Liberalism has had its day
Many remember the 2012 London Olympics with pride. The games showcased a country that appeared to be very modern, at ease with itself and a beacon to the world. They allowed much of London and the elites of politics, business and the media to bask in the glow of global admiration. For many in the UK though, it must have demonstrated an utter disconnect. A huge chunk of the population felt left out, let down and completely unrepresented in this new UK. These were the ones that had been hurt by the liberal economic settlement and ignored in the socio-political one.
Economically much of the country has never recovered from Thatcher. Whole chunks of it were de-industrialised nearly overnight as mining pits were shut and state industries privatised. Thatcher attacked inflation via interest rate rises driving the cost of borrowing up and with it the value of the pound. Much of traditional industry may have survived if given time and support to adapt but none was provided - they simply went bust.
The policy of privatisation has been continued by all parties - the selling off of state assets at knockdown prices. It was supposed to inject ‘innovation’ and ‘efficiency’ into the former state companies and increase investment. In reality, investment has been kept to a minimum in order to maximise profits. In many cases the companies have been asset stripped for the benefit of their foreign owners, many of whom are located in tax havens. One only has to look at Thames Water to see this played out. There is not enough value left in the company to pay for the new super sewer in London, so instead the consumer is being charged more. Public anger has increased with each new sell off, a lot of the time to foreign governments. Apparently UK politicians don’t mind state ownership as long it is not ours.
The economy has become ever more unbalanced with each passing year with London and the South East growing much faster. It has sucked the youth and innovation from other parts of the country further exacerbating regional disparities. Politicians have accelerated this trend by showering money on London via infrastructure spending as the ‘golden goose’ of the UK economy. It is easier to simply tax London and inject the proceeds into other regions to try and maintain consumption (and therefore the local economies) rather than fix anything.
There has been an obsession with free trade by all governments for decades. This works well for the financial sector or hi tech exporters who don’t compete on price. But for everyone else - when you pit a UK worker on £10 an hour against a Chinese one on £0.20 an hour - guess who wins? No one wants to talk about it though as that would mean challenging the dominant ideology. It has been easier to simply demand all workers to upskill to ‘compete’ globally. But it is not possible for every person in this country to work in IT or banking.
No party has actually made an effort to deal with the yawning economic inequalities. That would have smacked too much of an industrial policy which went out of vogue in the 70s. Nothing has been allowed to get in the way of free market ideology. The result is obvious; you only have to visit some towns and regions to find that the biggest employers are supermarkets or other retailers - there is no industrial base so consumption is the only economic output.
Free trade and free markets sound great if you are doing well for yourself. They are an efficient way to allocate resources as they require no central planning. But if you are at the bottom of the pile, were born there, think your kids are likely to stay there and have watched the destruction of your communities, you could be forgiven for wondering why no one is willing to consider an alternative.
The privatisation of the public realm has taken away many of the shared institutions that helped bind the country together. You don’t have British Telecom, British Rail or even the NHS, you have atomised sub-companies and organisations which all report to the individual regions, nations or shareholders. Economic liberalisation via privatisation has helped to unpick the ties that bind the fabric of the country together.
Politically, the lines of accountability have been uprooted due to constitutional changes including devolution to the home nations, introduction of metropolitan mayors and even unitary local authorities. Consecutive governments have devolved power but without a clear plan for how to bind it together. Power has gone to the home nations but without any thought being given to the English demos. Apparently they don’t deserve it. The outcome is the home nations see Westminster as an English parliament but the English see it as a British parliament.
Crazily, England is the only nation which is apparently not allowed any nationhood. It is remarkable the amount of money and goodwill that flows out to the other nations, with mainly abuse returning from the various nationalist parties. Many shrug their shoulders but it would be nice if English politicians could at least show a modicum of respect for normal national pageantry. Most seem embarrassed by the idea. In 2014, Emily Thornberry demonstrated what many felt when she tweeted comments about people who hang English flags outside their homes. Sadly a very standard response from the liberal class. No wonder many who do care about Britishness or want to celebrate Englishness have looked on aghast.
Social reforms have been accelerating for some time driven by efforts to increase diversity in national life, promotion of minority cultures, women’s rights and even recognition of parallel legal systems like Sharia law. Tolerance and diversity is a good thing and should be celebrated. But there are implications which people should be able to discuss in public. There is very little objection in the UK to the celebration of different cultures and religion - there is nothing more British than hitting a curry house on a Friday night. But there has been a steady pressure to ignore the problems that have grown up around the diversity agenda that has been pushed aggressively.
Politicians can still barely bring themselves to utter the name Rotherham without turning white and starting to apologise. This was the systematic raping and abusing of white children by mainly men of Pakistani descent. This was widely known in the town at the time but nobody did anything for fear of offending or being called a racist. This is an extreme but no means only example. In London Jewish orthodox children were found be attending illegal schools with the full knowledge of local communities. In Birmingham there was a conspiracy to take over schools in Birmingham and impose Islamist teachings.
People have watched political correctness seeping into the discourse, closing down debate when many want to discuss things openly. Those who have tried have been attacked by the liberal class who don’t want to acknowledge the problems or accept people’s right to disagree. Increasingly hate speech laws have been used to legally silence people or, in the case of universities, no-platform speakers who would dare challenge the established norms. This is demonstrated by Gavin Esler, a former journalist and Chancellor of the University of Kent, who recently suggested that TV channels shouldn’t allow pro-Brexit voices on the news.
You see the same issue when you talk about migration. In 2001, William Hague the then-leader of the opposition said:
“Talk about immigration and they call you racist; talk about your nation and they call you Little Englanders”
That was nearly 20 years ago and nothing has changed. Any effort to talk about migration is met by a wall of hostility. The idea that it is part of a government's responsibility to manage it seems to be lost on many people. Migration is a good thing but the UK is already one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Its population has surged from 60 million in 2000 to 66 million in under 19 years and that is simply unsustainable.
Many, especially on the left, have argued that large-scale migration suppressed wages, especially for those at the bottom of the income scale. They have been shouted down with accusations of racism and xenophobia. The slowdown in migration post-Brexit has proven the left correct, as manpower shortages in key sectors have driven wages up.
But under all of this is the unspoken - an unwillingness to talk about the settled population’s needs or concerns or that they should have a voice. Apparently if you are working class or even from a settled community, what you need is more change regardless of whether you want it or not. The impact on your community, public services or even your financial opportunities are secondary to an ideology of liberalism.
Is there any surprise that polls show public solidarity decreasing? Research shows that as a population becomes less rooted and more diverse people are less willing to pay taxes to help others. This makes sense as humans are tribalistic by nature. Throw in the sheer volume and speed of change and this will only get worse. These problems have been there for a long time and growing steadily. That there would be a reaction was clearly signposted for those interested enough to look. The growth of UKIP was as much a reaction to political correctness as a scream about migration. The election of Corbyn in 2015 as leader of the Labour party was a clear sign that the economy was not working for all.
The reaction of many MPs to the idea of actually helping to reduce inequality was telling. Their attacks on Corbyn started from the beginning and was as much about the idea of changing the liberal settlement as on him directly. Certainly they demonstrated the lengths they would go to defend the status quo. But it has still been a shock to see the reaction to the EU referendum.
This was a landmark event in recent UK history, as every vote mattered, unlike with the first-past-the-post electoral system. It brought people back into the political process for the first time in decades or for the first time ever. After the votes were counted, it was a rejection of the status quo by over 52% of the voting population.
But the liberal elite - the modern day establishment - made up of business, politicians, media, academia and even charities - all decided that the status quo worked for them and have fought tooth and nail to maintain it. They have spent 3 years insulting the intelligence and motives of anyone who voted leave whilst also ignoring their own culpability in creating a social settlement so unfair so many rejected it. In the process they have demonstrated a level of contempt for democracy that still shocks.
The liberal class in the UK have been shown to be fundamentally illiberal. They have no interest in the plurality of opinions. At best it can be described as a progressive conservatism which wants a huge portion of the population to go away or simply stop voting. It should be the antithesis of modern liberal democracy - what the UK considers itself.
With hindsight it shouldn’t really have surprised anyone who has watched the political class morph into one large mass over the last 30 years. All centred around the same policies and social outlook. There is very little difference between them now. You can see it in the way the major parliamentary parties have become decoupled from their core voters. Labour MPs, for the most part, hate the working class from their heartlands and Conservative MPs loathe the lower middle class voters from the shires. They are truly a class above who make their snobbery and disdain for much of the electorate obvious. They are more happy with each other in Westminster or amongst other city based liberals. The idea that the people should have a voice in the political process beyond ticking their party’s box on election day is anathema to them.
Equally, there is a broad agreement between traditional right and left voters. Polls show broad support for re-nationalisation of the water / railways system and mounting concerns about the public sphere including education and health. Both are worried about the effects of free trade and economic liberalisation and think that the government should do more to protect the country from globalisation. Even on defence, there is a large amount of agreement on supporting and funding the military correctly. This is all wrapped up in a patriotism for the UK and the home nations.
Those let down by the political class over decades voted in good faith in the EU referendum, only for the establishment to spit in their faces. The Brexit Party has emerged with a clear a message which resonates. The two main parties face an unprecedented backlash as people can see the contempt they are held in. The establishment in turn holds up support for Farage as evidence of the 52%’s innate stupidity and xenophobia. Round and round the frenzy goes.
Traditional voters know what they voted for - they wanted change. They have looked at the liberal settlement and found it wanting. Found it uncaring about the majority when it would worry about the minority and obsessed with market efficiency regardless of the human cost. More than anything liberalism has forgotten that a nation is a home which is more than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, I suspect the free trade obsessives and the transnationalists are in for a shock. People don’t want to open up the economy further nor give away more power - in fact quite the reverse. The next decades are likely to see a large reversal of much of the worst ravages of both.
In my view politicians have broken the political system and there is now no going back but in that process something new is being born. I just hope the existing parties burn to the ground along the way. Personally I am rather excited by the future.
Economically much of the country has never recovered from Thatcher. Whole chunks of it were de-industrialised nearly overnight as mining pits were shut and state industries privatised. Thatcher attacked inflation via interest rate rises driving the cost of borrowing up and with it the value of the pound. Much of traditional industry may have survived if given time and support to adapt but none was provided - they simply went bust.
The policy of privatisation has been continued by all parties - the selling off of state assets at knockdown prices. It was supposed to inject ‘innovation’ and ‘efficiency’ into the former state companies and increase investment. In reality, investment has been kept to a minimum in order to maximise profits. In many cases the companies have been asset stripped for the benefit of their foreign owners, many of whom are located in tax havens. One only has to look at Thames Water to see this played out. There is not enough value left in the company to pay for the new super sewer in London, so instead the consumer is being charged more. Public anger has increased with each new sell off, a lot of the time to foreign governments. Apparently UK politicians don’t mind state ownership as long it is not ours.
The economy has become ever more unbalanced with each passing year with London and the South East growing much faster. It has sucked the youth and innovation from other parts of the country further exacerbating regional disparities. Politicians have accelerated this trend by showering money on London via infrastructure spending as the ‘golden goose’ of the UK economy. It is easier to simply tax London and inject the proceeds into other regions to try and maintain consumption (and therefore the local economies) rather than fix anything.
There has been an obsession with free trade by all governments for decades. This works well for the financial sector or hi tech exporters who don’t compete on price. But for everyone else - when you pit a UK worker on £10 an hour against a Chinese one on £0.20 an hour - guess who wins? No one wants to talk about it though as that would mean challenging the dominant ideology. It has been easier to simply demand all workers to upskill to ‘compete’ globally. But it is not possible for every person in this country to work in IT or banking.
No party has actually made an effort to deal with the yawning economic inequalities. That would have smacked too much of an industrial policy which went out of vogue in the 70s. Nothing has been allowed to get in the way of free market ideology. The result is obvious; you only have to visit some towns and regions to find that the biggest employers are supermarkets or other retailers - there is no industrial base so consumption is the only economic output.
Free trade and free markets sound great if you are doing well for yourself. They are an efficient way to allocate resources as they require no central planning. But if you are at the bottom of the pile, were born there, think your kids are likely to stay there and have watched the destruction of your communities, you could be forgiven for wondering why no one is willing to consider an alternative.
The privatisation of the public realm has taken away many of the shared institutions that helped bind the country together. You don’t have British Telecom, British Rail or even the NHS, you have atomised sub-companies and organisations which all report to the individual regions, nations or shareholders. Economic liberalisation via privatisation has helped to unpick the ties that bind the fabric of the country together.
Politically, the lines of accountability have been uprooted due to constitutional changes including devolution to the home nations, introduction of metropolitan mayors and even unitary local authorities. Consecutive governments have devolved power but without a clear plan for how to bind it together. Power has gone to the home nations but without any thought being given to the English demos. Apparently they don’t deserve it. The outcome is the home nations see Westminster as an English parliament but the English see it as a British parliament.
Crazily, England is the only nation which is apparently not allowed any nationhood. It is remarkable the amount of money and goodwill that flows out to the other nations, with mainly abuse returning from the various nationalist parties. Many shrug their shoulders but it would be nice if English politicians could at least show a modicum of respect for normal national pageantry. Most seem embarrassed by the idea. In 2014, Emily Thornberry demonstrated what many felt when she tweeted comments about people who hang English flags outside their homes. Sadly a very standard response from the liberal class. No wonder many who do care about Britishness or want to celebrate Englishness have looked on aghast.
Social reforms have been accelerating for some time driven by efforts to increase diversity in national life, promotion of minority cultures, women’s rights and even recognition of parallel legal systems like Sharia law. Tolerance and diversity is a good thing and should be celebrated. But there are implications which people should be able to discuss in public. There is very little objection in the UK to the celebration of different cultures and religion - there is nothing more British than hitting a curry house on a Friday night. But there has been a steady pressure to ignore the problems that have grown up around the diversity agenda that has been pushed aggressively.
Politicians can still barely bring themselves to utter the name Rotherham without turning white and starting to apologise. This was the systematic raping and abusing of white children by mainly men of Pakistani descent. This was widely known in the town at the time but nobody did anything for fear of offending or being called a racist. This is an extreme but no means only example. In London Jewish orthodox children were found be attending illegal schools with the full knowledge of local communities. In Birmingham there was a conspiracy to take over schools in Birmingham and impose Islamist teachings.
People have watched political correctness seeping into the discourse, closing down debate when many want to discuss things openly. Those who have tried have been attacked by the liberal class who don’t want to acknowledge the problems or accept people’s right to disagree. Increasingly hate speech laws have been used to legally silence people or, in the case of universities, no-platform speakers who would dare challenge the established norms. This is demonstrated by Gavin Esler, a former journalist and Chancellor of the University of Kent, who recently suggested that TV channels shouldn’t allow pro-Brexit voices on the news.
You see the same issue when you talk about migration. In 2001, William Hague the then-leader of the opposition said:
“Talk about immigration and they call you racist; talk about your nation and they call you Little Englanders”
That was nearly 20 years ago and nothing has changed. Any effort to talk about migration is met by a wall of hostility. The idea that it is part of a government's responsibility to manage it seems to be lost on many people. Migration is a good thing but the UK is already one of the most densely populated countries in Europe. Its population has surged from 60 million in 2000 to 66 million in under 19 years and that is simply unsustainable.
Many, especially on the left, have argued that large-scale migration suppressed wages, especially for those at the bottom of the income scale. They have been shouted down with accusations of racism and xenophobia. The slowdown in migration post-Brexit has proven the left correct, as manpower shortages in key sectors have driven wages up.
But under all of this is the unspoken - an unwillingness to talk about the settled population’s needs or concerns or that they should have a voice. Apparently if you are working class or even from a settled community, what you need is more change regardless of whether you want it or not. The impact on your community, public services or even your financial opportunities are secondary to an ideology of liberalism.
Is there any surprise that polls show public solidarity decreasing? Research shows that as a population becomes less rooted and more diverse people are less willing to pay taxes to help others. This makes sense as humans are tribalistic by nature. Throw in the sheer volume and speed of change and this will only get worse. These problems have been there for a long time and growing steadily. That there would be a reaction was clearly signposted for those interested enough to look. The growth of UKIP was as much a reaction to political correctness as a scream about migration. The election of Corbyn in 2015 as leader of the Labour party was a clear sign that the economy was not working for all.
The reaction of many MPs to the idea of actually helping to reduce inequality was telling. Their attacks on Corbyn started from the beginning and was as much about the idea of changing the liberal settlement as on him directly. Certainly they demonstrated the lengths they would go to defend the status quo. But it has still been a shock to see the reaction to the EU referendum.
This was a landmark event in recent UK history, as every vote mattered, unlike with the first-past-the-post electoral system. It brought people back into the political process for the first time in decades or for the first time ever. After the votes were counted, it was a rejection of the status quo by over 52% of the voting population.
But the liberal elite - the modern day establishment - made up of business, politicians, media, academia and even charities - all decided that the status quo worked for them and have fought tooth and nail to maintain it. They have spent 3 years insulting the intelligence and motives of anyone who voted leave whilst also ignoring their own culpability in creating a social settlement so unfair so many rejected it. In the process they have demonstrated a level of contempt for democracy that still shocks.
The liberal class in the UK have been shown to be fundamentally illiberal. They have no interest in the plurality of opinions. At best it can be described as a progressive conservatism which wants a huge portion of the population to go away or simply stop voting. It should be the antithesis of modern liberal democracy - what the UK considers itself.
With hindsight it shouldn’t really have surprised anyone who has watched the political class morph into one large mass over the last 30 years. All centred around the same policies and social outlook. There is very little difference between them now. You can see it in the way the major parliamentary parties have become decoupled from their core voters. Labour MPs, for the most part, hate the working class from their heartlands and Conservative MPs loathe the lower middle class voters from the shires. They are truly a class above who make their snobbery and disdain for much of the electorate obvious. They are more happy with each other in Westminster or amongst other city based liberals. The idea that the people should have a voice in the political process beyond ticking their party’s box on election day is anathema to them.
Equally, there is a broad agreement between traditional right and left voters. Polls show broad support for re-nationalisation of the water / railways system and mounting concerns about the public sphere including education and health. Both are worried about the effects of free trade and economic liberalisation and think that the government should do more to protect the country from globalisation. Even on defence, there is a large amount of agreement on supporting and funding the military correctly. This is all wrapped up in a patriotism for the UK and the home nations.
Those let down by the political class over decades voted in good faith in the EU referendum, only for the establishment to spit in their faces. The Brexit Party has emerged with a clear a message which resonates. The two main parties face an unprecedented backlash as people can see the contempt they are held in. The establishment in turn holds up support for Farage as evidence of the 52%’s innate stupidity and xenophobia. Round and round the frenzy goes.
Traditional voters know what they voted for - they wanted change. They have looked at the liberal settlement and found it wanting. Found it uncaring about the majority when it would worry about the minority and obsessed with market efficiency regardless of the human cost. More than anything liberalism has forgotten that a nation is a home which is more than the sum of its parts. With that in mind, I suspect the free trade obsessives and the transnationalists are in for a shock. People don’t want to open up the economy further nor give away more power - in fact quite the reverse. The next decades are likely to see a large reversal of much of the worst ravages of both.
In my view politicians have broken the political system and there is now no going back but in that process something new is being born. I just hope the existing parties burn to the ground along the way. Personally I am rather excited by the future.
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