Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels are rising – that is a fact. Before the industrial revolution, atmospheric CO2 levels steadily remained at around 280ppm (parts per million). This number had remained constant for thousands of years, with very minor increases over the years due to natural processes. In March this year, CO2 concentrations were sitting at 418.81ppm. This huge increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations has already created and will continue to create unprecedented effects on the environment globally. This daunting fact has prompted leaders across the globe to act.
Last November in Glasgow, the COP26 summit was held which was widely regarded as an instance of the UK taking global leadership in the fight against climate change. The UK has worked hard to bring all participants of COP26 to a consensus about the actions needed to mitigate against the harmful effects of climate change and reduce global CO2 emissions as a means of lessening the damage caused by global warming in the future. In doing so, the UK government has sought to fulfil their end of the bargain and beyond, making bold promises in the hopes of accelerating the UK’s charge to becoming net carbon neutral by the year 2050.
Energy production is one of the biggest issues regarding our drive to net zero, producing 21% of the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. As such, the government has placed a levy on domestic energy bills, costing the average UK household an extra £159 per year on energy bills as a means of financing subsidies for renewable energy products. In addition to this, the government has recently raised the household electricity price cap from £693 to £1,971. This will put immense strain on the budgets of many households, not even mentioning the skyrocketing inflation recorded at 7% in March 2022. This financial squeeze is not showing any signs of relenting, with disposable incomes predicted to fall by 1.9% this year – an even bigger decline in living standards than the one seen in the year prior to the Winter of Discontent.
With all the economic doom and gloom spreading about, a question must be asked – is net zero by 2050 worth it? The UK sits on top of huge shale gas deposits which could easily be exploited by the government issuing licences for companies to begin fracking on these lands, solving the gas supply issues which drives lots of the inflation currently seen. This gas could also be used to generate electricity domestically, reducing the UK’s reliance on French electricity whilst increasing supply to the point where households’ electricity bills could be drastically reduced. The UK currently contributes to 1% of global emissions, meaning that despite being virtuous, the drive to net zero will have relatively little effect globally when countries like China and India make relatively little efforts to reduce their own carbon footprints. Moreover, exploiting domestic energy supplies will likely result in lower overall carbon emissions than the alternative of importing, as huge amounts of carbon dioxide is emitted when transporting these resources to the UK.
As such, it is little surprise that Reform UK – the largest right-wing opposition party to the Conservative party has begun to campaign against the government’s current plans to achieve net carbon neutrality. Whilst it is a noble cause to reduce carbon emissions, the current economic reality shows that the plans currently in place will massively reduce the quality of life for millions in this country instead of being the ‘Green Revolution’ that was promised by this government. We need pragmatic, not dogmatic solutions to current issues and reviving domestic energy production is the first step to solving the cost-of-living crisis and reducing our dependence on energy imports. We still have twenty-eight years to reach our target. Making sure that people are financially safe should be the government’s priority, only then can we focus on the environment. There is no doubt that this method of mitigating the cost-of-living crisis will encounter large resistance from pressure groups such as the Extinction Rebellion, but a far larger resistance will be seen in the polls if the government does not get a handle on the situation soon.
-
In Defence of Marriage
In our 21st Century society, the concepts of love and commitment in relationships have become twisted from what they originally meant to older generations. With the rise of social media (and dating apps in particular), people can form many simultaneous online connections with people who they know next to nothing about and then end the messaging and simply forget about them; this isn’t, in my opinion, a reliable nor realistic way to find a compatible partner – we fall in love with souls, personalities and imperfections, not the photoshopped images someone wants us to associate them with.
But putting aside the downsides and problems with technological romance we need to focus on the root of the bigger problem: many young people have become disillusioned with the idea of marriage, with many viewing it as an outdated and irrelevant institution with no real place in 21st Century life. Far from the high esteem, our ancestors placed this tradition, millennials today feel that there is no real point, that you can live together with your partner happily and contently without vows needing to be taken.
But why have attitudes towards marriage changed so much? This can partly be blamed on the economic situation this generation finds themselves in compared to that of their parents’ or grandparents’ – young people today are the first generation to be less well-off than their parents’ generation. Among many millennials, marriage remains the desired outcome for their relationship but simply isn’t financially realistic. In contrast to past generations, where all socio-economic groups married at roughly the same rate, today marriage is more prevalent among those with higher incomes and levels of education. Societal ideas of family and sex also contribute: with the growing “spectrum” of different gender identities ever-increasing, the nuclear family in decline in Britain and the rejection of the importance of values and beliefs in a relationship.
Young people find themselves nowadays wandering aimlessly in the world of dating, unsure of what sort of person they want to spend their life with, with only vague notions of appearance and personality. When they DO find someone, whether that be through a screen or in-person, the concept of marriage and lifelong commitment is a difficult one to approach, especially if you fear losing the person. Whilst this may indeed be a difficult topic to broach, it’s an extremely important one: if you want to marry, and believe yourself to have found a potential future spouse, you should declare your intentions early one – the longer you leave it, the harder it gets.
Many young people nowadays don’t seek a long-term commitment however, instead opting for casual flings, hook-ups based on a shared physical attraction and temporary pleasure. This ‘hook-up culture’ has seen a rise in popularity thanks to the media and its portrayals in television: the scenes of clubbing into the early hours of the morning and waking up in the bed of someone you just met definitely attracts many teens and young adults and in doing so has stripped the act of sexual intercourse of any significance it may have had. In the past, this act was reserved for married couples, seen as more moral and pleasurable when conducted with someone you truly care for. Nowadays it seems, people are perfectly willing to hand out sex to essentially anyone they find remotely attractive, discouraging the idea of long-term stable relationships (and marriages).
Continued mention of differences between the generations will undoubtedly raise questions over what has really changed in terms of attitudes towards marriage and family. Let’s explore.
Ever since religions have existed, marital practices and traditions have been detailed and carried out. Even up to the late 1970s, religious ceremonies still accounted for 50% of all marriages in the UK (falling for 80% in 1900), with the decline of religious affiliation, particularly Christian denominations, often being cited as a reason for marriage’s rejection by the young (indeed, only 1% of young people aged 18-24 identity as Church of England). Christianity has fallen from 66% in 1983 to only 38% in 2019, whereas secularism/no religion had risen in that same time from 31% to 52%. Christian ideals of marriage, between a man and a woman and overseen by God, have certainly become seen as more traditional and unaccepting in recent decades, especially with the legalisation of gay marriage across much to the West.
In particular, greater acceptance of divorce as a concept has put people off standing at the altar. Not only has marriage as an idea suffered a decline in popularity over time, the opposite can be said for divorce – invalidating and belittling the concept of marriage; people in modern Britain will stand before a minister and promise to be with their future spouse ‘till death do them part’, only to then divorce them weeks later and repeat the same vows with another person.
Of course, part of this can be blamed on the mainstream media (gossip magazines especially) and their obsession with the high-stakes divorces of wealthy and well-known celebrities – Brangelina immediately spring to mind! But the speed at which you can go from announcing your intent to divorce and actually being divorced has aided in its popularity as an option: on average, you can have a divorce legally finalised in 4-6 months, with you then receiving an often-sizeable amount from the other person.
Changing ideas about family and child-rearing has certainly been a large generational change. The nuclear family (2 married parents and their children living together) saw a decline in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with many families nowadays consisting of half-siblings, step-siblings and parents, or just one parent. This decline has drastically altered children and young peoples’ views on the benefits of marriage: if they had been born in the 1960s, they’d have seen their parents as a loving and dedicated unit, committed in their responsibilities as both spouses and parents (with the evidence showing that having married parents provides children with a more stable childhood than those with parents who simply cohabitate).
Nowadays, more and more children are growing up with their only perception of marriage being from the media (many ending in divorce, not having children) or from parents who either aren’t married to each other or whose marriages have failed and aren’t together. This dramatic upheaval of the family structure has blinded younger generations from what marriage truly means, how it’s different to cohabitation and how it changes you as a person. Add on top of that the fact that 42% of marriages in England and Wales end in divorce, and no wonder young people get cold feet about the whole affair – if you saw your parents go through that, it definitely wouldn’t be an experience you’d want for yourself and your spouse, especially if you had children who could understand what was happening.
To be married to someone means to be dedicated to building a shared life together, committed to providing financially and emotionally and (ideally) wanting to have children and start a family. It’s the difference of referring to your significant other as your girl/boyfriend or partner and referring to them as your husband or wife. So many dating relationships fail because the participants simply don’t have a plan or a desired outcome – often, it’s because they don’t want to commit to one specific goal (e.g. marriage) or are afraid. They may share similar interests and hobbies and be physically attracted to them, but at some point, the tough questions need to be answered and the answers ironed out. What is the plan for this relationship? Do we share the same values (religious, moral, political)? Do we want children and so, how would we raise them religiously?
This may seem far too forward for the youth of today, wanting instead only to focus on one-night stands and what hobbies they share, but figuring the important stuff out early on is crucial in not staying in dead-end relationships and instead of finding your future spouse. To be married someone means you want to protect them, commit to them and love them 100%. It is no wonder that studies have repeatedly found that (when all these factors are achieved) those in good marriage are on average happier, healthier and wealthier than those who aren’t.
A common rebuttal by the young to the benefits and joys of marriage is that you can live together perfectly happily in a relationship and NOT be married (and indeed, the freedom to live together out of wedlock is a common and easy alternative to marriage) – but after you take those vows and step back into your house, your life is bonded to another person’s, and the expectations, commitments and obligations you now gain are representative of that bond. Marriage is a symbol of your love and devotion, and that you want to share everything you have with said person. Cohabitation could be because of financial incapability to rent a single apartment or out of another mutual need – marriage is by definition, a commitment you make freely and willingly, knowing beforehand what will change and how your priorities will change, whether that be children or work-related.
In a time of so much social and political change, with Black Lives Matter, Brexit and the growing transgender movement, this one staple of devotion and love ought to be pursued by more people, for the joys it can bring are unrivalled apart from having children. So young people, I among you, I implore you to reject these fantasies of partying forever and seeking casual sex every night and instead set yourself the far greater and more fulfilling goal of getting married – your life, and the lives of your future spouse and children, will be infinitely better because of it.
-
One Simple Way to Fix the Government
Sorry, not this government. The idea of proportional representation seems to be fluttering about, but you don’t even need to go that far. There’s a much simpler solution which doesn’t rely on changing the electoral system. Even better, all you have to do is lean into existing political expectations. And, well, it’s not so much one simple way to fix the government. First comes the political party, which then becomes the government.
Solution
Put party appointments, candidates, and occupants of elected positions under the direct and total command of the party leader. Yes. Run the party like a company, military unit, the mafia, etc. whatever comparison works for you. In other words, like any group organised to actually achieve a common purpose in the face of external pressures.
But what about party members?
Shouldn’t the members have a say? No. At least not the way they do now. It’s better that way. They’ll come around when their party wins.
Party members don’t really have much, if any, of a say in party matters as it is. Whether it’s council, parliamentary, or leadership candidates, there’s quite a lot of filtering which goes on before they are presented to members. At the lower level, staggeringly few party members vote on internal party association positions, or even council candidates, so there’s no real loss there. At the higher levels, in the Conservative Party, for example, Kemi Badenoch was the most popular choice for leadership this time around, among the members, before MPs filtered her out and narrowed the field to Truss and Sunak. Now it looks like the party isn’t even really getting Truss. (A lot of that is her fault to be fair).
As a party member, what exactly are you losing by not getting a say? Even after all that, you were almost certainly going to vote for the party anyway, so what are you even complaining about? Isn’t it more important to get behind those who reflect your principles, or back who you think is the best shot, etc. rather than “having a say” exactly?
The reason you want a say isn’t that you want power, exactly, it’s that you want to feel like you matter. Trying to get thousands of cooks to meddle in the broth isn’t the way to matter. When you identify the leader and plan that you want to back, fall in line, and follow their lead. As part of the masses, you have a very small amount of individual energy. If you want it to do anything, it needs to be focused like a laser. Let yourself be focused.
Success happens when there’s a plan and everyone sticks to it. It doesn’t happen when everyone starts fighting over their own ideas. Make the party leader ultimately responsible not just for their plan but for all the resources and people they will need to execute it. That means party members do not get a say. Party members must be rewarded in other ways, but that’s a topic for another piece.
Loyalty
There is one aspect of party candidate selection which is worth keeping: loyalty. The selection process today selects for loyalty above all else, to the party, and to nebulous groups of insiders within the party itself.
Loyalty is important. You need everyone to act as one, working to the same goal, with the same ethos, presenting a strong, united front. The leader at the top should have a plan and will need loyal people to get it done. Make it obvious where that loyalty is going to – to the leader – rather than vaguely to the party, which really means planless, disorganised, venal, behind-the-sceners.
Members don’t really have a say as it is. When it comes to it, most don’t seem to mind and vote for the party in elections anyway. Activists keep knocking on doors, delivering leaflets, donating, etc. Lean into that political reality, clear up the leadership structure, and, even better, make it much more honest by showing plainly where that loyalty really goes.
Just in that regard, putting everyone under the direct and total responsibility of the party leader would make everything better for the candidates, party activists, and the party as a whole.
For candidates, they don’t need to waste time with the chaos and pettiness of the local party and activists. They don’t need to waste untold hours doing pointless tasks to prove their loyalty. If they owe their position entirely to the party leader, that’s where you get the loyalty. Remove some big obstacles to getting the best candidates 1) the time they have to spend doing politics instead of whatever highly demanding civilian job they have, and 2) the risk of not getting selected even after all the loyalty-proving they have to go through.
Do you want better politicians? Make it easier for the better ones to put themselves forward.
For the party leader, the benefits are obvious. He squashes the potential for distraction and dissent, potential rivals from within his own camp, and gets to act much more pragmatically.
This all increases the chances of winning. You like winning, don’t you?
What If It All Goes Wrong?
If the leader turns out not to be a winner, at least it’s totally clear where the problem is – the leader. If the party can only go where the leader does, and the party fails, you know what to do. This makes it much easier to cut your losses, move on, and try again with someone else in a new party.
This criticism is more or less a criticism of the status quo anyway. When party leaders don’t work out, the leaders change. Often the party as a whole changes, merely the branding stays familiar. How many of you have asked whether the Conservative or Labour Parties are really Conservative or really Labour?
What’s the difference, practically, between junking an entire party with its leader and starting again fresh, and more honestly?
Better Government
If you were reading closely enough, you noticed that the solution included total responsibility over those in elected positions.
Let’s face it, people don’t really elect the individual MP. They vote by party or leader. Lean into that political expectation. Use it to clear up and prevent parliament becoming whatever it is now. Stuffed full of has-beens, inadequates, and failures, many occupying “safe seats”.
The party leader should be able to fire and hire as they see fit to the parliamentary seats they/their party has already won. Accepting this should be a condition of candidacy in the first place. It could even be the first law the party passes.
The ability to replace bad MPs might keep them good for longer and allow for a proper cycle of “tested and done” out for “promising and new”. For example; what is the point of Matt Hancock? He’s just blocking someone potentially useful, or at least someone who is not a net negative. Let’s be real, nobody voted for Matt Hancock. Come on. Why wait around? Fire him and get someone else.
Spent losers hanging on is one of the reasons the Conservative Party today is having so much trouble. It happened to the Labour Party too in the dying days of the Gordon Brown government too. Too many MPs hanging around long past their usefulness. It diminishes the pool of potential ministers.
Before you know it, we’re all pretending that Dehenna Davison is a minister who actually does any governing.
The Party Leader
Command over all party appointments, candidates, etc. would include the party leader himself.
No party leadership elections. Most people vote by party or for a party leader, presidential style. Lean into that. Spare everyone the mixed and mashed chaos of whatever normally goes on in the background of party politics. Spare everyone the same mixed and mashed chaos of what goes on in the foreground of party politics!
But isn’t it a problem if you can’t remove a leader from the party? No. Just back the leader you want in a new party. It doesn’t really matter if someone can’t be removed as leader in a party if everyone leaves to do something different. Just look at UKIP/Nigel Farage/the Brexit Party. And now Reform UK or whatever the Brexit Party rebranded as.
The solution for fixing the government
In summary: there’s a leader, a plan, their team, who they will hire and fire to get the job done, and do you want it or not? If yes, you have a structure which might actually be able to get something done. If not, don’t vote for it, and from your perspective, nothing is lost. Simple.
-
Why we need a Hitchens-Navalny strategy for GE 2024
A few days before the 2010 general election, Peter Hitchens wrote an article in the Daily Mail titled ‘This is the most important article I’ve ever written – and loyal Conservative voters will hate me for it’.
In it he argued that, despite being counterintuitive, voters must eschew the Tories if there was to be any chance of implementing a genuine, conservative agenda for Britain.
Much of its analysis of Britain’s woes are completely applicable today. He ends it by writing: ‘Five years’ from now we could throw the liberal elite into the sea, if we tried. But the first stage in that rebellion must be the failure of David Cameron to rescue the wretched anti-British Blair project and wrap it in a blue dress’.
Fourteen years later, not only is the anti-British Blair project wrapped in a blue dress still ruling the country, but David Cameron is again one of its leading figures, rubbing more shoulders at Davos and advocating military actions more brutal and destabilising than even Blair could dream of.
In 2019, Brexit allowed the Conservatives to completely refresh their image and successfully brand themselves as a populist national-conservative party. I myself, for the first (and last) time, voted for them in that election. For this I am ashamed.
What has transpired since is that, what we once identified as Blairism, is in fact part of a wider and even more sinister agenda. If what Hitchens realistically desired was an internal struggle within the Conservatives after a 2010 loss, what we can achieve today is that party’s shattering into a million tiny pieces.
‘But Labour will be even worse’, you will undoubtedly hear the Tory Boys cry. If this was convincing and arguable back in 2010, today it is wrong on its face.
If grassroots supporters and ordinary voters could hear how Tory journalists, politicians and advisors speak amongst themselves, they would be taken aback over how deeply their views are reviled and how deep the liberal rot is.
It is a party run almost entirely by childless, rootless metropolitans, whose view of conservatism is a Randian wet dream of identikit glass skyscrapers and GDPmaxxing.
When it comes to social values, foreign policy, education, health and every other significant policy area, there is no difference between them and the people who run Labour.
In fact, I would go as far to say that Labour is actually run by more ‘normal’ people. So why is it so important to destroy the Tories? Because of what comes after.
Starmer’s Labour is at this stage a well-oiled machine raring to go. Unlike the Tories, it does not pretend to be something it is not. It is an out-and-proud party of the Davos agenda.
Its current popularity is based on it not being the party to preside over the last decade and a half of chaos and decline.
If we are going to have a globalist government, let’s have the exhibitionists instead of those in the closet, as this will help the public correctly identify their enemies.
Right now, there is no appetite on the left to disrupt Labour from its course, but once they are in power it will not take long for the Corbynista wing to start making movements.
This could remove from Labour the contingent that actually can make some common cause with the dissident right (Euroscepticism, averseness to dangerous foreign entanglements, distrust of corporate and financial elites, and a belief in the nationalisation of strategic industries come to mind).
More important is what happens to the Conservatives. Hitchens correctly identifies the Westminster consensus as being ‘only propped up by state funding and dodgy millionaires’.
The funding is allocated based on the number of seats a party holds, and the donations on its prospects of power. A Tory wipe-out would kill both birds with one stone.
If the rump of it is allowed to remain as a significantly large party, it is likely to limp on and even capitalise on its new ability to talk the talk from the opposition benches without having to walk at all.
A vacuum, which we know nature abhors, must be created in its place.
Current polling shows that support for Reform UK could cost the Tories many seats in favour of Labour, despite Reform not winning any themselves.
Reform platform is a damn sight better than anything else out there, but Richard Tice’s neocon Tory-lite outfit will not bring about the reform we actually need. It could, however, be the catalyst for it.
Destroying the Conservative Party once and for all would be a noble and worthwhile aim, and would open the door for major, long-needed shakeup of our politics.
This is a strong argument that Tice would be well advised to use, but predictably he will say that the Brexit Party stood aside for the Tories in 2019 and they failed on Brexit and immigration, so this time they won’t stand aside.
He will, equally predictably, be countered with the argument that he will still let Labour in without winning seats himself.
Openly declaring war on the Tories as a necessary first-step in building a viable and genuine conservative political movement is something that is hard to argue against. Such a battle cry could also attract non-Tory voters.
The only Reform UK politician I have heard express this intent openly is its Co-Deputy Leader, Ben Habib. So it is not an impossibility that they take this line.
Habib is the real deal, but would need someone with the profile of Farage to meaningfully spread this message.
If the straightjacket of the two-party system can be broken, a genuine political realignment can take place, making the ‘Red Wall’ shift pale in comparison.
You might now be wondering where Alexei Navalny comes into all of this.
We have all heard of ‘tactical voting’, but have you ever heard of ‘smart voting’?
Umnoye golosovaniye was a website set up by Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation that had a single goal: letting people know who to vote for to have the best chance of ousting incumbent United Russia politicians.
Unlike British tactical voting, this was an integrated, mathematical system that had no limits or any other goals, and would advise you to vote for communist, ultranationalist and liberal candidates alike; whoever had the best chance.
Many in the ‘non-systemic opposition’ said it would be impossible to vote out the ruling regime in any case, and that engaging with it by participating in elections would only legitimise it. Yet Navalny argued convincingly that shouting from the side lines alone ultimately changes nothing.
For obvious reasons, success of smart voting was limited in the Russian system, but it is a strategy much better suited to our own system of illusory free elections, which are based on brainwashing and narrative control, as opposed to the more primitive techniques used by the Kremlin.
There, the process of voting itself has to be manipulated to maintain the status quo, with there being a limit to the amount achieved by propaganda alone.
Here in the UK, propaganda is the overriding method of keeping out the non-systemic opposition.
What this means is that our actual electoral system is, compared to the American one at least, largely free from rigging and ballot manipulation.
This provides opportunity to collapse, or at least fracture, what is an all-encompassing regime by using its own structures against it.
The Conservative Party is the weak link in the chain – and it can be broken.
The success of a British smart voting system would depend on how convincingly the argument is made.
If it is made well enough, we could indeed throw the liberal elite into the sea five years from now.
