Samuel Martin, Author at The Mallard

Against assisted dying

By Samuel Martin — 2 months ago

It is unsurprising the government is rushing through ‘assisted dying’. Having decimated what little political capital it possessed after a hollow election victory, Labour is clearly desperate to shore up as many achievements as quickly as possible; successes which can be fashioned into something resembling a coherent and tangible legacy at a later date, showing little-to-no regard for the common good.

What is surprising is how limp-wristed and tepid the opposition to this policy has been, especially from Britain’s commentariat. In no uncertain terms, the assisted dying bill is one of the most radical proposals for social liberalisation in decades, yet our opinion-having class has alarmingly little to say, at least when compared to other matters. Those eager to broadcast their intelligence on other issues – which they’re similarly unqualified to write about (that’s not a bad thing, by the way; far from it!) – are inexplicably scared to take a crack at this offputtingly complex but highly important matter which affects us all.

What little discussion has occurred in the commentariat (never mind Parliament) has revolved around the foreseeable practical issues of such a policy, typically pointing to the results of Canada’s assisted dying policy (MAID; Medical Assistance in Dying), the initial proponents of which say is being abused. As such, opponents of assisted dying in Britain essentially oppose it on the basis of negative and unintended consequences, specifically the gradual loosening of safeguards overtime, killing people who should’ve received non-lethal forms of care.

None of this is wrong per se, although it’s hard to treat this angle as anything other than unsatisfying. It does not bode well for a civilisation that its only barricade against its destruction is the ineptitude of the barbarians.

More than a total lack of faith in anything improving at all, it suggests that we are caught between our reluctance to end life yet struggle to justify such an instinct; we retain the form of a society which professes something like the sanctity of life, but lack any of the substantial belief, frightened to unlearn that which can’t so easily be relearnt once lost to history as another primitive superstition.

It’s difficult to be truly hard-line on something like assisted dying because it elicits so much sympathy. No right-minded person wants people to suffer, never mind be made to feel that they are forcing people to suffer. After all, humans are motivated by aversion to pain more than most things. However, advocates of assisted dying use this fact to strongarm more hesitant individuals into agreeing with assisted dying in principle, disagreeing solely on the technicalities of implementation.

More often than not, support for assisted dying is couched in the idea that if you’re in ‘unbearable’ pain, you might as well be given the choice to end your life, especially if you’re going to die in six months anyway. Putting aside the remarkable precision of such a prediction, it never occurs to advocates that if you’re going to die in six months anyway, you might as well tough it out, if not for the sake of yourself or your loved ones, then for the sake of ensuring that society-at-large doesn’t suffer the wrath of short-sighted policy.

Of course, this is assuming unbearable pain is the main reason for assisted dying, contrary to plenty of evidence to suggest otherwise.

According to data from places where it’s already legal, the main reasons for assisted dying are the inability to fulfil day-to-day tasks and engage in ‘meaningful activities’. Even abstract notions like autonomy and dignity are cited as more important than pain. Even fear about being a burden on one’s family is reportedly just as common.

A real shame, that’s for sure. There are few greater exertions of autonomy than refusing to die for someone else’s benefit, and there is nothing more ‘undignified’ than having so little sense of self-worth that you sacrifice yourself for others in your most intimate and personal moment. If we can’t reserve ourselves for our own death, it’s no surprise that things like sex and marriage continue to lose any sense of exclusivity.

Concepts like ‘anarcho-tyranny‘ and ‘two-tier policing’ are typically used in discussions surrounding criminal justice, but the underlying logic surely applies to a system which releases unrepentant, serially violent criminals as it provides the sick and vulnerable – many of whom needlessly swell with guilt over their condition – with the option to end their own life. This sense of guilt will only become stronger when someone in a position of medical authority – in a culture which reveres expertise, even when it fails us – tells them they can make it go away. That which is legally a ‘right to die’ will feel like the duty to die, and by extension, those expected to sign-off on the procedure will feel as though they have a duty to kill.

Far from acting as a safeguard, medical professionals will act as affirmers to something which they’ve been told is not theirs to dictate in the first place. When the option is available, like the patient, the fact something can be done will weigh down upon them, and whilst they may be motivated by a desire to alleviate or prevent suffering, those once hesitant are now incentivised to act with urgency.

Indeed, the same can be said of the patient’s family, the consultation of which is notably absent from the bill’s supposedly stringent requirements, although they’ll certainly weigh on the patient’s conscience. If patients don’t feel burdensome to their loved ones, they’ll absolutely feel burdensome to the NHS, an institution our country continues to revere with mindless zealotry.

Courtesy of the selfish (but outwardly generous) nature of our present culture, the patient’s expectation of good care risks being outweighed by the ’empathy’ we demand them to have for others in a different position. Assisted dying is not yet legal and yet many already feel (perhaps not without reason) that the elderly are spitefully overstaying their welcome on this mortal coil.

Advocates of assisted dying (similar to advocates of abortion) like to believe that leaving something up to choice absolves the decisions made of any and all comparable virtue. Far from removing an ideological imposition on society, this notion that we have no choice but to leave everything up to choice, that all options must be on the table, is one of the most duplicitous and tyrannical value systems afflicting contemporary society; so much that life itself is ceasing to be the default, becoming just another option for which one is cruelly judged behind a veil of strained, artificial tolerance.

Extending the comparison, liberalising assisted dying doesn’t just implicate those who’ll be inevitably and unjustifiably killed in the name of healthcare, it devalues death outside of the circumstances in which assisted dying would be viewed as an option. When abortionists downplay (or functionally deny) the value of the child, they’re implicating any baby which (for whatever reason) doesn’t make it. A procedure once permitted for the sake of saving the mother’s life, balanced against the life of the child, is now a simple matter of preference, exalted as a form of empowerment.

Followed to its conclusion, an involuntary miscarriage, rightfully treated as a tragic incident deserving sympathy, can only be regarded, in all sincerity, as ‘tragic’ as receiving a bad hand in a game of Blackjack. Of course, insincerity is the essence of civility, and therefore integral to any tactful interaction, but this is not the same as having a genuine moral compass. The tragedy lies in the fact we know something deeply valuable has been lost. We say “I’m sorry for your loss” not “better luck next time” for a reason. As such, unless you intend to engage in mental gymnastics to suggest “terminating” highly viable babies past the legal limit is worlds apart to killing newborns, the recent movements for decriminalisation should be concerning, even if wholly in-step with our opponents’ revealed attitude towards the unborn.

In a similar vein, if assisted dying should be liberalised to alleviate suffering on the basis that our life is ours to use as we see fit, then suicide becomes just another expression of individual choice which needs to be destigmatised. After all, why should we need to suffer? Why would such a precondition exist if life didn’t have an inherent value, and if life has an inherent value, how could we justify a policy like assisted dying in the first place? Because the suffering outweighs that inherent value? How would you know when suffering outweighs this value? After all, suffering is extremely subjective. You can make this assessment for your own quality of life, but not for another person’s. Confronted with the potential suicide of another person, there’s not a lot you could do. You needn’t assist the act or condone it, but you’d be a hypocrite for showing or feeling anything more than defeated indifference. After all, who are you to judge? Again, it’s not your life. In order to override them, you’d need to believe life has a value beyond quantification, which it certainly does.

If one’s suffering is one’s business, then it becomes one’s business to deal with it, using their preferred option of the many made available. Although plausibly convenient, it makes life less rich, for what good are the virtues of mercy, assurance, and even heroism itself? More than rendered obsolete by consent-based ethics, they are contorted into acts of undue, arbitrary interference.

Life is worth suffering, not merely because of what can be done between our birth and death but due to its facticity; it is given, not chosen. Nobody derives meaning from the things they consciously choose; at least, not for long. There will always be the sense that relying on such things feels constructed, inviting us to seek something more essential. We don’t choose our nationality, our sexuality, our name, our family, and so forth, and so the importance of these things is heightened in an era with an abundance of choice.

The present political landscape serves as testament to this fact, not solely in the form of progressive-left identity politics. Regardless of how his economic prospects ebbed and flowed, the Englishman could rely on having won the lottery of life. He was born into a community with just cause and proficient capability to take his welfare seriously, as well as provide him with a sense of rootedness in an otherwise changing world. He had a cultural heritage which suggested he was part of something greater than himself; any belief in his abilities was well-founded and any shortcoming would surely be redeemed by the successes of his kin. Confronted with large scale demographic change from immigration, he feels himself in revolt against a class which has not yet taken everything from him, but is in the process of trying to destroy his few but cherished saving graces.

Even things which aren’t pleasurable, such as personal tragedies, supply us with a greater and much needed confrontation with the involuntary nature of our existence than even the most high-brow, profound, and enriching pastimes.

It is often said that the value of life lies in its depth, not its length; in other terms, life is about having a good time, not a long time, and whilst there’s certainly truth in this idea, it detracts from the distressing fact that we have time at all; a fact we tend to avoid truly thinking about until we’re out of it. Indeed, I suspect many have thought about how they’d spend their last day on Earth before resuming their lives as if their mortality was part of the hypothetical. The fact death takes us without our prior consent frightens us; it goes against what we regard as the basis for permissibility, so we’re inclined to ignore it.

The simple fact of the matter is that assisted dying is never abused; it merely comes to better embody the spirit in which it was introduced. The process misconstrued as the ‘slippery slope’ is nothing more than a superficially innocent argument being carried to its garish but logical conclusion. The ever-ambiguous safeguards aren’t meant to shield against improper uses of the system, merely to shield against uses which haven’t achieved mainstream acceptance, and could be used as a justification to prevent (or outright reverse) its full implementation. Things called insane right-wing conspiracy theories today will be referred to as inevitable and necessary progress tomorrow.

So, let’s cut to the chase. Instead of obsessing over regulations which will be altered or subverted, let’s be very frank about our fundamental and irreconcilable differences, and eagerly embrace the intellectually demanding and morally sensitive nature of this matter.

Those in support can make their case for life’s essential hollowness, and that our time on Earth is nothing more than taking the path of least resistance to the grave, filling our time with surrogate activities until it becomes too much, at which point we hop-off the existential ride. As for those opposed, we must more staunchly make the case for death as it comes for us, as it does. Just as we can gain value from being born here rather than there, from being this rather than that, the same must be said of our death. We do not view life as an empty vacuum to be filled with things that matter. The fact we do what we do, in the knowledge that our time is finite, makes what we do meaningful. Life gives meaning to our activities, not the other way around.

The advocates of assisted dying are right about one thing. We don’t get to choose what we do with our life, but it is because of this fact that our death remains our own. Therefore, the only way to ensure our death remains truly ours, something indivisibly belonging to us as individuals, free of aggregated social pressures and bouts of false consciousness, immune to last-minute bargaining and uncontaminated by ambiguity over cause-and-effect – altogether free from the risk of coercion – is to prevent it from being turned into a choice in the first place.

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It’s not the economy, stupid

By Samuel Martin — 4 months ago

Although it seems so distant, the current political landscape is a direct product of 2016. Without specific reference to the victory of Donald Trump, the Brexit referendum, and the rise of anti-immigration parties across the Western world, it’s impossible to sufficiently contextualise the obvious sense of insecurity characteristic of contemporary left-leaning politics and political analysis.

Every twenty years or so, the Western Left convinces itself it can finally do away with its native working class supporters and fully re-align itself along socially liberal lines, catering to the interests of ethnic and sexual minorities, immigrants, women, graduates, the underclass, and the progressive elements of the haute bourgeoisie.

These attempts at fully actualising a rainbow coalition of the oppressed and their allies rarely work out, backfiring and resulting in catastrophic electoral defeats.

Realising it’s jumped the gun on their replacement, the Western Left is once again begrudgingly going cap-in-hand to those it momentarily considered obsolete, hoping to win them over for election time, and hold onto them whilst in government.

The Left’s ‘bipolar’ relationship with its traditional voters has arguably been the central driving force behind its ideological development for the past 40 years. Categories like ‘Blairite’ and ‘New Democrat’ can’t fully be grasped without reference to the strategies by left-leaning parties to ease the anxieties of native working and middle class voters.

In a similar way, Keir Starmer and Joe Biden have undertaken initiatives of their own. The former is scarcely filmed or photographed without a Union Jack whilst the latter plays into his roots in order to present as a scrappy, charmingly cantankerous working class Irishman. As Biden’s successor, Kamala Harris clearly intends to continue this process, leaning heavily on V.P. pick Tim Walz’s ‘White Dude’ minstrel act and various forms of cosmetic patriotism.

However, whilst the comparative lack of political imagination is evident, and the general disinterest in being ideologically creative is obvious, ongoing rapprochement strategies are desperately trying to formulate a convincing counter-narrative to scupper the enduring threat of the populist right.

Confronted with an insurgent New Right on both sides of the Atlantic, the counter-narrative of the Third Way suggested the liberal revolutions of the 1960s and 1970s had crystallised. Despite the profuse sense of hopelessness, the Left had successfully dislodged the traditional moral and cultural tapestry which underpinned Western societies. Rather, they claimed that the activists had simply grown-up, encumbered with adult responsibilities and considerations, which (until fairly recently) went hand-in-hand with fiscally conservative politics.

Of course, this narrative was never entirely true. In no small part, the rise of the New Right was a reaction against the excesses of the social movements of previous decades, although this tendency was sub-ordinated by the right’s shift towards socalled neoliberalism; social conservatism was a present but ultimately secondary characteristic.

Grappling with a new threat from the right, similarly drawing on cultural discontent and siphoning support from the native working class, the Left is trying to use the same playbook, minus any of the context which gives it any credibility or sense.

Bemoaning the alleged capitulation of the centre to the so-called far right in The Guardian, former Prime Minister Gordon Brown argued:

“Sooner rather than later, the far-right poison will have to be countered with a progressive agenda focused on what matters to people most: jobs, standards of living, fairness and bridging the morally indefensible gap between rich and poor.”

Brown’s article is one of many left-wing think pieces and op-eds which have tried to recast right-wing populism – a movement motivated first and foremost by opposition to immigration and its demographic ramifications – as a misdirected reaction to a cluster of ‘real’ problems which the Left tactically concedes to have ignored: declining standards of living, economic inequality, deindustrialisation, social mobility, and/or a lack of educational opportunities.

Typically, the primary factor is something economical, although a social issue that specifically isn’t immigration can be thrown into the mix too, such as the spiritual deficits of secularism, emasculation anxiety, social alienation, and unaddressed mental health problems.

In their own musing on the issue, Novara Media’s Ash Sarkar and Aaron Bastani concluded deindustrialisation, consumerism, and cultural Americanisation (in other terms, not immigration) should be primarily blamed for the loss of social cohesion, oddly using the provincial towns of Southern France and Northern Italy (that is, the strongholds of the National Rally and the Brothers of Italy respectively) as places with a sense of community severely lacking in England.

Putting aside the fact the concept of community is treated as abstract and present-tense in left-wing commentary, or the fact it’s OK to talk about the scourge of foreign culture insofar it originates from America, or that England has its loose equivalents, the fact these picturesque settlements are voting for anti-immigration parties indicates how the inhabitants (either based on an influx of arrivals in their community or elsewhere) can infer that immigration is a threat to the very delicate and complex social harmony required for such places to exist. You could say good things are hard to create but easy to destroy!

Whatever the specifics, the Left is caught between its true constituents (immigrants and their descendants) and its tactical constituents (working and middle class ethnic natives).Not wanting to speak ill of immigration out of fear of offending the former, yet realising the importance of the latter to the integrity of its temporary (but necessary) coalition, it needs to decrease the salience of immigration by shifting the public’s focus, leveraging its media influence to push politically-convenient revisionist narratives.

The vote to leave the European Union was initially written-off as an emotional spasm, which was redefined as a more sympathetic but ultimately instinctive bout of political discontent, before finally being redefined as a desperate but rational economic decision motivated by declining living standards (as understood in purely materialistic terms).

Some attributed this to deindustrialisation, others attributed it to housing prices; some touted austerity whilst others pointed to the cost of living. Whatever the case, it didn’t really matter. Politics was being neatly steered back to safe, technical questions, the likes of which could only be solved by the same managerial class which felt threatened by the result.

A similar process happened following Trump’s victory. The White Male backlash at having a Black president (and the plausible threat of having a female president) became another iteration of the paranoid style in American politics, which was revised into a vague disaffection with Washington, finally boxed as an unrefined but understandable protest vote against the offshoring and automation of American industry and jobs.

Consequently, the Biden administration quietly left many of Trump’s trade policies in place and seriously started to entertain decoupling from China, making it a central and pronounced component of the Democrats’ party platform, alongside a more visible association with trade unionism.

Following the riots in the UK and the state election results in Germany, in which the Alternative for Deutschland won in Thuringia and achieved very close seconds in Saxony and Brandenburg, attempts at misdirection have already begun, from Starmer’s flat-out denial that discontent over immigration created circumstances ripe for public disorder to the sudden recasting of the German right’s successes as a reaction to regional inequality and name-calling, rather than Germany bearing the brunt of unwanted immigration into Europe.

In all the aforementioned instances, it’s not that the primary factor behind was initially misunderstood. The Left attacked voters as racist and xenophobic prior to these events and in their immediate aftermath, so they evidently understood the ethno-racial motivation.

Nor can it be said that the cluster of various socioeconomic factors attributed as the driving force of recent rightward shifts in the electorate are being plucked at random. The calculated selection is part of the style.

Right-wing populism is obviously motivated by economic discontent, but so is every political uprising. Even at the best of times, the economy matters to everyone, so it can’t sufficiently explain the behaviour of specific subsets of the electorate on its own.

Rather, it’s the fact that these concerns are secondary to immigration is not publicly acknowledged by the Left, even after ten years of political development, and attempts to revise the motivations behind these movements persist with such stubborn tenacity shows the modus operandi of contemporary left-leaning so-called ideas.

No insights or solutions, only new and innovative ways to distract from the elephant in the room: immigration. Primacy matters, especially when political capital is finite. We needn’t let the importance of economic reform fall by the wayside, but we shouldn’t allow it to be used as an obvious mechanism for deferring a major issue, wrapped-up as level-headed, ‘sensible’ analysis of current political circumstances.

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The Path of Reconstruction

By Samuel Martin — 7 months ago

As every British conservative writer, pundit, and academic will tell you, Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli once said:

“The Conservative Party is a national party, or it is nothing.”

How right he was! Having ceased to be a national party in both respects, dispensing with any meaningful concept of the nation and placing all its chips on a concentrated slither of the Grey Vote – a demographic which it’s managed to alienate after a completely avoidable PR disaster – the party is on track to be reduced to nothing come this year’s general election.

Based on recent polling, the Tories are competing for a distant second with the Liberal Democrats, leading many to suggest 2024 is going to be Britain’s equivalent of Canada’s 1993 federal election, in which a centre-left lawyer secures a majority after the unpopular centre-right government, headed by an unlikeable first-of-their-kind Prime Minister, was decimated by a vote-splitting right-wing populist upstart called Reform.

Given this, it is worth considering the possibility of a Canada ’93-style erosion of the Conservative Party over the next five years and what this will mean for the British right, assuming it’s going to be represented by Reform UK or a different party arising from a merger between the two. After all, by his own admission, Farage isn’t trying to win the general election, stating it won’t determine which party enters government (rest assured, it will be Labour) but will determine which party leads the opposition.

The collapse of the Progressive Conservative Party – Canada’s main centre-right party – coincided with the rise of the Reform Party of Canada (RPC); a right-wing populist party founded in the 1980s and led by Preston Manning. The RPC originated as a pressure movement for advancing the interests of Western Canada, whose inhabitants felt increasingly alienated by the central government, especially as constitutional issues increased in salience. The RPC was particularly suspicious of attempts to grant “distinct society” status to Quebec, believing Canada was a federation of similar and equal provinces united by a set of rights and obligations, rather than an essentially multicultural and bilingual state.

As the RPC sought to become a national party, it was required to expand its appeal and therefore its political platform. The party dispensed with its Western-centric agenda and outright rejected calls within its rank-and-file for Western Canadian independence. In its place, the RPC formulated a platform dedicated to shrinking the size of the central government, lowering taxes, making considerable cuts to government spending, pursuing free trade agreements, supporting Christian social values, promoting direct democracy, and advancing political reform.

After its electoral breakthrough in 1993, the RPC continued to broaden its appeal, softening its positions to attract more moderate-minded voters in Canada’s Eastern provinces. Whilst the 1993 manifesto provided an extensive 56 reasons to vote for the party – over half of which dealt with the party’s core concerns, treating areas outside their remit with scarce detail – the party’s 1997 manifesto condensed its list of policies, softened its position on tax-and-spend, made national unity a top priority, and generally provided more thorough proposals. The party also openly disassociated with views which invited accusations of bigotry, intolerance, extremism but retained a focus on family-oriented social conservatism.

In the 1997 federal election, the RPC would increase its vote share and total number of seats, becoming the largest party in opposition and solidifying itself as the main conservative party in Canada. The party held onto its Western support base and managed to strengthen its influence in the Prairies, but still struggled to find support among moderate Atlantic Canadians, many of whom continued to support the PCP, despite its greatly diminished political influence. For the most part, the RPC was still viewed (and still functioned in many ways) as a regional party, seen by many as the Western equivalent of the Bloc Québécois – a party dedicated to the interests of Quebec and another major winner in the 1993 federal election.

To complicate matters further, the Liberal government of Jean Chrétien pursued greater financial discipline in order to reduce the national deficit. This occurred during a period of “constitutional fatigue” which tail-ended a turbulent period of controversial proposals for reform. As fiscal conservatism and political reform were the RPC’s core concerns, the party often struggled to oppose government policy despite being the largest party in opposition, simultaneously trying to integrate its newfound responsibilities (and privileges) with its populist background.

Concluding it needed to broaden its appeal even more, the RPC merged with several provincial wings of the PCP into a new right-wing party: The Canadian Alliance.

Similar to the RPC, the party continued to adapt its image, refine its positions, and broaden its platform. However, unlike the RPC’s 1997 manifesto, which largely homed-in on the party’s approach to its core issues, the CA’s 2000 manifesto paid greater attention to issues beyond the RPC’s traditional remit, such as international affairs, environmental conservation, and technological change, all whilst carrying over RPC policy on tax-and-spend, decentralization, and family values.

Alas, despite these efforts, the Canadian Alliance (CA) was short-lived, existing for less than half-a-decade, and was widely viewed as the RPC under a different name. The party would place second in the 2000 federal election, increasing its share of the vote and its number of seats as the RPC had done in 1997, but not before playing host to a major change in the Canadian political landscape: the end of Preston Manning’s leadership. For most members, a new party required new management, so the bookish Manning was ousted in favour of the clean-cut (but also gaffe-prone) Stockwell Day, whose outspoken evangelical views often contrasted his own party’s efforts at moderation.

The Canadian right would remain out of power until 2006, in which the newly founded Conservative Party of Canada (CPC), led by Stephen Harper, a former policy advisor to Preston Manning, defeated the incumbent Liberal Party and formed a minority government. Founded in 2003, the CPC was created from a full and official merger of the CA and the PCP. Combining policies and aspects of their intellectual traditions, the merger reinvigorated the centrality of fiscal conservatism in the Canadian centre-right, and united Canada’s once-divided right-leaning voters under one national banner.

Although courting the Christian right, Harper displaced the last remnants of the RPC’s populistic social conservatism to the party’s periphery, entrenching economic liberalism as the backbone of the CPC’s electoral coalition whilst formulating stances on a variety of issues, from immigration to arts and culture, from constitutional reform to public transit, from foreign policy to affordable housing, from international trade to social justice.

As it took roughly five years and two election cycles for the RPC to destroy and absorb the PCP, it’s possible that Farage is banking on achieving something similar. However, what this implies is that Farage intends to oversee the destruction of the Conservative Party, but not the reconstruction of Reform UK – at least, not in a frontline capacity. Once the Conservative Party has been sufficiently diminished, a relatively younger and less controversial candidate will take the reins and transform it into a political force which can continue to fight national elections and possibly form a government; someone to move the party away from ‘negativistic’ anti-establishment populism – primarily acting as a vessel for discontent at the insufficient (if not outright treacherous) nature of recent Conservative Party policy – and fully towards ‘positivistic’ solution-oriented policymaking and coalition-building.

Assuming this is Reform UK’s plan, seeking to replace the Tories after beating them into the ground over the course of a five-year period, Reformers must internalise a major precondition for success; besides, of course, overcoming the perennial task of finding someone who can actually replace Farage when he stands aside.

In admittedly generic terms, just as the RPC/CA had to find support outside of Albertan farmers, Reform UK (or the hypothetical post-merger party) will need to find support outside of its core base of Leave-voting pensioners in East Anglia.

At some point, Britain’s populist right must become accustomed to acknowledging and grappling with issues it instinctively prefers to shy away from and keep light on the details; issues which remain important to much of the electorate and remain relevant to governing: the environment, technological change, the minutiae of economic policy, tangible health and welfare reform, foreign policy and international trade, food and energy security, the prospects of young people, broader concerns regarding economic inequality and social injustice, so on and so forth.

If this sounds similar to the criticism directed at the liberal-left’s aversion to immigration, demographics, traditional culture, and crime in a way that befits public concern and the national interest, that’s because it is.

There are many issues one could use to convey this point, but the environment is undoubtedly the best example. According to regularly updated polling from YouGov, the environment is a priority for roughly 20% of the electorate; only the economy, immigration, and healthcare are classed as more important by the general public, and housing, crime, and national security are considered just as important. Young voters emphasise the environment more than older voters. From the get-go, it’s clear that an environmental policy will be an unavoidable component of any national party and certainly one with a future.

Compare this to Reform UK’s recently released ‘Contract with the People’, which does not possess a subsection dedicated to the environment. Rather, it has a section dedicated to Net Zero and its abolition. On the whole, the subject is dealt with in a negativist manner, merely undoing existing measures, replacing them with nothing, all without reframing the issue at hand. At best, one can find some commitments to tree-planting and cutting down on single-use plastics. As most should have surmised by now, parties can’t afford to be meagre with environmental propositions – go big or go home!

Of course, none of this is surprising. After all, according to Richard Tice, Chairman of Reform UK, concerns about climate change are misguided because the climate has always been changing; it’s a process which can’t be stopped, but it’s OK because carbon dioxide is “plant food” anyway. It’s not happening, and that’s why it’s a good thing.

Indeed, leftists look stupid when they insinuate a similarity between a depoliticised process of post-war mass immigration to the Norman Conquest, so what does the British right have to gain by comparing manmade carbon emissions to the K-Pg extinction event? If not out of strong environmentalist convictions, any force eager to replace the Tories as the primary right-leaning party in Britain must be realise such issues cannot be left untouched – even those issues one might say the Tories have embraced too much or in ways which aren’t in the national interest.

As we look to other right-wing populist upstarts across the Western world, it’s clear that such a realisation is not optional, but a precondition for transforming fringe organisations into national parties.

Consider this in relation to Marine Le Pen’s National Rally, perhaps the most successful party to make such a transition, evidenced by the party’s unprecedented success in the recent EU elections and their gradual but near-total displacement of the Republicans, France’s official centre-right party.

Similar to the RPC, the National Rally’s evolution has involved more than a name change and moderating its less-than-palatable elements. Instead, it has retained its central issues whilst diversifying its platform.

Although Le Pen has undoubtedly been a key driving force behind readjustments to the party’s priorities and image, distancing itself from its origins and so on, much of this process stems from the influence of Jordan Bardella: the party’s young president and the current favourite to become the next Prime Minister of France.

Contrary to suggestions made by Britain’s vibes-oriented commentariat, who attribute Bardella’s relative popularity with young voters and the broader French electorate to the mere act of using TikTok, Bardella has gone to considerable effort in his capacity as president to identify and address issues which are important to voters, not just issues which are important to the National Rally, and incorporate them into the party’s platform; issues other than immigration which similarly influence much of the public, such as the environment, which Bardella views it as one of the three main challenges facing the younger generation (the others being demographic and technological change). Indeed, a far-throw from the perpetual handwringing over young, know-nothing eco-zealots which homogenises right-leaning boiler room commentary in Britain.

“France, no matter what they say, is the cleanest country in the world. But it is up to us to do even better.”
– Jordan Bardella (@jordanbardella on TikTok)

Going beyond criticism of existing policies, which is often connected to the party’s support for French farmers and poorer voters in provincial areas, Bardella encourages the party to take up the environmentalist mantle and formulate solutions in step with its own intellectual history:

“Our political family would be making a big mistake if it behaved as blindly on the environmental issue as the left has done on immigration for the past 30 years. We can no longer afford to deny it.”
– Jordan Bardella, Interview with Valeurs Actuelles (24/11/22)

Along with this readjusted approach, Bardella has also made very specific appointments in his capacity as president, such as promoting ideas put forward by Hervé Juvin, MEP and former ecological advisor, and appointing Pierre-Romain Thionnet as director of the National Rally’s youth movement, briefly described in Le Monde as:

“…a reader of the late Catholic integral environmental journal Limite and quotes the English philosopher Sir Roger Scruton…”

The National Rally typically views climate change through its longstanding endeavour of protectionism, noting free trade results in offshoring the sources of pollution, rather than getting rid of them altogether. As such, not only does France relinquish its industrial capabilities, it pushes pollution beyond its political control; offshoring depoliticises pollution, a process which is worsened by the logistical chains required to ship products made on the other side of the world, nevermind in other localities of the same country or continent.

To his credit, Farage has hinted on some occasions at something similar in the form of reshoring emissions, and whilst this is a step in the right direction, it remains an underdeveloped afterthought in Britain’s right-wing, which (in the words of Dominic Cummings) remains mired in the “SW1 pro/anti Net Zero spectrum.”

At the same time, the National Rally engages in more universally recognised forms of environmentalism which aren’t predicated on immigration restriction, euroscepticism, or protectionism, especially at the level of local government; from tree-planting campaigns to ‘eco-grazing’ to installing LED lightbulbs.

“People feel that we have to get out of the fact that there’s only the issue of immigration.”
Hervé Juvin, as quoted in The New York Times

As a result, the National Rally maintains a monopoly on its bread-and-butter issues and claims ownership of issues which are not traditionally associated with the French right. Consequently, the French centre and left struggle to maintain control of the narrative surrounding their own key issues and remain stubbornly averse to the concerns of voters living outside the Parisian bubble.

Returning to the British political landscape, Reform UK can most likely afford to hammer its wedge issue of immigration into the Tories’ base at this election, possibly felling the party’s influence once and for all. However, as 2024 fades into the rear-view mirror, it will need to grow something in its place. The gains which once felt exhilarating will begin to flatline and seem anaemic if the party doesn’t aggressively pursue diversification (not the tokenistic kind, mind you). As the reality of living in a Labour-dominated one-party state sets in, many will begin to resent Reform UK unless it makes a concerted effort to adapt; the initial collapse of the right’s remit into the concentrated set issues it sought to politicise must be expanded as the issues which gave birth to its populist phase are moved from the periphery to the centre, and from thereon out, integrated alongside others to ensure their long-term electoral viability.

If it succeeds, it or it’s successor may very well replace the Tories as the main party of the centre-right. If it does not, the election and its aftermath is unlikely to follow the course of Canada 1993 or anything resembling it; the Tory Party may very well make a resurgence comparable to Labour’s post-2019 comeback. Nobody can afford to botch a murder, least of all in politics. Reform UK can’t stop at knocking the Tories down and it can’t be content with knocking the Tories out; it needs to smother the party to death with its own handkerchief and raid its carcass, pocketing both its right-wing and centre-right voters, even those who don’t have immigration as their number one priority and then-some.

At the same time, it needs to stay true to the promise of a nationalist approach to immigration, law-making, culture, and identity; at least, if it wants to avoid the same fate as the Conservative Party.

As various groups eye-up the collapse of the Conservative Party, looking for a chance to muscle-in and establish themselves as the dominant tendency of the right, it’s imperative that nation-first conservatism comes out on top. This will be particularly important as (unlike Manning, who wrote an entire book explaining his ideology) the specifics of Farage’s politics remain more ambigious than many would suspect; it’s entirely reasonable to suspect factions will claim him as their forebearer and themselves as his pure and true successors.

In my view, the right-wing cannot encumber itself with regurgitations of its past, whether it’s a form of neo-Thatcherism, which subordinates and uses socionational issues to reinforce a revealed priority for technical refinement and economic liberalisation, a misguided rehash of Cameronite centrism, which scarcely thinks about such matters in a conservative manner at all, or citizenist post-liberal projects, the artificial soldarities of which are unravelling in real-time. The right has already squandered one revolution, best not to squander another.

Of course, all of this is easier said than done, but it’s OK… Nothing Happens!

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The War on Pubs, Part I: Taylor’s Conquest

By Samuel Martin — 9 months ago

The war on British pubs is as old as the British pub itself, so much so it can barely be classed as an emerging tendency. The government’s dislike of the pub is a fact of life and measures to undermine its prosperity and role in society are widely disliked but are rarely contextualised in political commentary beyond the Covid pandemic, relatively recent demographic changes, and the last fourteen years of government.

After the end of WW2, Britain seemed to be largely self-sufficient when it came to producing ingredients for beer, something it hadn’t achieved for the best part of a century. Protectionist measures enabled near-autarkic levels of barley production whilst wartime reserves of hops were sold for cheap on the domestic market. Of course, post-war economic pressures made investments more necessary and demanding, whilst imports (especially from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Ireland) were set to become more frequent. Nevertheless, an end to rationing, combined with the implementation of tax cuts in the mid-to-late 50s, one of the few helping hands to pubs since the birth of Modern Britain, which contribute to an increase in beer production and consumption. All things being far from perfect, Britain’s pubs could’ve expected much worse coming out of the most destructive war in history.

Indeed, Britain’s flourishing post-war beer market hadn’t escaped the notice of Edward Plunket Taylor. Famously a breeder of racehorses, coming to be recognised as a major force behind the development of the Canadian horse-racing industry, the tycoon’s family also owned Brading, a brewery in Ottawa founded in 1867. Using the loosely coinciding repeals of prohibition throughout various parts of the US and Canada as a springboard, Taylor merged Brading with another Canadian brewery to form Canadian Breweries in 1930. In pursuit of sheer scale, Taylor consolidated several smaller plants into a handful of larger plants and standardised his line of products, whittling his number of brands down from roughly 100 to six. By 1950, Canadian Breweries controlled 50% of Ontario’s beer market. Having subdued most competition at home, Taylor was well-positioned to turn his focus to foreign conquest.

Being well over 200 years old at this point in history, criticisms of the tie system weren’t new, and they weren’t to vanish in the coming decades, but it did provide an initial barrier to Taylor’s imperial aspirations. As pubs could only sell beer produced by the brewery they were tied to, Taylor realised he’d have to infiltrate Britain’s breweries before he could infiltrate its beer market. Aiming to acquire a 25% stake in every publicly traded brewery in Britain, Taylor sought to gain a foothold in the same way he had come to dominate the Canadian market: through the purchase and merging of smaller and unprofitable breweries. In 1967, Taylor merged Bass Brewery and Charrington United to form Bass Charrington, then the largest brewery in Britain with 19% of the beer market.

Taylor’s aspirations and manifesting success sparked a merging frenzy not seen since the relaxation of beerhouse regulations in the late 19^th century and the emergent ‘Beerage’, leading to the rise of ‘The Big Six’, Britain’s six largest brewing companies: Allied Breweries, Bass Charrington, Courage, Scottish and Newcastle, Watney Mann (also known as Grand Metropolitan), and Whitbread.

Whilst Taylor had managed to upend Britain’s brewing market, the tie system continued to incentivise against territorial trespassing between brewers. As such, the mergers occurred largely (albeit far from exclusively) along geographic lines. Allied Breweries and Bass Charrington were more concentrated in the Midlands and the North, both having central breweries in Burton-upon-Trent. Courage originated in Southwark with properties across the South, whilst Watney Mann originated in London with clusters in and around the capital. Fittingly, Scottish and Newcastle were based in Scotland and the Northeast, especially Edinburgh and Newcastle, whilst Whitbread originated in central London, maintaining a sizeable presence in the West End, stretching off into the southwest and much of Wales.

Counterbalancing the instinctual desire to compare The Big Six to feudal barons, their pubs were more clustered than rigidly delineated. Indeed, each brewer was a national entity and desired to expand their control of the overall market. Still, it was the emergence of these large-scale brewers which sparked concerns among small business of a cartelised industry, one in which independent brewers were fighting for an increasingly austere slice of the market.

Initial attempts to curtail the growth of these large brewers lacked momentum. Both with the government and most of the public considering the size of these brewers to be a non-issue. At the very least, it was ‘small beer’ compared to other matters which directly affected pubs and breweries in more gruesome ways. A survey carried out by the Consumers Association showed only 1% of consumers factored in beer prices when it came down to choosing a pub. Simply put, pubs were (and remain to be) more than economic hubs of rational decision-making, but markers of communal identity which provide a sense of place and evoke a sense of loyalty; something to support in a period of inept and lacklustre political leadership.

As for pub owners, many valued The Big Six (and the tie system more generally) as a way of ensuring a steady supply of beer, business, and a livelihood. Far from a barrier to entry, it was seen as the exact opposite, acting as an extension of the quasi-paternalist system which had existed prior to Taylor’s landing on English shores.

Nevertheless, the fears of independent brewers were far from unfounded. By the 1970s, roughly 80% of Britain’s beer supply was controlled by The Big Six, along with roughly 75% of brewer-owned retail, and 85% of ‘loan ties’ – arrangements in which pubs that aren’t directly owned by a Big Six brewer exclusively stock their products and other supplies for discounts and loans. By 1989, the top five best-selling beers had 20% of the total market whilst the top ten had a comfortable 30%.

Also, it became increasingly clear to many pubs that large, cut-throat corporations were not spiritual successors to small, local, historically rooted breweries. The sense of mutual dependency which existed between pubs and the latter was practically non-existent between pubs and the former. Needless to say, an individual pub had more to lose from being untied than any one of The Big Six.

Inflated beer prices were a direct consequence of this arrangement. Between 1979 and 1989, beer prices increased by 15% above the retails’ price index and the tax cuts of the immediate post-war period had long been offset by some of the highest beer duties in Europe. Even if the price of beer was comparatively less important to consumers than the social element of pubs, the financial pressure on customers to buy beer from their local’s tied brewer was far from ideal in a period of stagnating wages and rising inflation.

Pubs which weren’t tied to The Big Six were also routinely shafted by predatory pricing, in which the major brewers would temporarily lower their prices to undercut and destroy independent establishments before increasing their prices to consolidate their financial dominance in particular area. This practice was especially harmful to rural pubs, which were more likely to be independent and less economically secure than urban pubs, courtesy of a continuing trend of rural depopulation.

However, whilst the cost of beer wasn’t a pivotal concern, the wavering quality of beer was a growing source of frustration for pubgoers. Practically impervious to market forces, The Big Six were able to push less-than-appealing products onto the consumer through advertising backed by a steady and plentiful flow of cash. Courtesy of organisations like CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale), Watney’s Red Barrel became shorthand for the extortionately priced yet wholly unremarkable (if not always terrible) concoctions one could expect from companies perceived as too big to care about the quality of their products.

Overall, the relationship between breweries and pubs was less comparable to ‘aristocratic’ noblesse oblige and more akin to the terror of mobsters and strongmen, whose promise of security wore thin as they threatened pub owners with financial ruin should they defy their heavy-handed demands. In Hobbesian terms, they were demanding obedience from people they were increasingly disinterested in protecting. This state of affairs created a seismic reaction which would change the trajectory of Britain’s pub and brewing industry, albeit not necessarily for the better; a reaction not from the market, but from the state.

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With Friends Like These…

By Samuel Martin — 9 months ago

“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

Lord Palmerston’s famous adage is typically divorced from its context, especially when used in discussions regarding Britain’s foreign policy, or lack thereof. Delivered as part of a speech in the House of Commons in 1848, the then Foreign Secretary was responding to an argument put forward by one of his most consistent and outspoken opponents, Thomas Anstey, Irish Confederate MP for Youghal.

Over a decade after Poland’s incorporation into the Russian Empire, Anstey maintained intervention in support of the rebels, seeking to establish an independent Polish state, was both a feasible operation and a moral imperative which the government of the day – especially Palmerston, who was still foreign secretary during this period – absconded in favour of non-interference, despite previous suggestions to the contrary. According to Anstey, this amounted to, among other things, a betrayal of Poland and, by extension, their sympathetic ideals.

Accounting for the particular circumstances in which Palmerston was operating, primarily seeking a basic balance of power across the continent, maintaining a preference for less-absolutist models of government without a frothing desire to see them imposed at the drop of a hat, the essence of his shrewd foreign policy stems from the realisation there is no equivalence between interpersonal and international relations, due to the second-order consequences which come with maintaining such agreements:

“…When we are asked why the British Government have not enforced treaty rights in every case, my answer is, that the only method of enforcing them would have been by methods of hostility; and that I do not think those questions were questions of sufficient magnitude in their bearing on the interests of England, to justify any Government in calling on the people of this country to encounter the burdens and hazards of war for the purpose of maintaining those opinions.”

“It does not follow, when a Minister announces in Parliament an intention to perform a public act, that it is to be considered like a promise made to an individual, or by one private man to another, and that it is to be made a reproach to him if the intention be not carried out.”

Indeed, the maintenance of certain opinions under specific circumstances simply isn’t worth it. The opinions we value, whether written in parchment or spoken over the airwaves, and what we are prepared to do to maintain them, form the essence of our political loyalty. Unfortunately for many in Britain’s political class, even its nominally right-wing constituents, their political loyalty seems to lie with Israel. Berating any criticism or lack of enthusiasm as an act of betrayal, the British people are expected to view their interests as secondary to the interests of the Israeli government, all else being unthinkable.

However, much to their aggravation, Britain’s cooling support for Israel has only accelerated these past few days after a convoy of three vehicles, each displaying the World Central Kitchen (WCK) logo, was attacked whilst returning from a humanitarian mission to Gaza through a deconflicted zone; a route agreed with the knowledge and consent of the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). The affected British nationals were working as private military contractors tasked with protecting the convoy and providing medical support. By all estimations, not exactly frothing Hamas-adjacent anti-semites motivated by Islamism or Palestinian nationalism. Worse still, the convoy contacted the IDF after the first vehicle was hit, but to no self-preserving avail.

Of course, this isn’t the first time Israelis has taken liberty with the lives of British nationals, although it’s perhaps the first instance in which the disregard of the Israeli government and its supporters has been made so blatant. The IDF’s chief of staff released a less-than-sincere-sounding apology, claiming the attack was an accident, which chef José Andrés, WCK’s director and co-founder, evidently didn’t find convincing, noting the attack took place over considerable distance, never mind in an area tightly controlled by the IDF.

Benjamin Netanyahu responded in a similar vein, stating occasional civilian casualties were part-and-parcel of war and the overarching mission to keep Israel safe. Whilst not technically untrue, it’s also part-and-parcel – even if not an iron law of reality – for states to alter their relations in accordance with their interests, often in unexpected ways; those who are allies one day are rivals the next. As such, I’m sure Netanyahu would be very understanding if Britain ceased all arms exports to Israel, especially if we had a few security concerns, so to speak.

The Israeli government’s sense of entitlement when it comes to Western support is hard to ignore. David Mencer, Israeli government spokesman and former director of Labour Friends of Israel, affectively stated Britain was obliged to continue supporting Israel as doing otherwise would constitute a betrayal of liberal democratic values. In Mencer’s own words: “You’ve got to take our side.”

Indeed, Britain had great sympathy for the Israelis following the attack on October 7th and a military response from Israel was thought to be expected and justified. It is essentially different to claim Britain has a moral and political responsibility to secure the existence of the Israeli state from its enemies, whatever that entails. In any case, this whole debacle suggests two things about Israel, both of which should inform the UK’s future relationship. Either Israel is too incompetent to be considered a reliable ally or too malicious to be considered an ally at all.

However, despite growing suspicion, mainstream criticism of the Israeli government and its agencies has yet to attach itself to the national interest or any loosely-related concept. Sir Alan Duncan’s comments on “pro-Israel extremism” at the highest echelons of government, citing the conduct of various ministers and politicians, resulted in accusations of anti-semitism and a near-immediate disciplinary inquiry from the Conservative Party. At first glance, this looks like one of several increasingly confident pockets of dissent at the heart of the establishment. In reality, it’s the more puritanical believers in the liberal rules-based international order pointing out the internal contradictions of the status quo.

The likes of Lord Dave and Sir Alan aren’t posturing against Israel out of ‘realpolitik’; they aren’t aligning against the Israeli government for nationalist reasons, but for internationalist ones. In their mind, Britain should distance itself from Israel for the sake of conforming to international law to a greater extent than it already does; it has very little to do with a state being so entwined with a foreign government that it can barely condemn attacks on its own citizens, undermining the most basic interest of any modern state: the protection of its people.

At bottom-level, their understanding is an extension of their bizarre idea of domestic affairs. Parliament amending and breaking the law are one in the same; as an entity, law is stagnant and cannot be ‘constitutionally’ changed, at least not to any political degree. Likewise, the breaking of treaties, for whatever reason, is a violation of international law and therefore necessarily bad. Alas, just as men must tear muscle to build more to gain bodily strength, states must tear laws and treaties to create new ones to gain political strength, at home and abroad.

This line of thought is straightforward and popular enough. In fact, it may explain some of the strongest support for Israel among certain sections of the public; older, Conservative and Reform-voting types with the Union Jack and the Star of David in their Twitter bio.

Accounting for the obvious fact many use support for Israel as proxy for domestic concerns pertaining to the rapid growth of Britain’s Muslim population, doubling as an implicit anti-racist credential by aligning with a historically-persecuted minority group, I suspect a considerable amount of Israelophilia among Britain’s old can be attributed to Mossad’s response to the 1972 Munich Massacre; a 20-year global hunt for Black September soberly titled Operation Wrath of God. Their first impression of Israel, as portrayed by a sensationalist mass-media machine at the height of an international event, is that of a rabidly nationalist state which spares no expense when it comes to pursuing its goal and eradicating its enemies.

The fact Israel didn’t catch the main culprit of the massacre is of secondary importance, what matters is the will and perception of the Israelis was evidently more attractive than whatever the British state was doing. At this time, Britain was enduring some of the worst years of its post-war history, encumbered with economic stagnation, social unrest, and an impotent political class with no perceivable willpower or solution. Sound familiar? As many will recall, similar flickers of admiration were visible following the early response of Israel to the October 7th attack, reigniting a love for a certain determination which our own foreign policy lacks.

Of course, this only accounts for the inclinations of a broadly defined, misguided but well-intentioned demographic of everymen. The political fetishism of Israel among Britain’s centre-right commentariat and policymakers (literal fetishism in some cases) defies any comparable justification. Outside of building the largest possible electoral coalition against Islamism, it seems to be a bizarre fixation.

In short, condemning the actions of Israel committed against our country may feel like a condemnation of the type of politics many of us desire, but it isn’t. As a matter of fact, the opposite is true: it is one of many steps required towards the realisation of a sovereign, self-interested foreign policy.

Palmerston was right, there is no fundamental equivalence between interpersonal and international relations, but there is one similarity worth remembering: trust is the basis of all relations. We trust based on our perceptions of others, our experiences with them and others like them; we make informed guesses, leaps in the dark, as to whether or not we should make ourselves open and vulnerable for the purposes of co-operation and friendship. If our knowledge of another changes, it impacts our ability to trust them. Sometimes this strengthens trust, sometimes it weakens it, and if trust is weakened to such an extent, whether chipped away by routine transgressions or destroyed outright by a single, deeply callous act, one is forced to reconsider their relations.

This is true of both people and states, and following the most severe form of disregard from our so-called ally, after all we felt and done for them, without expectation of reimbursement or lavish praise, it is time we reconsider our relationship with Israel; not towards Palestine, but to our own, independent national interest. They haven’t allowed our co-operation and friendship to disrupt the pursuit of their perpetual interests, it’s about time we do the same.

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Beware The British Dream

By Samuel Martin — 10 months ago

‘Dying societies accumulate laws like dying men accumulate remedies.‘
– Nicolás Gómez Dávila

On 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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The Migratory Ratchet

By Samuel Martin — 11 months ago

To say Britain has just entered a recession is slightly disingenuous, notwithstanding the jargon and semantics of economists and journalists. Whilst GDP has dipped for a second consecutive quarter, GDP per capita has been contracting for seven quarters straight. Having dropped throughout every quarter of 2023, and most quarters of 2022, Britain is enduring the longest uninterrupted decline in GDP per capita since records began in 1955.

Compounded by the fact that Britain’s GDP would’ve declined further without the unprecedented amount of immigration experienced throughout 2022 and 2023, it’s abundantly apparent that the UK economy is a ponzi scheme; an artifice sustained through short-term economic benefits to the long-term detriment of the nation, offset by additional short-term benefits and so on. Even when Britain’s economy grows, having experienced anaemic growth throughout most quarters of the same period, it renders no discernible or substantive benefit to the average Englishman.

The benefits of this arrangement are exclusively experienced by politicians and corporations. The former is given a straightforward and politically convenient means of construing the impression of prosperity, of making Line Go Up, while the latter has access to an ever-replenishing pool of cheap and flexible labour; one which suppresses wage growth, burdens national infrastructure, and induces demographic problems across British society. Truly, the Potemkin School of Economics.

However, courtesy of the unprecedented and largely non-EU-driven spike in immigration following Covid, a lot of anti-immigration positioning has been reconstructed around this new normal. This isn’t entirely bad. After all, people deserve to know why immigration is increasing, despite longstanding public demand for it to significantly decrease, especially while its contemporaneous.

However, the problem I foresee, one which I see flickers of in right-leaning political commentary of all kinds, is the acquiescence to previous levels of mass immigration. You know? The days when net migration was running at a sensible 200,000, when a greater proportion of arrivals were high-earners from the EU in possession of illustrious Skillsets; the days when immigration coincided with increases in GDP and GDP per capita, putting White British people on-track to becoming a minority by 2066, rather than 2040.

As everyone should know by now, the immigration debate is fundamentally a concern about displacement, one which is forced to disguise itself through Legitimate Concerns, such as Parliamentary Sovereignty, Small Boats, Control, and so on. As such, given immigration salience is making a post-Brexit return, there will be attempts to force those concerned about demographic displacement to re-disguise their concerns in a way the system is prepared to officially tolerate.

I refer to this as The Migratory Ratchet, the process by which previous waves of migration are accepted to justify opposition to present waves of migration, and previous instances of ethnic displacement are accepted to justify opposition to present instances of ethnic displacement. The Migratory Ratchet operates on the basis that the quantity and quality of present migration is different to previous migration, and that recognising these differences must be the basis for immigration control.

This is not to say there aren’t quantitative and qualitative differences between forms of immigration. Nor is to say that it is always wrong to make such distinctions. Rather, it refers to the use of these distinctions as a political manoeuvre to re-politicise mass immigration under a system which seeks to depoliticise it as much as possible, and how this coincides with the system’s desire to perpetuate mass immigration in the long-term by making short-term concessions to immigration restrictionists.

The most prominent distinctions separate migrants between those on big boats (legal) and those on small boats (illegal), those with skills and those without, those coming in their tens of thousands and those coming in their hundreds of thousands, those who give and those who take, those who bring dependants and those who are dependants themselves, those who are white and those who aren’t, those who are (supposedly) Christian and those who aren’t.

By using these distinctions as proxy for nationalist politics, under prevailing ideological pressures which oppose nationalist politics altogether, one crafts a wedge which can be assimilated into the operations of the ratchet, allowing the system to adapt to present dissatisfaction. These so-called Legitimate Concerns, transform fundamental political questions of mass replacement into managerial caveats, summarised by the aforementioned distinctions, which merely refine the process as to make it less irritable to the common Englishman.

I’m doubtful Starmer’s inevitable premiership will change much, although I can envision a scenario in which he makes concessions to the Legitimate Concerns of immigration restrictionists; maintaining recently introduced regulations on bringing dependants, reducing illegal channel crossings (presumably by providing Safe and Legal routes), even placing more stringent barriers on foreign students, whilst increasing work permits at a similar or greater rate to the outgoing Conservative government and instating economic policies which reduce the intake of the cheapest of cheap foreign labour.

In summary, The Migratory Ratchet will keep turning. The least defensible externalities will be suppressed in a superficial show of strength, briefly demobilising the right, who will then express their outrage that net migration is pushing a million, instead of being controlled to a select few hundred thousand.

This wouldn’t be the first time this has happened. It is widely and incorrectly presumed that mass immigration began with Tony Blair, de facto chief advisor to the incoming Prime Minister, whose Institute for Global Change is pressuring the incoming Labour government to increase immigration for the sake of “Growth, Growth, Growth”.

Mass immigration as we understand it began with Blair, but mass immigration itself precedes New Labour. Britain has incurred large movements of people, even instances of replacement migration, before and after 1945 – that is, official Year Zero for Modern Britain – which now look small compared to recent intakes. Keep in mind: Britain basically had net zero migration from the end of WWII up until the early 1980s. Even with net negative migration, Britain experienced large influxes of people, the likes of which altered the country for generations.

On paper, 19^th century Irish immigration is dwarfed by 21^st century immigration, but it remains fact that the consequences of such immigration were vast and remain with us, such as turning Liverpool and Glasgow into hotbeds of anti-English sentiment, having largely displaced their native populations, and altering the face of trade union politics; from a tendency dominated by Englishmen trying to shield against the import of cheap Irish labour to one dominated by Irish surnames, infused and aligned with ethnic “anti-imperialist” politics.

On paper, the influx of Russian Jews at the cusp of the 20^th century is dwarfed by the post-Covid spike in immigration, but this still led to ghettoization and the displacement of the native population in various urban areas; a trend that has continued well-into the 21^st century as other foreign diasporas have set-up shop, bringing their grievances with them – infamously, something the centre-right can only identify as bad when it affects more settled diasporic communities in Britain – while Englishmen are pushed further and further into the surrounding shires.

The UK’s Somali-born population, one of the most financially and legally burdensome subdivisions of Britain’s foreign-born occupants, making them something of a lowest common-denominator in discussions about immigration, mostly arrived in the 1980s following the outbreak of civil war. This was merely one of several movements into the UK which occurred throughout the same period. Indeed, many rightists seem to forget (deliberately or not) that the first sustained increase in migration after WWII took place throughout the premierships of Thatcher and Major.

Boston, the most Eurosceptic place in the UK, is also the most Polish, having endured a major influx of Polish migrants throughout the early noughties; a transformation which was encouraged by the UK government following the accession of ex-Soviet countries to the EU. Needless to say, honouring the spirit of Brexit and rehabilitating mass movement from Poland as an acceptable mode of migration are mutually exclusive political convictions.

Nobody with any sense, or sincere nationalist principles for that matter, would look to such times and instances as the contextual basis for a “sensible” immigration policy. Alas, the centre-right believes one must implicitly concede to these instances of replacement to make incremental progress in resisting larger and renewed waves of migration and the various knock-on effects.

On the surface, it appears to be a pragmatic application of our principles, but nothing could be further from the truth. In reality, it is an implicit but unequivocal surrender of the nationalist framework for a moderated globalist framework; a substitution enacted under the bizarre assumption that as things get worse, our stated aspirations need to become less radical. Like our current leaders, whose short-termism is well-documented, it constitutes sacrificing long-term struggle for short-term gains to be offset by developments in the near future. Sound familiar?

It is one thing to find newer, more effective ways to express old aspirations, but this cannot be mistaken for substituting our aspirations altogether. Indeed, if the migratory ratchet was to make another full rotation, it follows that we should find ourselves in a new alliance with non-Anglo whites and “Model Minorities” (high-earners, high-achievers, more Westernised, etc.) marching in lockstep against “Third Worlders” – that is, exclusively the MENA/PT countries and sub-Saharan Africa.

As some have already noticed, talk of England as an Anglo-Saxon country has practically ceased on the British right, a large chunk of whom have started to nail their colours in defence of England’s “Anglo-Celtic” identity in view of “recent” attempts to make it Diverse and Inclusive – that is, not merely less English, but less European and less Christian. Erstwhile, colourblind meritocracy continues to be touted as a palatable wedge of political resistance, embracing entrepreneurial Indians and studious Chinamen to siphon off violent Albanians and lazy Somalians.

Such coalitions will not emerge out of shared political interests between societies, but within British society itself; an arrangement which befit the diversitarian politics of Modern Britain, but unbefitting the pursuit an undiluted nationalist agenda. There can be no two-stage solution. We cannot smoothly refine The Migratory Ratchet into obsolescence. Rather, it must be permanently reversed and absolutely destroyed; it must be rejected from first principles or not at all. This starts and ends with the reconstitution of the British people as a living, breathing, and historic reality.

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Words not Deeds

By Samuel Martin — 11 months ago

I think it’s safe to assume, second only to the United States, Britain has the largest ‘free speech network’ in the Anglosphere. Comprised of any array of pressure groups, organisations, commentators, broadcasters, forums, publications, and self-appointed champions and activists.

Despite this well-funded and high-profile network of talking-heads, very few have spoken out in defence of Sam Melia, Yorkshire organiser for Patriotic Alternative, an organisation described by The Times as “Britain’s largest far-right white supremacist movement”. Gee, I wonder why?

Of course, there have been a few condemnations of this ruling, although they have been written on the assumption that Melia’s points are just mindless bigotry, and that such vulgarity would be better combatted in an open forum. It’s assumed that even the general thrust of Melia’s angst isn’t up for serious discussion, or vaguely reflected by large sections of the public. In other words, it is (somehow) not legitimately political, even if one believes it to be wrong, for whatever reason.

For context, last month, Leeds Crown Court returned a unanimous verdict after less than a day of deliberating after an eight-day trial. Sentencing has been adjourned whilst a pre-sentence report is being prepared and Melia been granted bail until he appears in court again on March 1^st.

In April 2021, police uncovered a catalogue of downloadable stickers which were being distributed a group known as the Hundred Handers, an anonymous group of anti-immigration activists led by Melia, responsible for series of so-called “stickering incidents” between 2019 and 2021.

The court concluded that the stickers were “intended to stir up racial hatred” and “intentionally encouraging or assisting racially aggravated criminal damage”, further declaring that the stickering had “caused fear or alarm” – a delightfully vague and flexible justification.

Moreover, the argument that knowingly supplying material with the mere potentiality of being used in one of a multitude of ways constitutes “criminal damage” isn’t just contrived, it necessarily extends beyond fascist activism, applying to every political cause under the sun.

So, what did these stickers say? What made them so egregious that it was worth the court’s time? Well, one of them read “Labour loves Muslim rape gangs” – a slightly misleading statement, given that the Tories are a soft-touch too.

Don’t just take my word for it. Following the acid attack by Abdul Ezedi, a known sex offender who was granted asylum on his third attempt after claiming he had converted to Christianity, Gillian Keegan, Education secretary and Conservative MP said:

“This is not really about asylum, this is about the attack on a mother and her children, which was horrific.”

Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Labour MP for Streatham, the constituency where the attack took place, echoed Keegan’s comments on Ezedi’s asylum status and the all-encompassing ‘importance’ of microaggressions stating:

“His [Ezedi] asylum status is not really the issue of concern.”

Indeed, the attack was horrific, but it’s abundantly clear that asylum is absolutely part of the equation, much more so than gender. Out of the 710 acid attacks in Britain last year, 339 of the victims were women whilst 317 were men. Erstwhile, had the Home Office not permitted Ezedi to enter the country, and for quite intuitive and grounded reasons, the attack simply would not have occurred.

Unlike Melia, an unremarkable member of the public based in Leeds, one of the UK’s largest cities, who was found and arrested near-instantaneously, Ezedi, a man with a half-melted face in London, one of the most surveilled city on the planet, has evaded arrest for an entire week.

Britain’s police are so befuddled at the whereabouts of that they’ve taken to handing out cash prizes to violent criminals and grovelling on live TV, asking Ezedi to turn himself over.

Much has been said about the police’s waning capability and/or interest in dealing with serious crime, notwithstanding the many coppers who I’m sure are frustrated by the incompetence of their managers, but very little has been said about the force’s bizarre theory of mind.

How is it possible that an institution which has “modernised” so much over recent decades, jampacking its personnel with psychiatrists, criminologists, therapists, and charity workers, simply not understand how criminals think? Either they’re bad at their job or they’re theories are bunk. I’m inclined to think it’s both, skewing towards the latter.

Another of Melia’s stickers read “We will be a minority in our homeland by 2066” – “we” referring to White British people, “2066” referring to the date calculated from research conducted by demographer David Coleman, then-Professor at Oxford University, into Britain’s changing demographics back in 2013.

Again, what exactly is the cause for concern here? Merely 10 years ago, Coleman’s findings were getting write-ups and openly discussed in ‘respectable’ centre-left outlets, such as Prospect Magazine, The Guardian, and The Independent. Throw in the BBC if you feel so inclined.

This information, conducted by a highly respected demographer, out-dated though it might be, especially given the recent spike in immigration and the ensuing population growth, hasn’t been treated as a fringe, esoteric, and/or conspiratorial for the vast majority of the time it has been public.

Yes, freedom of speech should apply to all; that includes alleged and actual fascists, Nazis, communists, socialists, anarchists, supremacists of all creeds and colours, and even Piers Morgan. If our political class were to ever come around to this, they’d understand the efforts of the state are best directed at dealing with people like Ezedi, rather than people like Melia.

After all, if it has become the official view of the state that one can only express approval for such findings – that or nothing at all – then this absolutely should concern civil libertarians, whatever their political colours, regardless of what The Times says about the ‘offending’ individual and/or organisation in question.

Other stickers distributed by Melia and the Hundred Handers said: “Mass immigration is white genocide” and “Second-generation? Third? Fourth? You have to go back”.

This is where things get a little more controversial, although it stands to reason that freedom of speech isn’t valued (r feared) for its capacity to regurgitate uncontroversial points of view. When people marched through the middle of London, opposing what they perceived as a genocide by the Israelis against the Palestinians, were there protests en-masse? Were there legal repercussions for chanting ethnonationalist slogans of a foreign nation, such as From the River to the Sea? Not really, quite the opposite.

Simply put, it cannot be right that one group seeking collective preservation is given the freedom to do so, with near absolute freedom in their methods, turning out in their hundreds of thousands, whilst another group seeking collective preservation, with very few members in their movement and no electoral representation or visible popular support, is denied basic freedom.

This is not to say the protests weren’t problematic in other ways. Indeed, the problem with said protests was less to do with their opposition to the Israeli government and more due to the nature of allegiance revealed by the bulk of attendees, especially the organisers (Hiz but-Tahrir, an international pan-Islamist organisation, view their constituency in global, post-national terms) and the overlapping demographic implications for the broader body politic (it stands to reason that using one nation as a conduit for another nation’s interests is far from democratic).

My view is elucidated rather well by Ronald Reagan, then-President of the Screen Actors Guild, testifying as a friendly witness before the House Un-American Activities Committee in October 1947:

“As a citizen, I would hesitate to see any political party outlawed on the basis of its political ideology. We have spent 170 years in this country on the basis that democracy is strong enough to stand up and fight against the inroads of any ideology. However, if it is proven that an organisation is an agent of a foreign power, or in any way not a legitimate political party – and I think the Government is capable of proving that – then that is another matter.”

Understandably, there are qualms as to whether either camp’s claim to genocide is technically accurate, although both would claim ongoing circumstances function in much the same way. This can be discussed in a frank and open matter without the throwing people in the slammer.

As for the deportation stickers, once one accepts the likes of Melia on their own aforementioned terms – or, at the very least, is aware of the social implications of demographic change (i.e. social unrest) – one realises that a serious point is trying to be made, even if with an obvious hint of provocation.

Right now, the police are suggesting Ezedi is being helped by those in his community. More than the unsubtitled announcement of this revelation, sidelining the otherwise English-speaking population from their own domestic affairs, this shows a severe, multi-generational, and absolute lack of assimilation. You can moralise about the efficacy of deportations all you want, but we needn’t pretend that growing foreign contingencies inside our borders hasn’t created major problems.

In addition to naughty stickers, police also found a poster of Adolf Hitler on his wall and a book by Oswald Mosley at Melia’s home. For some reason, this is important. I’ve got books by and about Vladimir Lenin, Antonio Gramsci, Joseph Stalin, Chantal Mouffe, Karl Marx, Alain Badiou, and Giorgio Agamben and I’m not a radical leftist, or any kind of leftist for that matter.

Of course, given the stickers and his choice of paraphernalia, we can safely assume Melia is pretty right-wing. Then again, why should that matter? It is more than possible to have extreme views without being a threat to civilised society, just as one can hold moderate views to such a fanatic and unwavering extent that deviations from the illustrious ‘centre’.

In the case of the latter, the persecution of such people is seen as a necessary precaution to protect their modus operandi – typically, “liberal values” or “liberal democracy” – much in the same way many ‘extremists’ view persecution of dissidents as a necessary precaution for protecting their own modus operandi: the revolution, the state, the proletariat, the volk, and so on.

Indeed, views in and of themselves are basically harmless, although much of our political system evidently disagrees. In a similar vein to Keegan and Ribeiro-Addy, Conservative MP and Chair of the Women and Equalities Committee (yes, really) Caroline Noakes’ reaction to the Ezedi case centred around microaggressions – that is, words and mannerism whichcould hypothetically be interpreted as or lead to actions which are harmful:

“I think there’s a really important message here which is, with respect, the media are not interested in microaggressions, they want to hear about the most egregious offences.

“The stark reality is every day women will face misogyny and microaggressions. If you’re a woman of colour it will be worse, and we have to be better at understanding the culture that makes men think ‘that’s ok’. It’s not OK and you can see a pattern of behaviours that lead to really horrific crimes.”

The inverse and counter-intuitive approach our politicians and judicial system take towards words and actions is so confounding it form the basis of a derivative dystopia novel. Alas, it is the quite logical conclusion of our liberal-democratic political system, in which swathes of policy are depoliticised by filtering them the language of rights.

In Metapolitics, Badiou describes the role of political philosophy in reducing politics from a process of transformation defined by enmity to a passive exchange (a battle, some might say) of ideas:

“The central operation of political philosophy thus conceived is… first and foremost, to restore politics, not to the subjective reality of organized and militant processes… but to the exercise of ‘free judgement in a public space where, ultimately, only opinions count.”

This is certainly true, although it is quite clear that politics has deteriorated past this point, for the articulation of political philosophy itself is being drastically restricted. One is increasingly unpermitted to say or believe things happen or should happen for any other reason the one established by those in positions of officialdom.

Not only has the uniparty agreed that nothing can really be done about people like Ezedi coming into the country, absconding the idea something can be done to prevent people of his ilk from entering the country, they decreed the cause as if it were not up for debate: Andrew Tate saying women can’t drive is the problem, not the Human Right Act (1998).

Of course, Ezedi’s ability to game the asylum system via by the Human Rights Act (1998) was contingent on his claim of religious conversion, and the prospect of persecution should he return to Afghanistan, despite the fact he intended to return anyway.

Contrary to initial claims, Ezedi’s baptism was conducted by a Baptist priest. Sure, progressive Anglican priests have played an enabling role in other cases of a similar nature, such as the Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing, and comprise an annoying large section of the CofE’s internal structure, but let’s try and get our Protestant denominations right before we point the finger. The willingness of many on the right to attack the CofE, just to swipe at the easily and rightfully detested Welby, was generally quite pathetic, especially considering ultimate responsibility lies with the Home Office.

In a time of liberal-left ideological hegemony, swelling with liberal universalism and race communism, you must ask yourself: do you have the populist gusto to berate the small handful of octogenarians who continue to read the Book of Common Prayer? Do you have the dissident bravery to attack what little semblance remains of Britain’s established Christian identity?

Indeed, basically every other religious organisation in Britain is ‘complicit’ in charitable efforts designed to help refuges and converts into the country, real or not, with the bulk of anti-deportation charities and activists having no religious motivation and affiliation at all. The Board of Deputies of Jews has continuously opposed efforts to make asylum laws more strict, whilst the Muslim Council of Britain advertises relief and aid advice no different to that contained in the CofE document making the rounds.

To any fair-minded opponent of liberal immigration policy, this should constitute an outrage. Alas, as Britain’s left-right becomes a proxy for the mutual animosity between Muslims and Jews, revitalised by the Israel-Palestine conflict, treating the established church as a conniving force is sure to become a new feature of our national common ground.

According to an eruditely conservative Anglican friend, the clergy doesn’t spend much time catechising with little-to-no effort being invested into understanding the catechumen before their baptism. In a similar fashion to the Home Office’s treatment of asylum applications, everything is done at a recklessly fast pace, with some newcomers being confirmed into the Church a couple of months after their supposed conversion.

Compared with more conservative parishes, in which the clergy spend well-over half-a-year getting to know their converts, it’s clear that one of the major problems facing the Church, moreso than accusations of whimsy naivete or malicious treason, and accompanying the already well-documented tendency of progressive Christians to reduce their theology to a grand metaphor, is the lack of zeal amongst much of its clergy. An unfashionable but necessary disposition, the pedantic conservatism of the Church has been sidelined in the pursuit of goal completely antithetical to the spirit of the Church itself: reflecting the society it wishes to elevate.

Unlike the aforementioned individuals and organisations in this article, who are guilty of prioritising words over deeds, the current Church’s fixation on deeds very much detracts from the words on which such endeavours are meant to be considered, shaped, and executed.

This hegemonic emphasis in the Church on being a do-gooder, on doing charity for the sake of charity, showing little-to-no consideration for textual analysis or well-rounded practical considerations, lest one wishes their faith to be pigeonholed as mere eccentricity or stuffy reactionaryism, runs deep into the “Quakerification” of the Church of England and post-war Britain generally. The extent to which Quakers are so charity-oriented is reflected by their small handful of members, the most “pious” of whom are on the fence as to whether they even believe in the essentials of Christianity or not.

This is an unsurprising development when one considers the Quaker roots of the organisations integral to the maintenance of the status quo, forces to which the progressive elements of the Church have allied themselves: Joseph Rowntree Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust, Paul Hamlyn Foundation, The Lloyd’s Foundation, The Barclay Foundation, and so on. The next time some midwit reformer wonk tells you religion doesn’t matter in the nitty-gritty of policy – least of all, in a post-religious Britain – hit them with “Blairism is secularised Quakerism” and watch them self-combust.

An avowed atheist, Clement Attlee, central architect of Britain’s post-war consensus, said of Christianity:

“I’m one of those people who are incapable of religious feeling… Believe in the ethics of Christianity. Can’t believe in the mumbo jumbo.”

Eventually, Attlee’s sentimentally Christian, but ultimately Atheistic, path to a “New Jerusalem” would be supplanted by Thatcher’s scrupulous and austere Methodism. Contrary to characterisations made by detractors and supporters, insisting Margaret’s Method was rooted in relishing the vulgarity and excess of yuppies, it was explicitly founded on the individualistic Pauline doctrine of the New Testament.

It would take Blair’s Quaker-ishness to bring the role of religion back into public life. John MacMurray, Tony Blair’s favourite philosopher (as described by Blair himself) became a Quaker near the end of his life, the culmination of his quasi-personalist philosophy, developed on the cusp of (although absolutely not opposed to) the development of modern liberalism. Thereafter, religion’s only permissible utility was its ability to make people feel less lonely in an atomised world, steering clear of anything beyond a shallow, practically non-existent, ultimately contemptuous consideration for scripture, symbol, or sacrament.

Should it be any surprise that the Blairite state allows pseudo-Christians into our country so easily?

Sure, a more critical approach to matters of faith would greatly benefit us in keeping foreign-born sex-offenders out of the country, but this runs against the current of a political obsession with words, not deeds. Nevertheless, if our system placed greater emphasis on Ezedi’s past deeds when processing his claim to asylum, and a little less on words slapped on a few dozen stickers, we’d be simultaneously safer and freer as a result.

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Another Organisation? Splendid!

By Samuel Martin — 11 months ago

Popular Conservatism (PopCon) has just launched and it’s about as popular as booting a crippled dog into oncoming traffic. Spearheaded by Liz Truss, the shortest serving Prime Minister in British political history and the most unpopular Conservative politician in the country, the organisation is begging to be ridiculed by the media and the public.

However, whilst Truss is the face of the group, the organisation is directed by Mark Littlewood, former director general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), a pro-immigration think-tank. Like Truss, Littlewood is a former Liberal Democrat, serving as director for Liberal Vision, a group of economic liberals within the party. Unlike Truss, he’s a former of the Pro-Euro Conservative Party (PECP), a minor offshoot of the Tories which campaigned for Britain to adopt the Euro and oust then-leader William Hague in favour of arch-Europhile Kenneth Clarke. After the dissolution of the PECP, Littlewood became an advisor to the Conservative Party under the leadership of David Cameron.

Earlier in life, Littlewood worked for the European Movement, an all-party group campaigning for British membership of a federalised Europe; Liberty, the human rights advocacy group which spearheaded campaigns to implement and maintain the Human Rights Act; and NO2ID, a group which campaigns against the introduction of ID cards.

So, what does Popular Conservatism stand for? Apparently, its aims are: “inform and educate candidates and MPs about the need to reform Britain’s bureaucratic structures” and “advance these policies across the country, whilst demonstrating their popularity.”

According to Littlewood, PopCon is about: “Giving ordinary people, taxpayers and voters, their freedom back. That was what Brexit was supposed to be about: taking back control.”

Taking Back Control? Why would Littlewood care about Taking Back Control? Littlewood changed his view on EU integration at the time of the referendum, writing in a personal statement:

“Twenty years ago, I was a passionate and enthusiastic supporter of European integration. I was President of the UK branch of the Young European Federalists in 1996 and my first job was working for the European Movement. I was enthusiastic about the UK joining the single currency and I even supported the Pro-Euro Conservative Party, a breakaway from the Conservatives on the issue of Britain’s relationship with the EU.

“Since then, and bit by bit, my thinking has evolved and the European Union, in my judgment, has increasingly become a force for heavy handed and petty regulation rather than for free market liberalism. The EU is no longer the deregulatory single-market it once aspired to be. Instead, it has become a monolithic and increasingly interventionist bureaucratic super-state. After considerable thought – and with a heavy heart – I have reached the conclusion that Britain would be best advised to leave the EU and I will be voting accordingly on 23^rdJune.

“I believe there are risks and uncertainties involved in going for Brexit, but these are – on balance -risks worth taking. There is no guarantee that Britain will become a more outward-looking, globally free trading, open and free society outside of the EU. But there is, in my view, a pretty good chance of it.”

In summary, Littlewood’s euroscepticism (and by extension, the bent of PopCon’s brand of politics) is rooted in the belief the EU (much like the UK, presuambly) has become too protectionist, too nationalist, too conservative and too isolationist, hindering Britain’s ability to push ahead with economic and cultural globalisation. In the government’s own words:

“Global Britain is about reinvesting in our relationships, championing the rules-based international order and demonstrating that the UK is open, outward-looking and confident on the world stage.”

This aspiration, typically referred to as “Global Britain”, is uncommon amongst Brexiteers generally, but quite popular with a narrow clique of largely London-centric free-marketeers, comprised largely of Tory staffers, centre-right policy wonks, disgruntled civil servants, conservative commentators, and Thatcherite MPs. GBNews’ Tom Harwood, former Chair of Students for Britain, summarises the disposition of this demographic briefly but well: “open globalism, not narrow regionalism”. That’s right, we’re the real cosmopolitan internationalists, the left are the real provincialists!

As many will remember, “Global Britain” was announced as the official post-Brexit endeavour of the Conservative governments of Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, albeit the first and second were over-encumbered by the withdrawal process and Covid to implement many of their desired reforms – besides, of course, importing an unprecedented number of immigrants. Consequently, whilst Boris was intended as the figurehead for Global Britain, the role ultimately fell to Liz “Boris 2.0” Truss.

For clarity, there is nothing particularly radical about “Global Britain”. It has always been the Menshevik position within the Brexit coalition. Throughout the referendum it was occasionally used as a polemical tactic (i.e. Let’s Go WTO), but nothing more. Contrasted to the Bolshevik aspiration of turning Britain into an island fortress, derided by Britpoppers as “Little England”, the Menshevik aspiration is to turn Britain into a mass financial district, in which vampiric multinationals terrorise Middle England from above and an imported underclass of cheap labour, violent criminals, and ethnic displacement terrorises it from below.

Of course, it’s colossally terrible but it’s not too dissimilar to the relatively liberal arrangement we had before Brexit and certainly no different to the arrangement we have now. Alas, this doesn’t stop PopCons from complaining the system is stacked against efforts at economic liberalisation. Yes, the planning system is needlessly complicated, but there’s no need for hyperbole; weaning people off microplastics and ultra-processed food isn’t Soviet.

Essentially, both Global Britain and PopCon are tendencies born out of the ideas contained in Britannia Unchained, a book which seeks to answer the question on everyone’s mind: “How can we get white British people to work more for less and demographically replace them in the process?”. Making immigration uncontroversial by making it productive, saying NO to identity politics, saying NO to the Nanny State, Getting On Your Bike, STEM, India Superpower 2020, Peace… through Commerce. Real Tory Boy stuff.

This leads into another problem with PopCon. It isn’t just its initial unpopularity, it has no idea how to be popular, despite the fact the answers have been in plain sight for years. Boris Johnson’s popularity peaked when he promised to end immigration and shouted “Fuck Business” to a Belgian diplomat. Theresa May, a completely unknown and irrelevant politician, reached unprecedented levels of popularity after the referendum when she was attacking “citizens of nowhere” to such an extent she was being compared to Adolf Hitler. David Cameron reached the height of his popularity when he was promising to reduce immigration and hold a referendum on the EU, threatening to leave the ECHR, and declaring state multiculturalism to be a failure.

Compare this with Liz Truss. In her historically brief tenure, she tried to pursue free movement and trade with India and borrow billions to fund tax cuts for the rich. Suella Braverman, for all her many faults, understood during her leadership bid that leaving the ECHR and stopping illegal immigration are popular with the public, especially with voters in the Red Wall – policies which PopCon lightly sprinkled into their otherwise bland, derivative, and highly ironic attempt at wrapping Orange Book Liberalism in a flag.

Flip-flopping seemed to be an integral theme of the PopCon event. As established, Littlewood and Truss are former Lib Dems, but Anderson is former Labour, Farage was pivoting back and forth between endorsement and dismissal throughout the whole thing, and Holly Valance gave an unrelentingly generic interview stating life is about being left-wing, making money, and then moving rightwards.

This obsession with switching is bizarre, but it’s the recurring tendency one should expect from an organisation which simultaneously fights for the so-called “rules-based international order” and complains about an arbitrary global humanitarian class undermining national democracy; fronted by a former Prime Minister and her group of orbiters who’ve done nothing in their 14 years of government to address any of the problems their organisation hopes to “inform and educate” us about.

PopCon doesn’t seem to understand that some of us have been aware of the Great Replacement, Cultural Marxism and The Blob since secondary school. We don’t need to be told that some people think there are more than two genders or that state-funded charities and quangos are jampacked with people who hate our country; we don’t need to be told liberal-left ideas and values are hegemonic, or that illegal immigrants take advantage of the welfare system. We are children of the revolution, for Christ’s sake!

All the way down, PopCon is a group for people to scratch their heads at problems they have helped to create, assuming nobody else has identified them before, and offer milquetoast solutions with the galling expectation of jubilant applause.

It is slightly comical. 2030 will arrive and Liz Truss will be explaining the drawbacks of the sexual revolution and quoting G.K Chesterton. Erstwhile, MechaBlair will be conscripting masses of young White British men to fight Populism in Ukraine and organising taxpayer-subsidised migrant mega-orgies in The North. Indeed, trying to make political progress with the present batch of Conservative MPs is like trying to scale Mount Everest with Stephen Hawking; it’s really quite demoralising.

Whilst Donald Trump is saying immigrants “poison the blood” of America, whilst Germany’s AFD is advocating mass remigration, whilst France’s Eric Zemmour is openly discussing demographic displacement, the British right is forced to contend with another attempt to rehabilitate Thatcherism, another attempt to undercut the emergent nationalist, protectionist, and socially conservative elements of the right which have been trying to take root in established positions since the referendum; another perversion of the anti-immigration spirit of Take Back Control (TBC), framed in terms of mere economic and legal technicality, adorning it with another SW1-friendly signifier to go with the rest: TBC as a vote for liberalism, as a call for localist devolution, as a general dislike of politicians, as a mere symptom of economic turbulence, as a nationwide Freudian psychodrama.

Despite all of this, despite my complete contempt for PopCon, I’m glad it exists. In all sincerity and without a hint of contrarianism. PopCon is bad because it’s Tory-branded Globalism run by Thatcherite Zombies without a hint of self-awareness, creativity, or charisma, not because it’s “another organisation” – a complaint I’m absolutely sick of hearing from supposedly disaffected voices.

At present, Britain doesn’t have a political culture, but it wasn’t always this way. Indeed, some people (mainly our anti-political overlords and pseudo-Anglos within and adjacent to our circles) have espoused the notion that political organisation is somehow terribly un-English. However, a brief glance at history tells us that beneath gentle-mannered disposition (some might say caricature) of the native population, political organisation, rowdiness, and militancy – even outright violence – have existed for several hundred years in this country, boiling beneath the surface of even standard parliamentary exchanges.

The snobbish anti-partisanship of those who are disgruntled by the lack of action but see themselves above political organisation are an abject cancer. Everyone has remarked that MPs enter Parliament to immediately do something else, whether it’s charity work or presenting a TV show, but few have surmised what this means. It shows that power is contingent on the wider superstructure of society; the Overton Window must be adapted so political objectives can fully actualise themselves and legislated into reality, something the enemies of Britain have done and are currently doing very well.

As such, we don’t need less organisation or less division, we need more. More organisation, more division, more militancy, more enmity, more ideology, more partisanship, more coups, more activism, more conflict, more metapolitics of every form and variety. Let the Darwinian selection processes of the political run wild; radicalise democracy against every rendition of liberalism and rejoice as it stampedes over the latter’s mangled corpse. No, PopCon doesn’t deserve to fail… it deserves to be killed.

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

By Samuel Martin — 1 year ago

Yesterday, Rishi Sunak announced his intention to cut net migration by 300,000, calling it “the biggest ever cut in net migration” two weeks after the ONS revealed net migration had increased to an unprecedented 745,000, revised up from 672,000.

Despite the claims made by politicians and the press, this announcement isn’t worth getting excited over. I needn’t re-establish the Tories’ abysmal track-record on immigration, partially because it is common knowledge (we’ll get it into the tens of thousands this time, we promise!), but mainly because their policy will prove fraudulent and destructive, even if carried out to the fullest extent.

If the government succeeded in bringing down net migration to their stated target, it would still be far higher than anything experienced before Covid. Up until recently, net migration sat at around 250,000, peaking at over 300,000. As a net figure, these figures included upwards of 500,000 arrivals each year since the early noughties, continuing a rapid increase in arrivals since the late 1990s.

Now-infamous research by Dr David Coleman showed White British people would be a minority in the UK by 2066 if immigration continued at such levels. Coleman’s forecast was published in 2013. Ten years later, net migration has more than doubled with 450,000 every year being treated as a radical reduction by politicians and the press. Of course, it matters not whether such circumstances arrive sooner or later, it would be essentially immoral and consequentially destructive for our society, as we can infer from the past few years alone.

In many ways, what the government is doing is more subversive than not doing anything at all. It is treating pre-Covid net migration as the natural benchmark, implying anything more demanding is a form of deranged and impractical extremism, a notion which couldn’t be further from the truth. Keep in mind: this country saw the rise and fall of the BNP and UKIP, a referendum on EU membership, the triumph of the Brexit Party, and a landslide for the Conservatives before the post-2020 surge in arrivals, all of which were motivated by a fraction of what the “FAR RIGHT” (!!!) Tory government are proposing.

The government’s new policy has no intention of cutting the number of foreign students, graduate worker visas or the skilled workers list. NGOs remain generously funded, no laws or treaties are abolished or amended, whilst social care and graduate visas, along with dodgy postgrad courses at immigration-dependant universities, have been left practically untouched. Typical of the Tories, they can only address immigration in technical terms, seeing at is possibly economically inefficient and occassionally unfair, rather than a matter of sociopolitical importance.

Rather, it would scrap the shortage occupation list, which companies can use to pay foreign workers 20 per cent below the going rate for jobs with so-called “skills shortages”, ban foreign care workers and non-postgraduate students bringing dependants, increase the salary required for skilled foreign workers to get a visa to £38,700, and increase in the health surcharge to £1,035. Simply put, the government’s radical policy to regulate mass migration will not address several of the main causes behind mass migration.

Just like the “biggest tax cut in history”, the “biggest cut to net migration in history” is an admission of defeat disguised as a victory chant. Despite talk of reform, Westminster’s high-immigration, high-tax consensus remains unchanged. Nevertheless, whilst this policy is the epitome of progressivism driving the speed limit, the reaction from progressives has been nothing short of deranged. What is the country to do without the illustrious skillset of Nigerian dependants?! What about all those inspiring Somalian refugees that know how to JavaScript? Who will serve them Pret a Manger?!

Now more than ever, Conservatives should come to terms with the fact that there is no middle ground on this matter. Progressives, liberals, leftists, etc. are immigration maximisers by default and anything less than open borders is a violation of Human Rights™ and International Law™. Flimsy conceptual problems aside, just because something is The Law doesn’t mean its moral, practical or true. Laws are made to be broken; it is the implied function of government. Auctoritas non veritas facit legem!

In addition, the policy has spawned the input of several insufferable non-conservatives, bleating about how it’s ‘unconservative’ to set the wage threshold at the full-time average salary, describing the wage threshold as an attack on personal relationships and cheap foreign lifestyle journalists.

Someone should inform these people that up-ending the historical continuity of a people is as ‘unconservative’ as it gets. Drawing an equivalence between those inside and outside the political community, to the extent that the distinction between the two is functionally meaningless, is also wholly ‘unconservative’ but that doesn’t matter to them either. The reduction of the conservative philosophy to a single point of concern is to reduce the description of a hand to the presence of a thumb. The family is important and the upper-bound of the family – that is, the extended family of the nation – has been under sustained assault from mass migration for no less than 30 years. Can we conserve that, at least?

If our concern is keeping families together, I’m more than happy to support barring migration altogether to safeguard against the disintegration of foreign families, but something tells me these pseudocons wouldn’t be up for such an idea. Indeed, such a policy would be a good thing. Mass immigration has effectively made wage slavery the norm of the British economy, in which third world countries are stripped of their most talented and brought to Britain to work on barely liveable wages, undercutting native demands for better conditions and causing a host of demographic problems in the process.

Given that the recent spike in arrivals was driven primarily by non-EU migrants, originating from significantly poorer countries, it is unlikely that scrapping the shortage occupation list will do much to benefit the English worker. Such people are prepared to work for much less within the legal confines of the UK economy, subjecting themselves to conditions the average Englishman would class as unacceptable, if not downright exploitation. Oh well, at least consecutive years of mass migration has improved the “skills shortage” (it hasn’t).

In light of vague demands for an alternative, a net migration figure of zero would be a more fitting target. Far from unheard of, UK basically had net zero migration from the early 70s up until 1997, the year Modern Britain was founded. That said, this would only suffice as a short-term target. You could achieve net zero migration by importing one million insofar one million leave, the demographic consequences of which wouldn’t be insignificant. Ultimately, we need to cut the number of overall arrivals, not just the net figure, and deport anyone who shouldn’t be here. If we need to smash a few treaties here and there, if we have to fire a few thousand bureaucrats en masse to ensure the survival of the body politic, so be it.

Until then, until we see something substantial, rather than a mixture of boisterous rhetoric, statistical manipulation and historical revisionism, this policy is just like every other promise the Conservatives have made on immigration: one step forward, two steps back.

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