Leading up to December 2022, when I was preparing for my PhD viva, I was told by colleagues – quite consistently – that populism was back on the academic agenda. Clearly, I had timed my PhD well, the covid pandemic aside.
Now, at the conclusion of the process, I have people ask me what my core conclusions are. The truth is, I say, populism is going to remain a permanent feature of our political system for a long time, to such an extent that I think, for all his mistakes and poor insights, Cas Mudde was right to describe our era as the ‘populist zeitgeist.’ I am not alone in making this prediction: in his farewell speech to the European Parliament, Nigel Farage said populism ‘was very popular’; and there abound many different academic attempts at explaining the likely enduring appeal of populism.
Among them I find particular value in Nadia Urbinati’s Democracy Disfigured (2014) and Me, The People (2019): the former is particularly focused on how democracy can be transformed, though populism is only part of that story. In that book, Urbinati attempts to analyse the role of what she calls the doxa in democracy, emphasising the linguistic and dialogical elements of democracy as methods of identifying conflict and resolving them; in response to this, says Urbinati, populism attempts to ‘fix’ the inevitability of conflict. It can do this because democracy (and politics in general) is actually about never attempting to remove conflict, merely attempting to ‘win’ the immediate conflict, whilst accepting that you may ‘lose’ the next one. The underlying unity is, as a result, quite thin, and little more than a general agreement on the process of conflict and resolution, rather than an agreement on the resolution of conflict specifically.
Populism, says Urbinati, works from within the logic of democracy to recognise the inherently conflictual nature of politics and democracy, and then seeks to deny it. Instead of attempting to win now, and accept the possibility of losing in the future, populism attempts to win forever, and deny the possibility of future conflict. In doing so, populism becomes anti-politics.
In the latter book, Urbinati delves deeper into populism specifically, and considers the internal mechanisms of populism, rather than just the impact it has on democracy. In doing so, Urbinati looks at the role of ‘antiestablishmentarianism,’ ‘antielitism’ and, crucially, the messianic leader, in the emergence of populism.
This is an excerpt from “Ides”. To continue reading, visit The Mallard’s Shopify.
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Beware The British Dream
‘Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.‘
– Nicolás Gómez DávilaOn an economic, cultural, and political level, Britain has visibly become more American over the past few decades. Partially due to globalising processes which have occurred throughout the USA’s 30-to-40-year hegemony, the Americanisation of Britain is largely downstream from domestic decisions to ‘modernise’ the country. Possibly the most famous incident of Americanisation in recent British history was the creation of The Supreme Court, an artificial instalment of the Blair-Brown governments with precisely zero political or legal precedent, lacking any institution before it which can accurately or honestly be described as an official or spiritual predecessor.
Despite its arbitrary and fabricated existence, The Supreme Court has been reimagined as an ancient institution of Britain, and has visibly impacted the structure, practice, and direction of contemporary politics, from overriding the prorogation of Parliament to striking down the policy of an elected government as ‘unlawful’. Even basic political education has been contorted with irrelevant concepts and downright myths to assimilate this alien institution. Britain’s current and future leaders and representatives understand and articulate their nation’s political system through an American framework, believing Britain is founded on a Montesquieu-esque ‘separation of powers’ and has an ‘uncodified constitution’.
However, it’s abundantly clear the Americanisation process intends to contaminate much more than just the laws of Britain, but the spirit which said laws are meant to be derived and understood. Up until the early 2010s, the concept of ‘The British Dream’ simply did not exist. If one enters ‘The British Dream’ into Google’s Ngram Viewer, usage of the term is few and far between with static growth up until the early 2010s, throughout which the term skyrockets.
Loosely related ideas of social mobility and aspiration were well-established throughout preceding decades, but the specific notion of ‘The British Dream’ – as an explicit reference and/or equivalent to the American Dream, functioning as an integral, binding aspect of our national identity – really had no cultural, political, or academic significance. Before the 2010s, the small handful of instances in which The British Dream was mentioned usually referred to the non-existence of such a concept. In 2005, Boris Johnson said the UK had failed to articulate a British Dream comparable to the Americans, suggesting a key step towards realising such an ideal involves ensuring everyone in the UK speaks English.
Following the 7/7 Bombings, then-Conservative leader Michael Howard described The British Dream in aspirational terms, linking it to ideas of fairness, equality of opportunity, and the ‘need to break down the barriers that exist in too many people’s lives – and minds – that prevent or deter them from making a success of life.’ From what I’ve observed, a good chunk of the pre-2010 references to ‘The British Dream’ are directly referring to Michael Howard’s usage and understanding of the concept.
In 2007, the concept was described in similar terms by academic Professor George Rodosthenous, a specialist in musical theatre writing on the story of Billy Elliot. A story about a young boy escaping his Northern background, initially prevented by his uneducated, toxically masculine, Blue Labour trade unionist father, to become a London-based ballet-dancer and proud LGBTQI+ ally. Rodosthenous identified The British Dream as ‘a term which needs urgently a definition’, defining it as ‘the desire to do better than one’s own parents.’
Announcing his bid to lead UKIP in 2016, then-MEP Stephen Woolfe defined ‘The British Dream’ as ‘the chance to succeed in your life, no matter your postcode, your gender or the colour of your skin’, using his mixed heritage (Jewish mother, African-American father) and council estate upbringing as proof.
The concept is even used by high-ranking politicians. In her 2017 Conservative Party Conference speech, then-Prime Minister Theresa May promised to bring back ‘The British Dream’, defining it as the idea ‘each generation should do better than the one before it.’ Similar to Woolfe, she referenced her family background (specifically, her grandmother’s role as a domestic servant) to support the notion that upward mobility is central to Britain’s identity.
In a BBC interview discussing ‘The British Dream’ in 2017, Professor Pamela Cox, social historian at the University of Essex, reaffirmed this interpretation, stating: ‘The British Dream has come to stand for home ownership, having a secure job and a living standard higher than your parents.’
In an interview with The Telegraph in 2022, Conservative MP Nadhim Zahawi declared: ‘I am living the British dream’, having gone from an Iraqi child refugee to Chancellor of the Exchequer (albeit very briefly) and becoming one of several contenders (again, albeit very briefly) for Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader.
So where does the term come from? For the most part, present usage of The British Dream can be owed to David Goodhart’s book of the same name. Published in 2013, it documents the success and failures of post-war immigration to the UK. However, for the most part, the book is an extension of the ideas produced in previous works by Goodhart, so much so that prising them apart feels like splitting hairs.These works include ‘Too Diverse?’, a widely read essay for Prospect Magazine published in 2004, and ‘Progressive Nationalism’, a follow-up pamphlet published in 2006, the latter of which is particularly important, given that it constructs a ‘solution’ to present problems whilst the former is entirely analytical.
‘Politicians of the centre-left in Britain, and elsewhere in Europe, are trying to raise the visibility of national citizenship in response to growing anxieties about identity and migration in our more fluid societies – but they often do so defensively and uncertainly. Britain does need a clearer idea of citizenship and a robust protection of the privileges and entitlements associated with it. Indeed, an inclusive, progressive, civic British nationalism – comfortable with Britain’s multiethnic and multiracial character and its place in the European Union (EU) – is the best hope for preserving the social democratic virtues embodied in a generous welfare state and a thriving public domain.‘
Initially directed at the British centre-left, support for Goodhart’s proposal mostly stemmed from the Tory and Tory-adjacent right. Since 2017, Goodhart has been Head of the Demography, Immigration, and Integration Unit at Policy Exchange, one of several free market, centre-right think tanks. However, this shouldn’t be surprising. Despite hailing the ‘social democratic virtues’ of Britain, the thrust of Goodhart’s proposal is considerably (albeit, not entirely) Thatcherite in nature, making Trevor Phillips’ ‘liberal Powellite’ accusation correct in at least one regard.
Goodhart identifies himself as part of the broader post-liberal movement, of which Progressive Nationalism is but one of several ideological tendencies. I shall elaborate on post-liberalism (and my own personal issues with it) in a longer piece. The important point here is that post-liberalism is not anti-liberalism (as post-liberals will eagerly remind you) and aspires to make alterations – in their words, a ‘rebalancing’ of a lop-sided political order – within the prevailing paradigm of liberal-democratic capitalism; an arrangement perceived to have triumphed over all alternatives, thereby forming the basis of any supposedly legitimate arrangement.
As such, the compatibility of a post-liberal doctrine and Thatcherism (despite their widely publicised disagreements) shouldn’t come as a shock. Thatcher herself consistently defended the free-market for its ability to generate prosperity which could be taxed as revenue to fund and improve public services – the type of institutions Goodhart encourages us to unite around in an increasingly diverse society. Thatcher’s influence on the development of The Blob also goes hand-in-hand with this point, as does the ease by which Blair built upon her legacy, but I digress.
Intuitively, Progressive Nationalism seeks to shape a ‘progressive national story… about openness and opportunity’ – that’s the progressive element, enabled largely (albeit far from exclusively) by bringing immigration ‘down to more moderate and sustainable levels’ – that’s the nationalist element. Similar to other post-liberal projects, it pulls from both the centre-left and the centre-right, aspiring to reconfigure the content of the political centre within its pre-established ideological parameters.
In specific terms, Progressive Nationalism posits a strong state can and should provide cultural and economic security for the exclusive benefit and enjoyment of its citizens, ensuring a basic degree of monoculturalism in an otherwise liberal political order and a relatively generous welfare state in a broadly globalised free-market. Indeed, this doesn’t sound too bad, but a few details should be noted before going further.
Firstly, Progressive Nationalism (like many post-liberal tendencies) was explicitly designed to act as a containment strategy or ‘moderating’ ideology for the political centre; a comparatively liberal, inclusive, and civic alternative to potentially more conservative, tribalistic, and ethnocultural manifestations of nationalism:
‘The alternative to a mild, progressive nationalism is not internationalism, which will always be a minority creed, but either chauvinistic nationalism or the absence of any broader solidarities at all.‘
Secondly, unlike the more reactionary versions of nationalism that Goodhart dissuades against, Progressive Nationalism proclaims Britain’s transformation into a multi-ethnic society is both morally neutral and a foregone conclusion. For all the differences which exist across Goodhart’s work, such as his pivot away from describing an America-style national myth as ‘probably not possible to emulate… may no longer be possible either’ to the development of The British Dream, his belief that diversity is destiny remains a reliable constant. Marking the 20-year anniversary of ‘Too Diverse?’ in The Times, Goodhart maintains the necessity of creating a post-ethnic nation state with conclusive conviction:
‘I look at what is coming our way and I think we need the galvanising and unifying power of the post-ethnic nation state more than ever. We need it to lean against fragmentation as we head towards a 40 per cent minority population by 2050.‘
As such, the state must be willing and able to responsibly manage this transition, which Goodhart argues can and should be assimilated to the native populous by maintaining a high degree of economic development and conformance to fundamental liberal values, even among self-described non-liberals. In anti-political fashion, this would reduce the potential for non-liberal practices and convictions to develop into actual political or cultural challenges. thereby creating Division:
‘Diversity in itself is neither good nor bad, it is fairness that matters. Clearly, a developed, liberal society such as Britain can and does sustain a huge variety of beliefs and lifestyles, all of which are compatible with an adequate sense of Britishness. We do not all have to like each other or agree with each other or live like each other for the glue to work. As the philosopher David Miller has written:
‘Liberal states do not require their citizens to believe liberal principles, since they tolerate communists, anarchists, fascists and so forth. What they require is that citizens should conform to liberal principles in practice and accept as legitimate policies that are pursued in the name of such principles, while they are left free to advocate alternative arrangements. The same must apply to immigrant groups, who can legitimately be required to abandon practices that liberalism condemns, such as the oppression of women, intolerance of other faiths and so on.‘
Thirdly, finally, and unsurprisingly, Progressive Nationalism (despite its name) fundamentally does not regard Britain as a nation – a particular ethnocultural group – but as a state. That is, ‘Britain is (technically) not a nation at all but a state.’
Despite this, Goodhart is perfectly aware of the demographic implications of mass immigration, accepting the existence of homophily – ‘To put it bluntly, most of us prefer our own kind’ – even when concerned with a diverse in-group – ‘those we include in our in-group could be a pretty diverse crowd, especially in a city like London’ and that demographic change has been responsible for various forms of division (ghettoization, mutual resentment, political extremism, etc.). Moreover, far from being a defender of Britain’s policy of multiculturalism, Goodhart describes it as ‘overzealous’, dismissing the establishment’s previous attempts at promoting unity in a diverse society as insufficient at best: ‘The multi-ethnic success of Team GB at the 2012 Olympics and a taste for chicken tikka are not sufficient to forge common bonds.’
In fact, it is recognition, not ignorance, of immigration’s shortcomings that has given rise to a ‘Progressive Dilemma’ – the incongruence between social solidarity, diversity, and their respective benefits, as co-existing political priorities (i.e. immigration undermining the social trust necessary for a basic welfare state). Goodhart tries to resolve this dilemma by shifting the boundary of the political community from the nation to the citizenry, as recognised by the state. In this respect, Progressive Nationalism is distinctly anti-populist, especially anti-national populism, as a matter of political strategy and in its ideological details.
Whilst Populism attempts to recreate sense of peoplehood from the bottom-up, defining its boundaries in opposition to the elite – with National Populism doing so along the lines of a national group against an international elite – Progressive Nationalism attempts to recreate a sense of peoplehood from the top-down by adjusting pre-existing bureaucratic structures; that is, mechanisms which only exist as an expression of the primordial nation, something the Progressive Nationalist framework deliberately obfuscates by ‘blurring the lines between the civic and the ethnic.’
Conceding that a degree of exclusion being necessary for the existence of a state, Progressive Nationalism centres around the exclusivity of the state’s resources and benefits to those with bureaucratically sanctioned access, rather than the survival and self-determination of a particular ethnocultural group.
Having established this, Goodhart outlines several exclusionary measures to form the basis of a Progressive Nationalist state; benefits afforded exclusively to the citizenry, underscored by rituals which foster solidarity along post-national lines. For starters, A points-based immigration system to reduce illegal and lower-skill immigration, electronic embarkation controls, and an annual migration report created by an independent migration panel, are all fairly universal proposals amongst immigration restrictionists.
Additionally, Goodhart proposes tiered citizenship, comprised of those with ‘a more formal, full’ citizenship and those with ‘British resident status with fewer rights and duties’ for temporary immigrant workers without dependants. Immigrants would not be entitled to British citizenship, only to those who ‘worked their passage’. This so-called ‘passage’ includes a probationary period for citizenship, in which new arrivals would not qualify for full political and welfare rights but would be granted on completion, assuming one hasn’t committed a crime above ‘a certain degree of seriousness’. Such a process would be accompanied by citizenship ceremonies, rigorous citizenship and language tests, and oaths of allegiance, thereby ‘belatedly bringing Britain into line with much of the rest of the developed world, including the United States.’
By definition, residents (non-citizens) would not have the benefits of citizenship, especially ‘long-term benefits’ – pensions, social housing, etc. By contrast, not only would the citizenry have access to ‘generous welfare and thriving public services’, the identity and solidarity of the citizenry would arise from their shared access (and shared investment in the success of) these public services.
‘As society becomes more diverse and more affluent, our sharing of common spaces and institutions dwindles. Those public institutions that we do still share, such as education and health services, become more important.‘
However, access to public institutions rests on the proviso that citizens demonstrate ‘appropriate behaviour, such as the commitment to genuinely seek a job in return for unemployment benefit’ and seek social insurance over welfare payments wherever possible. Goodhart justifies this restrictiveness on the basis that open access to such resources is no longer feasible in a globalised and mobile society. It is also on this basis that Goodhart proposes the introduction of ID cards, both to track who is and isn’t in the country and to identify who is and isn’t entitled to state welfare.
Goodhart is very fond of ID cards, seeing them almost as a silver bullet to Britain’s problems. According to Goodhart, they can be a solution to Britain’s Progressive Dilemma, something which can be ‘a badge of Britishness which transcend our more particular regional, ethnic or racial identities’, and form of economic reassurance, claiming ‘identity cards… will demonstrate a commitment to using taxpayers’ money fairly’ and ‘ensure citizens that access to public services… is based on a protected entitlement.’
Moreover, by making the line between citizen and non-citizen more visible, which supposedly enables a fairer distribution of state resources, Goodhart suggests ID cards can mitigate any mutual resentment felt between minorities, who might otherwise ask for special treatment, and those of the majority group, especially those who felt ‘left behind’ in an age of globalisation. That said, Goodhart realises ‘much integration takes place spontaneously in private life’ especially in the ‘middle-class suburbs and professional and business life.’ As such, rather than directly intervening in people’s livelihoods, public authorities should provide positive incentives to mix and disincentives to separate to ‘ensure a high degree of trust-building contact’.
Such trust-building initiatives would include a ‘British Liberty Day’ (or simply Britain Day, in later references) to celebrate ‘the post-1689 Whiggish Liberal culture’ of ‘constitutionalism, rights and commerce’ and ‘a Whiggish story… from the Magna Carta to the race discrimination laws’ being taught at every level of education; one which would contextualise the ‘gradual extension of citizenship rights’ and establish Britain’s national myth as a nation of ‘brave islanders defending freedom against domestic tyrants and continental conquerors’, building a liberal fraternity between citizens of different backgrounds.
For the same reason, Goodhart argues ‘there should be a policy bias against faith schools’ and ‘a single national religious education curriculum which applies to faith schools’. Additionally, veils should be discouraged in public spaces and strong incentives directed at the south Asian community to find spouses in Britain, rather than returning to the subcontinent, as such a practice can ‘short-circuit the process of integration by bringing in spouses who are often completely new to Britain’s norms and language.’ Goodhart concedes ‘it is not appropriate for a liberal society to interfere directly in the marriage choices of its citizens, but it is appropriate for a liberal society to control who becomes a citizen.’
If it isn’t obvious by now, Goodhart defines British culture in explicitly liberal terms. True to post-liberal form, Progressive Nationalism is an attempt (albeit grounded in often astute observation; again, like many post-liberal tendencies) to insulate and maintain what is otherwise a vacuous political structure that risks being filled by forces which are perceived to be less-than-liberal overall.
What does any of this have to do with The British Dream? Simply put, The British Dream holds the Progressive Nationalist state together. Pulling on Bhikhu Parekh, a leading proponent of multiculturalism and arguably the most influential political theorist in Modern Britain, Goodhart argues ‘a primary emotional commitment to this place andits people’ is required to hold society together:
‘Societies are not held together by common interest and justice alone. If they were, the sacrifices that their members make for each other including sharing resources and giving up their lives in wars and national emergencies would be inexplicable. They need emotional bonding . . . that in turn springs from a common sense of belonging, from the recognition of each other as members of a single community. And that requires a broadly shared sense of national identity – a sense of who they are, what binds them together and makes them members of this community rather than some other.‘
Surprisingly, this emotional commitment isn’t the personalistic institution of the monarchy. Whilst it is viewed as a valuable resource, it is ultimately a secondary characteristic of the state. Instead of using it as a common institution to act as a lynchpin for a diverse citizenry, Goodhart attributes the value of the monarchy to its present popularity and little else, predicting the emergence of a ‘national republicanism with British characteristics’ which will hollow it out to a greater extent.
Rather, this emotional commitment is to the meritocratic power myth of The British Dream. Having failed to handle post-war immigration effectively, Goodhart argues we require ‘a national identity that feels meaningful, that is open to settled minorities and to newcomers and is completely ordinary – The British Dream in practice.’ In summary, it is a retroactive measure to an unwanted policy of mass immigration; an opportunity for the political class to save face and make the indigenous nation comfortable with an inherently uncomfortable arrangement by appealing to a universal desire for intergenerational progress; paradoxically, a specific place defined by its universalism.
In the small handful of references to ‘The British Dream’ throughout The British Dream in, Goodhart explicitly refers to the ability of Chinese and Indian individuals to enter high-status professional roles from low-status family backgrounds as the essence of the concept.
‘One test of who has been upwardly mobile and who hasn’t can be found on the British high street – in the corner shops and restaurants run by people of Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, and Chinese background. All four of those groups were overrepresented in self-employment on the high street in the first generation. Today, rates of self-employment have fallen quite sharply for those of Chinese and Indian background, as the next generation have gone on to become lawyers accounts and teachers – living The British Dream – whilst many Pakistanis and Bangladeshis remain in low status self-employment.’
That’s right, the height of Britishness is not being actually British, but being non-British and succeeding in Britain… something every British person famously does and wants. The British Dream is about being born to uneducated and paranoid provincialists – uppity Brexiteers who need to be assured (civilised) that the ongoing changes (destruction) to their country will be conducted slowly and prudently – and joining the educated, mobile, cosmopolitans in The City; shedding one’s heritage to the extent it becomes a hollow ornament to liven-up the corporate rat-race. In Goodhartian terms, going from a lowly Somewhere to a respectable Anywhere… just like Billy Elliot! Indeed, by these metrics, a person of non-British descent becomes more (spiritually?) British than a person of British background should the former be successfully dissolved into the laptop classes of London.
Counteracting liberalism’s crusade to the lowest common denominator of communal belonging, The British Dream reorients the political focus upwards, emphasising the shared desire for social mobility, without actively reversing the foundations on which this new orientation is constructed. In fact, besides a general concession to reduce immigration, Goodhart openly concedes to the direction of travel which has been occurring for the aforementioned 30-40 years: ‘Diversity can increasingly look after itself – the underlying drift of social and economic development favours it.’
Instead, it opts to bureaucratically insulate this new, lowly base of subsistence through moderate degrees of welfare chauvinism and social engineering. In no uncertain terms, it tries to bandage against the disintegration of the people without directly addressing the causes for such a process, wording the solution as a necessary measure, rather than a political choice:
‘It might seem odd to call a book that is in places about what a mess we have made of post-war immigration, The British Dream. But when a country is changing very fast, as Britain currently is, it needs stories to reassure and guide it. Unlike the American Dream, the British Dream is a phrase that does not trip off the tongue, the British tradition is more pragmatic than visionary. But it is time we started getting our tongue round the phrase.’
Is it? Must we change who we are to accommodate liberalism and its consequences? Bureaucratising the identity of an entire ethnocultural group to act as a barrier against social division and disorder that has been reversed countless times in other places on Earth? Is Britain’s claim to exceptionalism that it is the only country without a political class to prevent the collapse of a White British supermajority within these isles? If not for the entirely reasonable pursuit of national self-determination, then to reasonably attain any integrationist model that doesn’t run the risk of turning Britain into a larger version of London, where particularising diversity obviously hasn’t worked, despite the snobbish parochialism of self-described cosmopolitans. Indeed, this project places a lot of optimism in the state’s ability to manufacture solidarity through artificial forms of belonging which are supposedly more attractive than organic ones.
Much like the Windrush Myth, The British Dream shamelessly attempts to retroactively legitimise the growing migrant population in the minds of the masses, this much is obvious. However, even if this wasn’t the case, how do would such a myth help us understand ourselves when much of British history was absolutely not meritocratic or fluid? Needless to say, very few were living The British Dream in our own land when we built the Empire, or prior to the creation of the Union. The British Dream did not defeat the French at Trafalgar, the enemy did not cry ‘Sacre bleu! Fairness and openness have destroyed our frigates!’ – they feared men with names unlike their own, a language they did not understand, belonging to a different bloodline, flying a flag they did not recognise.
Overall, The British Dream, its related tendencies, and its consequences sound like a nightmare. Even on its own terms, what good is this ‘dream’ or any of its adjacent ideas, if it’s not something We desire, but a cackhanded imposition by sheer and supposed necessity? It is solution by comparison to malicious negligence, but a solution constructed on the concession of the British nation to its marginalisation, in the physical and the abstract, and its presumably ’inevitable’ demise. An easy, smooth, therapeutic demise, but its demise, nonetheless.
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Just Stop Oil: A Proposal for Alliance
Dear Just Stop Oil,
You’re a success.
You stuck to your principles through ridicule and hate. You’ve carried a burden. Others may still dismiss you, but that’s also an achievement. They didn’t even know to dismiss you before. You’ve now got a place in political discourse.
What are your next steps? Are the following broad steps reasonable guesses? It’s probably safe to say that you’re doing these things continuously, right?
Taking stock of where you’re at, analysing, refining your tactics, techniques, etc, consolidating your position, looking at how to increase the range and scope of your activities, deciding what to do next.
Are you open to ideas?
You’re off to a great start. You could be even greater. What if there were some small, simple changes which could inordinately boost your cause at no cost? What if you could get more publicity, stay in the news longer, and even win over political enemies while keeping your political allies?
The solution is simple. Your targeting is off.
Public roads, bridges, New Scotland Yard, art galleries. These are alienating a big portion of your potential audience. This portion is made up of a few main groups of people, with some Venn overlap, which you could easily win over. You’ll find the prospect of winning over some of these groups surprising but it’s easily possible.
The first is the general public. You’ve gained notoriety but at the expense of public support. Worse, you’re gaining public resentment. Whether you agree with them or not, these people place their own priorities, like getting to hospitals in emergencies, their jobs, daily lives, even just their own convenience, well ahead of Just Stop Oil becoming famous.
Find targets; simultaneously, do not cost these people anything. Even better, targets which these people might enjoy. Don’t worry, suggestions will come later.
Second, conservatives. Small c, big c, whichever, and as a broad group. There are just some people who value things like the normal goings on of the day to day, and indeed cultural heritage at art galleries.
Find targets which do not rankle these people. Even better, targets which strike at this group’s political enemies. Where do your and their enemies overlap? Don’t worry, suggestions will come in a minute.
Third, climate deniers. Let’s indulge you and use your characterisation for now. If you want to fully win this group over though, you should strongly reconsider using a term for them which they find derogatory, which makes them thing you’re abusing Holocaust victims for what they see as a manipulation. But yes, you can even win climate deniers over too. Again, they have political enemies. Where is your overlap? Suggestions will come now!
The last thing to adjust on targeting is where your own enemies are.
Where are the brains of the operation and who are their mouthpieces?
Oil company executives? No. Bankers? No. Tories? Really no.
If you’re thinking about who runs the world, the real question is about where do their ideas come from about what to do? The source of those ideas is really who runs the world. Where do these people all go to pick up their ideas? What is the last finishing step these people take before getting set loose in the world? Where might you go to learn about how to govern, about stately things like philosophy, politics, and economics? The tactic of getting noticed by annoying people will really work when you target those who actually have power.
Next, the mouthpieces. Who are the biggest purveyors of social, cultural, political, etc. ideas? Who is responsible for amplifying or diminishing points of view on a national level? More importantly, where do the most influential, the powerful (the governing?), get their information from once they’re out in the world? Is it from the Big Business Chronicle? The Burning Blaze Channel? Nah, maybe, disreGuard. The tactic of getting publicity will really work when you target those who themselves disseminate information at scale to those in power.
You’re probably thinking that these places are full of progressives, people much closer, more sympathetic to your side. Exactly! They already basically agree with you and they’re not going to give that up just because you soup, glue, and obstruct up their stuff. Even more reason to go totally nuts! More glue! How about cement? More soup! How about something obnoxiously fishy? More obstruction! Do you need a new parking space?
These are the exact same organisations which your above target audience can support. Even better for you, getting right up in these targets makes it much easier and more personal for them. They will talk about you loudly and a lot.
What do you reckon, Just Stop Oil? Do we have terms?
Yours very sincerely,
Joe King
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On the Invention of British ‘Values’
Contender for the Conservative Party leadership and Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, has declared that he would widen the scope of our PREVENT programme to include those with “anti-British” attitudes. He didn’t bother to define those attitudes but no doubt they include equality, diversity and inclusion to the extent that I will be sent to the Sensitivity Hub in the Leveled Up North for saying I don’t think young girls should cut their breasts off and that a wider cuisine base is the price worth paying for a million immigrant.
British values have had to be invented in the 21st century because they never existed. I’m sorry, but it’s true – otherwise David Cameron wouldn’t have had to try so hard to either define them or legislate for their respect. I still remember that cringe Google advert from circa 2014 that asked “what are British values” and delighted in showing us a picture of two men wearing kilts getting married. But culture, like air, is only felt in its absence. What’s worse, the definitions that have been foisted upon us of “British values” are only British in the sense that they can be found in Britain, but they are not uniquely British. Is it wrong to say that most of Europe respects the values of “equality, diversity and inclusion”?
Diversity built Britain, claims a fifty pence piece with a smug Rishi Sunak behind it. This is only true if you buy the Blairite lie that Britain was born in 1997 and actively chose to depart from its millennium-long history thereafter. Yet, these invented values are clearly not powerful enough to inspire the one thing that keeps a country together – loyalty. The chairman of this publication asked the question “what is a nation if it cannot inspire loyalty?” but neglected to interrogate the cultural dimension of that question, focusing on the legal questions of identity. This is like describing a human in terms of their body only, and making no distinction between living or dead bodies; a body needs a soul to be a person. If you don’t believe me, try and sit in the presence of the corpse of someone you know.
It does not have to be this way; and, when you climb out of the political rabbit hole built for us, you realise it actually is not this way. “Britain” is stamped across everything and pushed into your face at every opportunity – and I’ll tell you what Britishness is shortly. Instead, there is a richer dust beneath that impoverished earth that can be found, if only you look for it: Englishness.
The left fears Englishness because it is real. It does not fear Englishness because it does what the left wants to do, and better – it does not offer “an inclusive and diverse” society – but they fear it because it inspires so much loyalty and with so much ease. And as with oxygen, you only find it when you’ve been denied it for so long; but this actually makes finding it easier since we are so starved of it already. You can find it in a country pub, at a church fête, at a garden party, at a Christmas church service, in the architecture of Buckingham palace, in the music of Herder and Elgar, in the tailors of Saville Row – in short, in all the places you would not find anywhere else in the world. You don’t find it in a cup of tea, or in a queue, or the other twee nonsense that is so important to the 21st century project of multiculturalism.
You have to find these things, though. They are hidden, and consciously so – otherwise they threaten the damp, empty and meaningless focus of loyalty you’re supposed to feel, “British”. And Englishness threatens Britishness because it’s so much more powerful. I don’t blame the SNP or Plaid Cymru or Sinn Fein for being so successful. I blame our gutless, cowardly elites.
It wasn’t always like this. Britain and “Britishness” was only ever a legal identity supported by an English hegemony. There’s a reason that, for so long, writers would use the words interchangeably – it’s because they were. Englishness was unique and different to Scottishness (Welshness doesn’t exist), and quite clearly the animating spirit, the soul of Britishness. Scottish and Irish people might complain today that their culture was “erased” by the British state under an English hegemony, but to the victor, the spoils. England and Scotland had the same population sizes for centuries, and went to war so very often, it’s hardly surprising that one of them would eventually triumph.
English people were aware of this. It’s no surprise that Enoch Powell spoke about this – typically eloquently and with deeper understanding than any living politician – and urged that “Britain” concede its diminished place in the world, surrendering the Empire (and its step-child, the Commonwealth), instead accepting that England is the only real entity worth loyalty. Powell thought that clinging on to a vaguely defined “Britain” at a time when her seapower was basically gone, the massive waves of immigration were becoming the norm, and the European Economic Community was expanding, meant the hegemonic English identity would be turned in on itself, swallowed up, and hollowed out by the desire to make “Britain” as palatable as possible. As with everything else, on this issue Time has proved to be Enoch’s greatest ally, to the extent that David Lammy – who has no cultural or ethnic connection to Englishness – can call himself English. The only reason he can, is because Englishness and Britishness are still mistaken for one another. We have made the mistake of letting an English hegemony be captured by those who hate England.
But this hegemony is almost dead: whilst the last bits of “Englishness” that have dominated “Britishness” are swallowed up, it became the project of the Left in the post-Thatcher years to become even more aggressive in simultaneously undoing that hegemony whilst also turning it in on itself. That first part, of undoing this hegemony, was fuelled by Leftist desires for “equality” between Scotland and Wales, and England, and the farcical idea of Britain as a “nation of nations”, culminating in the devolution programmes that created the fake nation of Wales (still a principality of England, really) and threw the rabid dog of Scotland a steak as if that would satisfy its hunger. You don’t feed the strays.
Peter Hitchens’ Abolition of Britain catalogues that second arm of the Leftists strategy, of taking the ‘kind and gentle’ civilisation of Britain and weaponising it against the England upon which it was built. Another article published by the Mallard, written by Eino Rantanen, put this point well – “British friendliness has created not only complacency, but rather powerlessness in the face of people and ideologies that have no qualms asserting themselves, often violently”.
One violent ideology of this kind is the hated enemy of Blairism. Blairism was the final legal victory of the Leftist assault on English hegemony: again, the Blairite elements of the British state have been rightly identified before, but I will list them for the sake of explaining my point: the Supreme Court (which is a nonsense name, the Monarch in Parliament is still supreme); devolution, as I say above; the eradication of our educational heritage by devaluing university; and so on.
But, this publication has made it its job to be more optimistic, or so I’m told. The situation may look bleak, and I doubt I’ve helped, and this next point might make me sound even more blackpilled: the British project is nearly exhausted. The values that had to be invented in the sundering of the English hegemony of Britain were a sort of proto-globalism – that triumvirate of mediocrity, “equality, diversity and inclusion” have proven to be as empty as the French Revolution’s “liberte, egalite et fraternite” – but some kind of pseudo-cultural identity was needed to keep Britain going. In a way, the Left has dug its own grave, because it took away the only real substance that gave Britain an identity, and replaced it with a set of contradictory inventions.
And you can see this new public culture everywhere. Indeed, it is stamped across everything, in such a way that you cannot avoid it: for example, despite the fact that June has (somehow, unquestioningly) become “pride month”, there are still “pride parades” everywhere and all the time, and in such public spaces that you need to actively try to avoid them – an inconvenience that they are counting on, of course. And “pride parades” are not even about being gay anymore, or LGBT, or whatever, they’re just an excuse to get drunk and be promiscuous in the street, and you can take part – provided you wear the dress and make up and face paint necessary to mark you out as “one of us”, whoever the “us” is.
Contrast this, quite literally, with the fact that Eid is celebrated by thousands of Muslims on the streets of London, a religion that is less tolerant of homosexuality than Christianity. And again, you don’t even really need to be Muslim to take part in the celebration of Eid. The fact that these contrasting belief systems are publicly supported and worshipped is the sign of the absence of a communal identity, not its existence; deep and contradictory belief systems cannot be present in the same collective identity. It is just proof that different collectives live in the same space now; and the simultaneous celebration and sublimation of each is the only way their contradiction can be held in check. In the same way that Patrick Deneen wrote in Why Liberalism Failed that the expansion of atomistic individualism required a stronger state, so too does multiculturalism (another invented British “value”).
Then there’s the fact that every advert – every advert – is full of black people (or, if you want to see intersectional London’s one-step-further form of this, spot the Tube advert with an interracial lesbian couple in which both are wearing face masks). To such an extent that British people think the British population is 20% black (it’s 3%, by the way); and never mind the fact that black people are not Britian’s biggest ethnic minority, we now have a “Black history month”, apparently. You would be forgiven for thinking we lived in America – but maybe that’s the point.
Where is the room for Englishness in all of this? That’s just the point: there isn’t any, and by design. The desire to strip the England out of Britain by the Left meant that Englishness has to be sublimated in order to for “Britishness” to be viable. But here is the optimistic point of this article: the twin facts that the British project is fraying, and that English culture has to be suppressed, points to a single, irresistible conclusion. Englishness is both too powerful for the new British “identity” to counter, and that it is ripe for rediscovery.
The final point here is that, the word “rediscovery” is intentional – Englishness has to be found, partly because it is so smothered by that new British pseudo-culture I lay out above, but also because real culture is physical and tangible. You can find English culture hiding in an Anglican church, in a garden party, in the squat village pubs – basically, in all the places that are unique to England and around which a recognisable pattern of behaviour has been built. Englishness can be found once again – you just need to look for it.
