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.
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In Defence of the Profits of Oil and Gas Companies
Few companies today are less popular than those in the oil and gas industry. Shell, ExxonMobil and British Petroleum are all resented for the great profits they are now making. 79% of the public back yet another windfall tax to get these profiteering companies to subsidise their bills. This is despite the fact the existing levy, with pre-existing taxation, is already an extortionate 65%, following Rishi Sunak’s increase to it in May. No doubt, with the forthcoming £130bn plus price cap, further increases to the windfall tax will be touted as the means to pay for it.
Increasing the windfall tax on oil and gas companies’ profits would be wrong: any windfall tax on these companies’ profits is wrong. Individuals, and the companies they constitute, have a right to the windfall gains of their labour or property, even if they haven’t done anything to earn them. To seize these gains is to violate their rights, to use them unjustifiably. Any such levy must therefore be abolished, and any increase in them opposed.
Let us proceed to bolster the truth of this liberal position by refuting the principal argument for the existing windfall tax, and by deduction all increases too. We start with the contention that the profits of energy companies are ‘undeserved’. When Sunak increased the levy in May he argued it was fair because the companies’ increased profits have not come through “changes to risk-taking or innovation or efficiency”, but rather, have come as a “result of surging global commodity prices”. The essence of this argument is that individuals are not entitled to the income they have not had to do anything for. Although not Marx’s, Sunak’s reasoning shares with his the idea entitlements to incomes cannot be legitimised simply because they have arisen through free exchange. Some work needs to be done to confer deservedness.
It is then argued that the poor need support to get through the cost of living crisis, more than the companies’ shareholders need dividends, and this is a reason for the government to seize their profits via windfall taxation. Indeed it is predicted two-thirds of households could be in fuel poverty by January of 2023 (without further intervention). Together, the undeserved profits of oil and gas companies, and the needs of the poor, allow for a windfall tax for increased benefits to help the impoverished with their energy bills.
The problem with this argument for the windfall tax is it proves far too much. Consider this example: across the country the average salary of a plumber is £35,862, putting such tradesmen’s earnings 14% above the median. Now imagine for some reason half of all plumbers quit the trade and decide to become waiters instead. The remaining plumbers would see their wages increase significantly, even though they’re doing the same hours and work as before. Let us assume our plumber ends up being paid a wage, such that his household expenditure is £45,437.60, putting him in the ninth decile of spenders. This allows his household to spend about £11,117.60 on restaurants, hotels, recreation and culture, as of 2019.
According to Sunak’s argument, the plumber should be subject to a windfall tax. Both criteria are satisfied. First, the plumber has done nothing to see his salary increase. Second, the poorest households, who really struggle to pay for their food and increasingly large fuel bills, clearly could do with the money more. Indeed, the poorest decile spends only about £1,705.60 a year on food and non-alcoholic drinks, less than a fifth of the plumbers’ spending on leisure, and that was in 2019!
This is an unacceptable conclusion. Individuals have a right to the windfalls they derive from the voluntary exchange with customers and employers. To deny such a proposition is to accept whenever there is a shortage of labour in your trade or profession you are not entitled to bargain for a higher salary, or rather that the government is entitled to tax away all the additional income you may receive. Or at least it may tax it away insofar as others’ needs are greater than your own. I doubt my reader will want to embrace this. I believe this is because most of us implicitly reject the idea that individuals are only entitled to money they have worked for, or rather are only entitled to money insofar as it was proportionately worked for.
Consider the man who stumbles across truffles in his garden, he hasn’t worked for the money he receives on their sale; it’s sheer luck. Nonetheless, we accept he is entitled to their windfalls and should pay no more tax than anyone else with the same income. Equally, we accept people are entitled to the windfall on their car if it has become very popular, despite it being sheer luck such conditions have arisen. Indeed, it is sheer luck that beauty models are born beautiful. Yet no one is proposing taxing away their genetic-based windfall, with the bar being the income the average person would get going down the catwalk. I contend that the root of these beliefs is a commitment to defending the freedom of the individual to make as much money as he so can, in whatever activity he so chooses – even if sheer luck is the cause.
By analogy then, if individuals, e.g. our plumber, are entitled to their incomes from sheer luck, then so too must the oil and gas companies be entitled to their profits from sheer luck too (from globally higher commodity prices). The alternative would be to live in a dystopian world where each job, trade, profession and commodity market has a differential tax rate to eliminate all windfalls (for why allow a part to be kept). To a few this may appear but a minor inconvenience. However, as F. A. Hayek has explained, this would lead to the impoverishment of society, as prices would be unable to direct resources to their most efficient uses.
Consider, due to potato blight, the price of wheat increases dramatically as consumers switch to pasta. Today farmers of wheat would receive far larger profits as a result, due to the high price, despite having done no more work. This incentivises other farmers to shift to wheat production, from less urgently demanded crops, eventually pushing supply out, bringing the price of pasta back down. Resources are shifted from less valued to more valued uses and thus consumers are better off. If the state insisted, since wheat farmers are conducting no more work, efficiency-savings, investing or risk-taking, they should receive no higher price for their crop, the market would take far, far longer to adjust, and in the meantime, people would be worse off. Given these adjustments are always occurring across the economy, consumers would be permanently worse off if all windfall gains were taxed away.
Indeed it is even worse than this concerning the labour market. If half of the existing bin men decided to leave their jobs today the remaining bin men would see their wages go up, which would encourage new individuals into the role. If this wage weren’t allowed to go up though there would be shortages of bin men. To stop rubbish from going uncollected the state would have to conscript people into the position: These bin men would be slaves. Such is the conclusion one is forced to, as Hayek maintained, if rewards correspond not to the value which their services have for their fellows, but to the moral merit or desert the persons are deemed to have earned.
Clearly, if applied consistently, the principle no one should receive windfalls would impoverish the people, and require the conscription of individuals into many jobs. No man committed to living in a free society can thus permit the state to operate on such reasoning. Individuals have a right to their windfall gains, whether they be plumbers, or indeed the owners of oil and gas companies. The windfall tax must therefore be abolished, and failing that any attempts to increase it must be resisted every step of the way. Only then will the extraordinary profits of oil and gas companies remain where they should have always rightfully belonged: In the bank accounts of the shareholders.
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The Moment of Decision
In the throes of the culture wars, it’s easy to get acclimated to the situation after some time has passed. It feels like a lifetime ago that the battlefield that has become of the issue of transgenderism was little more than a few videos on YouTube imploring viewers to cringe at ‘Die Cis Scum’, and if anything demonstrates the futility of the adage ‘twitter is not real life’, it would be the recent admission from Jamie Wallis that he considers himself a woman.
There is almost certainly some kind of meaning to the fact that Jamie’s desire to be a woman emerged after he was raped, as though he psychologically associates a lack of autonomy to womanhood. But I am not a psychologist, and Jamie’s warped feelings about his identity are irrelevant in and of themselves. What this turn of events creates however, is a moment of Decision for the Conservatives.
For a long time, the Conservatives have enjoyed playing both sides of the culture wars. At conference, they can laud Maggie Thatcher as the first female Prime Minister and reap the benefits of appearing to be progressive – knowing that opposition can be quickly labelled sexist, and something that even the Conservative party has outgrown. Simultaneously, they can point to the Labour party and remind us of what happens if we abandon them. A few cringeworthy remarks about supporting women into politics is certainly a preferable alternative to those same “women in politics” sporting a five-o’clock shadow and suspiciously broad shoulders.
Governments, political parties, and states, like individuals, can hold simultaneously contradictory beliefs. Those who do not act are fortunate enough to never have to confront these contradictions – for they never implement them. But it is through existential participation in life that these contradictions make themselves plain, and a moment of Decision must occur. Constitutional monarchies justified themselves with recourse to the people – but what happens when the monarch and the people (or at least, the institutions representing the people) are at odds over a decision? Who decides? The logic of constitutional monarchy legitimises the king with recourse to the people, and so those institutions closer to the people in the mind of the populace ultimately set the laws. It’s these moments of Decision that move history – a constitutional monarchy may retain the state form of monarchy but rest atop the principle of democracy, but the moment of Decision reveals the incoherence of this state form and opens up a state of exception to alter it.
Equally, the Conservatives present themselves as being opposed to wokeism, but like the constitutional monarch – justify themselves on the principles of equality, and the moment of Decision reveals the incoherence of their rule. Whilst the party had no skin in the game, and whilst it had no existential participation, it could ignore the incoherence because it never actually had to make any decision based on these two contradictory principles. But the moment of Decision has arrived, and what is in store for us as members of the party?
Jamie Wallis has been supported by Boris and Oliver Dowden, the CEO of the party. It is clear the Conservatives have no intention of removing this person from the party or even coming close to asserting that transgenderism is in no way conservative. Jamie Wallis will most certainly be in attendance at Conference and all Conservative events in the future. The Conservative party will now have to decide:
- How will it refer to Jamie, should he ask to be referred to by female pronouns?
- What will they do if Jamie Wallis decides he wants to use the female bathrooms?
- If they wish to affirm Jamie’s wishes, how will they then define what a woman is, since it clearly no longer conforms to a simple definition?
Once again, the failure of Conservatives to engage in philosophy rears its ugly head. When you don’t attempt to delve into your beliefs, when you rest everything on ‘Common Sense’, you actually rest your political order upon the principles of those who do wish to assert and articulate their beliefs. Then, when you inevitably go to implement your beliefs: you’re struck with the inability to implement them in accordance with the principles you’ve justified your beliefs on. It’s simply not enough to have a political philosophy which resolves political (read: economic, technical, bureaucratic, etc.) problems. Your political philosophy must blend, gel, mesh, and harmonise with your ontological beliefs about the very essence of what it means to be anything at all. The idea that culture, economics, and philosophy are distinct and separate spheres is an optical illusion brought about by extended periods of peace. Any of these things, driven to a sufficient extreme become political, and our only tool to navigate these new political realities is philosophy. Those who don’t use it will find themselves lost, both politically and spiritually.
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Just Stop Crime!
Well, they finally got one. At long last, the notoriously useless Met has mustered the willpower to put down the biscuit tin and arrest someone worthwhile.
Too bad he got a measly fine, though.
Bacari Ogarro, also known as Mizzy, is a now infamous “Content Creator” (translation: obnoxiously unemployed) courtesy of his TikToks.
Ogarro’s most well-known ‘work’ includes stealing an elderly woman’s pet dog, threatening to kill random people, harassing women at night and in public places, trespassing into people’s homes and cars, and destroying books in local libraries.
Light-hearted stuff, for sure.
In a serious country, a viral Twitter thread and an online campaign wouldn’t be necessary to get the police to do its job; the modus operandi of any police force should be to keep anti-social types like Ogarro away from civilised society.
Unfortunately, as we all know, Modern Britain is not a serious country. Theft, harrassment, and trespassing are defacto legal, hence why Ogarro was able to post himself engaging in all three without consequence until a few days ago.
Many have remarked that Ogarro’s actions, especially waltzing into someone’s private property, wouldn’t end so well in the United States.
There’s some truth to this. Although any successful attempt at protecting one’s livelihood, even in the United States, carries the non-zero risk of media-assisted backlash – blubbering processions of apologists, resentfully insisting that a serial criminal was actually a sweet baby boy, and other pathetic delusions, potentially interspersed with some Peaceful Protests.
That said, those telling Ogarro to count his blessings overlook the fact he’s self aware:
“I’m a Black male doing these things and that’s why there’s such an uproar on the internet.”
“I always know outrage is going to happen. I know exactly what I’m doing and the consequences of my actions.”
Ogarro is likely aware that someone of his profile is disproportionately involved (or, perhaps to his ethnonarcissistic mind, racistly perceived to be involved) in gang violence in London, and understands how destructive it can be for people to behave as if this is the case, especially when threatened with violence!
Consequently, he’s unafraid to creep on random women in the early hours or threaten to kill men in broad daylight in pursuit of viral content.
Of course, all of this flies in this face of creating a high-trust society.
I’d like to imagine that any civilised society would respond to snatching an elderly woman’s canine companion – possibly her only companion – especially for the sake of clout, with a swift and painful execution.
Seeing that little dog, distressed and helpless, beholden to the self-aborbed malice of a TikTok prankster, makes it impossible to oppose death squads patrolling the streets, violently exploding the head of any pet-snatcher that crosses their peripheral vision.
After all, those that are cruel to animals will almost certainly be cruel to humans.
As Schopenhauer says, compassion for animals is intimately associated with goodness of character, and that he who is cruel to animals cannot be a good man.
It demonstrates an unrepentant lack of mercy or perspective.
Indeed, Ogarro’s more recent comments, made in an interview with Piers Morgan, show a total lack of perspective.
“This whole public uproar just makes me laugh because people are getting hurt over something that didn’t happen to them and that’s how I see it as.”
“But I wasn’t threatened with physical violence. But I didn’t have my dog stolen. But I did have breakfast this morning.”
Of course, and again, unfortunately, Modern Britain is too scared, incompetent, and unimaginative to pursue the purity of justice.
Instead, it prefers to oppress those who try to resist wanton mistreatment.
The backlash against Just Stop Oil’s recent protest is a contemporaneous example.
Already under economic strain, compounded by the unwillingness of the political class to build energy infrastructure, commuters didn’t take kindly to being met with a road blockade of eco-activists.
The commuters attempted to clear them out, but were swiftly mandhandled, and eventually arrested, by police officers – all of whom were happy to let the activists to create an obstruction, despite their insistence that they were “dealing with it”.
Given this, it’s unsurprising that MPs are using Ogarro’s rise to prominence as an excuse to hurry through the Online Safety Bill.
Putting aside the excessive and anarcho-tyrannic censorship contained within, the perverse implication is that TikTok’s “platforming” of Ogarro’s behaviour is more egregious than the behaviour itself.
“I’m cool with theft, intimidation, and trespassing, just do it in private” is as lolbert as it is psychologically revealing.
If the public doesn’t know about a problem, then the problem doesn’t exist. No wonder Hancock was so prepared to cheat on his wife!
In this case, politicians can’t be bothered (or don’t know how) to tackle crime, so they opt (or are forced) to pursue the pretence of tackling crime.
If Ogarro can point out the basic fact that our laws are superficial and weak, why can’t any of our politicians?
Condescending advertisements – “Mates Don’t Let Mates Be Perverts” – doesn’t prevent women from being harassed by sociopaths on the train, especially when bystanders know they’ll get into trouble if they intervene.
Politics is bloated with Very Important Very Nuanced Terribly Complicated Conversations; Conversations upon Conservations! Conversations we’re Having and Conversations we Should Be Having.
Ogarro? Very problematic. Very problematic, indeed. That’s why it’s important to ensure that he’s part of this conservation No Longer.
That’s right. You’re nicked, sunshine! Yeah. I BANISH YOU from The App for your overt and continuously criminal behaviour which you do literally In Real Life.Ah, another tinkering twist of the ol’ managerial-therapeutic apparatus never fails! GOD. We are a Sensible country.
No! For the love of God, no! Enough of the limp-wristed half-measures and cowardly indirectness, enough of the mate-mate-mateing and the PR voodoo.
Clear the smoke, smash the mirrors, and unleash the cops; restore the foundational principle of governance: Just Stop Crime!
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