To my mind you are describing, in effect if not directly, the end of Britain and Europe. Britain and Europe becoming, by sheer force of numbers, socially, culturally, politically and economically a seamless extension of the Middle East and Africa and Africa in particular where the population is estimated to triple to 4.5 billion by 2050. Some may think this is a good thing, although it seems to me no better than any other precious indigenous culture ceasing to exist and the very antithesis of global diversity. But I suspect some believe it to be our due and Europe is too complacent to worry about this and eventually even being not complacent will be insufficient to stop the transition. Hopefully none of this is true.
I think its for the worse, but our descendants will know no better. They will also be products of newer migration as well. I'm a product of English interference in Ireland. I'm glad I exist, but I'm not sure this is what my Irish speaking ancestors saw for their descendants, speaking a completely alien language.
I think what you're describing is what was behind the John Cleese 'London isn't London anymore' scandal a couple of years ago. He was viewing things from before the Great Replacement, from where present London really is unrecognisable as the same city. Yet John Cleese's detractors couldn't understand how London couldn't be London; surely it simply is what it is. I'm not sure if they were really that dense or just acting.
Of course others defended Cleese by claiming he merely meant that London wasn't as polite as it used to be. I found this disingenuous and am sure he meant something less anodyne than that. At least I hope he did.
I went to university in Birmingham many, actually many, many, years ago. I returned there more recently to visit Soho House and bask in our former industrial glory. I confess, I had a John Cleese moment and it had nothing to do with people not saying their pleases and thank yous. Very English of us not to actually say what we mean, though.
It's not simply that it's a tragedy when a 'precious indigenous culture' ceases to exist. It's especially tragic when it's OUR precious indigenous culture! I don't think we would blame the Eskimos (I believe that's the correct term nowadays) for worrying more about the collapse of their own culture than about ours. And we in turn shouldn't feel the need to find more pros than cons before we are able to defend ourselves and our way of life. The fact that it's ours is enough.
I do not disagree. Peoples have everywhere always regarded the potential loss of their culture as a tragedy worthy of going to war/dying over. Without this impulse there would likely be no culture/ civilization at all. It is no small thing and I suspect those who diminish the anxiety do so because they are either ignorant or in denial of an obvious truth which is very uncomfortable in all sorts of ways.
Support for open borders is more widespread than you might expect, at least here in America. (Could be different in the UK.) Pretty much every young left-libertarian or DSA type is in favor of it.
Yarvin in this clip has a funny take on open borders. "Ever been to Lagos? You don't want to go to Lagos."
True. And quite a few of the middle-aged liberals, as Ed suggested, may swear until they're blue in the face that they are opposed to open borders, but will nevertheless cry "Racism!" every time they hear about someone being deported, or prevented from entering in the first place. What they support and vote for often amounts to de facto open borders, no matter how much they may insist otherwise.
I think a great number of ordinary people do understand the situation pretty well. The frustration is that so many MPs, academics and experts don't (or pretend not to), and of course they're the ones driving policy and implementation. The situation feels somewhat similar to the destruction of our cities and towns by planners in the 60s and 70s - a consensus emerging among an administrative class that ends up wreaking enormous and irreparable damage, at which future generations can only wonder at how it was all allowed to happen.
I'm pessimistic that anything can be done to halt the process now, for all the reasons you outline. The political system is structurally hostile to radical parties of any stripe (and meaningful immigration control is now a radical notion). In addition, I don't see a person or party of sufficient charisma and competence capable of making the very difficult reforms that would be necessary. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear the juggernaut is fully self-sustaining now.
that's true. otoh a new party would go from getting around 15-20% and having 1 or 2 seats, to having 30% and hundreds of seats. it's hard to break through in the British system, but once you have...
Though I'd love to see it happen, a new right-wing party getting 30% of the vote sounds pretty unlikely - I don't think UKIP ever got more than about 12% in a general election even in their pomp. Maybe a Conservative splinter party would do better, or a united but realigned party under a genuinely populist leader. I don't know. If I'm honest, I can't see an effective configuration coming through any time soon, and of course every passing year permanently shifts the demographics a little more. Would love to be proved wrong!
May I say how impressed I was, in the midst of this perturbed analysis, by the clause, "Of course, people must do what they feel to be right." One of the truly admirable features of your writing is your willingness to assume that your ideological opponents are acting from decent motives. So few commentators seem to share that generosity these days; it's one of the main reasons I subscribe to your Substack.
There are not many countries that have made contributions to the material, technological and moral progress of the whole of humanity.
The UK is one of them. If we extinguish it by population replacement then we don't just extinguish it for the British, but also for everyone worldwide who would have benefitted.
Don't "say" it often enough, but TY for all Your articles, Sir.
Sad story. Sad, but almost certainly true. And You say it's unstoppable in the U.S.? A rare occasion for me to feel lucky I won't be around long. TY again.
Haven't been able to find the tweet, but someone said recently that the core issue of the 21st century will be that there are around 30 countries in the world that are rich and in which it is basically pleasant to live, and 160-odd which are fundamentally poor and dysfunctional in some way, and that a huge number of those living in the latter wish to live in the former.
One thought that occurs to me is that the call for infinity migrants is linked to national prestige: the fact that so many hundreds of thousands want to live here gives us the impression of being a fundamentally important country, which is clearly of some psychological importance, even to the outwardly oikophobic commentariat.
Ed, I'd like you to write a post on how much this feeling of 'Britain's done for and there's no going back' is due to general immigration and how much to specific immigration from certain toxic places. Though things would undoubtedly be better, would everything really be fine if all our immigrants were polite, law-abiding Hindus? Or would even they, simply by dint of seeming not of our tribe, undermine social cohesion? And no, I'm not trying to get you cancelled.
As well as sheer numbers and pace, I have a particular challenge with immigration from cultures that I believe are antithetical to values/cultural norms that I value (and that's a personal thing of course)
Which means in simple terms, before we left for Gloucestershire, our Jamaican neighbours in our part of working class far West London (Feltham) shared a huge amount of cultural norms with their white neighbours, as did our Goan Indian neighbours and our East Asian neighbours. But others definitely did not and it is the latter I believe that people are most concerned about.
On the subject of Feltham - this in today's Spectator
I've just read the article by Will Lloyd. I'm not as sure as he is that immigration is as unstoppable as the weather. If it is then Australia has gone some way to performing a miracle of meteorology.
The irreversible nature of immigration is what should make it a key priority for any nation/government. Once let in, very tough to kick people out, unless brutal and on some level, immoral, actions are taken to reverse course.
Problem is also compounded by fertility differentials between natives and migrants. Just a 5-10% migration intake can result in 50% non-native demographics within 50 years.
Unfortunately repatriation may be the only feasible option to save Britain for its natives. That would be position i'd reluctantly support had it been my country in this dire situation. Not sure if the British electorate will have the stomach for it.
Can't say I fancy either of the choices on offer: (a) shoulder-shrugging declinism; (b) 'a new Department of Immigration staffed by true believers' - believers in what, one wonders. The alternative is to stop the problem at source.
There are only two ways, or types of way, to do this: (a) to bribe those in power in the source countries; (b) to act to reform the source countries along the lines of the Asian tigers (South Korea. Taiwan etc).
The problem with 'a' is that too many of the source countries' rulers are incapable of controlling their citizens, or find it easier to pocket any benefits we may offer and then dissemble. This leaves 'b' but given that the available data for the world's most dysfunctional countries shows that our best efforts in the post 1945 period, known as foreign aid, have failed dismally, one is driven to a straightforward if slightly disturbing conclusion.
If we, (Western liberal democratic capitalism) are to survive, then the only rational international policy is what used to be called liberal imperialism. I find myself suddenly attracted to those worthy Victorian adventurers.
Both the major parties long ago (I guess starting with Blair) decided either deliberately or through lack of awareness, that immigration is not to be restricted. Labour is not going to be more restrictive than the Tories, and anyway, the ship has sailed, this is simply not the same largely homogeneous country that it was 50 years ago. I don't know much about Brazil but that could be the future for us as well I suppose. It's not the end of the world - I mourn the loss of the England of Waugh and Tolkien and Kipling, but that England probably never really existed, did it?
I have an Irish friend who's always telling me that I'm constantly harping back to an England that never existed. In his book countries never get worse; their populations just get older and more nostalgic. But what if they actually do get worse? Wouldn't things look sort of as they do now? And wouldn't the past look rosy in comparison?
It's amazing how people try to gaslight you about a past that you personally lived through and witnessed firsthand. It's especially irritating to hear it from people much younger than you.
This, in particular, drives me nuts. I'm only 52, it's not as though I'm describing something found only in sepia printed albums in dusty, dimly lit attics. I'm describing what was my adult life until Blair decided to ruin everything.
The nostalgia criticism is deployed very effectively by progressives, cosmopolitans and neolibs. Applebaum basically uses it to refute anti-globalists and she dismissed Scruton’s ode to the Old England he grew up in as poignant, but ultimately, unrealistic fantasy.
The criticism of nostalgia has a rhetorical advantage because it has two arguments baked into it that are nearly impossible to disprove: first, that it yearns for a world that never really existed; second, that it’s really just nativism and racism.
The second argument always conflates cultural preservation with bigotry and animus. More importantly, those making the argument would never deploy it against non-whites attempting to maintain their own traditions. But the second argument also tacitly acknowledges that the world has indeed changed, which refutes the claim that that the world of Waugh and CS Lewis never really existed in the first place.
Ed,
To my mind you are describing, in effect if not directly, the end of Britain and Europe. Britain and Europe becoming, by sheer force of numbers, socially, culturally, politically and economically a seamless extension of the Middle East and Africa and Africa in particular where the population is estimated to triple to 4.5 billion by 2050. Some may think this is a good thing, although it seems to me no better than any other precious indigenous culture ceasing to exist and the very antithesis of global diversity. But I suspect some believe it to be our due and Europe is too complacent to worry about this and eventually even being not complacent will be insufficient to stop the transition. Hopefully none of this is true.
I think its for the worse, but our descendants will know no better. They will also be products of newer migration as well. I'm a product of English interference in Ireland. I'm glad I exist, but I'm not sure this is what my Irish speaking ancestors saw for their descendants, speaking a completely alien language.
I think what you're describing is what was behind the John Cleese 'London isn't London anymore' scandal a couple of years ago. He was viewing things from before the Great Replacement, from where present London really is unrecognisable as the same city. Yet John Cleese's detractors couldn't understand how London couldn't be London; surely it simply is what it is. I'm not sure if they were really that dense or just acting.
Of course others defended Cleese by claiming he merely meant that London wasn't as polite as it used to be. I found this disingenuous and am sure he meant something less anodyne than that. At least I hope he did.
I went to university in Birmingham many, actually many, many, years ago. I returned there more recently to visit Soho House and bask in our former industrial glory. I confess, I had a John Cleese moment and it had nothing to do with people not saying their pleases and thank yous. Very English of us not to actually say what we mean, though.
It's not simply that it's a tragedy when a 'precious indigenous culture' ceases to exist. It's especially tragic when it's OUR precious indigenous culture! I don't think we would blame the Eskimos (I believe that's the correct term nowadays) for worrying more about the collapse of their own culture than about ours. And we in turn shouldn't feel the need to find more pros than cons before we are able to defend ourselves and our way of life. The fact that it's ours is enough.
I do not disagree. Peoples have everywhere always regarded the potential loss of their culture as a tragedy worthy of going to war/dying over. Without this impulse there would likely be no culture/ civilization at all. It is no small thing and I suspect those who diminish the anxiety do so because they are either ignorant or in denial of an obvious truth which is very uncomfortable in all sorts of ways.
Support for open borders is more widespread than you might expect, at least here in America. (Could be different in the UK.) Pretty much every young left-libertarian or DSA type is in favor of it.
Yarvin in this clip has a funny take on open borders. "Ever been to Lagos? You don't want to go to Lagos."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnaVRpfHTxU
True. And quite a few of the middle-aged liberals, as Ed suggested, may swear until they're blue in the face that they are opposed to open borders, but will nevertheless cry "Racism!" every time they hear about someone being deported, or prevented from entering in the first place. What they support and vote for often amounts to de facto open borders, no matter how much they may insist otherwise.
As ever, an excellent summary. Agree completely.
I think a great number of ordinary people do understand the situation pretty well. The frustration is that so many MPs, academics and experts don't (or pretend not to), and of course they're the ones driving policy and implementation. The situation feels somewhat similar to the destruction of our cities and towns by planners in the 60s and 70s - a consensus emerging among an administrative class that ends up wreaking enormous and irreparable damage, at which future generations can only wonder at how it was all allowed to happen.
I'm pessimistic that anything can be done to halt the process now, for all the reasons you outline. The political system is structurally hostile to radical parties of any stripe (and meaningful immigration control is now a radical notion). In addition, I don't see a person or party of sufficient charisma and competence capable of making the very difficult reforms that would be necessary. I hope I'm wrong, but I fear the juggernaut is fully self-sustaining now.
that's true. otoh a new party would go from getting around 15-20% and having 1 or 2 seats, to having 30% and hundreds of seats. it's hard to break through in the British system, but once you have...
Though I'd love to see it happen, a new right-wing party getting 30% of the vote sounds pretty unlikely - I don't think UKIP ever got more than about 12% in a general election even in their pomp. Maybe a Conservative splinter party would do better, or a united but realigned party under a genuinely populist leader. I don't know. If I'm honest, I can't see an effective configuration coming through any time soon, and of course every passing year permanently shifts the demographics a little more. Would love to be proved wrong!
Inshallah this signals the end of the Tories and the emergence of something that can effectively replace them, before it’s too late
May I say how impressed I was, in the midst of this perturbed analysis, by the clause, "Of course, people must do what they feel to be right." One of the truly admirable features of your writing is your willingness to assume that your ideological opponents are acting from decent motives. So few commentators seem to share that generosity these days; it's one of the main reasons I subscribe to your Substack.
thanks! I genuinely think they're mostly good people, and I admire them in many ways.
There are not many countries that have made contributions to the material, technological and moral progress of the whole of humanity.
The UK is one of them. If we extinguish it by population replacement then we don't just extinguish it for the British, but also for everyone worldwide who would have benefitted.
But perhaps the well is already run dry.
Don't "say" it often enough, but TY for all Your articles, Sir.
Sad story. Sad, but almost certainly true. And You say it's unstoppable in the U.S.? A rare occasion for me to feel lucky I won't be around long. TY again.
thank you
And sorry. I think processes like this are very hard to slow down once started.
Naw. You deserve more praise than You get, most likely.
And, yeah, I see what You mean.
Haven't been able to find the tweet, but someone said recently that the core issue of the 21st century will be that there are around 30 countries in the world that are rich and in which it is basically pleasant to live, and 160-odd which are fundamentally poor and dysfunctional in some way, and that a huge number of those living in the latter wish to live in the former.
One thought that occurs to me is that the call for infinity migrants is linked to national prestige: the fact that so many hundreds of thousands want to live here gives us the impression of being a fundamentally important country, which is clearly of some psychological importance, even to the outwardly oikophobic commentariat.
I think that was Inner Station, or Re Station as he's now known
Here ya go fellas: https://twitter.com/St1Station/status/1591533640139575296
Ed, I'd like you to write a post on how much this feeling of 'Britain's done for and there's no going back' is due to general immigration and how much to specific immigration from certain toxic places. Though things would undoubtedly be better, would everything really be fine if all our immigrants were polite, law-abiding Hindus? Or would even they, simply by dint of seeming not of our tribe, undermine social cohesion? And no, I'm not trying to get you cancelled.
As well as sheer numbers and pace, I have a particular challenge with immigration from cultures that I believe are antithetical to values/cultural norms that I value (and that's a personal thing of course)
Which means in simple terms, before we left for Gloucestershire, our Jamaican neighbours in our part of working class far West London (Feltham) shared a huge amount of cultural norms with their white neighbours, as did our Goan Indian neighbours and our East Asian neighbours. But others definitely did not and it is the latter I believe that people are most concerned about.
On the subject of Feltham - this in today's Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-lost-souls-of-the-atrium-hotel/
I've just read the article by Will Lloyd. I'm not as sure as he is that immigration is as unstoppable as the weather. If it is then Australia has gone some way to performing a miracle of meteorology.
"there has been a colossal brain drain from the east, dwarfing those of 1933 from Germany and 1453 from Constantinople."
Did a single tear roll down your cheek as you typed about 1453 and Constantinople?
always.
The irreversible nature of immigration is what should make it a key priority for any nation/government. Once let in, very tough to kick people out, unless brutal and on some level, immoral, actions are taken to reverse course.
Problem is also compounded by fertility differentials between natives and migrants. Just a 5-10% migration intake can result in 50% non-native demographics within 50 years.
Unfortunately repatriation may be the only feasible option to save Britain for its natives. That would be position i'd reluctantly support had it been my country in this dire situation. Not sure if the British electorate will have the stomach for it.
Can't say I fancy either of the choices on offer: (a) shoulder-shrugging declinism; (b) 'a new Department of Immigration staffed by true believers' - believers in what, one wonders. The alternative is to stop the problem at source.
There are only two ways, or types of way, to do this: (a) to bribe those in power in the source countries; (b) to act to reform the source countries along the lines of the Asian tigers (South Korea. Taiwan etc).
The problem with 'a' is that too many of the source countries' rulers are incapable of controlling their citizens, or find it easier to pocket any benefits we may offer and then dissemble. This leaves 'b' but given that the available data for the world's most dysfunctional countries shows that our best efforts in the post 1945 period, known as foreign aid, have failed dismally, one is driven to a straightforward if slightly disturbing conclusion.
If we, (Western liberal democratic capitalism) are to survive, then the only rational international policy is what used to be called liberal imperialism. I find myself suddenly attracted to those worthy Victorian adventurers.
Yes- Decolonisation looks the greatest mistake of the 20th century. We have all the responsibility and none of the power.
Both the major parties long ago (I guess starting with Blair) decided either deliberately or through lack of awareness, that immigration is not to be restricted. Labour is not going to be more restrictive than the Tories, and anyway, the ship has sailed, this is simply not the same largely homogeneous country that it was 50 years ago. I don't know much about Brazil but that could be the future for us as well I suppose. It's not the end of the world - I mourn the loss of the England of Waugh and Tolkien and Kipling, but that England probably never really existed, did it?
I have an Irish friend who's always telling me that I'm constantly harping back to an England that never existed. In his book countries never get worse; their populations just get older and more nostalgic. But what if they actually do get worse? Wouldn't things look sort of as they do now? And wouldn't the past look rosy in comparison?
It's amazing how people try to gaslight you about a past that you personally lived through and witnessed firsthand. It's especially irritating to hear it from people much younger than you.
This, in particular, drives me nuts. I'm only 52, it's not as though I'm describing something found only in sepia printed albums in dusty, dimly lit attics. I'm describing what was my adult life until Blair decided to ruin everything.
The nostalgia criticism is deployed very effectively by progressives, cosmopolitans and neolibs. Applebaum basically uses it to refute anti-globalists and she dismissed Scruton’s ode to the Old England he grew up in as poignant, but ultimately, unrealistic fantasy.
The criticism of nostalgia has a rhetorical advantage because it has two arguments baked into it that are nearly impossible to disprove: first, that it yearns for a world that never really existed; second, that it’s really just nativism and racism.
The second argument always conflates cultural preservation with bigotry and animus. More importantly, those making the argument would never deploy it against non-whites attempting to maintain their own traditions. But the second argument also tacitly acknowledges that the world has indeed changed, which refutes the claim that that the world of Waugh and CS Lewis never really existed in the first place.
Does anyone know where I can find a graph of the decline of White British over time, up to the 2021 census? Curiously such a thing is hard to find.
Me, an idiot: I no longer need alcohol because I have a subscription to Ed West's substack.
Haha
Very Zen and one must be in the end. And things rarely/never play out as one thinks.