Many British conservatives look at America’s Republican Party with envy. They have a slate of talented potential candidates for the 2024 US general election, and what with increasing numbers of Hispanics and black Americans voting for the GOP, they are likely to triumph in this year’s midterm elections in the face of a crumbling Biden administration that has pandered to the left over trans and cultural issues. They are also confronting many other problems that have started to destroy America’s self-confidence such as critical race theory and Black Lives Matter. It is a good time to be an American conservative right now.
Compared to the Republicans, the British Conservative Party is like the black sheep of the Western conservative family. Anyone who did their research on Boris Johnson before he gained the highest office in the land, such as me, knew his time as prime minister would be short and full of scandal. Those who knew this Conservative leadership race was inevitable suspected that the selection of candidates to replace Boris would be underwhelming. But there was one person who changed this year’s Tory leadership election: Kemi Badenoch.
It was always unlikely that she was going to win. Kemi was an equalities minister, an unknown government position. Her profile was quite low before she entered the race. I have no doubt that she wanted to win the Tory leadership contest and implement the changes she talked about. However, arrogant Tory MPs thought they knew best and eliminated her. The truth is that she was too radical for them. Regardless, she has transformed Conservative leadership races forever.
The reason why I made a reference to the culture wars the Republicans are fighting in the US above is because the UK is facing the same issue, and whilst Liz Truss and Rishi Sunak were clashing over the best way to generate growth, Kemi was the only candidate to discuss the impact of political correctness on Britain. As Louise Perry wrote for The New Statesman, she is a black woman from Nigeria who is resistant to groupthink.
Perry further explains that it wasn’t the fact that Badenoch is a black conservative that distinguished her from her talentless rivals; it was because she demonstrated how wrong her critics are about the assumptions often made about ethnic minority individuals in politics. She does not succumb to groupthink on Black Lives Matter in Britain, which would have made her the perfect person to take on that group’s victimhood mentality. They believe black people are victims of institutional racism. Their influence over British politics has increased since the death of George Floyd, and whilst the gutless Keir Starmer bent the knee for Black Lives Matter, Badenoch never did. If she became leader of the Conservative Party and prime minister, she would have proved the UK does not have a problem when it comes to institutional racism.
Furthermore, Badenoch had a plan to deal with political correctness. She is against gender-neutral toilets and she is opposed to throwing money at staff wellbeing coordinators (whatever they are). Despite being an immigrant herself, she also pledged to end the illegal Channel crossings that Boris has failed to deal with. Badenoch said she would do ‘whatever it takes’ to tackle illegal immigration, and in my opinion, that is a huge hint that she would have eventually pulled the UK out of the European Convention of Human Rights that thwarted the recent Rwanda flights. She stood out as a woman of principle, unlike Penny Mordaunt who proved to be nothing more than a fraud by reversing her previous pro-trans positions.
As a result of her anti-PC stance, Badenoch enthused the Tory membership base. There were numerous ‘Back Badenoch’ hashtags on Conservative Party members’ Twitter profiles, which further disproves Black Lives Matter’s theory on institutional racism because a mostly white, middle-aged party was so excited about the prospect of a Nigerian black lady becoming Tory leader. Her ideas were music to their ears.
And it is no wonder they were so enthused by Badenoch’s ideas. As Frank Feudi wrote for Sp!ked, Boris’s record on tackling political correctness is dreadful. Whilst he remained opposed to trans ideology in principle, last October him and his wife Carrie attended a Stonewall event at Conservative Party Conference, an organisation that has done more than any other to impose trans ideas upon society. Tucker Carlson also claimed Boris’s failure was that he did not govern like Trump, who took a tough stance towards the culture wars throughout his presidency. Boris even said himself he did not want to engage in a culture war. It is no wonder his cowardice paved the way for excitement about Badenoch amongst Conservative activists.
The Conservative Party is heading for defeat in 2024. Though Labour might not win a majority, I cannot see either Truss or Sunak being able to reverse the damage Boris has inflicted upon the political system and this country. They have been in power for too long and the lack of originality from the two remaining leadership candidates shows they are out of ideas. Their best outcome before 2024 would be to lose to a Labour-led government, retain a reasonable number of seats so that they can win again in 2028 or 2029, and elect Badenoch to provide the Tories with some fresh thinking and new policy positions.
It is a relief to say that the Conservatives have finally found a refreshing new candidate with bold ideas. Nonetheless, it is a pity that out-of-touch Tory MPs felt that she was not leadership material this year, and that they knew better than their members who help them get elected. The Conservatives would be wise to at least provide Badenoch with a cabinet position. But for now, they have made a dreadful mistake and they deserve to lose in 2024. The Tories can only redeem themselves by electing Badenoch as leader in the aftermath of an embarrassing electoral defeat.
-
Rishi Sunak: MP for Anywhere
In his 2017 book, The Road to Somewhere, David Goodhart sought to explain the Brexit vote, and the furore that followed, as a rift between two tribes in British life: ‘Somewheres’ and ‘Anywheres’.
Somewheres, Goodhart explained, are traditionally-minded and attached to place. By contrast, Anywheres are cosmopolitans and attached primarily to ideals. Somewheres are often provincial and typically live in (or nearby) the communities in which they were raised. Anywheres are primarily urban and often live far from where they were raised.
For Goodhart, Brexit was a revolt of the nation’s Somewheres. Alienated by the extraordinary rate of social change in the post-Blair era, they took a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to vote against the Anywhere-dominated political establishment.Though nominally a vote on Britain’s membership of the European Union, the referendum was essentially a vote of protest against the cross-party consensus on immigration.
The frustration of Somewheres is exemplified by voters in ‘The Red Wall’, a patchwork of traditionally Labour-supporting northern constituencies, who voted Tory en masse in the 2019 general election in the hope that Brexit might finally be settled and migration numbers could be reduced.
Though no less baffled than the rest of the establishment, The Conservative Party – unlike many of their fellow Anywheres – was willing to implement the referendum’s result. Ultimately, however, the failure to capitalise on the opportunities presented by Brexit, the collapse of the Red Wall, and a major electoral realignment was to define our outgoing government.
None personified this failure to understand the significance of Brexit as much as the man who was destined to lead the Conservative Party into the most recent election. This would not surprise readers of Goodhart’s work, for Rishi Sunak is Anywhere incarnate.
The hyper-conscientious child of immigrant parents who, through hard work and talent, has risen to the very apex of his profession, Sunak personifies the cosmopolitan ideals of the contemporary western elite.Sunak’s failure as Prime Minister does not reflect a lack of merit. Of the four Prime Ministers who succeeded Cameron, Sunak was probably the most capable and accomplished.
Sunak’s relationship with his heritage is interesting. Born to Ugandan-Asian parents, Sunak exemplifies the industry and drive of that entrepreneurial group of people. Teetotal and vegetarian, our erstwhile leader married outside both his caste and ethnicity – of Punjabi heritage, his wife is the only daughter of a fabulously wealthy family of south Indian origin. In this he typifies the subcontinent’s elite diaspora who, as Razib Khan writes, have globalisation ‘etched in their bones’.
His heritage aside, Sunak’s background is that of a stereotypical Tory frontbencher. A product of Winchester College (where he was Head Boy), Sunak progressed to Oxford (where he earned a 1st in PPE) and thence to Stanford (via a Fulbright Scholarship).Upon graduating, he pursued a career in high finance, first at Goldman Sachs and then at two hedge funds, the latter being based in California. Notoriously, Sunak filed US tax returns while serving as the Chancellor of the Exchequer, not relinquishing his Green Card until 2021.
Having joined the Conservative Party following an internship at Central Office, Sunak became an MP in 2015, replacing William Hague as the representative for Richmond. Parachuted into Number 10 in the aftermath of the Truss debacle, Sunak proceeded to dismay colleagues with displays of poor political judgement, choosing to announce the cancellation of a trainline to Manchester while in Manchester, to cite but one of several notorious examples.
Whereas for most the office of Prime Minister represents the culmination of a long and bruising career; Sunak’s brief tenure as Prime Minister will likely represent just another impressive (though relatively ill-remunerated) entry in a glittering CV. It is safe to presume that, before the Tories are again returned to power, he and his family will decamp to California in order that he might resume his career in finance.For all the bluster about his supposedly reactionary politics, Sunak’s values align with the managerialist liberalism which dominates the contemporary Conservative Party.
The Economist describes Sunak as ‘the most right-wing Conservative leader of his generation’ and claims his ‘nerdy demeanour covers an overlooked fact… [o]n everything from social issues, devolution and the environment to Brexit and the economy, Mr Sunak is to the right of the recent Tory occupants of 10 Downing Street’, but this is merely relative.
Objectively speaking, similar to his background, Sunak’s politics are blandly Anywhere, believing that a modern economy cannot function without high levels of immigration – derived from his instinctive belief in entrepreneurial mobility – and extols ‘diversity’ as both a moral good and political virtue, even at the expense of factual accuracy.
Sunak’s support of Brexit, often cited as evidence of his right-wing convictions, is misconstrued. Sunak was no ‘Little Englander’ hoping to make Britain’s borders more restrictive. Rather, Sunak saw leaving the EU as an opportunity to further liberalise Britain’s immigration regime.
With Sunak gone, the Conservative Party is once again presented with the opportunity to reinvent itself.
For a generation or more, the Conservative Party has simply failed to take the concerns of Middle England seriously. Sunak, so removed from the concerns of ordinary British people that he didn’t think it worthwhile to attend ceremonies marking the 80th anniversary of D-Day, exemplified this detachment.
If the Tory party is to regain political relevance, it must listen to the nation’s Somewheres – a constituency that remains in flux, and that the Labour Party does not speak for. The lack of enthusiasm for our incoming government is remarkable and telling. The electorate has grown tired of the Tories, but are dubious of a Labour Party who seem to offer nothing but more of the same.
So farewell, Prime Minister Sunak. We wish you well, Anywhere you go.
-
Her Penis is Boring
Oh good. You get a package and creatively wrap it. Who doesn’t love a Dutch surprise?
It’s all very predictable. As soon as you see the headline, you know what’s going to happen.
A great big chunk of the normie right, and even the more based/red-pilled/dissident/whatever right, have reacted like this. What do you reckon, do you recognise the below?
“Outrageous! *What do they mean HER penis*? If the left did this eh meh meh hypocrisy blah! Harumph, most unorthodox! If a man did this! We’ve fallen so far, the future of our country, something something the Queen. Splutters champagne, monocle falls out, but with Victorian era mutton chops.”
OK, the last bit might be a little unfair. You get the point though, don’t you?
Is this really some great new surprise or at all shocking? No! It’s been done to death and now they’re acting out with increasingly more extreme things to get the same level of reaction, attention, etc. to try and keep any buzz or excitement going in their latest fad.
Now they’re getting their ‘tits’ out at the White House. What’s next? Synchronised helicopters at the Cenotaph this November while the King stands to attention? This is all so dumb and transparent. Why are you reacting as if it’s anything other than boring?
The ‘right’ is the most promising place anything new or interesting is likely to come from. It’s on the outside. It’s not establishment normalcy, curated and factory-made orthodoxy. When it reacts in such predictable ways to such obvious dreariness, it’s really letting itself down. Don’t let your enemies feel like insurgents when they’re cradled by the status quo. Let them jump the shark.
Reacting is a diversion of your energy from more important things. Minority issues cut both ways. Sure, ‘most people’ (do majorities matter, or does winning matter?) might agree with you, and it might even count for something, but how high on their list of priorities is it? Yes, take the low hanging fruit, or perhaps this is an issue which also largely takes care of itself if enough (of the relevant) people are on your side.
Yes, this may have played a role in bringing down Nicola Sturgeon, but how significant was that? What role did money problems play? And the SNP are still there, with Labour next best positioned to take over. Nothing big or culturally or politically is really that different in Scotland. For the whole UK what still stands? The economy, immigration, house prices, tax rates, NHS standards, take your pick of any issue which needs more work.
For now, let the TERFs and trans people have at it. It’s not like the TERFs are your friends. Why give any quarter to a slightly different strain of the progressive problem?
And on a totally basic level, isn’t it just stupid to bother fighting ‘to prove’ (to who?) that men are men and women are women? This is really just a playground case where someone calls you a name, and you either call them one back or ignore it. You don’t waste energy trying to persuade your accuser that you are not whatever they called you.
Just like the playground, they don’t really believe in ‘her penis’ anyway. It’s a shit test, ab initiation rite, an in-group/out-group signifier. It’s like molesting a pig to get into the Bullingdon Club or whatever. Well, that’s the Machiavellian side. A lot of these people are just useful idiots, aren’t party insiders, don’t have a clue, and really have the same energy as the ones who have the power of God and anime on their side. Either way, don’t bother. It’s stupid.
Are we really wasting energy on something as basic as this rather than just going “no” and carrying on with something real, something that might need more real fighting over?
Don’t waste the energy. They’re better prepared for it and you’re just feeding the trolls, following the paths they’ve laid out for you.
When you react in the ways they expect:
- They have their own set ways to react, and the game keeps going,
- They’re ready and waiting, don’t do what they expect and wrongfoot them,
- You keep their fad alive, and…
- It makes you look like you’re just doing the same old thing you’ve done since 2016 or whenever.
The more you disengage, the more they’ll look for a different game, or otherwise chase the high by pushing the absolute limits of their ideological/aesthetic paradigm. Eventually they run out of things to do, or it breaks, or people will get so totally disgusted by it that it provokes a real reaction. Interpret ‘reaction’ as you will.
Your instinct to react now is understandable, but it’s not useful. Yes, you’re right, progressives do get away with all sorts of things. On one level it’s because they have power to enforce what they want, defend their people, and you don’t. On another it’s because they have the kinds of religious fervent nutters who will throw bricks through people’s windows, glue themselves to roads, throw Molotov cocktails, etc. and your side doesn’t.
Well, OK, then you have to work with the people you’ve got. It means treating this for what it is. Boring!
-
The White Man’s Latest Burden
“Take up the White Man’s burden; Send forth the best ye breed; Go bind your sons to exile; To serve your captives’ need” – Rudyard Kipling, from The White Man’s Burden (1899).
The relationship between foreign policy and immigration is relatively straightforward, yet routinely overlooked and often manipulated. Since Hamas’ attack on Israel and the ensuing bombardment of Gaza – an act which has sparked widespread protest across the Western world, overwhelmingly constituted of migrants and their descendants – there have been calls amongst the neoconservative commentariat for Britain to “Stand Up for Israel”, which – for the uninitiated – means funnelling more money to the Middle East.
Once again, neoconservatives (a.k.a. leftist and liberal infiltrators of the right) are advocating military support to foreign countries and generally running defence for imprudent militarism, both of which increase the risk of mass migration to the West; contributing to the Islamification of the Western world and the retreat of Western liberalism within its own borders, a subject which neocons love to talk about.
Those of us on the paleoconservative right who oppose attempts at humanitarian intervention do so with the knowledge that such actions do risk creating more destabilising migration, disrupting the already very fragile state of Western countries; a fragility revealed by the imported ethnic tensions which have since exploded onto the streets, arising not from an investment in Britain’s national interest, but the interests of other nations.
As such, giving Israel a blank check to do whatever it wants shouldn’t be Britain’s top priority. Putting aside the evident bloodlust of the chickenhawks and the various ethical problems of taking the plea for “proportionality” to its logical conclusion, the idea that any allegedly right-leaning commentator should use their airtime to run defence for every decision the IDF makes, without considering the second-hand consequences for the British state, should be challenged whenever the opportunity arises.
I have no problem with a neighbour using self-defence when confronted with a late-night burglar, but if his idea of self-defence is to fire a nuke in the home invader’s general direction, people from the town over might have some concerns. Similarly, a government’s decision to start a war is its own, but to call ‘feign knights‘ immediately after attacking the enemy in an especially vulgar way is unlikely to win support from the right-minded member of society. This may seem a bit hyperbolic, but you get the general idea – Israel should not be allowed to use self-defence as an excuse to create another migrant fiasco and expect us to make-do.
Alas, the British establishment prides itself on being the sharpest arrow in the United States’ increasingly spacious quiver; if Israel is America’s greatest ally, then Israel is Britain’s greatest ally as well.
Left-wing so-called ‘anti-imperialists’ (I use that phrase only half-seriously) are capitalising on the contradictions within neoconservatism, maintaining the West is simply facing the consequences of its actions. Palestinians shouldn’t suffer because of their government’s actions, but the British should. By portraying immigration as a mere component of a larger Western imperialist ratchet, leftists hope to depoliticise the issue of immigration. In turn, they hope to divert people’s concerns away from domestic policies they entirely condone, especially the concerns of traditional Labour voters and their longstanding opposition to mass immigration.
What’s that? Your daughter got molested by a Pakistani man who laughed about turning her into a kebab? Tut-tut. If only you’d opposed intervention in Kosovo, you could’ve prevented it! Guess you’ll just have to put up with things as they are. Don’t Look Back in Anger.
No matter how much that complain about them, it remains fact that leftists march in lockstep with liberals and centrists on immigration. To paraphrase a now legendary tweet, you can exist on the left and support some degree of privatisation (i.e., as a social democrat) but you can’t exist of the left and oppose immigration. Contemporary leftism isn’t about ‘material interests’ or whatever, it’s about anti-whiteness.
It would take a great deal of reform, but there is nothing stopping Britain from arming foreign nations and denying entrance to foreigners, refugee or not. However, that’s beside my point, and certainly beside the point of leftists trying to con people into ignoring the demise of their own communities.
Together, neoconservatives and leftists have reinvented the White Man’s Burden. The former has popularised the idea that the West has a moral responsibility to intervene when other parts of the world fall short of liberal democratic practice, whilst the latter insists it is the burden of the West – that is, an extension of its moral obligation to arbitrate the world – to import every person that tries to cross the border, despite what we know about the UK’s foreign-born population.
According to the 2021 Census, the three most common non-UK countries of birth are India, Poland, and Pakistan, quite similar to the results of the census 20 years prior. Contrast this with the targets of major Western interventions over the past 20 years, all of which are much further down the list: Iraq (40), Afghanistan (43), Syria (52). Non-Western countries with larger foreign-born diasporas in the UK include Nigeria, China, Bangladesh, Philippines, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Zimbabwe, Jamaica, Turkey and Somalia, all of which are in the top 30.
Of course, political events are reflected in the data. The Syria-born population of the UK grew considerably between 2001 and 2021, but this still implies Britain’s demographic complications aren’t primarily the result of Team America-style foreign escapades.
Rather, they are the result of an immensely stupid decision to liberalise border restrictions for the sake of Diversity – the official state dogma since the early noughties – to maintain a steady supply of cheap and flexible labour, and to keep the national Ponzi scheme – that is, the UK’s pension system – afloat until Islamists wipe out London with their DWP-funded nuclear arsenal. In short, foreign wars definitely haven’t helped, but they’re not the root cause.
Despite this, neoconservatives have tried to make the recent public displays of ethnonarcissism about the future of “Judeo-Christian” liberal values in the face of resurgent “Islamofascism”, whilst leftists have construed concerns about the protests as a deviation from the West’s need to demonstrate moral leadership – that is, to stand up for the downtrodden Palestinians and, of course, to import Infinity Migrants.
Liberals consider themselves above tribal notions of loyalty, insisting on a fundamental commitment to abstract ‘values’, whilst the socialist is a patriot – a patriot for every nation except his own.
And just when things couldn’t get any worse, Daftywaffen’s glorious leader has been allowed back on Twitter weeks before another mass protest in London on Remembrance Day – what a coincidence!
At a time when Britain is experiencing the inevitable fallout of the left-liberal immigration dogmas and neoconservative foreign policy, with hostility to the humanitarian ratchet at an all-time high, what the public needs to remember is the real threat to stability isn’t mass immigration but the FAR-RIGHT (!!!).
As we all know by now, protests are a milleniLOL ‘Generation Left’ pipedream. Remember when protesting British intervention in Iraq worked? Remember when a protest was allowed to occur that didn’t already have state backing? Me neither. Call me crazy, but I doubt Israel is going to take “proportional” action over a protest in London, just as I doubt a hundred-or-so people with British flags will stop our political class from wrecking the country.
Indeed, it is remarkable how literally every anti-British faction has developed a reason as to why the British people need to put their authentic convictions on the backburner and do exactly what they want at this exact moment.
If you want to stop the scourge of Islamism within British society, the foremost threat to our Western liberal-democratic values, you must place Israel first and foremost in your political considerations; our struggles in defence of Civilisation are one and the same.
Send forth the best ye breed (to the Middle East).
If you want to stand up for your nation’s monuments and armed forces, you need to rally around a man funded by pro-Israel think-tanks to counteract anti-Israel protests, even though people with similar convictions to yourself have been arrested for far less.
Go bind your sons to exile (for protesting with an English flag).
If you want to stop the systematic grooming of white girls, you need to suspend your opposition to immigration and support Palestine; you need to accept any wave of “asylum-seekers” which you created and won’t be allowed to deport, even if their application is denied under our very liberal laws.
To serve your captives’ need (by importing them to your native land).
Ultimately, it is not our burden to take up arms in defence of foreign states – overtly or covertly – or accept mass immigration. The Israel-Hamas War is simply not our fight. Middle England doesn’t care about Israel or Palestine. Middle England cares about England and the sooner a British government is prepared to place Britain at the heart of its foreign policy, rather than vague and destructive humanitarian ideals, the better.
