A couple of weeks ago Keir Starmer made headlines by claiming that too many people from overseas are recruited by the NHS. For this he was, of course, slandered as the second coming of Sir Oswald Mosely or Enoch Powell by his own side, who, despite their protestations to the contrary, rarely look beyond the headline when it comes to statements about immigration.
Sir Keir made the point that immigration was not the key to ending the staffing crisis faced by the NHS, a point in which he is perfectly correct. Rather than relying on foreign workers to fill the shortfalls in staffing, he would instead “train people in this country” to return to the goal that every country that seeks: remaining somewhat close to self-sustaining one of its most important government services.
An estimated 34% of people joining the NHS last year were from overseas, up from 18% just 8 years ago, a massively disproportionate amount compared to the wider population. There remains in England a shortage of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives. This compounded with the issues of the COVID backlogs has meant that the health service now faces some of the longest waiting periods in its history. Going into a winter with the ongoing fuel and power it is clear that, amongst the litany of other permacrises the service seems to face, the NHS may be entering one of the most testing seasons of its 75 years.
Why not then, if the situation is indeed so dire, accept as many immigrants as it takes to see us through? This makes sense to the types to whom immigration is a hammer and every problem a nail, but continuing this reliance on outsiders to prop up our geriatric and unreformable healthcare system can only end in disaster. They would have us prioritise short term relief over long term investment, a propping up of an overreaching shanty than to build with foresight the proper foundations of a functioning institution
But it makes sense to build from within. For one, it makes no sense to have our healthcare system, one of the most important things in the lives of millions of our countrymen, reliant on those who could at any time up and leave to go home. This has already happened with many Poles who after the covid pandemic dissipated have decided to go back to the continent, affecting services like bus provision in Birmingham particularly hard; so why are we so blind to it’s possible happening in a far more crucial industry? There is also a conversation to be had about our own homegrown medical personnel leaving for America after their training; but one problem at a time here.
This all feeds into the wider discourse around immigration, which has once again hit a record high. 1 in 6 people in England and Wales were born abroad, yet the ONS has decided – for no reason at all, I’m sure – to no longer record ethnicity statistics, and coincidentally demands for housing and services are strained to breaking point. The arguments are tired, but now with this it seems some are finally awake to our current reality that mass immigration is unfair and unjust to all parties save two: left-wing parties who prey on the votes of migrants; and big businesses who can save on labour costs by endlessly importing low cost workers from the third world.
All others suffer for the system; native peoples find their wages undercut and the value of their vote diluted, their languages and culture displaced from inner cities now turned to foreign ghettos. These areas are inhabited by the destitute peoples drawn to a strange place where they have no roots or history, taken from countries far poorer than ours who desperately need the wealth and skills of the people poached from them by the lazy politicians and managers of our institutions who would rather paper over cracks than build from within a stable and secure foundation.
This is a problem far wider reaching than just the NHS, but given that that particular institution is tantamount to our golden calf it’s a good place to start the discourse. For many in Labour however this discourse is unthinkable, as is any that seeks to come up with any solution to our immigration questions with any other answer than “no human is illegal, just let them all in”. This is Starmer’s problem; there remains in Labour the strain of far-left terminally online social vandals that took charge during the Corbyn administration. Though he is leading a cautious return to the centre, he will be answerable in part to these cerebral vacuums, as will his (often just as miserably online) MPs who have already shown themselves to have a habit of breaking rank, as seen in their attending picket lines over the last few months, in order to appease their Twitter followings.
Starmer, whose wife works in the NHS, might be the political equivalent of a plain ham sandwich but on this he knows what is needed, even if it puts him out of lockstep with his party, to whom even suggesting a policy on immigration that isn’t throwing open the door to the world is equivalent to having a televised fireside chat in which he reads extracts from Mein Kampf whilst sat atop a chair made from slave-picked cotton. It remains to be seen whether he sticks to his guns, or will be cowed back into toeing the line by his party, though on this it can be assured; Keir Starmer is right about the NHS.
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The Original “Original Right-Wing Gramscians”
Last year, The Mallard’s Chairman, Jake Scott, wrote two essays titled “The Original Right-Wing Gramscians”, detailing the history, ideology, and influence of free-market think-tanks in post-war Britain.
However, unlike the post-war free marketeers, whose “right-wing Gramscian” descriptor has been added retroactively, the French ‘New Right’ (Nouvelle Droite) openly characterised themselves, as did others, as “Gramscians of the Right” – both during their intellectual ascendancy in the 1970s, and during revived interest in their movement around the turn of the millennium.
Whilst technically established in 1968 with the foundation of the ‘Groupement de Recherche et d’Etudes pour la Civilisation Européenne’ (GRECE; Research and Study Group for European Civilization), the most recent attempt at a unified doctrine for the French (and, by extension, European) New Right is found in an essay titled “The French New Right in The Year 2000” (FNR2K).
A relatively short work, the FNR2K reads less as a political manifesto and more as an intellectual one. Granted, the content is political, but it doesn’t confine itself to the trappings of electoral politics. After all, the French New Right (FNR) grew out of electoral alienation, instigated by consecutive right-wing electoral defeats throughout the 1960s.
This prioritisation of intellectualism over electoralism is made clear off-the-bat when Alain De Benoist, often dubbed the FNR’s leading figure, dispels the idea that the FNR constitutes a “political strategy”. Instead, the FNR is defined as a “school of thought” attempting to “formulate a metapolitical perspective”.
Metapolitics, Benoist continues, is “not politics by other means”. Rather, it is the idea that “ideas play a fundamental role in collective consciousness”. All human actions, trivial or revolutionary, take place within a framework of “convictions, beliefs, and representations which provide meaning and direction”. These “convictions, beliefs, and representations” are the focus of the FNR’s work. In simpler terms, metapolitics is that which is outside, but shapes, the development of politics.
FNR2K is divided into three sections: Predicaments, Foundations, and Positions. ‘Predicaments’ is divided into three sub-divisions: What is Modernity?, The Crisis of Modernity, and Liberalism: The Main Enemy, all of which provide context to the FNR’s intellectual work.
‘Foundations’ establishes the FNR’s theoretical first principles in relation to a variety of topics: man, society, politics, economics, ethics, technology, the world, and cosmos. Throughout, these first principles are juxtaposed with the theoretical first principles found in liberal modernity.
Finally, ‘Positions’ summarises that which the FNR is for and against, as well as an additional 13th stand-alone commitment to promoting “independence of thought and a return to discussion of ideas”.
The FNR interprets Modernity as a convergence of five processes: Individualization (the destruction of traditional communal life), Massification (the adoption of standardised lifestyles), Desacralization (the replacement of religious understanding with scientific understanding), Rationalization (the hegemony of “instrumental reason” via capital and technology), and Universalization (the globalisation of assumed-to-be superior models of social organisation).
The Crisis of Modernity refers to the failure of these processes to produce their initial promises of Freedom and Equality. Freedom has been reduced to a procedural formality; it means to operate “within the marketplace, technoscience or communications without ever being able to influence their course”. Erstwhile, Equality has failed two-fold. It has both “betrayed” the people it allegedly sought to benefit (e.g. the murderous nature of communist regimes) and has been “trivialized” (e.g. growing economic inequality under capitalism). Specifically, this has happened despite Equality being the foundational principle of both communism (equal access to means of production) and capitalism (equal opportunity to prosper within a market economy).
As such, the end result of Modernity is “the most empty civilization mankind has ever known”. Contrary to a free and equal paradise, “the language of advertising serves as the paradigm for public discourse, the primacy of money has made commodities an omnipresent feature of society. Man has turned from a social animal to a hedonistic object; he occupies an unreal world of drugs, virtual reality, media-hyped sports” – he operates as a “solitary individual” amid an “anonymous and hostile crowd”.
Considered to be “the dominant ideology of modernity”, it follows that Liberalism is the FNR’s primary intellectual target. Attacked for reducing life to individualistic economic competition, erstwhile imposing a hypocritical notion of value-neutrality, the FNR considers Liberalism responsible for creating a barren existence: survival for the sake of survival, an existence devoid of higher purpose or aspiration.
However, Liberalism is not the only target. Whilst charitably described as a “legitimate reaction”, the FNR dismisses Marxism as a counter-productive and misdirected response to the problems arising from Liberalism, being rooted in common modern presuppositions.
As an example, Benoist points to the modern welfare state. Emerging as a reaction to the autonomous market, the welfare state does not restore historic communal ties undone by Liberalism. Rather, it assisted in re-engineering society to adhere to the matrix of mere production and consumption. Whilst Liberalism is nothing more than a “global system of production and reproduction”, Marxism has created conformity around “an opaque redistributive structure”, one which has “generalised irresponsibility” and has transformed members of society into “nothing more than recipients of the public system”.
In summary, Modernity has reduced humanity to the lowest-common denominator; to the barebones of production and consumption, supplementing its constituents with a hypermodern array of metastasized rights and a dehumanising system of welfare. Compounded, the end result is a frightful and depersonalised lumpen.
In response to this hellish existence, the FNR begins to lay the ‘Foundations’ of its counter-ideology. At bottom-level, this means recognising a distinction between Pluriversuum and Continuum; a distinction between what is diverse and particular (‘plural’) and what is constant and universal (‘continuous’).
Contrary to Modern depictions of man, either as an “infinitely malleable” atomised individual or the sum of a single specialised factor (i.e., economy; homo economicus) – man is neither wholly determinable or determined.
For example, one can’t change his ethnicity or family, but can, in a moral sense, choose to “go beyond himself or debase himself”. In this instance, the Pluriversuum of man is exemplified by the natural diversity of communities which exist in the world, whilst the Continuum of man is exemplified by his ability to engage in decisions, irrespective of his particular community and its customs. Neither is more key to man’s nature than the other; they are distinct but equally important aspects of what he truly is.
Against the backdrop of the first section, the FNR sees Modernity as reducing Earthly existence to Continuum (technical decision-making within a globalised system of production and consumption) at the expense of Pluriversum; liberal modernity means global homogenization (or, as it has become known in some circles: globohomo).
Given this, it follows that the origins of man, a social animal, as well as the affairs of his society, are also beholden to this logic. Society cannot be reduced to a homogenised collective or aggregated individuals, but a “body of communities” – families, neighbourhoods, localities, national ethnicities and supranational groups; they are distinct and defined by their respective, precise, and unique relation to each other.
Politics is an art, offering a vibrant plurality of forms, renditions, improvements and cultivations, unlike the Modern understanding which situates politics as a system of management; decisions are made to be purely technical and “neutral”, denying any fundamental alternatives to the machine, reducing politics to a matter of stability, rather than the deliberation and actualisation of ideas.
Economics (oikos-nomos; family law) must be recontextualised, from the narrow realm of immediate and quantifiable transaction to a broader understanding which incorporates distinctly qualitative values, such as beauty, ecology, family, and ethics.
Ethical values, whilst universally contingent on the distinction between good and bad, and other such related categories, must be allowed to organically develop into specific customs appropriate for particular societies. The universal reduction of morality to “practical materialism” must be resisted. This principle of striving towards excellence, provided specific meaning by context, is also true of different modes of life within a community; a good plumber is better than a bad philosopher.
Technology, whilst celebrated for its “Promethean” capabilities, must be harmoniously balanced with environmental custodianship. Concern for the natural world should stem not from government regulation or technophobia, but from a shared moral conscience; one which earnestly wishes for future generations to inherit a world “no less beautiful, no less rich, and no less diverse than the world we know today”.
Having established their given context and theoretical response to said context, the FNR2K concludes with its ‘Positions’ – what it is against and for:
Against Uprooting, For Strong Community Identities; Against Racism, For Difference; Against Immigration, For Cooperation; Against Sexism, For Gender; Against The New Class, For Bottom-Up Autonomy; Against Jacobinism, For a Federal Europe; Against Depoliticization, For Democracy; Against Productivism, For New Forms of Labour; Against Ruthless Economic Policies, For Economy at the Service of the People; Against Gigantism, For Local Communities; Against Megalopolis, For Cities on a Human Scale; Against Unbridled Technology, For Integral Ecology; For Independence of Thought and a Return to Discussion of Ideas.
Many of these points will be intuitively, if not immediately, understood, such as the first, third, ninth, tenth, eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth. After all, these are matters regularly discussed and supported by more traditional conservatives: social cohesion, national identity, strong borders, developing social and economic capital, aesthetical refinement of all kinds, and environmental custodianship.
Although there has been strong pushback against ‘gender ideology’ and corresponding issues (i.e. transgenderism), one shouldn’t be misinterpret De Benoist’s use of ‘gender’ – he’s saying very much the same thing: men and women are ontologically different and one cannot, and should not, become the other.
Even unfamiliar terms like “The New Class” immediately become familiar once De Benoist pins down a summary:
“…the manpower for the media, large national and multinational firms, and international organisations. This New Class produces and reproduces… the same type of person: cold-blooded specialists, rationality detached from day to day realities… engenders abstract individualism, utilitarian beliefs, a superficial humanitarianism, indifference to history, an obvious lack of culture, isolation from the real world, the sacrifice of the real to the virtual, an inclination to corruption, nepotism and to buying votes… The New Class depersonalises the leadership of Western societies and… lessens their sense of responsibility.”
All this said, some points are likely less understood from the get-go. Despite being listed second, the commitment to ‘difference’ is perhaps the central defining tenet of the FNR. Dubbed “the right to difference” De Benoist suggests, as a matter of principle, that diversity is good – diversity of people, cultures, systems, products, religions, and ideas.
Placing primary emphasis on ethnocultural diversity, the “right to difference” is meant to counteract what De Benoist sees and refers to as “the ideology of sameness” – an all-encompassing term for global homogenization and all its various forms: mass immigration, economic and cultural globalisation, philosophical universalism, egalitarianism, and so on.
However, whilst the “right to difference” forms the basis for the FNR’s support for group-based, individual, and ideological differences, it also provides a basis for conserving differences in a whole host of other domains.
Democracy is, first and foremost, understood as a rejection of universal equality; it recognises “a people” – defined by a common, but distinct, sense of membership – as the basis for legitimate deliberation and decision-making, both in the name of the common good and as an expression of individual agency. This is situated in contrast to depoliticization, which does not recognise the existence of a people, and by extension the sovereignty of the people, allowing bureaucrats, technocrats, and lobbyists to forego pluralism and disqualify certain political programs at will.
Similarly, instead of a “Europe of Nations” or a “European Nation”, the FNR2K poses organic regional secession from existing European nation-states, and the ‘bottom-up’ federalized along Eurocultural lines (including Russia), affording distinct identities and devolved powers to all principalities, with the exception of “those matters which escape the competence of the lower level” and apply to “all the federal communities” of Europe, such as major military, diplomatic, legal, environmental, and infrastructural matters.
The FNR believes: “the nation-state is now too big to manage little problems and too small to address big ones” – civilizational superorganisms, organised in a polycentric patchwork, albeit with integrated research, industry, communications, and currency, are necessary for securing autonomy, tranquillity, and difference.
Labour must be reinterpreted beyond a ‘productivist’ understanding – it must incorporate work that is conducted and valued for qualitative, rather than merely quantitative, reasons; this ranges from labours of love and duty to ensuring the fruits of labour strive for timelessness, rather than obsolescence.
Additionally, modernity has created a society “where payment by salary is the principal means of integration into social life”. As such, the mission of reimagining labour is two-fold: “to work less in order to work better and in order to have some time for oneself to live and enjoy life”.
Tell me: doesn’t it feel as though you’ve heard all of this before? That you have felt, read, or even articulated such sentiments yourself? To be clear: I am not remarking on the originality or unoriginality of the FNR2K. After all, what good would such a point prove? ‘Originality’ – the moralist insistence to reinvent, the insistence of newness as a virtue – is a cornerstone of modernity.
Rather, I am remarking on how a document published over 20 years ago still bears an uncanny resemblance to matters the British right has, seemingly, only begun to publicly engage with, even if only peripherally, over the past few years: disaffection with liberalism, deracination in a society struggling to be cosmopolitan, the ‘bloatedness’ of institutions, the sense of ennui amid barely managed decline, the ‘re-emersion’ of tribal and class antagonism, the vicious discourse surrounding hereditarian innateness and social malleability, the homogenisation of everything from brand logos to community identities, from the sound of music to values and customs, from architecture to our options at election time.
Despite this, Francophobia has become something of an informal cornerstone of the British right’s identity; THB Britain Should Invade France, etc. Such parochialism, whether sincere principle or hollow performance, does not aid our political or intellectual development.
If the British right is prepared to concede, as it has done so before, that despite historic animosity and cultural differences, Britain and France share common civilisational challenges (multi-faceted demographic change, the future of freedom, sclerotic and hostile institutions, etc.) then it should also be prepared to engage with and learn from French – and more broadly, European – interpretations of affairs.
It’s no debate. The French right talks about positive visions for the future, the British right talks about the Plank of the Week. Whilst the British right mobilised to find footage of Keir Starmer not wearing a seatbelt, the French right almost made Eric Zemmour president of the republic. In Britain, we’ve only just got around to discussing illegal immigration. By contrast, France is way ahead of us.
It’s clear that many of our problems are here at home, not with the “Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys”. Given how intellectually barren the political landscape is generally, particularly on the right, perhaps it wouldn’t hurt to look beyond the English Channel, and see what our continental adjacents can offer as inspiration.
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Breakfast with Thierry Baudet (Part III)
In mid-July, the Mallard was fortunate to have breakfast with Thierry Baudet, leader of the Dutch ‘Forum for Democracy’ (FVD) party in the Netherlands. We discussed his views on manufactured consent, immigration, CBDC, and climate change; and his new book ‘The Covid Conspiracy’. Part II can be read here.
TM: Why do you think that your party is allowed to exist?
TB: Well, they are currently trying to pass a law to make it possible to forbid it. The Dutch Secret Service published a report about undermining of public faith in established institutions. They call it ‘anti-institutional extremism’. They claim that it occurs when a narrative is created which undermines public trust in institutions. They claim that it is dangerous for democracy. They then claim that that means it should be able to ban any political party which might so undermine trust.
TM: And that just happens to be you?
TB: Yes, parties that disagree with the Covid narrative, parties which might have sympathy for Russia, parties who do not agree with mass immigration. It shows that we are slouching towards totalitarianism. There is one single allowed approach to all issues and there is no room for difference of opinion.
TM: Do you think a party like yours might spring up in the UK?
TB: I don’t know. Your political system is extremely difficult to penetrate for small or fringe parties. It is a general trend in Europe, and probably also in the US, that you are not allowed to doubt the underlying assumptions anymore. Go back to the 1960s and the Vietnam war: then, there were people arguing in America about fighting communism abroad. Nowadays, every politician just agrees that ‘something must be done’ about Russia/climate Change/refugees etc. There is no public discussion allowed. They want militant democracies.
TM: What do you feel are the other differences between FVD and other European right-wing parties?
TB: First, we are much more radical. The AfD, for instance, does not want to leave the EU.
Second, we are the only group to create a social and economic framework for our members. This is not something that we have seen with other movements in Europe, we are the most progressive from that point of view.
Third, we embrace aesthetics and culture. We think that what we offer instead of the other parties is the Western tradition. We talk a lot about beauty, music and traditional architecture. I do not see the others talking about that but it is absolutely crucial to the conservative message. We have aesthetics on our side. We have love on our side. We love the things that have been created for us and the tradition that we have inherited. We are not just liberals; we actually have a vision for a completely different way of living. This has not been crystalised yet but a lot of our members are actively searching a means to be religious again. A means to experience the transcendental dimension in life. You cannot go without those things, it is every aspect of your life which is not just the political.
TM: It seems to me that a lot of people do not care about those transcendental dimensions anymore. Do you think that’s true? If so, why?
TB: Yes, a lot of people don’t care about it. But I also think that there is an ideology behind ugliness. I believe it is linked to the teachings of the Frankfurt school. They believe that beauty, the family, national identity, etc were all elements of fascism. These thinkers have decided that they should target the beautiful. It is why the left wing reveres ugliness. They like the idea of harmony being disturbed, they have been taught that harmony is associated with fascism, and it is their job to destroy it. They are told that if they build things in a beautiful way, it is kitsch. They want ‘happy chaos’ – but that doesn’t exist. We are transitioning to a new era with no focal point, no traditional family. A world where everything is fluid and deconstruct-able. This is very much the dominant philosophy, and it is of course in the interest of large corporations because it turns people into consumers.
TM: Quite a bleak view, Thierry. Do you have any hope? Do you think it will change?
TB: I think that the human will for liberty is stronger but that this malaise may last for decades. I think it might become a lot worse before it gets better.
The only thing that I think I can do is continue fighting. I’m not going to go down with this, and become bitter… I will try as hard as possible to live a good life. Secondly, I think that we can connect with each other and help each other have a nice life. There is a lot that we can do if we are inventive and remain loyal to one another. It is very difficult for any state to control everybody.
We can’t foresee the future in every detail, but I meet a lot of fantastic people speaking out. There is a real will and energy among people to regroup and form alliances and set up platforms.
TM: So, it’s not over?
TB: It’s not over.
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Ukraine is the origin of Europe’s next refugee crisis
As Russia is poised to invade Ukraine, with a build-up of as many as 100,000 troops on the border and a concurrent supply of blood banks, commentators are concerned with what this might mean for the rest of the European continent. It may seem selfish to consider the impacts on Western Europe of a ground war in Ukraine, but an inability to think clearly about such ramifications led to a series of ‘forever wars’ in the Middle East, a refugee crisis in the Mediterranean, and the precipitation of homegrown terrorism.
A recent Spectator article, from Owen Matthews, considered that economic sanctions on Russia would likely be enough to deter any invasion, as Putin does not want or need ‘more chunks of Ukraine – there’s no strategic, political or economic upside in fighting an attritional war over open country’. Perhaps not, and the cost of war would certainly be prohibitive, but this presumes that the gas lines to Europe will be turned off, at any point; Russia would not want that, as it would help to cover any military spending, and Europe cannot even consider it, as Germany closes down her nuclear plants and British energy bills are set to soar.
But Russia can destabilise Europe in other ways; and the easiest way is to cause a refugee crisis.
There are three main reasons why this is a likely possibility at this point. First, the Russian style of warfare is one that easily displaces populations: their typical attack plan is to besiege and pummel cities into submission, either with artillery or air support, and concurrently blockade ports until the population submits. The experiences of Russian tactics in Chechnya and Syria are evidence of this: in 2000, before nine years of attritional warfare would see Chechnya reincorporated into the Russian Federation, the Siege of Grozny decimated the city to an extent not seen since the Second World War. An estimated half a million people lived in Grozny by the time of the siege; today, there is just over half that number.
Syria is the same story, with a few details changed. Rather than commit a ground presence, Russia engaged itself in the Syrian Civil War mostly in the air, with what was ultimately a five-year campaign that targeted anti-government positions, but killed as many as 2,000 civilians within the first six months. The refugee fallout of the Syrian Civil War cannot be laid solely at Putin’s door, but it is undeniable that the Russian style of warfare played a significant role in its creation.
Then there is the actual population of Ukraine. Any ground war will not be a repeat of 2014, for a number of reasons, but the most important is the lack of support Russia and Putin experience amongst the Ukrainian population. The Annexation of Crimea was justified somewhat on the historical basis of Russia’s connections to the population and the resurgent separatism in the region; in Western Ukraine, there is no such support, and only 17% of the population hold any warm feelings towards Russia.
Whilst it is never a certainty that a Russian invasion would displace the near-60% of Ukrainians who hold negative attitudes towards Russia, the rules of migration have drastically changed, and populations across the world are much more prepared to leave their homelands if forced to. Moreover, of the 25 million Ukrainians who hold negative attitudes, if only 1% of that number – 250,000 – decided to head West, Eastern European nations would be facing a series of very difficult questions indeed.
Which brings us to the third reason why a refugee crisis is likely; Ukrainians are already heading West, and have done for some time. Economic trends across Europe have seen improved national economies in the Eastern European nations, the Visegrad Group, to the extent that they are actually facing a labour shortage. Consequently, worker flows to Western Europe have slowed, and itinerant workers from Romania and Ukraine have increased in number; so much so, that there are over 300,000 Ukrainians in Poland alone.
This figure has been manageable because of its gradual growth. The same number turning up on the Polish border would not be met with the same warmth; indeed, we already see this with the crisis on the Polish-Belarusian border. Accusations that the Belarusian government has been engineering the crisis are credible, but not the whole picture: Lukashenko stands by Putin very closely, and has accused the West of trying to ‘drown the region in blood’. It would not be beyond the bounds of possibility for the Russian regime to be orchestrating the refugee crisis on the Polish border, but even if they are not, who is to say that they will not in future?
Almost no-one is discussing the reality that the next European refugee crisis is brewing in Ukraine, and the hardest truth to face up to is it might not even need Western nations’ involvement to erupt. The hard questions Europe has faced for nearly a decade are about to get harder.
