Most people would say that they have two grandmothers – the mother of their father, and the mother of their mother.

However, for the fifteen nations that make up the Commonwealth Realms, I believe it can be equally said that we all have three grandmothers. The mother of our fathers, the mother of our mothers, and the mother of nations.

Queen Elizabeth II was the nation’s grandmother, one who was dearly loved and cherished.

For many alive Elizabeth II was not just The Queen, but The Queen. A whole generation of people has been born, grown up and died only knowing Queen Elizabeth II as the Queen of the United Kingdom, the Queen of Canada, the Queen of Australia, the Queen of Jamaica, etc. She has been an almost constant presence in modern British history, from the dark and troubled days of the Second World War to the turbulent and chaotic times of the 21^st century.

It’s still hard to describe just how strange everything feels now. The Queen is dead, and the world will never be the same again.

All of us will remember her unfailing service, her sincere faith, her eternal good cheer, and her unflinching desire to make good her promises to the Commonwealth so many years ago. Those who had the privilege of meeting her recall her warmth, her razor-sharp wit and dry humour, and her capacity to make you feel like you were the most important person in the room, not she. She was a giant of her times and there is not one figure in recent history who can command as much respect or adoration.

Queen Elizabeth II oversaw the transition of Empire to Commonwealth, of a war-torn society to a burgeoning modern democracy, a world riven by authoritarianism stepping into the light of liberty. She faced down apartheid in South Africa, applauded her former colonies as they embraced independence, and prayed each year for the good fortune and happiness of all her subjects.

Under her Crown, we were all one people.

It was undeniably the highest honour imaginable to have been a subject to such a monarch, and it is my keenest sorrow to witness her passing. I know that she found courage in her faith in Christ and the Church of England, and I have no doubt she we will walk with the King of Kings through the gates of Heaven.

Her son, King Charles III, has now assumed her throne. I have every confidence in him to ably succeed her in this heavy burden that he has now been called by Grace to take upon his shoulders. He has had a lifetime of tutelage under one of Britain’s most beloved and respected monarchs in her history and has demonstrated remarkable insight and wisdom that was truly ahead of its times.

He inherits a Commonwealth equally at a time of change as his mother found it, a United Kingdom facing challenges at home and abroad, and a Royal Family constantly shifting to keep up with the demands of its age. A trying time for anyone, but His Majesty is up to the challenge. I eagerly look forward to seeing the fruits of his reign.

I was honoured to have been a subject of Queen Elizabeth II. I am honoured still to now declare myself a loyal, obedient and joyful subject of His Majesty King Charles III.

God save The King.

Image Credit

2020 was awful and most people would agree that they never want to experience that year’s events ever again. For Rishi Sunak, though, it was the highlight of his career as Chancellor of the Exchequer.

He was smooth and slick during those COVID press conferences and he just presided over the furlough scheme that ensured people could live off government money comfortably whilst the nation was locked down. Sunak quickly became regarded as future leadership material and those must have been the glory days of his career. 2020 was a nightmare for ‘ordinary’ people, but for Sunak, it was the start of a promising future.

But a week is a long time in politics. Things have quickly changed for this Tory hopeful; he stabbed Boris in the back recently and put himself forward to replace his former boss as Prime Minister. In fact, it is somewhat laughable that Sunak claims he would ‘govern like Thatcher.’ But that is because many of us who remember his time as Chancellor were not so fooled by the way the media portrayed his handling of the Government’s response to COVID. The price of lockdown is becoming all too clear now, and Sunak should be remembered as a Chancellor who was worse than Gordon Brown.

This comparison may not seem fair to some readers. Brown was Chancellor during an economic boom, and he occupied the role for ten years. Yet Brown also made terrible decisions that failed to prepare us for 2008’s events like selling our gold, failing to build enough homes, and ruining the UK’s pension system. As Tejvan Pettinger explained for Economics Help, the last Labour government made the mistake of running a budget deficit of 3 per cent towards the end of the 1997-2007 boom under Blair. If Labour had reduced public debt further, this would have given them more room for manoeuvre during the 2008-12 financial crisis.

In the Conservative Party, many Tory members and MPs make the mistake of thinking the 2008 recession was caused by Labour’s ‘reckless borrowing.’ Though it was an argument I supported during my early days of political activism, Brown did nothing in hindsight to cause the global housing collapse; that was caused by the irresponsible housing policy of the Clinton administration, and the consequences of subprime borrowing spread throughout the rest of the world as the global economy is hugely interconnected.

But did the ‘Conservative’ Party’s economic policies help cushion the blow of the Great Recession? Pettinger’s piece explains how borrowing levels actually got worse once the Tories gained power in 2010 onwards. That hardly sounds fiscally conservative, does it? View Pettinger’s article here if you do not believe me.

However, Sunak’s record no doubt makes Brown blush. Government borrowing during the 2020/21 fiscal year was predicted to hit around 400 billion pounds, the equivalent of between 17-20 per cent GDP, well above its 10 per cent peak at the height of the global financial crisis (which was when Brown was Prime Minister).

Of course, Sunak would argue his decisions were necessary to finance Britain’s lockdown during a global pandemic. Nonetheless, John Hopkins University found that global lockdowns failed to prevent the spread of COVID and recommended that they should not be used as an instrument to tackle pandemics in the future. Even The Daily Telegraph was reporting in August 2020 that lockdown itself killed more people than COVID. With stories now surfacing of children who failed to receive support from social services during lockdown, and people having missed cancer appointments in 2020-21, it is apparent that locking down the country, and the world, was a deadly, self-inflicted mistake.

Sweden and Florida are two useful case studies for parts of the world that did not lock themselves down and still tackled the spread of COVID. Sweden’s COVID death rate currently stands at 19,144, and though its population is smaller than the UK’s, which locked down hard, they were praised for not locking down by mainstream outlets like Germany’s DW, despite being a nation that is 88 per cent urbanised, but then again Britain’s urbanisation numbers are very similar. Sweden’s leading epidemiologist, Anders Tagnell, argued his country’s approach to the coronavirus should be based on evidence, and there was none to prove that lockdowns were working. That we will come to later. 

Florida’s infection levels, meanwhile, were no different to California’s, which locked down hard, and now the state has been ranked as one of the best when it came to handling the pandemic, according to The Committee To Unleash Prosperity. In fact, Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, recently said his state’s economy is experiencing a record surplus. This shows Sunak and Boris did not have to fund an economically catastrophic lockdown to tackle the coronavirus; they chose to go down this path.

In Brown’s defence, he had no control over America’s subprime housing bubble exploding, which wrecked the former Labour Chancellor’s budget plans, though he should have been more financially prudent in anticipation of a crash. That is his only mistake.

And now, Britain is literally paying the price for Sunak’s record borrowing. Sure, the unemployment rate currently stands at 3.8 per cent, one of the lowest rates since 1974, but that does not help those on low incomes in the face of surging inflation and high interest rates.

Interest rates were at a record low during the height of the pandemic in 2020, and as Norton Finance explains, when interest rates decrease, there’s an increase in borrowing. The Bank of England has a 2 per cent inflation target (a rule set by Gordon Brown, funnily enough), yet it has now exceeded 9.1 per cent. This means interest rates will have to rise to levels not seen since the 1980s to bring inflationary levels back down, which affects small businesses with large loans and provides consumers with less discretionary income, both of which will harm the economy in the short-term at least. Inflation itself has a huge impact on consumer spending levels, many of which are already being felt with surging prices in shops, etc.

Under New Labour, inflation hit 1.9 per cent in 2005, just below Brown’s target, and this was the highest level it got to before the crash. As expected during a recession, inflation climbed to 3.99 per cent in Britain during the 2008 crisis, but that is still far lower than it is now.

It pains me as a former Conservative Party member to write that a Tory Chancellor did a worse job at handling the economy in two years than a former Labour Chancellor who was in office for ten years did. However, as the Conservatives look to the future, they need to regain their reputation for economic prudence. That has been destroyed by Sunak’s financing of Boris’s overreaction to COVID. Sunak should not only be remembered as a worse Chancellor than Brown, but he should be regarded as the worst Chancellor in history in years to come.

Picture Credit

We are being treated to a clapping seal show presented as the Conservative leadership contest. The only candidate likely to alter Britain’s course into the iceberg of national decline and total senescence was Kemi Badenoch, so of course the MPs ejected her from the contest before the final three. For a moment it looked like it would come down to a face-off between Penny “Tory Blair” Mordaunt and Rishi “Green Card” Sunak, but instead we get Sunak vs Liz “Thatcher LARP” Truss. And of course, we are now witnessing the virus of zombie Thatcherism having colonised the brains of our prospective new prime minister. Each desperately tries to out-Thatcher the other, displaying the degeneration of the Conservative mindscape into a derivative pile of philosophical junk. It used to be that the Tories actually had ideas about how to govern and how to use the state to do this. Not anymore.

The Situation

Let’s survey the devastation of British national life. Inflation is at 9%, the highest for forty years. Energy prices are already a disaster, and are set to become truly catastrophic in the autumn and next winter. Productivity, bumping along for decades like a sea slug on the ocean floor, is falling into the Mariana Trench. Our levels of private debt are rocketing into the stratosphere. Our public debt is in orbit after the Covid-19 spend binge. Poverty rates are climbing and set to go even higher. The consequences in learning loss from Covid school closures for hundreds of thousands of children is an absolute disaster. A million immigrants settled here last year. Five million people have simply dropped out of the workforce and now subsist on benefits. Thousands of children have been abused, trafficked, raped, and even killed by grooming gangs. We lag behind other European nations for going back into the office. Quality of service from companies in the private sector and public services in the state sector has thudded face-first into the earth as a result. Our sainted health service is performing the worst it ever has, and is a black-hole of funding. The organs of the state have ceased to function: passport and driving licences are apparently a luxury rather than a necessity, while the main goal seems to be implementing ever more diversity and gender quotas. Our state capacity is therefore that of a poor south European country without the compensation of a pleasant climate.

The Solution?

And what is the answer presented to all of this? Why, tax cuts of course! This isn’t the sum total of either finalists’ policy proposals, but these are the prescriptions to our economic and social dis-ease that are being touted most vociferously by Liz Truss, the likely winner. And why would they not be? It’s always an attractive piece of political casuistry to tell people you’ll take less of their money one way while they’ll go on losing it in so many other ways. Given the British tax burden is the highest it’s been since the Second World War, this route to party popularity must seem like too good a golden road to electoral survival to miss. Never mind that the economic rationale for cutting taxes isn’t … completely watertight. It’s a sign of our political disconnect from economic reality that Sunak’s arguments against cutting all the taxes all the time has gone down like a lead-lined lifejacket with his prospective party voters. No, we must all hail our saviour Truss for her faith in the Laffer curve, an economic truism worked out on the back of a napkin and further distorted by politics towards the simplistic formula tax cuts always = higher tax revenue. Never mind that the ideology she adheres to represents the dissolution of social ties and the proletarianization of the middle class. Truss is a revolutionary in the mould of her hero Cromwell, a man who committed regicide. Yay, conservatism!

This tax-cut obsession underpins a religious vision where the small state is the worldly heaven towards which we must sacrifice and strain our sinews, an eternal truth applicable to all times and circumstances. The goal is to further liberate the individual from all bonds and constraints, enabling them to achieve this worldview’s highest good of maximum autonomy, never mind the social and cultural dissolution and chaos that it unleashes. Of course, since Thatcher’s time Conservatism as a party phenomenon has been seen as economically liberal, with nods towards some sort of cultural conservatism. This always amounts to little more than a rhetorical sleight-of-hand to distract from the economic preferences of the party elite, who themselves find the social conservatism of their members and those voters in the Red Wall embarrassing and morally retrograde. The Conservative vision of political-economy, culture and society is as impoverished as those it rules without governing are fast becoming.

Out of Ideas

What makes this all the worse is that when J.S. Mill epitomised the smug, self-congratulatory liberal style by calling the Conservatives “the stupidest party,” this was not actually true. But now the leadership candidates’ vague gestures at imitation Thatcherism looks set to prove Mill right. And yet it wasn’t always like this, and does not have to be like this. E.H.H. Green, in his magisterial historical survey, Ideologies of Conservatism, demonstrates that while the Conservative party may indeed not be as philosophical in a formal sense as the left, to say that Conservatives have always been an intellectually barren party is simply wrong.

As Green writes, “Study of Conservative intra-party debate throughout the party’s history, and especially over the course of the ‘Conservative century’, reveals that the controversy over Conservative ideas in the last quarter of the twentieth century was not unique in terms of either its nature or intensity.” The Conservatives at the century’s beginning debated tariff reform, social reform, land reform, industrial and agricultural productivity, Ireland and Empire. 

Intra-party debate continued up through the 20^th century, carried out in books, public and private party pamphlets and papers, speeches, articles and newspaper columns, as well as two book clubs, along with the Ashridge college of political philosophy. As Green rightly argues, “it may be that the Conservatives produce fewer ‘great texts’ (although they produce and refer to more than is frequently assumed), but if one sets aside the formal, ‘canonical’ notion of the forms of expression of political thought and examines speeches, policymaking discussions, exchanges of views and opinions in correspondence, and the construction of and response to legislation, the Conservatives’ engagement with ideas is clear, rich, varied, and extensive. Politics is about argument, and arguments are about ideas.”

This intellectual ferment was driven both by an innate interest in ideas shown by significant minority, and in reaction to changing events which demanded empirical observation and adaptation. This stemmed from a sense that to govern a great nation was a weighty and serious matter, fraught with danger and risk, one’s greatness not to be taken for granted or put at risk for ideological whim or purity. Leaders of the party actually thought things through in some depth. Even Prime Ministers engaged with the questions of the day with a depth that is incomprehensible in our time. Harold Macmillan wrote books on political-economy that reduce many such contemporary efforts to toilet paper status.

Thatcherism came from the more liberal side of the Conservative tent, but as Green wrote, it grew out of a scene rich in debate and discussion and had intellectual firepower behind it, whether one agrees with the substance or not. The network of thinktanks discussed in Richard Cockett’s book Thinking the Unthinkable communicated ideas from liberal thinkers like Hayek and developed policies from them. One can see these organisations as following in the wake of earlier arguments and institutions, seeing them as an example of what could be achieved and what to achieve it for. Now the Conservatives either serve up stale neoliberal centrism or cosplay Thatcherism.

Another Way

As Aris Roussinos recently argued, the cramped vision that the Conservative party now offers is far from the full picture, and does not have to be. A series of Conservative ministers and Prime Ministers gave a more expansive view of what constitutes the Conservative vision of the state, political-economy and their relation to society (which does exist and in which we live). As Roussinos writes, figures like Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan, R.A. “Rab” Butler and others argued affirmatively for the use of the state to set the course for economic action, and against unbridled, brutal laissez-faire capitalism. A strong state was not, in their view, inimical to the Conservative tradition, and was in fact integral to insuring the social, political and economic conditions that enabled the good life for families and communities.

This attempt to chart a “middle way” between the Scylla and Charybdis of totalising socialism and atomising laissez-faire capitalism is one that sits well within the Conservative tradition, among whose political ancestors we can include the true One Nation philosophy that grew out of Benjamin Disraeli. His main effort was to reconcile and unite the “Two nations; between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other’s habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets; who are formed by a different breeding, are fed by a different food, are ordered by different manners, and are not governed by the same laws . . . . THE RICH AND THE POOR.”

As I’ve written before, Disraeli rightly saw that what at the time was called “Manchester Liberalism,” of economic upheaval under the guise of prosperity and social turmoil presented as progress was inimical to social stability and the good life. Disraeli saw and put into words as no-one else could that “The great body of the people of this country are Conservative. I use the word in its purest and loftiest sense. I mean that the people of England, and especially the working classes of England, are proud of belonging to a great country, and wish to maintain its greatness.”

Rachel Wolf, in arguing that what is being offered now by the leadership candidates is the polar opposite of what won the party its 80-seat majority, echoes Disraeli when he declared that “The Tory party is only in its proper position when it represents popular principles. Then it is truly irresistible”. Disraeli saw rightly saw liberalism as a liquefier of social solidarity, “composed purely of wealth and toil, based on a spirit of rapacious covetousness.” As he wrote in his wonderfully scathing way, “Liberal opinions are the opinions of those who would be free from a certain dependence and duty which are deemed necessary for the general or popular welfare. Liberal opinions are very convenient opinions for the rich and powerful.” For Disraeli, the point of governing, and why Conservatism must actually govern through the state, was to “secure the social welfare of the PEOPLE.”

The Edwardian Bridge

Between Disraeli’s vision and that of Macmillan and his generation is a Conservatism of the early 20^th century that arguably links the two. Green traces the development of a British Conservatism inflected by the Idealist school of philosophy espoused by T.H. Green at Balliol. The Historical school of economists grew from this scene. The group “first came to prominence in Britain in the 1880s, and from that point on developed a sustained critique of Classical economics and what it saw as its vulgarized derivatives, Manchesterism [laissez-faire liberalism] and Socialism.” The Historical school was against free trade and for protection where needed, saw nations, unions, trusts and groups in general as more important for political-economy than the isolated, supposedly rational individual of Smith and Ricardo, and supported state intervention to create the conditions for economic prosperity through industrial productivity and thereby ease social discontent and prevent unrest.

Conservative figures like Alfred Milner, Leopold Amery, J.W. Hills, and Arthur Steel-Maitland also came from this milieu, influencing more in the party. All were in favour of using the state for social and economic reform for the common good. Through the minor figure Arthur Boutwood, E.H.H. Green argues that these Conservatives saw the individual as an ethical being whose aim was the realisation of his potential, with self-realisation the sum of life. [HG2] The role of the individual and nation were inseparable: individual self-realisation was only possible through society, as citizens of the nation into which we are born, and which provides our social, cultural, political and economic context. The potential of the individual citizen and the nation were seen as realised by each other. Citizenship was “freedom for duty,” and therefore commitment to the common good.

As Green writes, “Boutwood argued that true freedom could only come through co-operative acts that were born out of a recognition and realization of mutual needs and goals.” According to Green, Boutwood saw the relationship between the individual and the nation as one where the individual and nation had a duty to each other, and if the nation “’be not effectually and equitably serviceable, it should be made so’.” The state was to enable this, and “to achieve its ‘moral conception’ by … ‘work that sustains and fosters [the nation’s] life, that builds up its people into serviceable manhood’”, to create the conditions for individual, communal and national opportunity. In other words, to govern, and to reform where needed for the reciprocal common good. 

Boutwood was, again, a minor figure, but one whose writing encapsulated a view of society and political economy that galvanised many more significant men of the time, including eminent aristocratic party members and the Historical economists. The need for politicians and economists to lay the ground for individual and national prosperity and stability was best expressed by H.S. Fox when he wrote “’The State may become social reformer without becoming Socialist, but if the State does not become social reformer it will inevitably become Socialist’.” We face similar circumstances today, and it was because of this that the Historical school and more Conservatives than one would think were in favour of social reforms including pensions and workers rights and protections. As Green writes, ‘By 1914 [the Unionist Social Reform Committee] had proposed an extension of old-age pension rights, argued for minimum wages in certain trades, sponsored several schemes for working-class housing, and was close to presenting a blueprint for a national health service.”

The central aim of this kind of Conservatism, “was to provide the basis for a socially and politically integrative strategy that could overcome tensions and divisions within Britain.” To achieve this required cultivating national unity, “which in turn required acknowledging that the nation was … an organic entity. It was here that a positive role for the State was essential, in that the State was to ensure that no particular section of society was to be systematically undervalued or over-privileged. In practical terms this meant … social reform in the domestic sphere to alleviate the privations of the poorer classes, but carried through without recourse to class-divisive rhetoric or actions.”

Conclusion

There is a Conservative view of the state that runs through the true One Nation tradition descended from Disraeli, which underlay the worldview and policies of Edwardian Conservatism, Macmillan’s post-war Conservatism, and was buried by Thatcherism. We obviously can’t, nor should we, replicate exactly these kinds of Conservatism for today. But we must reignite the intellectual fire that galvanised Conservatism up to Thatcher’s time, and look again at the approach of the figures above towards the use of the state in service to our political, social, economic, and national life. The country is facing a range of problems that could very well prove disastrous or even catastrophic. These will not be solved or ameliorated by pursuing small-state dogma, but by the Conservatives learning to govern again. Whether that can be done remains to be seen.

Picture Credit

After spending a year across the pond in America, when I returned home to Britain, I was pleasantly surprised to find the streets of towns, cities, and villages decorated in union flags, with shop windows displaying various items in celebration of the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.  Before I left, I used to ask myself why the British couldn’t be as patriotic as the Northern Irish unionists were who displayed their patriotism all year around. But while these decorations may only last for the jubilee, they illustrate something important about our country: Britain is still a proud nation.

Unlike most nations of the world, Britain (along with Denmark) are the only two countries that don’t have a yearly National Day.  Britain, of course, has days dedicated to the various patron saints that go largely uncelebrated, but the country does not have a day that brings national unity across the nation. Instead, our national celebrations only come once in a decade in the form of celebrating our monarchy.

The years Jubilee has been significant in signifying the proud attitudes that the British still hold for the union. This stands in contrast to the recent years of bombardment that have sought to teach the British to be ashamed of their history and heritage. This phenomenon can be linked to an anti-racism and anti-colonialist  narrative, that has appeared in recent events such as students at Oxford University taking down a portrait of Her Majesty due to the history of colonialism , statues of well-known and respected national heroes being vandalised during Black Lives Matter protests, and my own experience of being suspended from Aberdeen student’s union last year for the words “Rule Britannia.”

These attempts to erase British history and its achievements, comes from a narrative pushed by Marxist’s which seek to teach the British that our imperialist past ought to be seen as a source of guilt due to the dynamic of the coloniser/colonised to the oppressor/oppressed and the empires promotion of capitalism  through the industrial revolution. Some, such as Kehinde Andrews, even go as far as to compare Britain’s role in colonialism to that of Nazi Germany or Imperial Japan. But Britain never carried out atrocities like that of the Holocaust or the Rape of Nanking.  In a world of empire building, the British Empire arguably modernised countries and created infrastructure within them.  This thinking has served to not only attempt to abolish national pride but also the monarchy, arguing that its role serves to only reinforce privilege. 

But the role of Her Majesty is more than a ceremonial institution, it is unarguably a crucial part in shaping national unity. Without it, people are more easily subjected to the political polarisation inherent to republicanism. The monarchy allows for patriots from all beliefs to rally under one crown. It is why Her Majesty is the Commander of the army, after all. By technically holding the reigns of military power, Her Majesty ensures they don’t fall subject to political division. Thus, the institution of the monarchy allows us to connect with our ancestors precisely because our ancestors, like our countrymen alive today, are also different from us yet have fallen under the same crown.

This year’s Jubilee has served to emphasise these factors, demonstrating that the will of British people has yet to be conquered. With thousands across the nation being unafraid to display their patriotism and admiration to their country by decorating their homes in union colours and celebrating with their communities. I myself was in London this weekend witnessing thousands of people, including many from Commonwealth countries such as Canada, joyfully waving their union flags and singing along to the national anthem with others they may have otherwise never spoken to: an important reminder that our monarchy not only serves to unify us, but also our former colonies outside of Britain.

Britain’s glory and legacy can therefore still be conserved even in an age in which it may look as if people have become increasingly spiteful of it. The British have historically been a people proud of their nation, customs and traditions. With thousands joining together across the nation in celebration of the flag and Queen they hold so dear, illustrating that nothing has yet changed. This nation, after all, will always be the place where our hearts, ancestors and souls will forever lay.

Picture Credit

It has been a month since Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II has passed away. Having lived to the age of 96, Queen Elizabeth has been the longest reigning British monarch in history, with just over 70 years of a reign that was highlighted by some of the greatest societal transitions, advancements, regressions, and change that has ever been experienced in our human history. Her Majesty would’ve been the longest reigning monarch in human history had it not been for Louis XIV of France ascending to the throne in his childhood.

She had reigned during the tenure of 15 British Prime Ministers since Sir Winston Churchill, 14 American Presidents since Harry Truman, 16 Australian PM’s since Sir Robert Menzies, and overall 179 prime ministers in the various and vast realms and nations of the Commonwealth.

She oversaw the largest transition from the remnants of the Empire to the decolonized and “democratic” world we know today, for better or for worse, with not an ounce of tyrannical fervor or egotistical despotism that would keep those nations who gained their independence.

Rather, she welcomed the prospect of nations forging their own path – in good faith and friendship – even if it eventually proved detrimental to the people of those realms, such as the Sino-British Joint Declaration, or the abandoning of British Rhodesia and South Africa to the whims of the communist revolutionaries who destroyed the prosperity and integrity of those nations.

The ‘Second Elizabethan Era’ as it has been promptly named will be remembered as a time of great change, and regardless of many of the criticisms that many on the traditional right may have about Queen Elizabeth II’s lack of action during her reign, justified or unjustified, she will always be known for the reassurance and calm that she brought nationally, and globally, to her subjects.

Having lived in the United States, and especially going through my high school education in the region that was part of the beating heart of the American Revolution, I was often asked by my American classmates and peers as to why the Royal Family was “such a big deal”, or laughing at the idea that people could live under a King or Queen and be absolutely ok with that concept.

“LOL! What makes them so special? We have FREEDOM to choose who rules us!”

Other notable remarks I can remember was when my freshman year history teacher laughed dismissively and regarded the monarchy as a “relic of the past” and proceeded to put on a “Crash Course World History” video for my classmates to gawk at – or my sophomore year civics class where my teacher boastfully claimed that American democracy was the “best system of government that humans have been able to achieve”.

I’ll give them points for patriotism – but sadly the lack of introspection was far too apparent.

Sure – on paper Americans may not have to be subjected to the “tyranny” of a sovereign. But in reality, the “free and equal” society of the United States is neither as free nor equal as they like to boast.

There is still a ruling class that bankrolls Washington, and there are still political dynasties that take advantage of their massive wealth and resources to control the country by coercion rather than direct power.

The middle-class American finds themselves part of a shrinking demographic, as wealth becomes harder and harder to obtain, and the pitfalls of modern America continue to consume all those who find themselves close to the edge.

The “freedom to choose” is a demonstrable illusion, especially on the national level. When one challenges the powers that be, they are either “reinforced” out of the system, made an example of, or imprisoned, given a show-trials and branded as an insurrectionist.

Point this out to most Americans and they will either shrug it off as “the way things are”, laughingly defend the hypocrisy, or show complete apathy as long as it leaves them be.

 Before I continue, I must point out assuredly that I love America. As flawed as it is, and as infuriating as the aforementioned points often make me, the people of the United States are some of the finest I have ever known. Where they may lack education in certain areas, they more than make up for in character.

Even the stubbornness and boastfulness, as tiresome as it may be at times, is a trait that I find rather admirable, if not lacking in nations like Britain and Australia.

If only that energy was put into the right direction, the United States may not be in the rut that it finds itself in today under the corpse of the Biden regime.

Which is why this article isn’t titled “Americans are Foolish for Not Appreciating Monarchy, etc”.

Frankly, how could the current generations of Americans understand just how good, and necessary, it is to have a monarchy? Every four to eight years they have to go through administrative shake-up to administrative shake-up of one incumbent undoing the works of his predecessor – and this exhausting reality is one that they have always known (with the exception of FDR).

I understand completely why Americans wouldn’t care about the longevity or traditions of lengthy leadership. Where we in the commonwealth have been able to rely on the consistency of monarchy, the only consistency of American politics is change – usually for the worst.

Why invest energy into caring or venerating leaders when they often lead to great disappointments, broken promises, and temporary fixtures that will only last a breath in the grand scheme of things.

Referring back to the idea of the “Second Elizabethan Era” – a period of time that encompasses 70 years of gradual change, but preserved traditions. Whereas examples in America, such as the “Jacksonian Era” or the “Progressive Era” and other such periods of time that only ever take up a couple of decades at most, and consist of rapid changes to the nation as a whole, as well as complete reformation, absconding, or complete dissolution of American traditions.

Hell, in the last twenty years alone America has gone through four eras – The War on Terror, the Great Recession, the Trump Era, and now the New Social Revolution. It’s all rather dramatic – and yet there has been no consistent presence tying it all together. Is there anything for people to latch on to for a sense of calm and representation?

The Constitution perhaps? Unfortunately there’s only a limited amount of inspiration one can get from a “living document”, and with the way Washington DC walks all over its traditions it’s hardly consistent.

The flag? Americans are meant to salute a new flag now, the rainbow flag of diversity and tolerance. The only thing close to a national flag being seen in the public square isn’t even American, but rather Ukrainian.

Suffice to say, the America of today is a shadow of its former self at best, and a completely transformed nation at worst. Realistically, what values and traditions of the Founding Fathers have carried on to the present-day United States?

Britain and the rest of the Commonwealth that have retained the monarch as their head of state may share some of these major problems, but through preserving the vital traditions and venerations of the monarchy it is more likely that these nations will be able to emerge from the current troubles of the world we live in without major identity issues, or lack of an inner cultural understanding.

In fact, the current troubles can largely be attributed to the “Americanization” of these countries – and the push for so-called “independence” which takes power and authority away from age-old institutions and into the hands of corrupt bureaucrats, politicians who only have vision that is contained to their own lives, and lobby groups who by-and-large hate the nation they advocate on “fixing”.

When watching the funeral procession of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth, I, along with millions of others across the world were reminded of why we celebrate the traditions, importance, and lives of our monarchs. They represent us on a far deeper scale than as mere political representatives. They represent us in character, in spirit, and as physical embodiments of the realm. They are in many ways a link to the past, and a constant reminder of where we have been, what we are now, and where we ought to be going.

An example for us to aspire to, and a standard for us to maintain in our own personal kingdoms and households.

Dare I say that the effects of this phenomenon were witnessed fully during the weeks of mourning for Her Majesty. Hundreds of thousands paying their respects in person, billions watching at home and abroad. Reflection and respect being paid by the generations of people who lived under her reign.

When was the last time a President or a Prime Minister received such a widely observed departure? Polls of confidence in Charles III as a monarch went from being below fifty percent to skyrocketing across Britain and the Commonwealth.

         I have written previously about the rise of Republicanism in Australia as being a large threat – but after having seen the reaction and subsequent rise in support for monarchy, I think I can rest a little easier knowing that there is still an incredibly large amount of support for the Royal Family and the monarchy that exists in my country.

My hope for the reign of His Majesty King Charles III is that the monarchy may take a more active role in guiding the realm rather than being a passive observer and a symbolic figurehead (especially as it seems that Parliament and the current Tory government is in utter shambles).

But even if he still retains the attitude of his predecessor and remains a mere symbol of tradition, that would be far better than having nothing at all.

Governments may come and go, times may get tougher, but we’d still have that link to our ancient heritage as a people, our noble traditions, and our timeless culture remain steadfast against the tides of change.

That isn’t something you can vote for. Nor is it something you can buy. Which is why we ought to protect and preserve it as best as we can for future generations.

Image Credit

At the start of June we at The Mallard along with millions of others across the globe celebrated the Platinum Jubilee of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. In the UK especially there was a great show of affection from the people to the Queen, with tens of thousands flocking to The Mall to witness the various parades of the guard, the cavalry, and communities from Britain and the commonwealth celebrating 70 years of Elizabeth II’s reign. For many within conservative circles, the amount of people who showed up seemed to be a clear indicator that the Republican movement in Britain is dead in the water, and far less influential than many smug liberals like to think it is.

Despite a tough couple of years for the Royal Family between the media crucifixion from the Megan Markle debacle and the loss of Prince Philip last year, not to mention the decades of having to adapt to a rapidly changing world, it is clear from the Platinum Jubilee celebration that the monarchy is here to stay, and I for one am happy to see that is the case.

However, the monarchy doesn’t just represent the people of Britain – it is an institution that is supposed to represent the larger commonwealth.

For Australia, in the aftermath of the recent Federal election and the victory of Anthony Albanese and the Labor government, new questions have arisen about the future of the monarchy in Australia.

Albanese’s appointment of Matt Thistlethwaite as the assistant minister for the republic has raised the issue of Australia’s position in becoming a fully independent republic, removing a British monarch as the head of state for a President-type figurehead for the Australian nation.

Of course, this role of “Assistant Minister for the Republic” is an indicator that the current government wants to transition into the “progressive” future of denying Australia’s cultural and historical ties with its mother nation in Europe, and embracing the Asia and America-centric world. Stripping the old oak timber foundations for the steel-beams and glass-panels of the New World Order.

Unfortunately this is nothing new. For decades the Australian government and politicians, both Labor and troublingly Liberal, have exercised their power in order to do away with any formal legal ties to Britain, from the Australia Act 1986, to the Referendum in 1999.

In the case of the 1986 Australia Act, while it may have been seen as a new chapter for Australian sovereignty and control over its own laws instead of being subjected to the whims of a British parliament – it was largely symbolic as Australia had been exercising sovereignty over its own country since its federation in 1901. 

As for the 1999 Referendum, while the media and political class, as well as the metropolitan urbanites in Australian cities overwhelmingly backed the transition towards an Australian Republic, the “Yes” vote failed due to the overwhelmingly popular support that the monarchy had in rural and semi-rural areas.

Looking at the map of the vote, it’s clear to see that it would have been a disastrous imbalance for urban hubs to decide the entire fate of the country in relation to the monarchy and having the Queen as head of state.

While past attempts to make Australia a republic failed, that was a vastly different Australia, almost foreign to the one that exists today.

With the massive demographic shifts that have occured in Australian population hubs, both in terms of the sheer scale of the population and the ethnic make-up of these urban areas, the cultural ties that once existed with Britain and the monarchy are growing weaker. This hasn’t been by choice, but rather by effective action by both the government, education, and media to out-populate loyalists of tradition and those with ties to Britain, and guilt-trip any association with the colonial past and the great achievements of Britons in Australia.

In the last 20 years, Australia’s urban demographic has shifted considerably. Particularly due to the influx of immigrants from China and India, and Asia in general. While the majority of the population are still descendants of European immigrants, in urban constituencies the large swathes of non-European immigration have become a point of contention for many issues – most importantly integration into Australian culture. Anyone who has been to Box Hill in Melbourne can attest to the fact that this once very Australian suburb is now just a mini-Beijing.

These sub-communities exist across Australia, focused in the cities, where the votes count most crucially come election time. While some may discount this statement as blatant bigotry or intolerance, it is interesting to note that in the most recent federal election, the traditionally Labor seat of Fowler was won by the independent incumbent, Dai Le, with the constituencies large Asian population playing a huge role in her success.

Trends exist for a reason, and if immigrants or second/third-generation Australians are more likely to vote for candidates that look like them rather than one of the traditional parties, as horrible as they are, what is to say that these same demographics of people feel absolutely no cultural or historical ties with the monarchy and what it represents?

With more and more “New Australians”, what protects the wills and the interests of those who have had family here going back to the First Fleet?

The demographic change is just one issue – the other issue is the shaming of British achievements in Australia, and the constant bleeding-heart antics of politicians and the media to try and make a show of how “sorry” they are because of their ancestors success in building one of the modern world’s most impressive nations.

From Kevin Rudd’s national apology to the Aborigines (aka traditional land-owners) to the consistent vandalization of anything commemorating Captain Cook, and the cringe-inducing rants of “Abolish Australia Day” that is heard around campuses and TV panelists every year in January, the latest generations of Australians, “new” or old, have been taught to hate themselves, hate those who came before them, not see their country as their own but rather that they are trespassers, and that they should do everything in their power to disassemble the “racist past” and “build the Australia for all!”.

It’s become so ridiculous that you have every other person claiming Aboriginal ancestry in the style of Elizabeth Warren, in order to distance themselves from the “evil British settlers” – insufferably referring to Melbourne as “Naarm” or Sydney as “Ku-Ring-Gai” showing the rest of us how “in touch” they are with the land.

While these sentiments may come from a good place, the truth or the matter is that if “Australia is for all” it is really for no one. It is simply just another landmass with a smorgasbord population of random groups who have no ties to each other, no ties to a greater ideal or tradition, and no real unique identity.

Just another “progressive” nation, that progresses nothing other than endless consumption and existence for existence’s sake.

Frankly, if Australia was to have another referendum on the monarchy question I’m not confident that we’d get the same result as we did in 1999 with a rejection of such a blatantly anti-traditional notion. The country has changed too much, too fast, and too little has been done to oppose this in government or on the streets.

I don’t trust the same Australian politicians who overwhelmingly supported lockdowns and imprisonments for dissenters as people capable enough, or morally sound enough to be given the reins of full independence. But, if things continue the way they do, and if Albanese moves in the direction he’s indicated – there will be no stopping these sycophants from cutting the final ties of Australia to its kin on the other side of the globe, and enter the brave new world of Asia-Pacific “progressivism”.

The truth is simple; the Republican movement in Australia isn’t just anti-monarchy or anti-British – it’s anti-Australian.

Image Credit

An unfortunate reality which I am determined to alter is the prevalence of economic arguments for The British Monarchy. Many in The Mallard have wrote fantastic pieces on the Monarchy, for example Xander West’s article exploring of the “Republican Option” was an excellently written and intellectually brilliant piece in its deconstruction of the abysmal yet ever prevalent republican argument.

My issue in this article is not so much the republican argument, but the royalist one. More specifically the economic argument for the Monarchy. This argument often relates to tourism, or other businesses which profit from the Royal Family, and while there are truths and falsities to these arguments in various manners, I believe they completely miss the mark on the advantages of The Monarchy. In fact, I find the inability to assert an effective non-economic argument for the Monarchy illustrates a lack of true respect and support for the most important institution in our Great Nation.  

Looking at the world through monetary value alone is a sad consequence of liberalism’s iron grip on society, and the Monarchy for the most part hasn’t escaped this sad reality. Many seek to promote the necessity of the Monarchy for financial reasons, and I believe that this can only be understood as arguing that the main advantage of a car is its paint colour while ignoring the true substance of the vehicle. The Monarchy was never intended to be a money maker, because it was never something crafted or forged to serve the people, rather it was the other way around. This flip of perspective has relegated the Monarchy to the post-metaphysical level, and thus removes it of its core value and its actual importance. In a sense, this switch of the Monarchy serving us as a monetary gain, over the joint relationship of service both ways for a stronger symbol of the nation and its values is in effect cutting the meat off the bone and throwing it all away.

Conservatives are passionately aware of the Monarchy’s true value, and standing, because more often than not we are metaphysical in our thought. We seek to attribute special value beyond materialism, and the monetary nature of our liberal society. The Monarchy is something which goes beyond money, it is a symbol of our nation itself. Not a reflection, an idea which is often asserted. The Monarchy is not a reflection, instead it is the ideal to strive towards. The Monarchy is a guiding force through the calamity of the postmodern world, and all of the consequences which come of it. Our Monarchy is steeped in the legitimacy of the centuries by which it has presided and led our Great Nation. Money is nothing in comparison to our rich history, and special traditions. When our Monarch sits to open Parliament in front of that grand gold display, enacting a tradition centuries old in a building which will soon reach 1000 years of age, something special is occurring. The fibre of goodness which is left in the liberal melting pot of modern Britain comes to the forefront, and when our armed forces march with determination and people fly their flags in pride of their Monarch and nation, the reality of our Monarchy shines brighter than the bleak alternative of a republic.

Tourism and money cannot match the respect, reverence and admiration of the world when they see our Royal Family. Money cannot reach the levels of symbolism and leadership our Monarchy provides. Simply put, our Monarchy is more than money, and to reduce it to such material levels is a shameful reminder and promotion of liberalism’s destructive presence in royalism today.  

Image Credit

The recent Dobbs v. Jackson decision by the Supreme Court of the United States has been hailed as a resounding victory by the pro-life movement as it overturns the supposed right to abortion and the famous ruling on Roe v. Wade made almost 50 years ago. Make no mistake about it, pro-life activists have been campaigning, praying, and working diligently for decades for this moment and this historic political event signals the effectiveness of their labour. While of course this decision does not immediately make abortion illegal on the federal level (despite the contrary claims of ill-informed leftists), it does pave the way for individual states to pass their own legislation on the criminality or otherwise of abortion as their own democratically elected representatives see fit. Thus, regardless of this sure seismic victory for the pro-life movement, many see this as simply the next step in a continuing journey of eradicating abortion from the shores of the Unites States.

This decision is clearly no accident but the consequence of deliberate and painstaking political work over many years, but rather crucially it shows the enduring and significant impact of Donald Trump’s presidency. During his time in office, he appointed three Supreme Court Justices specifically promising his supporters that they would be ‘pro-life judges’ (see here) and it has been these very people who have tipped the balance in the Court to a conservative majority and paved the way for this moment.

Needless to say, the left are furious. Violence has already been committed, protests conducted on mass, and government buildings stormed all in defiance of a decision which totally accords with the political processes of the United States and their foundational political document, the Constitution. As we look on from the United Kingdom however, one can’t help but remember the great distinctions in our political systems which requires the British pro-life movement to work hard for our own change and not simply rely on the progress of our American friends.

The defence of life and the opposition to the barbaric practise of abortion is a core conservative tenet – despite notions to the contrary when one considers the majority view of the ‘Conservative’ Party’s elected representatives – and if the recent US Supreme Court decision can teach British conservatives anything, it is that abortion is not an inevitability in western, developed nations. Conservatives really should care when our society, not only permits, but encourages and celebrates the killing of children – this should be a central issue for us for several reasons.

We have science, reason, and common sense on our side. The left seemed to love “The Science™” when it apparently warranted mass lockdowns and compelled vaccinations but on the issue of abortion they ignore that fact (or worse don’t care) that a foetus in the womb is a human being. It has distinct DNA from the mother, a distinct body from the mother, a beating heart, ability to feel pain, forming features, and with ultrasound technology we are able to see their movements and being before our own eyes. The lazy argument of “my body my choice” has no credit when one realises that a pregnant woman does not have two hearts or two heads, she has a separate human being, a sperate body in her womb. The baby is a distinct life and ought to be treated accordingly. If conservatives are to be the anchor points of common sense in a society drifting into the delusion of leftism (what is a woman?), then we have to be willing to stand with the scientific truth that a baby is a baby and therefore one should not be allowed to kill it.

To be a champion of individual rights must start with life. If conservatives care about building a society of freedom, where people are endowed with value because of they are made in the image of God and thus worthy of respect and dignity, we have to defend the crucial and basic rights of all people. This only works, and only makes sense when the right to life is defended. Without life one cannot exercise any other rights and it makes a mockery of the conservative vision of individual liberty and autonomy when we accept the killing of certain innocent people as a normal aspect of modern life.

Abortion decimates conservative societal values of morality, responsibility, duty, and respect. Engrained in the conservative tradition is not simply the idea that a person can do whatever he wants, but that there are responsibilities we all carry to one another, our family, our nation, and our God. Abortion is, by definition, the unjust killing of an innocent person which clearly begs the moral question, but it also denies the role of responsible self-government in each person’s life. Actions have consequences, when one engages in sexual activity one is consenting to taking on the responsibility of the potential natural outcome of that action. Conservatism is about living powerfully, it is about self-governing, choosing virtue over vice, accepting one’s duty to others even in difficulty, and living morally even when surrounded by immorality. When these principles are abandoned, society disintegrates and we lose any moral and ethical cohesion which will only hurt our country.  

Abortion is an inherent attack on the family and perversion of the role of mother and father. Apart for killing an innocent child, it turns mothers against their natural purpose as caregivers and nurturers and it turns men away from their responsibilities, giving them a way to embrace sexual liberty and use women for physical pleasure without facing the consequences. It is a cheapening of people, and a cheapening of the union which comes through sex. Families are the basic building block of society, that should at least be the conservative ambition. We want to empower families to be the primary educators, ethical instructors, societal leaders and role-models, not government bureaucrats. Abortion killed 214,256 people in 2021 in England and Wales (see here), this is not an insignificant number. Abortions devastate families and perverts the role of parenthood. The sacrifice of children on the altar of convenience, self-serving ambition, or even fear is blatant evidence of our waywardness as a society and lack of moral fibre.

What’s notable here is that this reasoning is value-based. This is because abortion is not about economic growth or manufacturing or government spending, it is about morality and ethics, it is about the kind of people we want to be and this sort of things we value. British conservatism can learn something from the Americans. In the US some conservatives will vote on this one issue. They will give their vote to whomever opposes the killing of children irrespective of their stance of tax reform or import tariffs. This is so because there is a realisation that society is more than economic freedom, it is more than just the free market, it requires a strong moral framework for its success and prosperity.

In Britain we cannot have our conservative dream society of low taxes, free markets, and personal liberty if we are unwilling to champion a society which values life too. The very principles of individual freedom and empowerment are undermined when we permit the slaughter of innocent children. We have to mould the culture. We have to influence the cultural norms, call out evil where it exists and promote the alternative good. Conservatism, rooted in tradition, the fear of God, duty, responsibility and courage, best shines in the way people live, in what we permit, promote, and celebrate.

Clearly there is a long road ahead. The appetite for reform in the way I am advocating for is not large at all in the British electorate. It is not a particularly winning issue which is why “conservatives in name only” will never push for this change. Evil has always stood before great men who have risen up to fight for what is right. William Wilberforce faced years of political influencing before seeing the war on slavery won in this country. Today we have another moral evil to purge our country of. For too long we have hidden away from it, out of mind out of sight, but it exists. Babies are being killed. Families are being torn apart. Morality is slipping away and our nation needs defiant, courageous men to speak up for the defenceless, to advocate for the right to life of every person, and to see the culture developed into something worth celebrating and admiring.

Image Credit

The modern English are a deracinated people. They know nothing of their great artists, poets and writers but most importantly, they’ve been uprooted from their history. History is a socially adhesive force, binding the dead to the living and those yet unborn with the unending assault on our culture and customs over the last 60-70 years having its intended outcome – a docile mass of atomised consumers.

The modern English care nothing for Elgar’s marches or the works of Shakespeare. Instead, they prefer instantaneous access to subscription-based services like Netflix and Spotify, where they can fry what remains of their brain circuitry watching Lizzo twerking her fat arse. Ask an English teenager “Who was Admiral Nelson?” and more likely than not they’d reply with something about a Multi-Car insurance policy rather than the Battle of Trafalgar. Joking aside, our material opulence and abject lack of transcendental belief has exacerbated this totalising apathy and ignorance. Moderns only care for the evisceration of their attention spans by short-term dopamine-driven feedback loops and satiating their basest desires. The average Zoomer can’t watch a video about the war in Ukraine without a pretty Tiktok girl dancing along to it – it would demand too much of their concentration capacity. This stark reality begs the question: can Zoomers and their coming generational successors focus long enough to read about their history? The answer of course is no – so it matters what they’re taught.

Modern Curricula

Upon leaving my secondary school after my A-Levels, I had the pleasure of being in a class with a militant communist who draped our Sixth Form building with a flag of the USSR on leaving day. This same individual was successful in petitioning our school to include a module on the history of migration throughout British history a few years after leaving. This module, ‘Migrants in Britain, c800-present’, is run by the Edexcel exam board for GCSE students and it is as insidious and subversive as it sounds. The goal of the course is to present a narrative that England and Britain have always been cornucopias of ethnic diversity, that ‘migration’ has been an ever-present facet of English society, and that, just like the United States, we really are a ‘nation of immigrants’.

A brief specification outline for this module is as follows:

• c800–c1500: Migration in medieval England

o The experience and impact of migrants

o Case study: the city of York under the Vikings

• c1500–c1700: Migration in early modern England

o Case study: Sandwich and Canterbury in the 16th century, and Huguenots in 17th-century England

• c1700–c1900: Migration in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain

o Case study: Liverpool in the 19th century, and the experience of Jewish migrants in the East End of London in the late nineteenth century

• c1900–present: Migration in modern Britain
o Political changes: the creation of the BUF and the BNP; laws to restrict immigration; laws to establish equality for migrants.

o Case study: Bristol in the mid-twentieth century, and the experience of Asian migrants in Leicester from 1945

o Social attitudes: the hostility of far-right groups; Enoch Powell’s ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech; attacks on Jews, e.g. Battle of Cable Street, 1936, race riots in 1981 and Burnley, 2001.

To be succinct, I shall tackle two of these subsections: ‘c800–c1500: Migration in medieval England’ and ‘c1900–present: Migration in modern Britain’.

Migration in Medieval England

It’s 867AD, and Viking ‘migrants’ are peacefully integrating into the city of York; they’re skipping down the streets with Anglo-Saxon children and making daisy chains to express their gratitude at how hospitable the locals have been. Just like the immigrants of today, they undoubtedly want the best for the country they’re ‘migrating’ to and yearn for nothing more than seamless assimilation, equality and GDP growth. I am of course painting a caricature of what this module is implying, though the fact remains that the Vikings were not ‘migrants’ at all – they were invaders.

The Kingdom of Northumbria was already deeply embroiled in a civil war between two rival Kings, Ælla and Osberht when the Vikings began a raid of the city. Norse tradition holds that upon defeat the two Kings were blood-eagled and the Vikings ultimately triumphed in a battle of excessive violence. The Vikings proceeded to seize control and established the Kingdom of Jórvík centred around York. I could spend an age deliberating on the minutia of these events but the pressing issue at hand is the insidious language being woven into the modern teaching of history.

Something the right is truly awful at is effectively resisting the linguistic warfare being callously waged upon us. The merciless brutality of the Battle of York highlights the underhanded substitution of the term ‘invader’ for ‘migrant’; this surreptitious move undoubtedly has the politically motivated goal of the student not distinguishing between modern mass immigration and medieval Viking invasion. They’re dying to hear their indoctrinated students say “Immigration has always been a staple of our culture”, and hoping they question no further.

The usage of the word continues to be applied liberally throughout the module – the specification defines a migrant as “encompassing those affected by both voluntary and forced migration, temporary migrants, migrants from abroad and internal migrants within Britain”. This definition would have you believe that Alan from Gloucester, who is moving to Chippenham for a consulting job, is exactly the same as Ali, a Pakistani immigrant, travelling halfway across the world from a culturally alien society to start a grooming gang in Rotherham. I think you’d agree that the term possesses little currency if the scope of its meaning is so vast and clouded.

If one wishes to engage in semantics, the Vikings were technically ‘migrants’, but to give an inch to subversives and indeed to even entertain their lexical framing is to lose the battle entirely. The writers of this module wish to create the impression that England and Britain were always multi-ethnic societies. To be clear, England was never a multi-ethnic society – not in its conception, nor reality – it was a monoethnic society of Anglo-Saxons established by King Æthelstan in 927AD. Celtic peoples resided in northern parts of the Kingdom as well as Cornwall if you wish to be pedantic, but the meta-narrative of the nation was inextricably bounded to King Alfred and the Anglo-Saxon ethnicity.

Migration in Modern Britain

One positive of this module section is the use of the word ‘migration’ in the title – it is more congruent with the socially understood meaning of the term. The substantially larger downside is that it is packed with unabashed lies, outright deception and vindictive demonisation of the native population.

Mass migration into Britain began in June 1948 with the arrival of the HMS Windrush at Tilbury Dock and, unsurprisingly, the module writers immediately begin to deceive their confiding students. Reading this module or watching any modern documentary on the subject, you’d be presented with an allegory of noble West Indians altruistically surrendering their way of life to help unwelcoming Londoners rebuild their city after the war. This narrative is xenophilic, self-hating garbage.

The Windrush was operated by the New Zealand Shipping Company on behalf of the Ministry of Transport and it was half empty when docked in Kingston, Jamaica in April 1945. The company had the brilliant idea of selling Jamaicans cheap tickets to England to pocket a little extra cash, all the while giving the English no prior warning. The politicians at the time were taken aback by the arrival of the ship and even had to make emergency provisions for them. Accounts of the passengers on the Windrush make no mention of ever being invited to work in England. Don’t believe me? Have a read of some personal accounts from the BBC website yourself. They, like most people who emigrate, did so for what they deemed a better lifestyle and as a calculation of economic self-interest.

The weaving of this myth deliberately portrays Londoners as ungrateful and cruel as well as falsifying and obfuscating key details of the event; fanning the flames of anti-white hatred. Unfortunately, when these distortions and fabrications enter public consciousness, the symbolistic power they are imbued with can prove difficult to dispel.

The module goes on to demonise Mr Enoch Powell, possibly the most erudite politician of the 20th century. Powell lived an amazing life and achieved many outstanding feats. Powell was the youngest brigadier in the British army, became a professor of Greek at the age of 25, and spoke nine languages to name just a few of his achievements. However, the most notable characteristic about Powell didn’t end up being his encyclopaedic knowledge but his intellectual fearlessness.

On April 20th 1968, Powell gave his famous ‘Rivers of Blood’ speech and the module would have you believe that Powell was motivated by unbridled hatred of immigrants rather than a love of hearth and homeland. When Powell took pleasure in speaking Urdu in Indian restaurants, when he became an expert in the country and town planning, and even when he placed value in the continuity and traditions of Britain, he was always undoubtedly guided by hatred. Contrary to mainstream perception, Powell was actually very liberal on various issues from divorce law reform to opposing capital punishment to name but two (a far cry from the crypto-fascist authoritarian picture being painted).

The simple fact is that Powell was an ethnocentric man like most other people on the planet and sought to protect his nation from what he saw as catastrophic demographic collapse. Powell’s dynamism and oratory prowess struck an emphatic chord with the people and the prescience of his observations is undeniable to anyone today.

Our ‘Educators’ and Rectifying the Problem

Gaetano Mosca, the progenitor of what came to be the school of Italian Elite Theory, came up with the idea of the ‘Political Formula’ i.e. the philosophy that justifies the rule of an elite. Our current elite’s political formula is something along the lines of: ‘diversity, tolerance and inclusion’ and holds that individual self-expression is the ultimate good, from this it would follow that collective identities are the ultimate evil due to their exclusivity. Nationalism is a form of collective identity, and collective identities exclude and alienate people by their very nature; what value does an identity hold if everyone can possess it? Not much. Nationalism and group identity are therefore a spit in the face of our elite’s political formula, specifically directed towards their sacrosanct value of inclusion.

Coupled with this political formula, our elite possesses a managerial and technocratic ethos, pursuing economic growth above anything transcendent; the notion of ‘Homo Economicus’ is ever-present. This hyper-individualistic and material mindset has a direct impact on how our elites view their own history – it tolerates no deviation, and trickles down to our teachers.

Rectifying this problem begins with assailing the current political formula and the Boomer Truth Regime we live under. The political formula of the Right should be one of hierarchy, dynamism and vitality. Life-affirming masculine narratives of our greatness should be taught to our students – national heroes like Drake, Nelson and Wellington would be mandatory course material. The endless self-flagellation we’ve been subjected to is not in the character of our people and should be thrown onto the dumpster fire as duplicitous crap. Harping on about our supposed moral shortcomings and historical wrongs is not in the best interests of our people – they need something different.

Conclusion

The insidious aims of these module planners are all unspoken of and intentionally so; incrementalism is a powerful tool – slowly boiling the frog has too often proved effective, but leftist chicanery need only be unearthed by a man willing to do the digging. Clandestine word games and their political goals become painstakingly clear when intellectually challenged and vast portions of our people yearn for well-grounded positions against them. This fact only further necessitates that the linguistic framework we find ourselves in requires a radical counteroffensive – this is of paramount importance.

People are not governed by rationality, their opinions are governed by belief, superstition, feelings and base instincts. Following this logic, a nationalistic outlook is branded into the minds of most healthy people, all that is required is a little cudgelling to get them in line with our vision. I believe the average Englishman is instinctually aware of the intellectual deconstruction of his culture but articulating it coherently is another matter.

Modern sensibilities demand that not only we English, but all European nations simply give up the exclusive nature of their identities, sacrificing them on the altar of inclusivity when no other peoples are expected to do so. Only we bear the moral responsibility of safeguarding our identity from these malicious attacks – permissiveness from others and within ourselves must not be tolerated.

Image Credit

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier this year, many have turned their attention towards Taiwan and China. It has been no secret that since 1949, China have sought to reunify the island with the mainland and that Taiwan has sought to resist. However, I argue that for Taiwan this decade will be vitally important and that if it can survive the next ten years then it will probably outlast mainland China.

Regarding the Russian invasion of Ukraine, I argue that demographics play a greater role than what has been initially stated. When you have a largely aging society like Russia has, the nation’s political elites know and understand that there is a limited timeframe in which they can act. The reason for this is because, they understand the current size of potential army recruits remains at the largest it is going to be for the foreseeable future.

As too it has been argued that Russia sought to invade Ukraine now because of this reduction in young people and the need to secure the nation’s geographic security gaps that are presently open. Consequently, I argue that China is no different with these problems and the need to secure its own political goals regarding Taiwan.

Subsequently, since 1949 China has been defiant about its position on Taiwan and its strategic messaging to the rest of the world about it. Alongside this, China will have needed to take Taiwan by the latest 2027.

This is because of similar demographic reasons that an aging China has started to face, mirroring the structural conditions that plague Russia’s desire to act while it still can.

If we take the fact that China is the fastest aging society in history, and that it needs to achieve all its goals by the year 2049, we are left with two very interesting intersecting factors at play.

If we work backwards from the year 2049, the targeted symbolic year of a hegemonic Chinese nation we can start to be presented with a better image and a potential reunification timeline that could unfold. That gives us a twenty-seven-year gap from present, in which they will need to achieve this.

Typically, it takes twenty years for a generation to occur, as noted by Strauss and Howe. This period will be important because it will be the benchmark for which unification normalisation will start to begin. What this will allow is the full political annexation of Taiwan over to mainland China. This is because a full generation of normalisation needs to happen, to make sure all political issues can be worked out and solved when being cored happens.

We can observe similar processes occurring in both Hong Kong and Macau, but as shown China does not have fifty years to fully transfer sovereignty to the mainland. Therefore, a mere generation will be the minimum for which China can hope to achieve this change.

We do not have much historically to compare too when regarding modern Island nation invasions but if nations like Ukraine and Afghanistan are to be models for Post-Cold War invasions and occupations, then it is deeply unlikely that an invasion’s success would be achieved in the space of a month.

However, working on the core assumption that China can peacefully walk straight into the island and the straight the process of sovereignty transfer right away. This would leave us with the year 2029 to start this process immediately in theory.

Secondly, if a drawn-out conflict would occur to fully control the island, this would take arguably two-five years depending on the resistance put up by Taiwanese soldiers and citizens alike. If we take a conservative estimate and say it will take two years of conflict to fully pacify the nation (something unprecedented in modern history). This would leave us with the year 2027, just five years from now, for which invasion can occur to reach China’s own deadline of 2049.

I argue that Taiwan will have plenty of time to both prepare and acknowledge a basic timeline of how China will seek to act. This becomes especially relevant due to the geographic conditions of the island and its 180km distance between itself and the mainland. It will be almost impossible to sneak up on the nation or launch a full amphibious assault. In addition, any Chinese military build-up will be noticed and will give the Taiwan several months to directly prepare for an invasion.

This is not withstanding neighbouring nations, that will be brought into interfering in any potential conflict, especially with the QUAD nations being heavily reliant on Taiwanese business.

Yet, we have ignored one core thing that still matters and that is China’s demographic position. The nation similarly to Russia is approaching a massive demographic bust moment, in part due to its over thirty years of negative fertility rates. Subsequently, the chances of China invading Taiwan remain unlikely at 20%, in the long term when regarding the next five years. As such, this has been best documented by both Hoie and Darley, both have demonstrated the difficulty on China’s part towards achieving this aim.

However, if they do China will not be able to hold the nation, just like how both the Soviet Union and the West could not hold Afghanistan. The outcome of this will be catastrophic for the Chinese nation state, on not just a political level but on a civilisational one too.

Taiwan will continue and will eventually survive, against Chinese aggressions. This is in part because of the decreasing likelihood of China of securing its desired timeframe due its fast-approaching demographic bomb.

Picture Credit