of what part of British history and tradition the author thinks he’s defending.
The immorality of the politicians that got us in this mess is far worse than the average person could ever aspire too.
Calling what the British version of the Uniparty has devolved into “Centrist” is a poor joke on actual Centrists. The Uniparty that Starmer and Labour rules for is extremist in nearly every regard.
For the first time I feel a little sympathy for Starmer (or Billy Bunter, as I see his imminent transformation into). He has the wife, ‘our Ang’ and Rachel from Acconts on his case, day and night.
No British government will be able to stand against the tide of mistrust that is sinking them one after another under the deep water of deliberate deception (illegal immigration), incompetence (everywhere you look), and the greed of the political class. When the Emperor’s new clothes were bought by Lord Alli you are justified in expecting the worst is yet to come.
I would suggest the author is far too generous to Starmer. He is not an old-school politician who had some core beliefs and was willing to argue their case and wanted power for purpose. Starmer and Sunak are both politicians who wanted power without purpose. One has succeeded in destroying the Tory party. I suspect the other will destroy the Labour Party.
A most intriguing article, well-writ and stated in excellent language.
All this strained talk about “stories” that must be told, must be changed, must be invented…all to confabulate and convince the non-elite classes who bear the brunt of the elites’ ignorance, mistakes and misrule. The populists? They don’t gin up “stories,” they merely point to existing conditions and then explain how and why things are that way, and how they can/should/must be remedied. They’re not “telling stories,” they’re meeting reality head-on and proposing social and governmental policies to correct the carnage caused by past “stories” which have turned out to be false, damaging and very often outright lies.
Count me in for the populists. We shouldn’t have to live like this, even if our elite story-tellers insist on it.
Starmer used all the methods of a populist, selling easy answers, rabid demonising of target individuals, selective use of facts omitting counter arguments, harnessing the worst of social media
The only difference is that some are slightly more self aware or honest about what they’re doing. Many, including reputable journalists seem to genuinely believe they have such a unique grasp of moral rectitude that when they do it, the end justifies the means, or it somehow doesn’t count as populism.
Starmer is the classic puritan preacher, his mistake was to be so sanctimonious.