or engineers, doctors, scientists or theologians. When your go to response to everything is legislation or taxation you impede your ability to understand the world. I've been joking for years that all the British government need to do to get net zero up to work is to repeal the second law of thermodynamics - sadly I don't think anyone in government would get the joke.
It is not coincidental that a Labour party that 'rode the tiger' of the Pakistani clan system for votes and now witnesses those voters fragment to Islamist campaigners were also instrumental in demonstrating a distinct lack of interest and resolve in addressing the systematic rape and torture of young white girls by those very same pakistani muslims.
I was there in West Yorkshire in the 1980s and saw it happening, without realising its extent or reach. Everyone noted the studied indifference of the local Labour politicians, the Labour city councils and West Yorkshire Police.
These people should be prosecuted, but I have more chance of winning the Euromillions than a single prosecution.
Now Labour politicians squirm on the sharpened blade of an inquiry and think up ever more fantastical reasons not to hold one.
And I quote "In 1981 Armed revolutionary committees loyal to Khomeini (which came to be known as the Pasdaran) arrested many thousands of youth and activists from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried by Lajevardi, known as the Hanging Judge, and executed."
This is not ancient history Kier Starmer was at university when this happened.
Revolutions turning on their supporters is not new. The French and Russian Revolutions are full of examples. Lots of people supported the 1979 Revolution: Michel Foucault for one, and me (I'm a few months older than the PM) for another. In my case on the grounds that being ruled by your own is better than being ruled by somebody else. (I voted for Brexit, so I may not have changed all that much.)
To be charitable, I suppose you're saying that communists and nationalist in Iran were more like "fellow travellers" than Robespierre or the committed Party members Stalin had shot—and should have known better. But I think things turning out the way they did is less an Islamic problem than the way revolutions tend to go.
Have to say that Wikipedia entry is not that encyclopaedia's strongest work: 'These arrests ended the alliance between the Tudeh Party and the ruling clergy of Iran and it collapsed, even as the Soviets worked with the Iranians to build up their nuclear capabilities.[citation needed] Even with this agreement, the Iranian government saw the Soviets as "atheistic devils" and the Soviets did not like the government because it had suppressed the Tudeh.[citation needed]'
I’m neither a British citizen nor a conservative Muslim, but I think I know much about these two worlds, and I’d say that the time is ripe for a deep, objective, and pragmatic rethinking of the state of the UK! Before it’s too late!
By “too late”; I do not allude to an apocalyptic scenario such as an impending civil war, but to Ibn Khaldun’s analysis of the clash of social values that belong to different groups, which might lead to the fragmentation of the collective psyche in ways that can be thoroughly unpleasant (unironically, Ibn Khaldun wrote about the sexual abuse of young boys in his time as evidence of the inevitable conflict between urban communities and untamed nomadic groups).
This fragmentation might lead in turn to an open struggle between those groups where Qahr (which can be roughly translated in this context as symbolic violence) can be used to diminish and delegitimise the other group’s sense of self! Which might accelerate a shift in political fortunes and an actual transfer of power from one group to another!
There will not be a civil war as there is no real geographic dimension but there will be increasing Islamic insurgency (aka terrorism) to further their political goals and separate political demos.
During the 2010s I worked next to a Muslim, and after a skirmish near Israel (long before October 7th) I heard him say something like "they took Israel from us like we took Bradford from the British". So they do still think in terms of physical territory. That is one of their weaknesses IMO.
What I mean is that there will be no UK-wide civil war, as that always has a geographic dimension e.g. civil war over say Welsh independence.
I agree there is a physical dimension e.g. Bradford and that will play out over increasing separatism over the coming years with a weak UK state pandering to the demands
This "They take no interest in other cultures or the prejudices common within; they view all religions as Anglican in nature,"
Is one of the most common errors ever - thinking that everyone else thinks like you. Although it is surprising how someone can become PM and still believe that.
Whittle: When people make the claim … that the country will be minority white British by the … 2060s, what do you feel about that?
Hitchens: Well I'm afraid my, as I've said before, my gall rises in me when you start using terms like “white”. I'm very much from the generation which remembers the great Martin Luther King speech, so [someone] should be judged by the content of his character not the colour of his skin and I reject all classification of people by skin colour instinctively. I'm still very much a “one race the human race” person. I have not in any way shaken off that aspect of my leftwing [youth]. I hope I never shall. It happens to be based on the Christian gospels as well.
So it's nothing to do with colour. The whole question is whether we can actually integrate and create a Britain which is still British but which contains large numbers of new people. That accepts an extremely difficult challenge under certain circumstances but has to be the goal which … civilized people … have to seek.
Whittle: To do that you actually have to have a British establishment that actually believes in Britain.
Hitchens: You would have to have that, and that is fanciful, isn’t it?
Ps in case there’s any doubt this is not an endorsement of Hitchens view which I think absurd (like most of his utterances) and inconsistent even on its own terms
Ed - do you think Kier Starmer likes the British, recognises British culture and history, and actually believes in this country.
I frankly do not believe he does. He buys the left wing shibboleths of racist little englanders / products of a racist empire along with a lot of the Labour Party.
This is why he will fail as PM. There will be long thought pieces for you to write in the future explaining that failure.
I'm not sure what he thinks tbh. he seems to have little in the way of any higher power. If the court rules that British history is good, then he will believe it
It did seem somewhat odd that it required a court judgement for Sir Kier to recognise that a bloke-in-a-frock with a penis is actually a bloke and not a woman.
Destroying Britishness based on groundless platitudes and an ultimately tyranical belief that people from cultures very different to ours ought to be forced to become British but then realising, too late, that it can’t be done
Mr Hitchens answer ignores the fact that Black Americans have been on the recieving end of inter group violence from more recent arrivals. They have their wages smashed by constant stream of incomers from the South, and their small business and middle class having to compete against legal incomers. Beyond that there is a massive human tragedy in the wests 40 year old childless adults, the siblings who were never born and the marriages never made.
Beyond that why are we doing favours for nuclear powers- Pakistan and India
Quite. I just struck me as a hopelessly naive view (but shared by many moderates) presumably forged at a time where numbers were so low it didn’t matter if the view was practical or true, tinged with white saviourism and blind to the preferences of minorities who don’t really exist at all in this given world view
Perhaps the conclusion here is ironic, but if Islamist voters are moving away from Labour it is unlikely they will return. There are now enough Islamist in many seats for an explicitly Muslim party to be viable, so why would they switch back? Labour may of course continue to court them due to a sincerely-held belief about multiculturalism, but the cynics in the party – among them perhaps Morgan McSweeney – will see that there's no future in chasing clans when the clans have their own parties.
could be, but I think they will try. I'm doing a follow-up post on the new Islamopobia proposals, which I think are aimed at this, and which obviously bring risks to freedom of religion, and freedom from religion.
One future possibility is Labour ending up with 320 seats and an Independent Alliance with 10 - what happens then?
If Labour gives them the anti-"Islamophobia" law before the next GE won't it have to promise something even worse for the rest of us to get them to vote Labour in that GE?
UK is walking the same walk as the rest of Europe: in 5-10 years we’ll have a LABCONS party/coalition, a Reform party, and several crazie(-er)s to each side. Unless DomCum comes up with his TSP, that is. God help us.
This is also what happened in Scotland where Labour poured their scorn on the hated Tories and were then outflanked on the left by the SNP. Like most of us here I feel pretty unhappy with this new problem, as it wouldn't have happened if the parties we voted into power had done what their manifestos said on immigration. Blair and co were cynical, but Boris's wave is simply unforgivable.
Two good points, except in Scotland, they always disliked Thatcherism/Blairism but stuck with Labour until 2010, largely I think because Gordon Brown was of course Scottish. Ed Milliband the London lawyer with two kitchens cost Labour their Scottish fiefdom. And Alex Salmond was an effective political leader.
"Ethno-narcissism, and its less pathological variant, ethnic pride, is the norm almost everywhere in the world. Europeans are very unusual in consciously rejecting it and viewing it as a sin, a product – more than anything – from the shock of 1914-45, which effectively vaccinated them against this human emotion. "
To use a recent Curtis Yarvin quote:
"At the dawn of the industrial war which destroyed Europe, most Europeans actually still believed in Mars. Every country had its chanting crowds ready to go to battle. We understood the immense value of traditional warfare in building culture and society. And then—the best aristocrats of the continent found themselves physically destroyed by industrial death machines. An artillery shell can’t even tell the difference between Achilles and Thersites."
War is dysgenic - it kills off the heroes first and most.
Thersites, no.
He runs a media operation appealing for recruits.
There are still idiots pretending that battles like The Somme and Passchendaele didn't wreck Britain, although many of the Western Front heroes hadn't yet fathered children (or only one).
The heroism of WW2 was the West's last gasp; and won by the West's pulverising superiority in science, technology and industrial production far more than by courage. And with the Soviet Union and China doing the heavy lifting.
After 1945, with Hitler dead, impoverishment of the gene pool has made its presence felt throughout the West. And a weary, kneejerk cynicism (the inevitable consequence of governments and establishments herding young men into the 1914-18 slaughterhouse) has become universal.
The infamous Neather quote is one I’ve longed brooded on, I think it was the unspoken but psychologically intended purpose of the New Labour period of migration to essential make Labour the permanent party of government. In the process of doing so, it essentially destroyed the grassroots purpose of the Labour itself, moving away from its working class base to being much more a coalition of rival interest groups (much like the Democratic Party). I remember thinking how in the 2010s Labour just couldn’t win back its northern heartlands thanks to this migration and how it was effectively out of government for a long time to come. What I could never foresee is how Boris ruthlessly betrayed his Brexit base by having an even more extravagant and irresponsible migration policy thanks Blair’s. It was without question the most cynical political betrayal that I have ever since in British politics and it’s impacted is going to be far greater than Brexit ever will be. The Tories willing chose political suicide and keeping SW1 happy rather than biting the bullet and changing immigration policy. I would laugh if it wasnt for the despair I feel for the future
Thanks Joseph. I was an early bregetter, but my feeling was that, in or out, the consequences of EU membership are going to be minuscule compared to the immigration policy being pursued by countries across western Europe. I found it utterly strange to see people emotionally torn about this assault on their sense of identity while either oblivious or complicit in a far bigger - and irreversible - change.
One of the things about sectarian parties is that that they tend to be over-represented by first past the post. Look at the way the DUP keeps getting more seats than they should. While the Gaza independents are currently only a loose group, there would be a real electoral advantage for them to launch a real political party, especially as the vote share for the two main parties fall and results become more erratic. First past the post is going to end up with a Islamist party holding the balance of power, and those Islamists will be very hard to chuck out as it would require the whole non-Muslim population in their seat to rally around a single candidate.
Like the Irish faction in the 19th century. The Liberals went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate this faction, to the extent of changing the British constitution, and the Conservatives followed suit. Look at how that worked out. Of course there were moral issues involved.
Too many economists and lawyers in public life, not enough historians.
or engineers, doctors, scientists or theologians. When your go to response to everything is legislation or taxation you impede your ability to understand the world. I've been joking for years that all the British government need to do to get net zero up to work is to repeal the second law of thermodynamics - sadly I don't think anyone in government would get the joke.
This is astonishingly good BTW
Thank you
It is not coincidental that a Labour party that 'rode the tiger' of the Pakistani clan system for votes and now witnesses those voters fragment to Islamist campaigners were also instrumental in demonstrating a distinct lack of interest and resolve in addressing the systematic rape and torture of young white girls by those very same pakistani muslims.
I was there in West Yorkshire in the 1980s and saw it happening, without realising its extent or reach. Everyone noted the studied indifference of the local Labour politicians, the Labour city councils and West Yorkshire Police.
These people should be prosecuted, but I have more chance of winning the Euromillions than a single prosecution.
Now Labour politicians squirm on the sharpened blade of an inquiry and think up ever more fantastical reasons not to hold one.
Some members of the Iranian communist party supported the 1979 revolution
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudeh_Party_of_Iran
And I quote "In 1981 Armed revolutionary committees loyal to Khomeini (which came to be known as the Pasdaran) arrested many thousands of youth and activists from both nationalist and leftist groups, many of whom were later tried by Lajevardi, known as the Hanging Judge, and executed."
This is not ancient history Kier Starmer was at university when this happened.
Revolutions turning on their supporters is not new. The French and Russian Revolutions are full of examples. Lots of people supported the 1979 Revolution: Michel Foucault for one, and me (I'm a few months older than the PM) for another. In my case on the grounds that being ruled by your own is better than being ruled by somebody else. (I voted for Brexit, so I may not have changed all that much.)
To be charitable, I suppose you're saying that communists and nationalist in Iran were more like "fellow travellers" than Robespierre or the committed Party members Stalin had shot—and should have known better. But I think things turning out the way they did is less an Islamic problem than the way revolutions tend to go.
Have to say that Wikipedia entry is not that encyclopaedia's strongest work: 'These arrests ended the alliance between the Tudeh Party and the ruling clergy of Iran and it collapsed, even as the Soviets worked with the Iranians to build up their nuclear capabilities.[citation needed] Even with this agreement, the Iranian government saw the Soviets as "atheistic devils" and the Soviets did not like the government because it had suppressed the Tudeh.[citation needed]'
I’m neither a British citizen nor a conservative Muslim, but I think I know much about these two worlds, and I’d say that the time is ripe for a deep, objective, and pragmatic rethinking of the state of the UK! Before it’s too late!
By “too late”; I do not allude to an apocalyptic scenario such as an impending civil war, but to Ibn Khaldun’s analysis of the clash of social values that belong to different groups, which might lead to the fragmentation of the collective psyche in ways that can be thoroughly unpleasant (unironically, Ibn Khaldun wrote about the sexual abuse of young boys in his time as evidence of the inevitable conflict between urban communities and untamed nomadic groups).
This fragmentation might lead in turn to an open struggle between those groups where Qahr (which can be roughly translated in this context as symbolic violence) can be used to diminish and delegitimise the other group’s sense of self! Which might accelerate a shift in political fortunes and an actual transfer of power from one group to another!
There will not be a civil war as there is no real geographic dimension but there will be increasing Islamic insurgency (aka terrorism) to further their political goals and separate political demos.
During the 2010s I worked next to a Muslim, and after a skirmish near Israel (long before October 7th) I heard him say something like "they took Israel from us like we took Bradford from the British". So they do still think in terms of physical territory. That is one of their weaknesses IMO.
What I mean is that there will be no UK-wide civil war, as that always has a geographic dimension e.g. civil war over say Welsh independence.
I agree there is a physical dimension e.g. Bradford and that will play out over increasing separatism over the coming years with a weak UK state pandering to the demands
This "They take no interest in other cultures or the prejudices common within; they view all religions as Anglican in nature,"
Is one of the most common errors ever - thinking that everyone else thinks like you. Although it is surprising how someone can become PM and still believe that.
Christopher Hitchens . . . sixteen years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0EYg8Tgrh0o&ab_channel=TimothyI.Warke
Peter Hitchens last month:
Whittle: When people make the claim … that the country will be minority white British by the … 2060s, what do you feel about that?
Hitchens: Well I'm afraid my, as I've said before, my gall rises in me when you start using terms like “white”. I'm very much from the generation which remembers the great Martin Luther King speech, so [someone] should be judged by the content of his character not the colour of his skin and I reject all classification of people by skin colour instinctively. I'm still very much a “one race the human race” person. I have not in any way shaken off that aspect of my leftwing [youth]. I hope I never shall. It happens to be based on the Christian gospels as well.
So it's nothing to do with colour. The whole question is whether we can actually integrate and create a Britain which is still British but which contains large numbers of new people. That accepts an extremely difficult challenge under certain circumstances but has to be the goal which … civilized people … have to seek.
Whittle: To do that you actually have to have a British establishment that actually believes in Britain.
Hitchens: You would have to have that, and that is fanciful, isn’t it?
Ps in case there’s any doubt this is not an endorsement of Hitchens view which I think absurd (like most of his utterances) and inconsistent even on its own terms
I imagine that is a major generational difference among people on the Right - even more so among 20-somethings than my age.
Ed - do you think Kier Starmer likes the British, recognises British culture and history, and actually believes in this country.
I frankly do not believe he does. He buys the left wing shibboleths of racist little englanders / products of a racist empire along with a lot of the Labour Party.
This is why he will fail as PM. There will be long thought pieces for you to write in the future explaining that failure.
I'm not sure what he thinks tbh. he seems to have little in the way of any higher power. If the court rules that British history is good, then he will believe it
It did seem somewhat odd that it required a court judgement for Sir Kier to recognise that a bloke-in-a-frock with a penis is actually a bloke and not a woman.
He is a very closed book. Sunaks, idea of maths till 18 you think came from his personal enthuiasm
Keir not Kier
Quite so.
Kier (unless Austrian for cowherd) is Irish, and originally meant dark or swarthy.
Keir is Scottish (prob. from the Gaelic for fortress).
The first Labour leader was a Keir, and it looks as though the last one will be too.
Destroying Britishness based on groundless platitudes and an ultimately tyranical belief that people from cultures very different to ours ought to be forced to become British but then realising, too late, that it can’t be done
Mr Hitchens answer ignores the fact that Black Americans have been on the recieving end of inter group violence from more recent arrivals. They have their wages smashed by constant stream of incomers from the South, and their small business and middle class having to compete against legal incomers. Beyond that there is a massive human tragedy in the wests 40 year old childless adults, the siblings who were never born and the marriages never made.
Beyond that why are we doing favours for nuclear powers- Pakistan and India
I haven't been able to take him seriously since he surrendered to the Covid tyranny by getting jabbed.
So it's no surprise that, like Farage, he won't oppose population replacement.
Quite. I just struck me as a hopelessly naive view (but shared by many moderates) presumably forged at a time where numbers were so low it didn’t matter if the view was practical or true, tinged with white saviourism and blind to the preferences of minorities who don’t really exist at all in this given world view
What in the name of sanity have we done?
Perhaps the conclusion here is ironic, but if Islamist voters are moving away from Labour it is unlikely they will return. There are now enough Islamist in many seats for an explicitly Muslim party to be viable, so why would they switch back? Labour may of course continue to court them due to a sincerely-held belief about multiculturalism, but the cynics in the party – among them perhaps Morgan McSweeney – will see that there's no future in chasing clans when the clans have their own parties.
could be, but I think they will try. I'm doing a follow-up post on the new Islamopobia proposals, which I think are aimed at this, and which obviously bring risks to freedom of religion, and freedom from religion.
One future possibility is Labour ending up with 320 seats and an Independent Alliance with 10 - what happens then?
If Labour gives them the anti-"Islamophobia" law before the next GE won't it have to promise something even worse for the rest of us to get them to vote Labour in that GE?
UK is walking the same walk as the rest of Europe: in 5-10 years we’ll have a LABCONS party/coalition, a Reform party, and several crazie(-er)s to each side. Unless DomCum comes up with his TSP, that is. God help us.
It appears the dam has broken on two party politics. But what that means in practice is tricky to predict.
This is also what happened in Scotland where Labour poured their scorn on the hated Tories and were then outflanked on the left by the SNP. Like most of us here I feel pretty unhappy with this new problem, as it wouldn't have happened if the parties we voted into power had done what their manifestos said on immigration. Blair and co were cynical, but Boris's wave is simply unforgivable.
Two good points, except in Scotland, they always disliked Thatcherism/Blairism but stuck with Labour until 2010, largely I think because Gordon Brown was of course Scottish. Ed Milliband the London lawyer with two kitchens cost Labour their Scottish fiefdom. And Alex Salmond was an effective political leader.
As you no doubt have pointed out already, this is not going to end well.
The Labour Party has for many years now, consistently committed High Treason in an intellectual, moral and spiritual form.
But has it committed High Treason - or any similar offence - from a legal point of view ?
Can any prosecution (which, sadly, will have to be a private one) bring this home to an increasingly shameless nest of traitors ?
"Ethno-narcissism, and its less pathological variant, ethnic pride, is the norm almost everywhere in the world. Europeans are very unusual in consciously rejecting it and viewing it as a sin, a product – more than anything – from the shock of 1914-45, which effectively vaccinated them against this human emotion. "
To use a recent Curtis Yarvin quote:
"At the dawn of the industrial war which destroyed Europe, most Europeans actually still believed in Mars. Every country had its chanting crowds ready to go to battle. We understood the immense value of traditional warfare in building culture and society. And then—the best aristocrats of the continent found themselves physically destroyed by industrial death machines. An artillery shell can’t even tell the difference between Achilles and Thersites."
https://www.palladiummag.com/2025/04/25/the-orbital-authority/
War is dysgenic - it kills off the heroes first and most.
Thersites, no.
He runs a media operation appealing for recruits.
There are still idiots pretending that battles like The Somme and Passchendaele didn't wreck Britain, although many of the Western Front heroes hadn't yet fathered children (or only one).
The heroism of WW2 was the West's last gasp; and won by the West's pulverising superiority in science, technology and industrial production far more than by courage. And with the Soviet Union and China doing the heavy lifting.
After 1945, with Hitler dead, impoverishment of the gene pool has made its presence felt throughout the West. And a weary, kneejerk cynicism (the inevitable consequence of governments and establishments herding young men into the 1914-18 slaughterhouse) has become universal.
unbelievably good writing
Thank you!
Excellent substack Ed
The infamous Neather quote is one I’ve longed brooded on, I think it was the unspoken but psychologically intended purpose of the New Labour period of migration to essential make Labour the permanent party of government. In the process of doing so, it essentially destroyed the grassroots purpose of the Labour itself, moving away from its working class base to being much more a coalition of rival interest groups (much like the Democratic Party). I remember thinking how in the 2010s Labour just couldn’t win back its northern heartlands thanks to this migration and how it was effectively out of government for a long time to come. What I could never foresee is how Boris ruthlessly betrayed his Brexit base by having an even more extravagant and irresponsible migration policy thanks Blair’s. It was without question the most cynical political betrayal that I have ever since in British politics and it’s impacted is going to be far greater than Brexit ever will be. The Tories willing chose political suicide and keeping SW1 happy rather than biting the bullet and changing immigration policy. I would laugh if it wasnt for the despair I feel for the future
Thanks Joseph. I was an early bregetter, but my feeling was that, in or out, the consequences of EU membership are going to be minuscule compared to the immigration policy being pursued by countries across western Europe. I found it utterly strange to see people emotionally torn about this assault on their sense of identity while either oblivious or complicit in a far bigger - and irreversible - change.
One of the things about sectarian parties is that that they tend to be over-represented by first past the post. Look at the way the DUP keeps getting more seats than they should. While the Gaza independents are currently only a loose group, there would be a real electoral advantage for them to launch a real political party, especially as the vote share for the two main parties fall and results become more erratic. First past the post is going to end up with a Islamist party holding the balance of power, and those Islamists will be very hard to chuck out as it would require the whole non-Muslim population in their seat to rally around a single candidate.
Like the Irish faction in the 19th century. The Liberals went to extraordinary lengths to accommodate this faction, to the extent of changing the British constitution, and the Conservatives followed suit. Look at how that worked out. Of course there were moral issues involved.