I enjoy your historical stuff (and books) very much and as a history graduate understand the importance of the past. However, do you think sometimes this impedes looking at the *future*?
As others have noticed, the rest of the Continent is moving towards the 'nativist' right. In my view that's because the facts of life are fundamentally conservative (with the small 'c') and luxury beliefs will always run out of reality to fuel them in the end.
The other thing you didn't mention, which struck me as obvious, was property ownership. I've been saying to NIMBYs for years that if they didn't get real they'd have to deal with a generation of angry young people with no skin in the game when it came to being conservative. And lo...
thank you. I will follow that up in the next post. There will be a conservatism of course, but it will be very different (most of all, much less influenced by Christianity)
If you are correct, that conservatism will be less overtly Christian, then the Second Reformation will not just be complete, but an absolute victory. All is lost in that scenario, and there will be nothing worth conserving.
Hi Ben. Is it actually true that the Right are gaining meaningful power and influence in most European countries? Look at Georgia Meloni in Italy for example. She seems to have rapidly moved to a far more mainstream pro EU position and has made no meaningful changes to immigration levels for example.
Both ideologies and the structures that surround and support them may become too deep-rooted to change, except over a very long period. (Of course the issues in the EU are somewhat different than those applying in Britain).
But both Britain and its cultural scion the US are the most liberal States in European civilization and therefore maybe the Great Moving (Progressive) Left Show is stronger here than elsewhere. Certainly I'm amazed at how incredibly tolerant towards liberal change - but also how easily cowed by demands for niceness and tolerance - the British people are. Sure they might grumble in the pub saying " of course you can't say that" but they - we(!) do almost absolutely nothing to fight back.
That's a fair point, although Meloni is 'off-shoring' immigrants to Albania. Don't know how effective that will be. The Euro Right is always going to struggle as the EU is a centrist stitch-up, I would like to think eventually conservatives will take a leaf out of Gramsci's book.
Interesting that some of the youngest property owners i know (via the deposit lottery) are the some of the most culturally left and who find it hard to pick holes in DEI, BLM, or TR etc, or have never tried to. It's like they feel a guilt regarding their inheritance, and leftism is the most confessional route. I'm sure those acquaintances and friends i'm thinking of would have a strong rebuttal to this claim, but they are also some of the most agreeable people i know - which reduces the chances of their leaving the Overton window. As economists like to say 'resources have alternative uses' - well i think that all philosophies are a reaction to a previous mode of thought and can only be understood as series of eddies and whirlpools (at least it helps me to see them linearly like that). this narrow modern perspective promotes myopia though.
Agree on the NIMBY thing. For several years I have done a control + F search for “hous” and “accom” on economic articles in the Telegraph and other opinion sites and if it comes back blank then I won’t waste time reading it.
Not just NIMBY but the loss of gainful employment (paying family-supporting wages) for the younger generation. I can't speak to the particulars in the UK, but in the US this has been huge. When I was growing up anyone not headed to college or the military (or destined for a slot in a family business) would go to a unionized factory-- GM used to be called "the thirteenth grade" in my home state of Michigan. Hence we end up with guys either unemployed playing games and watching porn in their parents' basement, or at best working scut jobs at Walmart or fast food places with no future.
Thank you - I think the Reformation parallel is very instructive. I grew up surrounded by left-liberals, and most of friends are left-liberals now - I was very conscious of going against the tide when I started reading Roger Scruton and Peter Hitchens, and I remain a bit of an oddity in my circle of friends.
But my swimming led me eventually to Catholicism, and I suspect that genuine conservatism will become more clearly linked with religious practice in the coming decades because people need a specific tradition to conserve - defending what things were like 20 years ago doesn't really cut it.
Replying to yourself isn't narcissistic, heavens no.
Just to say that the Brompton Oratory pretty much embodies the element of future conservatism that I see myself inhabiting. Very English in certain ways, very culturally conservative in many ways, very religiously conservative and traditionalist, but also tremendously international and "diverse".
Thanks for your excellent writing - I am very happy to be paying the small fee for it. I think there's more going on here, however, than you touch on.
The auto-destruction of the Conservative Party (big C) is in part a consequence of incompetence, dissimulation and the adoption by some Big Cs of a wet version of much of the progressive agenda - but they don't wear it well, so it doesn't win over youngsters who want silver bullet solutions to difficult things, but readily alienates the older constituency.
Yet it may be that small-c conservatism gets a boost pretty soon, once the dopamine hit of a Labour landslide is re-metabolised by the younger voters: the tablets on which the shibboleths of progressivism are etched are beginning to erode, and some of the prophets are being shown up as not fit for the job - Ibrahim X Kendi, for example, and Mermaids, to name just two outfits.
Meanwhile, people will always long for a sense of community and belonging, and wearing a lapel badge as a self-appointed bien pensant isn't much comfort once the dinner party, common room debate or political march is over and you're left alone with you fears and the sense that Ecclesiastes was on to something.
That's equally true of youngsters, not just your/my generation. Stick-on virtues and urban individualism, along with synthetic 'friendships' on social media, have a very brief half-life when it comes to feeling satisfied with life. Real contentment comes from things big-C conservatives recently lost track of (many of which are implicit in Christianity, whether you are a formal believer or not) in their short-termist, opportunist haste to latch onto the Next Big Thing. But the kids can sniff out fakery and desperation at 100 yards.
And one reason 'far right' politicians in Europe have done well is that they appear to some voters, young ones included, to be authentic, willing to call a spade a spade, and don't trade in confected voguish neologisms.
If anything remains of the Tories after the election, they might consider the value of straight-talking and credibility, while meeting the needs of young people in ways that are not purely material, or solely determined by data analysis and focus groups - just like the now much-derided 'patrician' conservatives tried to do in the past.
One of the interesting aspects of the right in Europe is the division between someone like Wilders in the Netherlands, who (as I understand it) sees himself as protecting liberal, modern values against mass Islamic immigration, and Orban, who I think sees himself as trying to turn the clock back to a Christian Europe with pre-cultural revolution values. I don't know which vision will end up being the more successful. My guess would be something like the Wilders variant, since I think that's an easier sell to the young.
I don't think there's any great movement embracing a return to couverture and "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" for women; or Jim Crow racial laws; or gays being stuffed back in the closet. Consider in the US the recent votes on abortion where even in the most rightwing states voters want to keep the practice legal. Legal pot has also been winner. The "conservatism" isn't Reagan's and the Moral Majority's at all. The Trump campaign can honestly brag that the man is the most gay friendly Republican president and Trump has expressed opposition to hard abortion bans. The "new" conservatism of the young begins and mostly ends with opposition to high levels of immigration as immigrants are seen as competitors for scarce well-paying jobs and housing. Plus some opposition on some of the Left's more out-there crap, e.g, on trans issues and "1619" racialism.
I think it will be post-Christian in the sense that specifically religious questions about homosexuality and abortion will be largely absent. Orban is more culturally than socially conservative on that front and not that far from Wilders. Hungary is encouraging more children - a very hard task - but it has pretty high abortion rates, although it is tightening the laws. IVF is subsidised by the state. No SSM but unions are recognised, so it's conservative for 2020s standards but liberal for the 2000s.
Jim Crow is a bit of a side show to most of the western world, it was really only part of a specific part of one western - new world - country, but a part of the world that has huge importance to the progressive narrative.
Most people don't give a hoot in a holler about gay marriage, and that includes many regular church-goers. It's a classic "Neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" issue.
Over on Rod Dreher's blog a commenter, who is a very sincere Christian and generally conservative, opined just yesterday that Jerry Falwell should be exhumed and his remains hanged as Cromwell's were. Because he created the disastrous linkage between the GOP and Christianity. By making Christianity merely partisan (at a time when our parties were not at all sorted out on moral issues like abortion) Falwell damaged the faith severely and wrecked its influence on public life.
I'm one of your centre-left/liberal (paid) subscribers and so may be in a minority when I say that I cannot wait for the forthcoming Tory annihilation. It'll be well deserved and needed. Despite this, I have long shared your concerns/dismay at what passes for 'progressive' these days. There is strain of intolerance, a willingness/delight to censor/bully opponents, running through today's liberals that makes a mockery of them even claiming to be liberal. I am definitely uneasy about what Labour will do with regards to social and cultural issues, most notably their muddle over gender id.
I would say though that the biggest problem for the Conservatives comes down to competence, not society becoming more socially liberal. They've governed appallingly and treated us with contempt. And seemed to have enjoyed it. Brexit has been a predictable shit show, austerity has helped trashed public services etc. The fact that the Tory press wet themselves over Labour's VAT on private school fees proposals shows you how badly Conservatism has failed in recent years. Talk about self-interest!
If services had improved, if it had got easier to see a GP, find a dentist, buy a home, catch a bus, they may have stood half a chance at minimising the scale of defeat. But they've failed in spectacular fashion. Cultural issues are important, but most people just want things to work and not feel poor all the time. This is why they're going to lose.
I'd love to read some comparative infrastructure studies. HS2, the odd alpine tunnel, NHS, continental systems. "budgets and black holes" perhaps. is it competence, short termism? The institutions themselves don't seem capable of bringing out the best in people. but the HS2 story deserves a documentary.
Isabel Hardman (and many others) discusses this very well in her "Why we get the Wrong Politicians" book. How we select MPs. the expense, the time, are all relevant. And letting a few thousand people select a PM is clearly bonkers.
All of the failures of the past decade can be traced back to immigration policy and sheer numbers. Someone will have to start there - only Reform will even discuss it.
I refer to the intolerance you speak of as the 'privileged left'. And unless they and the media start to recognise this, we will not move forward. As indeed it is regressive holistically speaking.
I bought, read and enjoyed your book and I accept your thesis. However there are signs that some young men are rejecting the leftist paradigm - e.g. Matt Goodwin's substack this week has featured an article by an anonymous man in his twenties who rejects the current "Conservative" party but also condemns all the DEI nonsense. And if you think about it, getting people to hate themselves because of an immutable characteristic like skin colour is surely a strategy which will rebound?
From where I sit much of what Mr West asserts here is far from obvious.
London, which may perhaps be said to indicate the broad direction of future travel in our political life is more religious and culturally conservative than any city in Britain. It is however also the least Anglican. This is an established fact and anecdotally obvious from anyone who speaks to their non white graduate neighbours. And the future of this country does not belong to white graduates.
The only salient fact in this political cycle, it strikes me, is the collapse in voter engaement which follows on from the collapse in authority in this country. There is no growth, no movement, no progress in any political direction other than apathy.
Meanwhile a quiet, personal moral and religious revival is taking place in our capital and across our land.
We are at the Guelphs and Ghibbelines stage of the collapse in political authority. The rosettes no longer correspond to the deeper movements in our national life. All is in flux but I have faith that the Lord has the chief hand in these affairs.
I live in a place called Britain, that is hyper-capitalist and, like Ancient Rome, Social Darwinist, with the poor and weak increasingly consigned to drugs, homelessness, physical poverty, deaths of despair (notably via junk food).
If this is a "left-wing" country, then I'm The Flying Dutchman.
In reality, the graduate progressives of our time have redefined left-wing out of existence or to mean the exact opposite of what it once did.
E,g, the US Democrats, once the Party of the underdog, are now the Party of the overdog.
i wonder if scapegoating (girard) has anything to do with this. i've rarely seen 'the good guys' feel so comfortable deploring others while not attempting to test their assumptions.
I remain staunchly of the view that almost all masculine, heterosexual men remain pretty right wing. I mix with a fair number of elite people (albeit mostly in the private sector) and the views of young men (at least with a drink in them) are virtually indistinguishable from mine. On trans, out of say 100 conversations, I’ve yet to speak to a man who doesn’t think its complete bullshit. Immigration/race equity is a more sensitive subject, even for men, but similar vibes in the vast majority. This extends right to people working in the heart of London. In contrast, women find these conversations very difficult, and women generally prefer to speak small picture anyway. What happened 5 mins ago and how they felt about it. Whereas, men tend to be more grandiose and then dress that up as being more big picture. Welcome to my posts! I think this is underplayed in Ed’s account. Also, underplayed is that men who are tallish, well enough employed and not socially dysfunctional have far more bargaining power in the dating game than all women, especially as the 20s grind on into the early 30’s. This means their views will prevail because of the asymmetric bargaining power. And I think this is the historic norm. The new religion was largely created by a 1960s counter culture(with earlier roots of course) driven mostly by men, with women coming to it late. It may be that the women occupying that space now (often in areas such as health and HR where they are bombarded) are about to become the blue stockings of old. I do not think it’s insignificant that when communities are overrun by an invading horde, it is the women (esp the young) who are often spared but on condition that they convert to the insurgent norms.
Absolutely they have and I'm not for a second suggesting that men are better than women or vice versa for that matter. But there are at a general level differences, even if they do not always hold true.
Progressive ideals seem to have a random walk with no teleology.
Fervent progressive things frequently succeed but they are often completely different from preceding progressive views. Liking Assange, Occupy, despising big phrama and opposing nuclear were progressive core beliefs 10-15 years ago while now the core beliefs are antisemitism, trans issues, Ukrainian nationalism, opposing electric cars, opposing objective grading schemes. Opposition to the police was progressive for about a year then completely disappeared from the radar.
You mention the UK and the US in the same breath, but it would be very surprising if the US doesn't become much more right-leaning than the UK. In the US, religion still holds power and demographic influence. Devout conservatives have twice as many children as liberals. There are no such differences in the UK, and religion is very weak there.
In the US, there are Hispanic immigrants, some of whom are open to becoming nationalist-religious conservatives. In the UK, it's hard to see immigrants from the third world filling the same role.
In the US, there are populations with extreme crime rates, so any attempt by the police to be too liberal would immediately turn the country into a nightmare. The same goes for other Western European countries that have absorbed very low-quality immigration (like Sweden). In the UK, this is not yet the case.
There is robust evidence that there is a growing divide over time between left/woke young women and young men who are becoming more right leaning. This is even showing in dating trends (USA) and the apparent difficulty women have in finding a mate. Growing alienation I think is the driver behind the more obnoxious element of the ultra masculine misogynistic cigar smoking blogger. Shout often enough about toxic masculinity and you’ll start to generate some really extreme examples of it. Both sexes are depressed, but by far the biggest impact is on young women themselves. There are well documented links between the ‘female woke’ and degree of mental ill health (see Jordan Peterson). This doesn’t really chime with the long term unopposed march of the progressives surely? I also agree with some contributors here that mention religious growth. More people are being drawn to the traditional forms (again it is tracked more in the US). There is a move toward the ‘bells and smells’ of the Catholic church, with congregations becoming more right wing with a new generation of priests, and often young men in particular turning to the even more serious Orthodox (see recent interview with Father Trenham). I think things are in flux and woke will be inevitably gentled by reality.
Religion is still shrinking in the US, including in the "smells and bells" churches. And the forty year old alliance between conservative Christians and the GOP has seen much better days. That Donald Trump can gain the knee jerk approval of preachers where the Anerican flag is more prominent than the Cross is a huge turn off for many people. "My Kingdom is not of this world" quoth Jesus. Some of his ministers should be writing that on a blackboard a hundred times. (See also: Put not your trust in princes...)
That’s a brilliant reply Jon, thank you. It’s lovely when someone takes the time and knows what they are talking about! I agree that the nationalist/religious vibe is not a good one, and overall numbers are shrinking still, but I definitely see green shoots appearing. It is very recent and much is anecdotal at present. Priests and pastors need to remain above politics, and Christian beliefs encompass both what is objectionable and what is applauded to the left AND the right. You can’t cherry pick the message.
Since the 1980s the Tories have been making the young poorer to make the old richer.
Examples reducing student grants under Thatcher and of course make house prices more expensive -these are not policies that will cause them to be loved by the victims.
Also of course they have via the benefits system paid low skilled immigrants to come here (they might not have wanted to do this but they did it) who are unlikely to vote for them.
It is not surprising that they face extinction although high gas prices did not help.
High gas prices? Are you talking about petroleum or the stuff which heats houses and fuels power stations? And the word "to" in "to make the old richer" implies you think this was intentional. But student grants probably (I'd have to check) weren't compatible with expanding post school education; it wasn't a policy of making the young poorer, but a trade-off, as I understand it. I don't think the growth of house prices relative to incomes is particularly welcome, but again, I don't think it was ever a deliberate policy, and nor do I think that people priced out of the housing market are "victims" that's putting an emotional spin on it. The Tories wanted people to keep more of their own money, an eminently sensible thing to want, but the 80s were a time of unprecedented wealth, both disposable income and surplus wealth, and some of that surplus wealth incentivised people to become buy-to-let landlords, and that distorted the housing market more than I think anyone foresaw.
Hi Ed.
I enjoy your historical stuff (and books) very much and as a history graduate understand the importance of the past. However, do you think sometimes this impedes looking at the *future*?
As others have noticed, the rest of the Continent is moving towards the 'nativist' right. In my view that's because the facts of life are fundamentally conservative (with the small 'c') and luxury beliefs will always run out of reality to fuel them in the end.
The other thing you didn't mention, which struck me as obvious, was property ownership. I've been saying to NIMBYs for years that if they didn't get real they'd have to deal with a generation of angry young people with no skin in the game when it came to being conservative. And lo...
Anyhow, keep up the good work.
thank you. I will follow that up in the next post. There will be a conservatism of course, but it will be very different (most of all, much less influenced by Christianity)
If you are correct, that conservatism will be less overtly Christian, then the Second Reformation will not just be complete, but an absolute victory. All is lost in that scenario, and there will be nothing worth conserving.
Surely the secularists die out?
Well, we all die in the end. Ideas however handily survive our individual mortality.
Hi Ben. Is it actually true that the Right are gaining meaningful power and influence in most European countries? Look at Georgia Meloni in Italy for example. She seems to have rapidly moved to a far more mainstream pro EU position and has made no meaningful changes to immigration levels for example.
Both ideologies and the structures that surround and support them may become too deep-rooted to change, except over a very long period. (Of course the issues in the EU are somewhat different than those applying in Britain).
But both Britain and its cultural scion the US are the most liberal States in European civilization and therefore maybe the Great Moving (Progressive) Left Show is stronger here than elsewhere. Certainly I'm amazed at how incredibly tolerant towards liberal change - but also how easily cowed by demands for niceness and tolerance - the British people are. Sure they might grumble in the pub saying " of course you can't say that" but they - we(!) do almost absolutely nothing to fight back.
That's a fair point, although Meloni is 'off-shoring' immigrants to Albania. Don't know how effective that will be. The Euro Right is always going to struggle as the EU is a centrist stitch-up, I would like to think eventually conservatives will take a leaf out of Gramsci's book.
Interesting that some of the youngest property owners i know (via the deposit lottery) are the some of the most culturally left and who find it hard to pick holes in DEI, BLM, or TR etc, or have never tried to. It's like they feel a guilt regarding their inheritance, and leftism is the most confessional route. I'm sure those acquaintances and friends i'm thinking of would have a strong rebuttal to this claim, but they are also some of the most agreeable people i know - which reduces the chances of their leaving the Overton window. As economists like to say 'resources have alternative uses' - well i think that all philosophies are a reaction to a previous mode of thought and can only be understood as series of eddies and whirlpools (at least it helps me to see them linearly like that). this narrow modern perspective promotes myopia though.
Agree on the NIMBY thing. For several years I have done a control + F search for “hous” and “accom” on economic articles in the Telegraph and other opinion sites and if it comes back blank then I won’t waste time reading it.
Not just NIMBY but the loss of gainful employment (paying family-supporting wages) for the younger generation. I can't speak to the particulars in the UK, but in the US this has been huge. When I was growing up anyone not headed to college or the military (or destined for a slot in a family business) would go to a unionized factory-- GM used to be called "the thirteenth grade" in my home state of Michigan. Hence we end up with guys either unemployed playing games and watching porn in their parents' basement, or at best working scut jobs at Walmart or fast food places with no future.
Thank you - I think the Reformation parallel is very instructive. I grew up surrounded by left-liberals, and most of friends are left-liberals now - I was very conscious of going against the tide when I started reading Roger Scruton and Peter Hitchens, and I remain a bit of an oddity in my circle of friends.
But my swimming led me eventually to Catholicism, and I suspect that genuine conservatism will become more clearly linked with religious practice in the coming decades because people need a specific tradition to conserve - defending what things were like 20 years ago doesn't really cut it.
Replying to yourself isn't narcissistic, heavens no.
Just to say that the Brompton Oratory pretty much embodies the element of future conservatism that I see myself inhabiting. Very English in certain ways, very culturally conservative in many ways, very religiously conservative and traditionalist, but also tremendously international and "diverse".
Dear Ed,
Thanks for your excellent writing - I am very happy to be paying the small fee for it. I think there's more going on here, however, than you touch on.
The auto-destruction of the Conservative Party (big C) is in part a consequence of incompetence, dissimulation and the adoption by some Big Cs of a wet version of much of the progressive agenda - but they don't wear it well, so it doesn't win over youngsters who want silver bullet solutions to difficult things, but readily alienates the older constituency.
Yet it may be that small-c conservatism gets a boost pretty soon, once the dopamine hit of a Labour landslide is re-metabolised by the younger voters: the tablets on which the shibboleths of progressivism are etched are beginning to erode, and some of the prophets are being shown up as not fit for the job - Ibrahim X Kendi, for example, and Mermaids, to name just two outfits.
Meanwhile, people will always long for a sense of community and belonging, and wearing a lapel badge as a self-appointed bien pensant isn't much comfort once the dinner party, common room debate or political march is over and you're left alone with you fears and the sense that Ecclesiastes was on to something.
That's equally true of youngsters, not just your/my generation. Stick-on virtues and urban individualism, along with synthetic 'friendships' on social media, have a very brief half-life when it comes to feeling satisfied with life. Real contentment comes from things big-C conservatives recently lost track of (many of which are implicit in Christianity, whether you are a formal believer or not) in their short-termist, opportunist haste to latch onto the Next Big Thing. But the kids can sniff out fakery and desperation at 100 yards.
And one reason 'far right' politicians in Europe have done well is that they appear to some voters, young ones included, to be authentic, willing to call a spade a spade, and don't trade in confected voguish neologisms.
If anything remains of the Tories after the election, they might consider the value of straight-talking and credibility, while meeting the needs of young people in ways that are not purely material, or solely determined by data analysis and focus groups - just like the now much-derided 'patrician' conservatives tried to do in the past.
One of the interesting aspects of the right in Europe is the division between someone like Wilders in the Netherlands, who (as I understand it) sees himself as protecting liberal, modern values against mass Islamic immigration, and Orban, who I think sees himself as trying to turn the clock back to a Christian Europe with pre-cultural revolution values. I don't know which vision will end up being the more successful. My guess would be something like the Wilders variant, since I think that's an easier sell to the young.
I don't think there's any great movement embracing a return to couverture and "Kinder, Kuche, Kirche" for women; or Jim Crow racial laws; or gays being stuffed back in the closet. Consider in the US the recent votes on abortion where even in the most rightwing states voters want to keep the practice legal. Legal pot has also been winner. The "conservatism" isn't Reagan's and the Moral Majority's at all. The Trump campaign can honestly brag that the man is the most gay friendly Republican president and Trump has expressed opposition to hard abortion bans. The "new" conservatism of the young begins and mostly ends with opposition to high levels of immigration as immigrants are seen as competitors for scarce well-paying jobs and housing. Plus some opposition on some of the Left's more out-there crap, e.g, on trans issues and "1619" racialism.
I think it will be post-Christian in the sense that specifically religious questions about homosexuality and abortion will be largely absent. Orban is more culturally than socially conservative on that front and not that far from Wilders. Hungary is encouraging more children - a very hard task - but it has pretty high abortion rates, although it is tightening the laws. IVF is subsidised by the state. No SSM but unions are recognised, so it's conservative for 2020s standards but liberal for the 2000s.
Jim Crow is a bit of a side show to most of the western world, it was really only part of a specific part of one western - new world - country, but a part of the world that has huge importance to the progressive narrative.
If you can't get a girlfriend- why vote for parties who want to give women your money
If you get jail time, for doing wheelies on a pride colored sidewalk- why vote for Gay marriage
If young men aren't given anything why share?
Most people don't give a hoot in a holler about gay marriage, and that includes many regular church-goers. It's a classic "Neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" issue.
Not sure that's how conservatism works.
Over on Rod Dreher's blog a commenter, who is a very sincere Christian and generally conservative, opined just yesterday that Jerry Falwell should be exhumed and his remains hanged as Cromwell's were. Because he created the disastrous linkage between the GOP and Christianity. By making Christianity merely partisan (at a time when our parties were not at all sorted out on moral issues like abortion) Falwell damaged the faith severely and wrecked its influence on public life.
I will only ever hear 'We're doooooooooooooomed' in John Laurie's voice (and fittingly, he was an undertaker).
I'm one of your centre-left/liberal (paid) subscribers and so may be in a minority when I say that I cannot wait for the forthcoming Tory annihilation. It'll be well deserved and needed. Despite this, I have long shared your concerns/dismay at what passes for 'progressive' these days. There is strain of intolerance, a willingness/delight to censor/bully opponents, running through today's liberals that makes a mockery of them even claiming to be liberal. I am definitely uneasy about what Labour will do with regards to social and cultural issues, most notably their muddle over gender id.
I would say though that the biggest problem for the Conservatives comes down to competence, not society becoming more socially liberal. They've governed appallingly and treated us with contempt. And seemed to have enjoyed it. Brexit has been a predictable shit show, austerity has helped trashed public services etc. The fact that the Tory press wet themselves over Labour's VAT on private school fees proposals shows you how badly Conservatism has failed in recent years. Talk about self-interest!
If services had improved, if it had got easier to see a GP, find a dentist, buy a home, catch a bus, they may have stood half a chance at minimising the scale of defeat. But they've failed in spectacular fashion. Cultural issues are important, but most people just want things to work and not feel poor all the time. This is why they're going to lose.
competence plays a big part. I wonder if we just need better paid MPs (and maybe fewer)
I'd love to read some comparative infrastructure studies. HS2, the odd alpine tunnel, NHS, continental systems. "budgets and black holes" perhaps. is it competence, short termism? The institutions themselves don't seem capable of bringing out the best in people. but the HS2 story deserves a documentary.
Isabel Hardman (and many others) discusses this very well in her "Why we get the Wrong Politicians" book. How we select MPs. the expense, the time, are all relevant. And letting a few thousand people select a PM is clearly bonkers.
yeah. why would you want to become one these days?
As with every other job we fail to do basic competence,sanity, literary and numeracy tests which could be done very easily .
All of the failures of the past decade can be traced back to immigration policy and sheer numbers. Someone will have to start there - only Reform will even discuss it.
I refer to the intolerance you speak of as the 'privileged left'. And unless they and the media start to recognise this, we will not move forward. As indeed it is regressive holistically speaking.
Egon from Ghostbusters:
"Not necessarily. There's definitely a very slim chance we'll survive."
I bought, read and enjoyed your book and I accept your thesis. However there are signs that some young men are rejecting the leftist paradigm - e.g. Matt Goodwin's substack this week has featured an article by an anonymous man in his twenties who rejects the current "Conservative" party but also condemns all the DEI nonsense. And if you think about it, getting people to hate themselves because of an immutable characteristic like skin colour is surely a strategy which will rebound?
It’s amazing that you can write so many good columns on this topic.
thanks!
From where I sit much of what Mr West asserts here is far from obvious.
London, which may perhaps be said to indicate the broad direction of future travel in our political life is more religious and culturally conservative than any city in Britain. It is however also the least Anglican. This is an established fact and anecdotally obvious from anyone who speaks to their non white graduate neighbours. And the future of this country does not belong to white graduates.
https://www.theosthinktank.co.uk/cmsfiles/Religious-London-FINAL-REPORT-24.06.2020.pdf
The only salient fact in this political cycle, it strikes me, is the collapse in voter engaement which follows on from the collapse in authority in this country. There is no growth, no movement, no progress in any political direction other than apathy.
Meanwhile a quiet, personal moral and religious revival is taking place in our capital and across our land.
We are at the Guelphs and Ghibbelines stage of the collapse in political authority. The rosettes no longer correspond to the deeper movements in our national life. All is in flux but I have faith that the Lord has the chief hand in these affairs.
I live in a place called Britain, that is hyper-capitalist and, like Ancient Rome, Social Darwinist, with the poor and weak increasingly consigned to drugs, homelessness, physical poverty, deaths of despair (notably via junk food).
If this is a "left-wing" country, then I'm The Flying Dutchman.
In reality, the graduate progressives of our time have redefined left-wing out of existence or to mean the exact opposite of what it once did.
E,g, the US Democrats, once the Party of the underdog, are now the Party of the overdog.
i wonder if scapegoating (girard) has anything to do with this. i've rarely seen 'the good guys' feel so comfortable deploring others while not attempting to test their assumptions.
I remain staunchly of the view that almost all masculine, heterosexual men remain pretty right wing. I mix with a fair number of elite people (albeit mostly in the private sector) and the views of young men (at least with a drink in them) are virtually indistinguishable from mine. On trans, out of say 100 conversations, I’ve yet to speak to a man who doesn’t think its complete bullshit. Immigration/race equity is a more sensitive subject, even for men, but similar vibes in the vast majority. This extends right to people working in the heart of London. In contrast, women find these conversations very difficult, and women generally prefer to speak small picture anyway. What happened 5 mins ago and how they felt about it. Whereas, men tend to be more grandiose and then dress that up as being more big picture. Welcome to my posts! I think this is underplayed in Ed’s account. Also, underplayed is that men who are tallish, well enough employed and not socially dysfunctional have far more bargaining power in the dating game than all women, especially as the 20s grind on into the early 30’s. This means their views will prevail because of the asymmetric bargaining power. And I think this is the historic norm. The new religion was largely created by a 1960s counter culture(with earlier roots of course) driven mostly by men, with women coming to it late. It may be that the women occupying that space now (often in areas such as health and HR where they are bombarded) are about to become the blue stockings of old. I do not think it’s insignificant that when communities are overrun by an invading horde, it is the women (esp the young) who are often spared but on condition that they convert to the insurgent norms.
Future historians will say that the fate of the West was sealed when women were given the right to vote.
As if men can't commit colossal mistakes and ghastly atrocities. Most of the things we shudder and jaw drop over in history are the deeds of men.
Absolutely they have and I'm not for a second suggesting that men are better than women or vice versa for that matter. But there are at a general level differences, even if they do not always hold true.
I don't think that. Not all of my comments are serious but most are more true than not.
Progressive ideals seem to have a random walk with no teleology.
Fervent progressive things frequently succeed but they are often completely different from preceding progressive views. Liking Assange, Occupy, despising big phrama and opposing nuclear were progressive core beliefs 10-15 years ago while now the core beliefs are antisemitism, trans issues, Ukrainian nationalism, opposing electric cars, opposing objective grading schemes. Opposition to the police was progressive for about a year then completely disappeared from the radar.
You mention the UK and the US in the same breath, but it would be very surprising if the US doesn't become much more right-leaning than the UK. In the US, religion still holds power and demographic influence. Devout conservatives have twice as many children as liberals. There are no such differences in the UK, and religion is very weak there.
In the US, there are Hispanic immigrants, some of whom are open to becoming nationalist-religious conservatives. In the UK, it's hard to see immigrants from the third world filling the same role.
In the US, there are populations with extreme crime rates, so any attempt by the police to be too liberal would immediately turn the country into a nightmare. The same goes for other Western European countries that have absorbed very low-quality immigration (like Sweden). In the UK, this is not yet the case.
There is robust evidence that there is a growing divide over time between left/woke young women and young men who are becoming more right leaning. This is even showing in dating trends (USA) and the apparent difficulty women have in finding a mate. Growing alienation I think is the driver behind the more obnoxious element of the ultra masculine misogynistic cigar smoking blogger. Shout often enough about toxic masculinity and you’ll start to generate some really extreme examples of it. Both sexes are depressed, but by far the biggest impact is on young women themselves. There are well documented links between the ‘female woke’ and degree of mental ill health (see Jordan Peterson). This doesn’t really chime with the long term unopposed march of the progressives surely? I also agree with some contributors here that mention religious growth. More people are being drawn to the traditional forms (again it is tracked more in the US). There is a move toward the ‘bells and smells’ of the Catholic church, with congregations becoming more right wing with a new generation of priests, and often young men in particular turning to the even more serious Orthodox (see recent interview with Father Trenham). I think things are in flux and woke will be inevitably gentled by reality.
Religion is still shrinking in the US, including in the "smells and bells" churches. And the forty year old alliance between conservative Christians and the GOP has seen much better days. That Donald Trump can gain the knee jerk approval of preachers where the Anerican flag is more prominent than the Cross is a huge turn off for many people. "My Kingdom is not of this world" quoth Jesus. Some of his ministers should be writing that on a blackboard a hundred times. (See also: Put not your trust in princes...)
That’s a brilliant reply Jon, thank you. It’s lovely when someone takes the time and knows what they are talking about! I agree that the nationalist/religious vibe is not a good one, and overall numbers are shrinking still, but I definitely see green shoots appearing. It is very recent and much is anecdotal at present. Priests and pastors need to remain above politics, and Christian beliefs encompass both what is objectionable and what is applauded to the left AND the right. You can’t cherry pick the message.
Since the 1980s the Tories have been making the young poorer to make the old richer.
Examples reducing student grants under Thatcher and of course make house prices more expensive -these are not policies that will cause them to be loved by the victims.
Also of course they have via the benefits system paid low skilled immigrants to come here (they might not have wanted to do this but they did it) who are unlikely to vote for them.
It is not surprising that they face extinction although high gas prices did not help.
High gas prices? Are you talking about petroleum or the stuff which heats houses and fuels power stations? And the word "to" in "to make the old richer" implies you think this was intentional. But student grants probably (I'd have to check) weren't compatible with expanding post school education; it wasn't a policy of making the young poorer, but a trade-off, as I understand it. I don't think the growth of house prices relative to incomes is particularly welcome, but again, I don't think it was ever a deliberate policy, and nor do I think that people priced out of the housing market are "victims" that's putting an emotional spin on it. The Tories wanted people to keep more of their own money, an eminently sensible thing to want, but the 80s were a time of unprecedented wealth, both disposable income and surplus wealth, and some of that surplus wealth incentivised people to become buy-to-let landlords, and that distorted the housing market more than I think anyone foresaw.
Mr Aster doesn't know much about Britain, I'd guess.