If you think that the free speech-v-cancel culture tension has already been pushed to its limits in the UK over the past year, you probably haven’t heard of 40 Days for Life.
The campaign to pray for an end to abortion throughout the period of Lent reached its peak this weekend, drawing Christians across the country together around one of the most significant and controversial issues of our time. One in four women in the UK will experience abortion in their lives. Pro-life groups have worked to make abortions unnecessary by giving women support to keep their children, even up until the last moment of their decision. With such efforts come debate. And with debate comes the difficulty of democracy.
Already, certain local councils such as in Ealing and Richmond in London have caved to activist pressure to ban “pro-lifers” from expressing their views in public, specifically in 150m zones around abortion facilities. Last month, the Northern Ireland Assembly voted to implement a similar censorship zone around all abortion facilities across their country. A similar private member’s bill is in consultation in Holyrood, with MSPs tweeting zealously this weekend about the need to censor pro-lifers.
These so-called “buffer zones” are well-intentioned. Campaigners claim that the pro-lifers “harass” women arriving for appointments. Harassing anyone, particularly vulnerable women, would be deeply wrong and hypocritical of a group claiming to offer help.
But if the volunteers were to engage in harassment, we can rest assured that it is already illegal and would be prosecuted.
In reality, a 2018 review from the UK Home Office found that any instances of harassment were rare outliers, and that the police already had sufficient powers to tackle unlawful conduct.
And so, it’s unsurprising that across the UK, we have seen ideologically-motivated attempts to end “pro-life” activities repeatedly refused by the courts. Take the 2018 court judgment against Nottingham City Council that their injunction against a pro-life campaigner ‘simply could not be justified.’ Take the overturned charges against Brighton campaigner Andrew Stephenson in 2011, and indeed the successful lawsuit brought against the police for his unlawful arrest. Take Southwark Council openly admitting they simply don’t have sufficient evidence to create a buffer zone against pro-life charities, despite the tenacious demands of the Council’s members.
In fact, various women who have received wanted help from the groups to keep their children, right before their abortion appointments, have even spoken out in support of allowing the groups to offer their services to others in need.
And why not keep all options open? New polling from the BBC shows that more than one in ten women have felt “coerced” into having an abortion. Even if not talked into it by partners or “friends”, many women feel they have no option but abortion because of social or economic pressures. Why prevent them of hearing about offers to resolve these pressures?
Where Ealing and Richmond have already implemented “buffer zones”, even silent prayer is now illegal. How they’ll ever be “caught” is anyone’s guess. But refusal to pay a fine for the thoughtcrime can lead to prosecution.
Free speech is both hardest and most important to support when you’re hearing something that you disagree with. For those that support abortion, that means allowing others to voice their concerns and offer alternative options. There’s no point supporting free speech for a popular cause, but not a minority view. And furthermore, refusing to let the vulnerable women considering abortion hear about alternative options available to them is surely detrimentally patronising – all for the sake of an ideological “win”. There is comfort in the discomfort of democracy. We all have a right to be a part of the public conversation, and might just benefit from hearing out those who see things differently.
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Post-liberal politics and why we should reaffirm a uniquely British way of life
Post-Liberalism is a term that is often used in our discourse with far-reaching implications for the future of British politics. It refers to a vision of society opposed to Francis Fukuyama’s claim of the ‘End of History’, and the inexorable expansion of liberalism. A post-liberal society is therefore one where liberal ideas such as individual freedom and treating people with equal respect, as well as government and juridical neutrality, are left behind. The decline of such principles has clear risks for the nature and quality of political discourse, such as occurred in the vituperative nature of interactions between some ‘Remainers’ and ‘Brexiteers’ post- 2016 referendum.
Political polarisation is, however, most noticeable in the formation of the woke left and the populist right, which have filled the vacuum left by the weakening of liberalism in Britain. How can Britain avoid a dichotomous post-liberal future? I argue that an important alternative is still available, one that entails a reaffirmation of the British way of life guided by the institutions, values, traditions and history that have made Britain a free society.
The first ideological force seeking to divide Britain is ‘wokeism,’ a neologism that has come to the forefront of political debate during the past decade. The woke left in Britain aims to create a moral identity for Britons, predicated on specific characteristics such as race, gender and sexuality. The widespread application of this ideological force would render the individual almost servile to woke culture.
Thus, individuals are told to think, say and write only narratives that are branded as ‘correct’. The latest example was the hounding out of Kathleen Stock from the University of Sussex for having ‘incorrect’ views about gender. This shows that wokeness seeks to paint British values such as free expression as something wholly ‘bad’. Such a reductionist approach totally neglects the positive, inclusive and forward-looking nature of much of British society.
Furthermore, wokeism also led to a rise of the second divisive trend in post-liberal politics – the ascension of the p and social coopulist right. Populism is a stance and rhetoric of politics that claims to speak for the silent majority or ‘the common person’ against the liberal, and increasingly ‘woke’ establishment. Right-wing populism builds on these themes by leaning on rhetoric and policies that foreground at least one of the following: economic nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and conservatism. Through these, right-wing populists claim to give voice to the people neglected by the modern liberal society. Giving voice to the people has amounted to unrestrained authoritarianism, with the populist right presenting itself as the messianic solution to all the problems of society.
Although the woke left and the populist right have different political objectives, they possess remarkable similarities. Namely, both see the ballot box as the sole legitimiser of their actions, and their populist rhetoric constructs a battle between ‘oppressors’, the establishment, and the ‘oppressed’ masses. Finally, both seek to hijack the power of the state in order to achieve their political aims, in the name of some intangible promise of a better future, for specific social groupings, whether that is specific ethnic minorities or the white working classes. These political aims are summed up in slogans such as “Black Lives Matter” and “Take Back Control”. Consequently, post-liberal Britain is presented with ideological forces which seek to undermine the very freedoms that have made this country great.
In this reality of two ideological extremes, we must pursue ‘a middle way’. This approach is called the British way of life, centred on the moral life of the individual. This moral life is demonstrated through the ability of individuals to choose and act in accordance with often unwritten norms and traditions. This helps to mitigate the effects of cumbersome bureaucracy as symbolised by Whitehall and Holyrood, which squeeze the freedoms, lifestyles and preferences of the individual. The British way of life should, therefore, centre on a view of freedom, where individuals have the autonomous power to choose their own conception of the good life. However, this view does not mean advocacy for a licentious free-for-all society. The moral life requires individuals to appeal to social institutions such as the community, religion, and the family. Only this approach to politics will be able to temper the excesses of wokeism and right-wing populism.
In short, the British way of life centres on the importance of choice, rights and duties, fundamental to a free society. This nurtures a healthy society, where people’s individuality is shaped by our community, values, history, traditions, and their own choices. Therefore, Britain should be fearful of attempts to change our religious, historical, habitual practices in favour of ideological preferences over the role of the state, speech, statues etc…
To conclude, wokeism and right-wing populism seek the concentration and preservation of power they approve of, by either appealing to social justice and identity politics, or to populist rhetoric. In face of this, politics should affirm the moral identity of the individual. A uniquely British way of life, therefore, remains the best defence against the divisive forces of post-liberalism.
Picture Credit
Ojel L. Rodriguez Burgos is a Policy Fellow of The Pinsker Centre, a campus-based think tank which facilitates discussion on global affairs and free speech. The views in this article are the author’s own.
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Britain needs to be more family-friendly – but not on Corbyn’s model
Jeremy Corbyn is back in the news, though for admirable and respectable reasons this time. In a speech to the Commons on Tuesday, Corbyn argued that the current two-child limit to parental support benefits is immoral, specifically immoral to the 3rd, 4th or 5th child born to that parent, and instead it’s time “to scrap the two-child limit on benefits, and create a social security system that treats people with dignity, care and respect.”
It is quite common for socialists to claim that “it’s time” for the measures they propose, thus implying it has been a deliberate, cruel choice thus far to not pursue the measures, rather than caused by any practical limits. Nonetheless, stopped clocks and all that, and Corbyn has actually managed to touch on a problem quite serious in the British polity: we have an aging population and a declining birth rate, a combination which is, put nicely, a demographic time-bomb.
It was not that long ago that a Tory minister received quite substantial criticism for proposing a pro-natalist policy, which must of course raise eyebrows as to why Corbyn is being lauded for proposing something so similar. I think we can chalk that one up to a mistaken belief that the unnamed minister was attempting to “engineer” a birth rate change whilst Corbyn just wants to support the children born anyway.
Corbyn is, fundamentally, correct. The British state needs to do more to support children, but the focus should be on families, rather than children alone. By focusing on “children”, Corbyn is – unintentionally, I think we need to admit – neglecting the role parents play in both the creation and support of children. An avalanche of studies show the advantage children experience when both of their biological parents are involved in their childhood. Most importantly, the family is the finest form of welfare available in the world, and thinking the state can ever do more than supplement that welfare is misguided at best.
Since Corbyn has wandered into normative questions, we also need to clarify what is actually “immoral” in his eyes. Is it that further children would not get any support from the state? Perhaps, but then the immorality is not caused by the state, it is caused by nature as a rule and ameliorated by the state as an exception. Is it that, in providing support for the first two children but not any subsequent children? Maybe, but it is a dubious claim that state welfare is an expression of moral worth, though I appreciate I am battling with a socialist on this.
Moreover, this might be a typical “nasty party” attitude to take, but why does Corbyn stop at the 5th child? Why not make the point regarding the 10th, or 20th child? Pro-natalist policies are good, when they support the lives of children already in the world, but if we are not careful we can generate a trap in which it pays to have children, and not work. Incentivising parents to have more children when it is the state supporting them and not their own employment is risky business.
What it should be doing instead is less direct. Instead, the British state needs to foster an environment that is more supportive of families, both in the material and in the attitudinal sense, which I explored in a recent paper with the think tank Civitas. What is an unfortunate truth of this situation is that birth rates are almost uniformly a symptom of the social environment, with a positive correlation between economic development and falling birth rates. As far as I know, no developed nation has successfully broken this link, but that does not mean it cannot be done.
If the economic development of a nation has a bearing on birth rates, but birth rates are not the primary concern of national governments in their economic policies, then we cannot rely on the economic argument only, but there is still the possibility that economic policies could be shaped around families more. For one, as the Tory minister suggested, reforming the tax system to offer tax breaks in proportion to children (in both number and age) is an obvious option. The fact that Hungary has pursued such policies suggests it is possible, so the political will is all that stands in the way.
Inevitably, we need to think about housing. Property offers the most secure physical environment for parents to raise children in, especially as they make the transition from tenants to owner-occupiers, with which comes a greater degree of security. As has become common to remark on, millennials and Generation Z are facing crises of home-ownership, and without the security that can offer, families will start later and later, which not only has an effect on birth rates, but will mean those children born will be born into a world of insecurity.
Corbyn is right that the British state needs to support children more, but he has missed the key point: the British state is not hospitable to families, and needs to be restructured to be so.
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One simple way to fix the government | Daniel Evans
Sorry, not this government. The idea of proportional representation seems to be fluttering about, but you don’t even need to go that far. There’s a much simpler solution which doesn’t rely on changing the electoral system. Even better, all you have to do is lean into existing political expectations. And, well, it’s not so much one simple way to fix the government. First comes the political party, which then becomes the government.
Solution
Put party appointments, candidates, and occupants of elected positions under the direct and total command of the party leader. Yes. Run the party like a company, military unit, the mafia, etc. whatever comparison works for you. In other words, like any group organised to actually achieve a common purpose in the face of external pressures.
But what about party members?
Shouldn’t the members have a say? No. At least not the way they do now. It’s better that way. They’ll come around when their party wins.
Party members don’t really have much, if any, of a say in party matters as it is. Whether it’s council, parliamentary, or leadership candidates, there’s quite a lot of filtering which goes on before they are presented to members. At the lower level, staggeringly few party members vote on internal party association positions, or even council candidates, so there’s no real loss there. At the higher levels, in the Conservative Party, for example, Kemi Badenoch was the most popular choice for leadership this time around, among the members, before MPs filtered her out and narrowed the field to Truss and Sunak. Now it looks like the party isn’t even really getting Truss. (A lot of that is her fault to be fair).
As a party member, what exactly are you losing by not getting a say? Even after all that, you were almost certainly going to vote for the party anyway, so what are you even complaining about? Isn’t it more important to get behind those who reflect your principles, or back who you think is the best shot, etc. rather than “having a say” exactly?
The reason you want a say isn’t that you want power, exactly, it’s that you want to feel like you matter. Trying to get thousands of cooks to meddle in the broth isn’t the way to matter. When you identify the leader and plan that you want to back, fall in line, and follow their lead. As part of the masses, you have a very small amount of individual energy. If you want it to do anything, it needs to be focused like a laser. Let yourself be focused.
Success happens when there’s a plan and everyone sticks to it. It doesn’t happen when everyone starts fighting over their own ideas. Make the party leader ultimately responsible not just for their plan but for all the resources and people they will need to execute it. That means party members do not get a say. Party members must be rewarded in other ways, but that’s a topic for another piece.
Loyalty
There is one aspect of party candidate selection which is worth keeping: loyalty. The selection process today selects for loyalty above all else, to the party, and to nebulous groups of insiders within the party itself.
Loyalty is important. You need everyone to act as one, working to the same goal, with the same ethos, presenting a strong, united front. The leader at the top should have a plan and will need loyal people to get it done. Make it obvious where that loyalty is going to – to the leader – rather than vaguely to the party, which really means planless, disorganised, venal, behind-the-sceners.
Members don’t really have a say as it is. When it comes to it, most don’t seem to mind and vote for the party in elections anyway. Activists keep knocking on doors, delivering leaflets, donating, etc. Lean into that political reality, clear up the leadership structure, and, even better, make it much more honest by showing plainly where that loyalty really goes.
Just in that regard, putting everyone under the direct and total responsibility of the party leader would make everything better for the candidates, party activists, and the party as a whole.
For candidates, they don’t need to waste time with the chaos and pettiness of the local party and activists. They don’t need to waste untold hours doing pointless tasks to prove their loyalty. If they owe their position entirely to the party leader, that’s where you get the loyalty. Remove some big obstacles to getting the best candidates 1) the time they have to spend doing politics instead of whatever highly demanding civilian job they have, and 2) the risk of not getting selected even after all the loyalty-proving they have to go through.
Do you want better politicians? Make it easier for the better ones to put themselves forward.
For the party leader, the benefits are obvious. He squashes the potential for distraction and dissent, potential rivals from within his own camp, and gets to act much more pragmatically.
This all increases the chances of winning. You like winning, don’t you?
What If It All Goes Wrong?
If the leader turns out not to be a winner, at least it’s totally clear where the problem is – the leader. If the party can only go where the leader does, and the party fails, you know what to do. This makes it much easier to cut your losses, move on, and try again with someone else in a new party.
This criticism is more or less a criticism of the status quo anyway. When party leaders don’t work out, the leaders change. Often the party as a whole changes, merely the branding stays familiar. How many of you have asked whether the Conservative or Labour Parties are really Conservative or really Labour?
What’s the difference, practically, between junking an entire party with its leader and starting again fresh, and more honestly?
Better Government
If you were reading closely enough, you noticed that the solution included total responsibility over those in elected positions.
Let’s face it, people don’t really elect the individual MP. They vote by party or leader. Lean into that political expectation. Use it to clear up and prevent parliament becoming whatever it is now. Stuffed full of has-beens, inadequates, and failures, many occupying “safe seats”.
The party leader should be able to fire and hire as they see fit to the parliamentary seats they/their party has already won. Accepting this should be a condition of candidacy in the first place. It could even be the first law the party passes.
The ability to replace bad MPs might keep them good for longer and allow for a proper cycle of “tested and done” out for “promising and new”. For example; what is the point of Matt Hancock? He’s just blocking someone potentially useful, or at least someone who is not a net negative. Let’s be real, nobody voted for Matt Hancock. Come on. Why wait around? Fire him and get someone else.
Spent losers hanging on is one of the reasons the Conservative Party today is having so much trouble. It happened to the Labour Party too in the dying days of the Gordon Brown government too. Too many MPs hanging around long past their usefulness. It diminishes the pool of potential ministers.
Before you know it, we’re all pretending that Dehenna Davison is a minister who actually does any governing.
The Party Leader
Command over all party appointments, candidates, etc. would include the party leader himself.
No party leadership elections. Most people vote by party or for a party leader, presidential style. Lean into that. Spare everyone the mixed and mashed chaos of whatever normally goes on in the background of party politics. Spare everyone the same mixed and mashed chaos of what goes on in the foreground of party politics!
But isn’t it a problem if you can’t remove a leader from the party? No. Just back the leader you want in a new party. It doesn’t really matter if someone can’t be removed as leader in a party if everyone leaves to do something different. Just look at UKIP/Nigel Farage/the Brexit Party. And now Reform UK or whatever the Brexit Party rebranded as.
The solution for fixing the government
In summary: there’s a leader, a plan, their team, who they will hire and fire to get the job done, and do you want it or not? If yes, you have a structure which might actually be able to get something done. If not, don’t vote for it, and from your perspective, nothing is lost. Simple.
