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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In Brussels, the Eurocrats are increasingly out of control
Earlier last month, it was announced that the European Commission wants to double the budget of the EU for North African countries to no less than 42 billion euros. It thereby also wants to extend the Erasmus programme for student exchanges to that region. One does not need to be a migration expert to understand that this will only exacerbate the current major migration challenges, and that public opinion may not be fully on board with this, to put it mildly. Things are really going from bad to worse with the European Commission, which is led by Ursula von der Leyen. Despite great unease with green policies and migration policies, and some minor adjustments, her EU Commission is trying to continue with business as usual.
In October, von der Leyen survived two votes in the European Parliament to topple her. Notable was how the French centre-right Les Républicains, which are part of the centrist European People’s Party (EPP), supported the motion of Marine Le Pen’s National Rally’s EP group to oust von der Leyen. Also, there is grumbling among the centre-left. German SPD MEP René Repasi even warned von der Leyen that she has six months to deliver on the promises she made to his centre-left group, or it could put forward its own censure motion.
Then, it would be wrong to expect the European Parliament to really show their teeth. One diplomat confided to Politico nobody needs to worry about an overly powerful European Parliament, stating: “I don’t believe in this new Parliament, sorry. (…) They can threaten, but when a leader picks up the phone, they always fall in line.” One example of that is how the socialist group recently went along with von der Leyen’s omnibus bill, a modest exercise in EU regulatory simplification, after Spanish PM Pedro Sanchez intervened.
A Hungarian scandal?
Developments within the European Commission may affect its stability more than whatever happens in the European Parliament. First, there has been Pfizergate, whereby the European Court of Justice ruled that the European Commission violated transparency rules by failing to grant access to text messages between Ursula von der Leyen and the CEO of pharma giant Pfizer.
Secondly, there are now also allegations that the Hungarian government would have deployed intelligence officers to Brussels to gather information on EU institutions and to recruit an EU official. According to a number of media, Hungarian intelligence officers disguised as diplomats would have attempted to infiltrate EU institutions during the period when the current Hungarian European Commissioner, Olivér Várhelyi, served as Hungary’s ambassador to the EU.
Várhelyi has reportedly told President Ursula von der Leyen he was “not aware” of the alleged spying activities. Her spokesperson told media afterwards that “the president is pleased to have sat down with the Commissioner on this issue and the working group will continue its work on the subject.” In other words: von der Leyen is absolutely not keen to escalate this, and also other European governments will prefer not to engage into a direct diplomatic clash, if everything would be proven.
As I have been writing before, if it is serious about fighting cronyism, the EU should cut its EU transfers for all Member States, given how easy it is to otherwise accuse the EU of “double standards”. Stories about cronyism and executive control of the judiciary have been popping up all across other Central and Eastern European countries, like Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Bulgaria. Obviously, similar problems have been evident in the old EU member states as well, not to mention Italy. In 2021, Professor Vince Musacchio, a renowned anti-corruption expert from the Rutgers Institute on Anti-Corruption Studies, has warned that between 2015 and 2020, the EU has allocated around €70bn to Italy in structural & investment funds. Half of these funds ended up in the hands of organised crime.”
Then to see EU Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi stepping down would perhaps not be the saddest of outcomes. He is responsible for health policy but has been telling MEPs that “new tobacco and nicotine products pose health risks comparable to traditional ones.” This is simply unscientific to the core and should disqualify him from this position. Channelling his inner nannycrat, Várhelyi has also been pushing for a taxation system on products high in sugar, fat, and salt to help finance public health during a meeting with the European Parliament’s health committee, thereby arguing some of those receipts should go to the EU budget. So much for the idea of “Orban’s man” standing up against Brussels.
American pressure
While internal European Commission trouble or pressure from the European Parliament may not change much, there is still the matter of US President Donald Trump.
So far, he has already forced the EU to abandon its plans for a digital tax, while the US has also obtained concessions regarding the EU’s planned climate tariff, CBAM, prompting countries such as South Africa to demand equal treatment. The new tariff is likely to deal a severe blow to African economies. South Africa’s Presidential Climate Commission estimates that CBAM would reduce African exports to the EU by 30-35% by 2030, representing a value of €1.7 to €2.1 billion.
Despite the trade agreement reached between the EU and the US this summer, Trump has threatened new tariffs on the EU in response to the €2.95 billion fine imposed on Google. He warned: “We cannot let this happen to brilliant and unprecedented American Ingenuity and, if it does, I will be forced to start a Section 301 proceeding to nullify the unfair penalties being charged to these Taxpaying American Companies.”
The Trump administration also continues to challenge the EU’s new digital rules – the Digital Services Act and the Digital Markets Act – which it calls ‘Orwellian’. In doing so, it accuses the EU of censorship. Apparently, the US is even considering sanctions in the form of visa restrictions against EU officials in connection with the DSA.
Equally strong is the Trump administration’s opposition to the EU’s green regulations adopted during Von der Leyen’s first term, the era of the ‘green deal’. It has for example been objecting to the upcoming EU anti-deforestation directive, which was in fact already challenged by the Biden administration. These new EU rules ban the import of goods if producers fail to prove that no forests were felled in their production. In September, the European Commission proposed to delay the implementation of the directive a second time, until 2027 instead of 2026, blaming an IT system issue. Not long after, it once again changed the timing of the delay, adding confusion for everyone.
According to one member state source, the Commission’s concessions may be due to US pressure, and unrelated to the closure of the EU-Indonesia trade deal, as others have alleged. Trading partners like Indonesia and Malaysia are large exporters of palm oil and thereby heavily affected by the new bureaucratic burdens that EUDR would impose. Malaysia considers it unfair that its imports are classified as “standard risk”, as opposed to the US classification of “low risk”, given that deforestation there has improved significantly, with NGOs recognising a reduction of 13 per cent last year. Just as South Africa complaints about US privileges in the context of CBAM, also here, the new two-tier system for trading partners is under fire. In this way, Trump does not only affect EU regulation, but also the EU’s trade relationship with the rest of the world.
Not only did the Trump administration manage to get a de facto opt-out from the EU’s bureaucratic new deforestation rules, it is pushing for more. With Qatar, the U.S. has been urged the European Union to scale back the EU’s corporate sustainability directive CSDDD – the EU tends to love Communist-sounding acronyms. Thereby, both have threatened that the rules risked disrupting liquefied natural gas trade with Europe.
Suicidal energy policies
Despite the ongoing developments, the EU Commission’s 2026 work programme for 2026 appears to offer “business as usual”, without major changes to EU policy, apart from a “simplification” exercise that leaves major EU measure that burden competitiveness, like its ETS climate taxation, most “green deal” regulations, the AI Act or GDPR untouched. The centre-right EPP is likely to get some concessions on the new 2040 climate target the EU Commission has been pushing forward, but the question in the first place is whether there should be yet another climate target at all.
Simplification is good, but it is not enough. The EU’s climate taxation scheme ETS should be abolished, so to drastically cut the price of energy for European industry. At the moment, this tax is almost twice as high as the total US natural gas price, which in itself is only about one fifth of the natural gas price in Europe. Major chemical company INEOS is now advocating scrapping carbon taxation, but it remains a political taboo, despite the fact that the US, which does not have such a tax system, has managed to reduce CO2 emissions per capita relatively more than the EU since 2005.
The situation is urgent. Europe’s chemical industry, which is the bedrock of all other industry, has been scrapping lots of investment and jobs this year.
On the contrary, the European Commission is however pushing hard to simply continue with its plans to expand the EU’s ETS climate tax. This “ETS2” scheme is estimated to cost families up to 650 euros extra per year in terms of extra costs for fuel and heating. The institution seems completely tone-deaf to reality.
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The Plastic University Bubble
I remember visiting a neighbour’s house as a child, and she had bought us an intriguing toy. ‘Super Elastic Bubble Plastic’ was its name. It was a viscous plastic material that came in a tube, along with a straw, which was used to blow it into a bubble shape (much like chewing gum). You could then throw it around and use it as a playball, and the strengthen it had through its artificiality meant it would not pop.
Our university system is much like this toy, in that it is an artificial bubble, sustained only by the will of the state managerial elite, in whose childlike hands it rests. The fundamental fact of the modern university is that it has been transformed from an institution oriented to promote the pursuit of knowledge, into a factory designed to churn out a constant supply of future managerial candidates. Such a change was an intentional act of our political class, beginning with John Major and finishing completion under Tony Blair’s New Labour.
In a debate in the House of Commons in 1983, William Waldegrave, a junior minister in Mrs Thatcher’s government told the House that “Young home entrants to university were 7.5 per cent. of the 18-year-old age group from 1978 to 1980, 7.2 per cent. in 1981 and 6.9 per cent,” and in response to criticism of university budget cuts he explained that this was to “protect the research base.” Restricting university attendance – to dare I say, an ‘elite’ few – strengthened the purpose of the university as a place of high quality research.
In contrast, John Major’s government reformed higher education with the Further and Higher Education Act 1992 leading to the proliferation in the number of universities, with 33 polytechnic colleges becoming universities and a further 45 universities being created since the Act was passed. The number of 18-year olds entering university thus skyrocketed, and Tony Blair laid out his plans to take this further, telling the Labour Party Conference in 1999 that “Today I set a target of 50% of young adults going into higher education in the next century.”
Although this is framed as an egalitarian policy intended to remove class and socioeconomic backgrounds to university attendance, such notions can be swiftly dismissed. As James Burnham, in his prescient The Managerial Revolution, tells us:
“The process of the extension of governmental ownership and control nevertheless means a continuous increase of managerial dominance in the economy as a whole. A clear witness to the truth of this last observation is provided by the growth in the number of “bright young men,” of trained and educated and ambitious youth, who set out for careers in the government, not as politicians in the old sense, but as managers in the various agencies and bureaus in all the myriad fields where they now operate.”
No clearer sign of this is needed than the fact that Leeds Beckett University, that bastion of quality British higher education, advises that “bachelor’s degrees in subjects such as economics, business studies or English would offer entry into generic civil servant roles.” Furthermore, a look at the government’s Civil Service Fast Track scheme shows that applicants must have only ‘achieved’ a 2:2 to apply for 11 out of the 17 scheme pathways. A 2:2 is typically a grade of 50-59%. Mediocrity is now a requirement for entry into the managerial caste. Never mind trying to achieve a first class degree and achieve something with your life; come and join the managers in Whitehall, or one of the hundreds of government quangos, is the message of Mr Blair et al.
The economics of the university system do not make sense. In the words of Shimeon Lee of the Taxpayer’s Alliance:
“…unlike home students, overseas fees are not capped. This allows universities to charge a price that actually reflects the cost of delivering degrees, including the cost of subsidising home students. For example, international students studying a PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) degree at Oxford will pay £41,130 a year. In contrast, home students will pay only £9,250 – the maximum universities have been allowed to charge since 2017.”
International students, paying tens of thousands to study in the UK, are economic tools designed to subsidise the cost for British entrants. Therefore, are simply a policy instrument used to enable as many 18-year-old Brits to go to university as possible.
Let us reflect on what this means. The managerial class, understanding that it needs a supply of fresh-faced youth to rise through its ranks with meaningless degrees in order to sustain itself, has over the past three decades opened the floodgates to millions of foreign students for no other reason than to strengthen its existence through numbers.
For those of us dissatisfied with the cultural and moral vacuum that is modern Britain, the solution is obvious. Repeal the 1992 Act, revert every post-92 university back to a polytechnic college, and abolish international student visas. Maybe then the youth of today will do something useful, rather than studying English (which we all already speak, anyway) or gender studies only to go on and work for Ofcom or Defra.
There are signs that we are heading in the right direction. Recently, Cardiff University announced that 400 academic jobs (7%) will likely be cut because of economic pressures. Revealingly, the university’s vice chancellor Wendy Larner explained this as a result of “the context of declining international student applications and increasing cost pressures, and the need to adapt to survive.” At least she was honest.
Our universities, and schools, now operate only as a training ground for future managers. Rather than keeping it artificially inflated, like a plastic child’s toy, let the bubble pop. Let the children aspire to work in business, learn a trade, or do something else that will actually benefit society.
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What the reaction to the Ukraine conflict reveals about national identity
A country is first and foremost its people.
Despite my best efforts I cannot remember where I came across that phrase, nor will I be so brazen to claim it as my own. Nonetheless, it has always struck me as being axiomatic, and current events in Eastern Europe have given me reason to reflect on it further.
The West, including our own country, has since the end of World War II (and in some circles even before then) eschewed notions of national identity and even the concept of the nation itself. Borders are seen by many as a physical expression of violent exclusion and “othering” of fellow human beings, who should be given immediate and untrammelled access to any society they wish; free at any point to up and leave for another.
Politicians, organisations and members of the public alike, particularly those on the Left, are quick to espouse the idea that migration and asylum are human rights, which sit above the rights and privileges that attach to existing citizens.
A cursory glance through the Guardian’s migration articles tells you everything you need to know about how the Left views borders and the right to self-determination in 99% of cases involving the West. They unceasingly extol the supposed virtues of multiculturalism and appear to truly believe in the idea of open borders, with scant regard to the existing people of a nation.
Yet on one matter, the notions of inviolable borders, the nation, its people and the right to self-determination have come flooding back into consciousness and are being defended vociferously by those who otherwise have spent the last 80 years denigrating them and holding in contempt those who seek to re-establish them as common sense norms.
What is it about the ensuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine that has stoked the fires of righteous indignation in defence of a nation presently undergoing a hostile invasion by another?
Surely the mounting death toll plays its part in this reaction. But I am not convinced that is all.
What we are witnessing, it seems to me, is on some level a tacit realisation and acknowledgement that there is after all such a thing as a nation state, a specified people attached to and belonging in that nation state, and the right of that people to remain distinct, separate, independent and free to maintain their own homeland. It is tacit, not because those who express dismay at the current situation do so silently, but because they do not openly admit the source of their opposition to Putin’s aggression.
Back in July 2021, President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin wrote an article, published on the Kremlin’s official website – On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians – in which he outlines the common bonds that ultimately make Russians, Ukrainians and indeed Belarusians one and the same people.
“Russians, Ukrainians, and Belarusians are all descendants of Ancient Rus” he writes, “bound together by one language (which we now refer to as Old Russian), economic ties, the rule of the princes of the Rurik dynasty, and – after the baptism of Rus – the Orthodox faith…[which] still largely determines our affinity today.”
Of the constituent republics of the now defunct USSR, he says “Of course, inside the USSR, borders between republics were never seen as state borders; they were nominal within a single country.”
Mr Putin argues that “some part of a people in the process of its development…can become aware of itself as a separate nation” who should be treated “with respect.” He even goes as far as to suggest that those people should be welcome to establish a state of their own, but only after a satisfactory answer has been proffered to the question “But on what terms?”
It is clear that he does not truly believe the Ukrainians (or Belarusians for that matter) are as distinct from Russians as they like to believe. This he confirms later, essentially repealing his earlier platitudes, when he writes “But the fact is that the situation in Ukraine today is completely different because it involves a forced change of identity.” In other words, whilst some people undergo a change in identity and should be allowed to go their own way, this is not the case in Ukraine who have had such a change imposed upon them; a change it appears Mr Putin feels is incumbent upon him to help them resist.
Leaving aside the moral questions surrounding Mr Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine and whether he is justified in his view of the Ukrainians being fundamentally Russian, let us explore the principles he is applying.
What Putin is suggesting here is that the Russians and Ukrainians, though occupying separate, autonomous territories, comprise the same people, united by a common ancestry, language and heritage. In other words, the lineage of Ancient Rus endures, despite some fragmentation here and there along with the establishment of states independent from one another.
Such a set-up has historical precedent. The Ancient Greek City States were seen as being inhabited by fundamentally the same people – Greeks – yet each with their own independent territories, the citizens of which took on an identity derived therefrom whilst simultaneously maintaining their overarching Greek identity. One could be a Spartan and a Greek, or an Athenian and a Greek. Either way, one was still a Greek.
This shines light on something quite interesting in terms of the conception of a people. For, and I have long been aware of this, one’s citizenship merely denotes one’s rights and status within a state, not one’s membership of a people.
In other words, membership of a people, whilst it could be enshrined in law (and I think there are good arguments it should be – this appears to have been the impetus behind the idea of the nation state to being with, now weakened by lax immigration policy and the doctrine of multiculturalism), ultimately pre-exists that law and the citizenship that might formalise it. As Sir Roger Scruton wrote: “Nations emerged as forms of pre-political order that contain within themselves the principles that would legitimise sovereign government.”
This idea of pre-existence is quite clear in Putin’s understanding of the underlying indivisibility of Russians and Ukrainians. Yes, they occupy different states and maintain distinct citizenship. But, crucially, just like the Greeks, they share an overarching identity and membership otherwise not indicated by co-habitation of the same land.
No doubt millions of Ukrainians would reject this view point. Yet, in doing so, they too would be applying the same principle – namely that their being Ukrainian pre-exists the Ukrainian state. In fact they could reasonably argue, in contradistinction to Putin’s claims, that it is this very pre-existence which endows the Ukrainian state with its right to exist separately from Russia. Their very sense of themselves as a nation acts as the motivation behind their dogged defence of their national territory.
When it is said that a people have the right to self-determination, as many are now saying of the Ukrainians, which “people” do they mean? I think they can only reasonably point to a people who would in the absence of a state to call their own continue to be extant and identifiable.
If, for example, the state of Ukraine underwent a sea-change in its population such that the members of Ukrainian society, Ukrainian citizens, were largely Germans or Somalis or indeed a farrago of peoples of widely varying languages, cultures, customs, religions and historical descent/heritage, they would be Ukrainian in name only, solely by virtue of their citizenship. Assuming those who we presently know and recognise to be Ukrainian people occupy another region of the world, would they not continue to be Ukrainian notwithstanding that the territory of Ukraine would have been abandoned?
In fact it is quite obvious that Ukrainians are considered a people in their own right by the intention of the International Court of Justice to investigate claims of genocide as a result of the conflict.
According to Article II of the United Nations’ Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is defined as specified acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such.”
I would submit that an awareness of a pre-existing membership of a particular and identifiable people has long been found in those of us who believe in nation states and borders. But I would also argue that that same awareness can be found in those on the Left who are denouncing the Russian invasion. For if Ukrainians are not a people in their own right, why should they have self-determination? If, as Putin holds, they are Russians, does it make sense to say that they are entitled to that determination? It would be tantamount to asserting that Russians are entitled to self-determination from Russians. Applying that logic, there should be no opposition to Surrey declaring a bona fide independence from the rest of England.
If those crying out in defence of Ukraine do not see a people that pre-exists its nation state, but rather a people identified only by the continued existence of that state, they nonetheless do acknowledge that Ukrainians are a distinct and separate people albeit merely by virtue of citizenship, irrespective of background.
Let us assume for a moment that is the correct view. This does not change the fact that Ukrainians, even by admission of the Left, have the right to decide for themselves their own future. Such a freedom must surely be unfettered, meaning that any and all decisions that could affect them within their borders should be within their exercise of control.
I think the notion of a people based on pre-existence to a state, though manifested and formalised by the creation of a state – a homeland – is the better one, without which the nation state is less well-grounded and defensible. Another reason is that if a people are identified by the existence of the state they occupy, what happens if that state ceases to exist?
None of this is to diminish the role that territory plays in the identity of a people. On the contrary, and as alluded to above, that role is of paramount importance.
The occupation of territory, together with the establishment of institutions endowed with a sense of identity and which reflect the culture of its people, is a direct manifestation of that pre-existing status that subsists in the absence of a law that enshrines and protects it.
Scruton put it thus: “National loyalty marginalises loyalties of family, tribe and faith… [placing] before the citizen’s eyes…a country…defined by a territory, and by the history, culture and law that have made that territory ours.” He goes on to say that “Nationality is composed of land, together with the narrative of its possession.”
As such, the nation state of a people – their homeland – becomes as much a part of their identity as their cultural practices. The loss of that homeland does not to my mind destroy them as a people but it is certainly a gross offence against their identity which serves to alienate them from themselves, even if not completely.
In this way, and as now brought to our attention in the most alarming of ways, borders matter. But more than that: the reaction to the invasion of Ukraine proves to us we already knew that, including those who ceaselessly advocate for the right of all and sundry to enter a Western country as if it were more their right to do so than our right to preserve our sense of who we are by exercising full control over our borders.
Russia might be invading Ukraine with tanks; the United Kingdom has been invaded by other means – unwanted mass immigration which has encouraged millions to arrive with their own cultures and sense of who they are in distinction to us who were already here and whose sense of ourselves is intimately bound up in our own homeland, its institutions and its history – now all under assault for being less than perfect and not reflective (rightly so) of peoples whose cultures and identities evolved thousands of miles from our shores.
It is time we recognised that if, as I would agree, Ukraine has a right to exist for the benefit of Ukrainians, detached from Russia and free to determine its own future, we in the West and in particular Great Britain, have that right also. We, too, are a people. Our state, our kingdom, might be the result of a unification of the English, Welsh, Scottish and Irish peoples, but each of us retains our own unique character and, importantly, homeland. Although there is some agitation to dissolve the union in Scotland (and in some parts of England), the preservation thereof derives from continuing mutual agreement without impinging on that uniqueness.
The same cannot be said for the results of mass immigration and multiculturalism which, whilst allowing newcomers to preserve their identities, serves to undermine ours whose is expressed in the country we have for a thousand years called home, but is now threatened with having to accommodate increasingly vast differences while losing the benefit of a retreat to somewhere recognisably ours such as was available to Englishmen and Scotsmen alike prior to 1945.
Any student of history can point to numerous examples of the inherent difficulties in establishing territorial dominion over multitudinous peoples who differ so widely in matters of culture and identity that open conflict eventually bursts out and engulfs the region. The situation as we face it in Great Britain, brought about by absurd notions of cultural relativity, is unsustainable.
The circumstances in which Ukraine now finds itself are objectively much more urgent and dire and, admittedly, have come about in a different manner: but the intended outcome is the same. Putin is, after all, making an attempt to reabsorb the Ukrainian people into a Greater Russian family, thereby extinguishing their identity. He will fail to do this absolutely, but if he succeeds in establishing dominion over the territory that otherwise acts as a significant expression of who they are, their identity will be materially reduced.
Such a loss would not necessarily mean a displacement of the Ukrainians to other lands, but the incursion of other peoples’ customs and laws, however similar Putin might hold Ukrainians and Russians to be. In this way, the expression of the Ukrainian people via a country and institutions that becomes less recognisable to them will serve to alienate them and prevent them from self-realisation and determination.
The Left knows this. They know that borders provide a delineation between “us” and “them” – this is of course why they hate borders. Yet in the case of Ukraine that same knowledge prompts them to defend, at least in word if not deed, the rights of the Ukrainian people to maintain a homeland for themselves.
If Putin does manage to subdue Ukraine in the immediate term, the longer term will be much more difficult. The Ukrainian people’s conception of themselves – a conception that pre-exists their own nation state – will likely prompt them to persevere in re-establishing it.
A country is first and foremost its people. But we in the West would do well to remember that if a people lose entitlement and independent jurisdiction over their homeland, whilst they might continue to endure in some form or other, their destiny will no longer be in their hands.
