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“For the vast majority of people Brexit isn’t about the EU, it is a proxy for a world view that includes their attitude to diversity and climate change as well as Europe. They would prefer to have parties which much more clearly reflect those values. Either Labour and the Tories rotate into those positions or they will be challenged by new parties rooted there.”
This is a quotation from Lord Cooper of Windrush, the Downing Street director of strategy under David Cameron, in today's Times. His lordship is right that attitudes to Brexit are about deep emotions that have little to do with the question in hand. This is the most interesting and least examined aspect to the crisis through which Great Britain (not to mention Northern Ireland) is living.
Of course, he is also completely right in thinking that cultural politics is now more important than economics.
How odd that important people who write newspaper articles find this surprising or hard to explain, when the reasons are obvious: grave threats to nation-states. These, of course, trump (no pun intended) everything else.
It is a coincidence that Lord Cooper took the name Windrush for his title. It is from a village, apparently, and not a reference to the SS Empire Windrush, the name of the first boat that brought West Indian immigrants to England in 1948. The 'Empire' bit is always airbrushed out of the story.
He began his political career, like his friend Daniel, Lord Finklestein, as a Social Democrat (a right-wing spin-off from the Labour Party), was the quintessential Cameroon and Tory moderniser, the architect of the Conservative measure legalising single-sex marriage and is 'a psephologist of genius'. Polling and focus groups were always the heart to the project to modernise the Tories (i.e. to make the Tories Blairites), as they had been the heart of New Labour.
Some of the Tory polling was pretty unreliable, for example relating to the electorate's attitudes to immigration. In fact, under John Major and Margaret Thatcher, the Tories had indeed seemed to be very much the 'nasty party' of Theresa May's phrase. However, this was because of their economic conservatism, not their social conservatism. I know this because they were never social conservatives.
Margaret Thatcher was regularly accused of being a nineteenth century liberal, by me and others, but she was always a Tory, a believer in the nation as well as in Nato.
I imagine Lord Cooper is still essentially a social democrat, as is Theresa May. David Cameron, admirer of Garibaldi, is to a large extent a liberal.
Had Mrs Thatcher become Prime Minister in 1970 we would not have joined the EEC, at least not when we did. There are few real Tories left and, with some exceptions like Nicholas Soames, Jeremy Clarkson and the late Auberon Waugh, Tories tend not to want to stay in the EU. Nigel Farage, of course, is an example.
They are the anithiseses of the modernisers and the wretched A-List of MPs parachuted into seats to make the parliamentary party more diverse and trendy, the Amber Rudds and Anna Soubrys.
I doubt though that even a Herodian massacre of candidates by their constituency associations in deselections will save the Tories from Nigel Farage and from Jeremy Corbyn, not to mention the new, more right-wing, Ukip.
I imagine Lord Cooper is still essentially a social democrat, as is Theresa May. David Cameron, admirer of Garibaldi, is to a large extent a liberal.
Had Mrs Thatcher become Prime Minister in 1970 we would not have joined the EEC, at least not when we did. There are few real Tories left and, with some exceptions like Nicholas Soames, Jeremy Clarkson and the late Auberon Waugh, Tories tend not to want to stay in the EU. Nigel Farage, of course, is an example.
They are the anithiseses of the modernisers and the wretched A-List of MPs parachuted into seats to make the parliamentary party more diverse and trendy, the Amber Rudds and Anna Soubrys.
I doubt though that even a Herodian massacre of candidates by their constituency associations in deselections will save the Tories from Nigel Farage and from Jeremy Corbyn, not to mention the new, more right-wing, Ukip.
@Paul,
ReplyDeleteYou know, so far as I can recall and after all this time, my memory is questionable, it was the Left that was anti-Common Market in the 1970s and not the so-called Conservative party.
Jeremy Corbyn, a Leftist, still holds this view, or so I have read :). And jolly good for him!
With regard to a Herodian massacre of Conservative party candidates, I have never, ever, voted for one and after this betrayal of Beleavers, I am unlikely to do so in future and I class myself as conservative.
As Rod Liddle recommends, I will investigate the SDP: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHStWSOvHhM
In the 1970s Margaret Thatcher was in favour of the EEC and sat in the cabinet that took us in in 1972, though many backbench Tory MPs were opposed, such as J Enoch Powell, as was public opinion. I aged ten was in favour. Labour opposed joining in 1972 but was also split. I feel disgust for the so-called Conservatives too but want to join the party to try to change it.
ReplyDeleteWhat do you think of Nigel Farage or his old party UKIP? What come to that do you think of 'Tommy Robinson?
What come to that do you think of 'Tommy Robinson?
DeleteTommy Robinson is the kind of guy who makes me embarrassed to be a nationalist. He's pro-degeneracy and he's an Israel-Firster.
I didn't know you were a nationalist. What does that mean exactly? I don't know what it means. I am a conservative, a Tory, a Catholic, who sees European civilisation and all European nation states under terrible threat. You are the 'Politically Incorrect Australian', aren't you?
DeleteI rarely read other people's blogs but I see the PIA, who I believe is you, wrote this. http://anotherpoliticallyincorrectblog.blogspot.com/2019/04/two-cheers-for-nationalism.html
DeleteI didn't know you were a nationalist
DeleteI'm not at all sure that I am a nationalist. I'm a nationalist to the extent that I prefer nationalism to globalism. I'd rather have nationalism than One World Government or rule by a globalist capitalist cabal. If those are the only choices on offer I'd pick nationalism, but without any great enthusiasm.
Ideally I'd like to see a revival of the concept of Christendom but I don't see any prospect of that happening.
People like Tommy Robinson are one of the reasons that my enthusiasm for nationalism has steadily diminished. There are too many nationalists who claim to want to save our civilisation but what they really want to save is liberalism and all its attendant evils - feminism, militant homosexuality, crazy gender politics. Their idea of western civilisation is Gay Pride Marches, transgender bathroom rights and abolishing all differences between men and women. They oppose immigration because they see it as a threat to feminism and the LGBT agenda.
I am a conservative, a Tory, a Catholic, who sees European civilisation and all European nation states under terrible threat.
DeleteI'm a social conservative. In fact I'm a social ultra-conservative. I disapprove of divorce. I believe very strongly in traditional sex rôles. I disapprove of higher education for women because it leads inevitably to feminism and immorality.
I'm no fan of capitalism because I see it as one of the forces that has done most to undermine traditional values, the family and Christianity. I'm no great fan of socialism either although it seems to me to be marginally less socially destructive. I kind of like the idea of a balance between capitalism and socialism, a balance that Europe seemed to have found but which has been falling apart over the past couple of decades.
As for religion, I approve of it for socially pragmatic reasons. If the pre-Vatican II Catholic Church still existed I would certainly have become a Catholic by now.
I agree that European civilisation is under terrible threat although I think that the threats are almost entirely internal threats - liberalism, feminism, nihilism, excessive urbanisation, consumerism are all evils that European civilisation itself created. European civilisation cannot be saved unless it finds a way to deal with the demons it created.
You are the 'Politically Incorrect Australian', aren't you?
Yes, that's me. I admit it's an odd blog because what I've used it for is to work through my own ideas. My views have changed quite a lot since I started it.
I agree with a lot of what you say but the threat to the West comes more from outside forces than from its liberalism. I too dislike liberalism, feminism, nihilism, excessive urbanisation, consumerism and see capitalism as the most anti-conservative force of all. Still I like free markets very much, which bring prosperity and freedom from the state and help the poor and worst off. That the markets make for unequal societies is a good, not a bad thing.
DeleteI agree with a lot of what you say but the threat to the West comes more from outside forces than from its liberalism.
DeleteI don't think there are any external threats to the West at all. Third World immigration is not an external threat - those immigrants are in the West because western governments invited them in. Again the threat comes from our own governments, our own bureaucracies, our own voters who keep voting for pro-immigration parties like the Tories, our own western media, our own western education systems.
The West is actually a threat to the rest of the world. Western degeneracy, consumerism and atheism are being aggressively exported to every non-western country. China is not a threat to the West. The West is a deadly threat to China.
Still I like free markets very much, which bring prosperity and freedom from the state and help the poor and worst off. That the markets make for unequal societies is a good, not a bad thing.
A degree of inequality is indeed a good thing, but inequality is not a good thing when societies become as unequal as our western societies have become. When the rich measure their net worth in the tens of billions and the poor often have a net worth of zero then inequality has become unhealthy and dangerous. It means that there's a very very large segment of the population that feels, quite correctly, that they have absolutely zero reason to feel any loyalty to such a society.
When housing becomes an unaffordable luxury you have an unhealthy situation. In Australia we're rapidly heading for a future in which electricity will be an unaffordable luxury for most people.
and see capitalism as the most anti-conservative force of all.
Agreed.
"I don't think there are any external threats to the West at all. Third World immigration is not an external threat - those immigrants are in the West because western governments invited them in. Again the threat comes from our own governments, our own bureaucracies, our own voters who keep voting for pro-immigration parties like the Tories, our own western media, our own western education systems."
DeleteI agree.
"The West is actually a threat to the rest of the world. Western degeneracy, consumerism and atheism are being aggressively exported to every non-western country."
DeleteI agree with this and you could have mentioned other bad things we want to export but over the last 200 years the West has done vastly more good to the poor world than bad. You are right that the West is in decline and a danger to itself.
China is a competitor to Western hegemony and I prefer a world run by Donald Trump or by the DC establishment to one run by Communist China.
In 1983 I well remember that Labour's manifesto, 'the longest suicide note in history', pledged the party to take us out of the EEC. Perhaps Michael Foot would not have been so very bad a Prime Minister as we imagined back then. I canvassed in that election for Norman St John Stevas who disliked Thatcherism much as I did. I remember him fondling his boyfriend's thigh, which shocked me though I innocently believed there was an innocent explanation. He took me to my first nightclub full of mundane Chelmsford girls turned into sex symbols.
ReplyDeleteFor the vast majority of people Brexit isn’t about the EU, it is a proxy for a world view that includes their attitude to diversity and climate change as well as Europe.
ReplyDeleteIf Brexit happens I think that most Brexiteers are going to be bitterly disappointed by the results. There will almost inevitably be a massive increase in Third World immigration. Employers must have cheap labour otherwise they might have to start paying decent wages, which is of course unthinkable.
Britain is likely to become even more of a U.S. puppet state and will get mixed up in even more disastrous American military adventures. Any hope of sane relations with Russia and China will fly out the window. Britain will probably end up, in practice, with less sovereignty than it has now.
Britain will be even more a cultural colony of the U.S., with American trash culture and degeneracy being even more of an influence.
Britain will go on becoming more totalitarian, with every crazy American politically correct idea being enforced by law.
I thought Brexit sounded wonderful back in 2016. Now I fear it will be a disaster.
Stopping mass immigration from the Third World is needed many times more urgently than leaving the EU. I hope both happen. Daniel Hannan, I note, hopes Brexit will mean more Third World immigrants coming to the UK. I think Nigel Farage said the same thing.
DeleteStopping mass immigration from the Third World is needed many times more urgently than leaving the EU. I hope both happen.
DeleteI'm more and more convinced that you can't have both.
Daniel Hannan, I note, hopes Brexit will mean more Third World immigrants coming to the UK. I think Nigel Farage said the same thing.
It's a certainty. It's not just the demand for cheap labour and more consumers. Mass Third World immigration will be used to punish the British people for voting for Brexit.
The trouble with Brexit is that it's obvious in retrospect that it was poorly thought out. Britain's problems were almost all the fault of successive postwar British governments rather than the fault of the EU. Brussels wasn't the problem. Westminster was the problem. Whitehall was the problem. The unbelievably vicious British political establishment was the problem.
Leaving the EU was never going to fix those problems. A post-Brexit Britain will be even more of a Third World hellhole and even more of a police state.
We have been lucky to have a reservoir of excellent Eastern European immigrants who share our values (I speak of Christianity and European civilisation rather then modish ideas) just as the US is lucky to have Hispanics who are culturally European and Christian. But Eastern European immigrants have not prevented the UK allowing 60,000 non-EEA immigrants to settle each year and allowing many more illegals to do so.
DeleteIf only England could copy the American First Amendment and have free speech again, as we did until 1965. Referendums and election of leading public officials have much to recommend them.
ReplyDeleteI do not want England to be American or European, but inevitably it is strongly influenced by each of those continents.
If only England could copy the American First Amendment and have free speech again
DeleteThe First Amendment does not guarantee free speech. It merely means that the government cannot directly censor. But the government doesn't need. The corporate sector is happy to do the censoring for the government. In fact the First Amendment makes things worse - in effect it gives corporations the right to decide what people can say and what people can think. And those corporations are entirely unaccountable.
And America has the First Amendment and it's a social and cultural sewer.
The First Amendment does a huge power of good. Private companies are not obliged to relay views they dislike nor in a free society should they. It is not free speech that causes America's defects.
Delete