Hannah Arendt would be worried about how information technology makes evil more likely

If you looked up evil in the dictionary there would probably be a picture of Adolf Hitler or the Nazis, which is fair enough as they murdered over six million people. Many books have been written trying to understand the evil at the heart of the Nazi regime, but the definitive work was written by Hannah Arendt in her book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

The book chronicles the life and trial of Adolf Eichmann who, amongst other things, planned the transportation of Jews during the Holocaust that allowed for millions to be moved to camps where they were murdered. Eichmann was not remarkable for a cold calculating intelligence. He wasn’t evil like Hannibal Lecter or Darth Vader. He wasn’t possessed by a fanatical hatred of Jews, beyond the antisemitism that was prevalent at the time. Eichmann wasn’t remarkable at all, really, apart from the remarkably appalling deeds he was a part of.

Arendt wanted to explain how someone so normal could be a key part of such massive evil. Her book also explores how we got to the point where great acts of evil weren’t conducted on the battlefield or in the sacking of cities, but by bureaucrats behind desks. Her book remains the best and most insightful exploration of human evil, and should be read by everyone.

The work of genocide involves a lot of bureaucracy

Eichmann’s job was a senior - but not quite at the top - bureaucratic position in the public sector, but he participated in one of (if not THE) most awful things that has ever happened. Arendt’s book shows that in modern industrial society, the everyday work of genocide is like that of any other office job, and the people most suited to it are the same office drones that are found all over the world.

The book shows how a totalitarian system like Nazi Germany became a part of normal life. The Holocaust needed paperwork. When we think of evil, we think of something abhorrent or something whose every part is disgusting to us as moral human beings. We don’t think of things that are dull, like paperwork. Arendt argues that under totalitarianism, evil becomes everyday. It no longer looks like evil. This allows for great evil to be committed.

Doing evil requires modern infrastructure. It means people doing the office work of evil, the logistics, the memo writing, the planning meetings, the quarterly reviews. Arendt argues most of the people involved in, and necessary for, the doing of great evil are separated from the actual acts of evil: killing people, brutalising them, taking away their homes, forcing them into camps, committing mass exterminations. Most people involved in the process that leads to great evil might not think what they are doing is evil.

One of the biggest changes that has taken place between when Arendt was writing and today is that the kind of office work that Eichmann did has now been digitised. Computers have removed the need for a dystopian society to have legions of people typing out arrest warrants, a la Terry Gillingham’s Brazil. The growth of information technology means that you need fewer Eichmanns, people willing to do great evil but at a distance from it, to do something really terrible today.

Turning people into machines

As much as needing fewer bureaucrats is useful if you want to do evil, there is a more significant change that information technology has brought about that makes totalitarianism more likely. For evil to occur, something needs to happen to turn ordinary people into people like Eichmann. That something is a process that occurs in totalitarian societies, like the ones that Arendt spent her life studying.

Arendt argued that a totalitarian political system, like the one in Nazi Germany, turned people into machines and this allowed them to do the extraordinarily evil things that the regime required. She called this The Banality of Evil. Arendt argued that Eichmann stopped thinking and thus was able to be a part of a genocide. She said we need to watch out for anything or anyone who seeks to subvert our capacity for critical thinking and turn us into machines.

Totalitarian societies turn people into machines and they don’t need machines to do it. However, our modern machines make it easier to turn people into the thoughtless drone that Eichmann became. To see why that is, we need to look at another work by Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism.

How social media isolates us

Social media isolates us from each other as relations through technology come to replace non-technology-based relations. James Williams explores this in his book Stand Out of Our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, in which he discusses how social media and mobile technology change our behaviour. One of these changes is a process that Williams describes as interactions on social media replacing the things we are seeking to achieve by using social media. This means that over time our goals change to be what social media platforms want, instead of what we want.

We might join a social media platform, install it on our phone, take it everywhere with us and check it all day because we want to connect with friends and family, or network with colleagues, but social media platforms are incapable of measuring how many meaningful social interactions we have. What it can measure is our attention to the platform, likes, clicks, video watches, etc. and platforms attempt to monopolise our attention so they can sell adverts.

Eventually, the platforms train us to see a like or comment as a social interaction with a friend or family member when they’re not the same thing. The platforms change our behaviour so that we see what they want, our attention on the platform, as what we want, for meaningful social interactions with others. Williams calls this process tech obscuring our starlight or our guiding principles behind our actions.

Our starlight is obscured

As our starlight is obscured, interactions on technology platforms come to replace meaningful human interactions. This means we become more isolated from each other, which Arendt identified as a precursor to totalitarianism.

Totalitarianism requires people to be lonely in a mass society full of people who are disconnected from each other. When you are lonely in a mass society everyone constantly assumes the worst about each other and people stop trusting each other. This is further aided by social media showing the worst aspects of humanity, from online abuse to petty put-downs. When social media has replaced meaningful social interactions, it’s easy to stop trusting other people.

Arendt wrote that totalitarianism requires people to be isolated from each other, but also be able to connect to form mass movements like the Nazi Party or the Russian Communist Party. Being lonely in a mass society is, ironically, a shared experience. Recruits to the totalitarian movement are both lonely and connected via their loneliness. Social media provides the dual purpose of isolating us from each other by taking the place of human interactions, and by allowing members of a nascent totalitarian movement to connect.

Undermining objective truth

There are other ways that modern technology can aid totalitarian movements, which is that social media, and the filter bubbles they create, undermines our shared understanding of the truth.

Arendt wrote an essay called Truth and Politics, in which she argued that facts are fragile and that organised lying is a threat to facts. She said that we cannot allow those in power to undermine the belief in facts all together. Public institutions like libraries, universities, etc. keep records of facts that can be shared and help maintain the truth. Totalitarian movements seek to attack these institutions.

By now all this should be ringing alarm bells and reminding you of our post-truth social media world where Donald Trump and his supporters attack the idea of objective reality with “alternative facts”. Arendt would have recognised the attack on truth as that of an aspiring totalitarian.

How social media undermines truth

Social media filter bubbles mean people only interact with people who share the same values, which means that a lie that reflects those values can spread without ever being troubled by the truth. Especially if that truth conflicts with these values as it will never be shared into those social media communities, protected by filter bubbles.

Platforms like Facebook and Twitter either present all information as equally valid (regardless of its source or validity) or emphasise pieces of information, articles, opinions, posts, etc. based on how much interaction they have had (again regardless of how truthful or authoritative they are). There is no quality scoring based on how true or false information is. A complete lie that generates more interactions on the platforms - as emotionally charged lies are likely to do - will appear more prominently than a mundane fact.

Arendt argued that once the idea of objective truth breaks down, the world can be reshaped to what it needs to be. Anyone can become a criminal. It can be said that a fair election was actually rigged. Human life can be redefined as worthless. These are the tools that totalitarian movements use to turn people into machines. Events like the above made it possible for Eichmann to do terrible evil. Recent technological changes have only made this easier.

Attacks on authority

Adding to the problem is the totalitarian attack on authority. Totalitarians are a subspecies of authoritarians, but at the same time they erode the idea that authority can come from anywhere outside of their movement.

Arendt wrote an essay called What is Authority? In which she argued that we no longer respect authority and this causes problems as authority is necessary for society to function. Arendt says that authority is how we get things done without having to use reason or violence. Teachers and coaches have authority, which is why we obey them. Authority allows things to be done efficiently.

Totalitarians attack other sources of authority whilst making the real sources of authority within their movement opaque. Arendt describes this in detail in The Origins of Totalitarianism. This process keeps citizens in a perpetual state of uncertainty as to who exactly has authority over them and what their instructions are. This uncertainty over authority is the everyday experience of Totalitarianism.

Choose your own authority

One reason totalitarians do this is to remove our capacity for action. Without authority, we cannot act together. The primary motivation for following an instruction is not authority but fear of violence. Arendt says that violence is the opposite of authority. A constant fear of violence is also the everyday experience of life under totalitarianism. This was most memorably captured by George Orwell’s description of Room 101 in 1984.

Social media and modern technology platforms attack authority in the way that they present information, opinions, articles, etc. based on how much they have been interacted with, instead of based on the authority of the author. This is because they want to show you content to monopolise your attention and not authoritative content. This undermines the concept of authority.

Filter bubbles that undermine the concept of objective truth also attack authority. In a post-truth world, authority can be anything or anyone you want it to be. It could be Alex Jones or Trump or someone from your neighbourhood. Why not choose an authority that shares your values? If we all live in a bubble where authority is the people we agree with then our capacity for action is reduced.

The importance of action 

The idea of action is central to Arendt’s thinking and it comes up in several of her works. Arendt wrote about the importance of the Viva Activa or active life in her book The Human Condition. She said life had three elements: labour, which is the biological stuff people need to live, work, which is making things like tools that help us survive, and action, which is the social element of human life. Arendt argues that action is essential to political life. Totalitarianism prevents action.

Totalitarianism attacks action in many ways, which is enabled by modern technology. We have seen how it attacks authority which makes action possible, but tech also makes us isolated from each other. Furthermore, it obscures the starlight of our values changing the action we want to take into one that isn’t meaningful for us but benefits the technology platforms. On top of this, it attacks the concept of a shared truth, which is necessary for shared action.

Arendt’s warning

Action is the essential element of our meaningful social and political interaction with other people. The idea undermines a lot of Arendt’s other writing. Without our ability to create action, we are prey to totalitarian movements. Without action, totalitarian movements can turn us into unthinking machines, capable of doing great evil like Eichmann. 

Arendt described all this in an age before modern computers, technology platforms and social media. None of these processes that Arendt described are new in the Information Age, however, changes in information technology do make it more likely for the processes that Arendt described to arise.

What do we think about when we think about Derry?

What do you think of when someone says Derry? Most likely the excellent sit com Derry Girls, but try and think about the place not the show. Invoking the name of any place brings certain thoughts to mind. It’s worth taking some time to examine these thoughts to make sure that our thinking isn’t guided by stereotypes or outdated information. 

So how can we think about Derry? We can think of Derry as a historic British city. It has plenty of history and is in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It has around the same population as Carlisle, a comparison that invokes a place of a certain size and character. Also, like Carlisle, Derry is a regional hub and the only large city in a large rural area. 

Other British cities around the same size as Derry are Gloucester, Winchester and Exeter. This company conveys a different image of a city. A place that is historic, metropolitan but not too metropolitan, picturesque, big enough to have more than one Tesco and several microbreweries. All these things are true about Derry, but the way we think about Derry is not the same as how we think about Carlisle, Gloucester, Winchester and Exeter. 

A historic British city 

So, why don’t we think about Derry in the same way that we think about other historic British cities? Derry has beautiful historic buildings such as the Guildhall and Medieval Town Walls. It dates to the Plantation of Ulster, when Protestants moved over from Scotland to Northern Ireland. 

Derry was originally a monastery in the Middle Ages, involved in the Tudor conquest of Ireland, the Siege of Derry took place here in 1689 and the city was important during the Second World War. During the war, Derry was the UK and the Allies’ most Westerly port and thus where American conveys would arrive. Derry was also key to the Northern Ireland civil rights movement.

A modern British city

When thinking about Derry we shouldn’t let it be defined by its history. We can think of Derry as a modern, urban hub in a largely rural part of the country. Here the comparison to Carlisle is apt. Derry has good restaurants, bars and nightlife. Craft beer has yet to take off, but a range of enjoyable local ales as well as an interesting selection of beers from the Republic of Ireland are available in most bars.

Like most regional centres, Derry has interesting pieces of public art and modern architecture. There is the Hands Across the Divide sculpture, by Maurice Harron, and three impressive bridges across the River Foyle. There’s the Craigavon Bridge the oldest, the Foyle Bridge, which looks majestic when viewed from the river bank, and the Peace Bridge a striking curved footbridge that neatly complements the city centre. There are also murals and other pieces of public art, including the Derry Girls mural, as well as a striking modern train station.

Culture and celebrations

As a regional centre of culture, Derry hosts festivals and celebrations. Halloween is enjoyed more enthusiastically in Derry than anywhere else in the UK. When I was there every single shop, pub and hotel foyer were meticulously decorated for the occasion.

Screens around the city projected videos of Halloween characters that also reflected Celtic mythology. These were pitched at the right level of creepiness so that they weren’t naff but also weren’t too scary for most children. Music was played in public squares, whilst Halloween markets and club nights took place over an entire weekend of celebration. There is even a skeleton on the city’s shield.

Recent history

Using these parameters, we can think about Derry in the same way as any other historic or modern British City. So why don’t we? When I first asked you to think about Derry, I doubt that historic buildings, modern bridges or festivals came to mind.

When thinking about Derry it feels like a mis-categorisation or unfair to the city to include it in the same bracket as Exeter, Gloucester or even Carlisle. True, all cities are unique, but Derry stands apart from its British counterparts.

The reason is simple, Derry’s recent history casts a long shadow over any thinking about it as a place. Its medieval history and modern architecture are equal to that of Exeter or Carlisle, but it seems to be a betrayal of its recent history to foreground these when discussing the city of Derry. 

The totality of history

When we think about Derry, do we think about the demonstrations of the Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association being first banned and then blocked by the force of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1968? Do we think about the 1969 Battle of the Bogside, between Catholic residents and the police, which according to some accounts was the start of the Troubles? Do we think about the shooting dead of 14 unarmed civilians by paratroopers on Bloody Sunday in 1972?

These events took place before I was born, but this is what first comes to mind when I think about Derry. Do population, historic buildings, landmarks and nightlife cease to be relevant when weighted against such events? No place should be defined by one aspect of its history.

I am not for a moment suggesting that we forget about the Troubles. What I’m asking is when we’re thinking about Derry, or are thinking about how we think about Derry, are such events to be the totality of what we consider? Should we focus on what makes Derry different, rather than what makes it like other British cities?

Wildfire

Derry’s recent past is never far away. Driving through the suburbs I spied graffiti saying “No Irish Sea Border” and “Fuck Boris” on suburban walls. Recent tensions lurk beneath the surface, like the painful collective memories of the sisters in 2020’s Wildfire (set in a community on the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland).

In the film, the buried trauma of sisters Kelly and Lauren is stirred up by Kelly’s return from a period of vagrancy and her disruptive presence upsets the fragile stability of Lauren’s life. Set to a backdrop of news stories about Brexit possibly creating a hard border on the Ireland of Ireland and with flashbacks to the sister’s childhood during the Troubles, the trauma of the family’s past and the disruption that Kelly causes serve as a metaphor for Northern Ireland’s fragile peace and tested constitutional arrangements. It shows how this sits atop painful recent history that can be sent tumbling out of control by unexpected chaotic forces.

Different and the same

It’s easy to think of Derry as different to other British cities. In many ways it is. The cities I mentioned above, Carlisle, Exeter, etc., are different because – and you have probably been yelling this at the screen for a while - they’re English and not in Northern Ireland. However, in many ways, the city is the same as the rest of the country and other cities in the Western world. There’s still Guinness and chain supermarkets, which have touched every corner of the Earth.

A recent Unite Against Racism rally demanding open borders after the drowning of migrants shows that Derry is having the same debates as the rest of the Western world. What to do about refugees and borders in the age of looming climate disasters? How do we be less racist in the 21st century? The debate continues from Derry to Doncaster to Denver.

Everywhere has history 

Every city is full of contradictions, controversies and has a complex identity. In Derry they are closer to the surface as they draw on recent history. I’m from Leicester, where we never stop reminding visitors that a King was found in a car park here - apart from when we win the odd football tournament.

We forget that this event was the culmination of a traumatic and bloody civil war that divided communities and killed huge numbers of people. The pain has faded over the centuries to the point it has been buried, resurfaced, propagandised, memorialised, romanticised, debated and finally turned into a novelty mug sold in a gift shop. Is this the fate that eventually awaits Derry’s history? Maybe, if the way that every other city treats its own complex history is anything to go by.

How we think about a place when we think about a place

Derry is a more complex place to be characterised by its most famous sitcom or most well-known historic events. Is it important to acknowledge what makes every place special and not to forget the tragedies of recent history, but it’s also important to remember what we all have in common, which can easily be forgotten when considering the highly charged emotional events of living memory.

We should be conscious of how we think about a place when we think about a place so that we don’t get trapped into the same endless cycle of historic thinking, and never to open our minds to new possibilities or a place’s ever-evolving identity.

What is the New Right’s narrative, and why does it appeal to some on the left?

The “New Right” is having a moment. That cannot be denied. Neoconservatives - with their Christian moralising about The Simpsons or Desperate Housewives, love of globalisation and outsourcing, and desire to throw around American military might - are out of fashion on the right. Now the right is all about defending Western culture, economic and political nationalism, and fighting culture wars at home, not military wars overseas.

The “New Right” is not a political party or movement or philosophy. It’s not a group of people who think one thing or even share the same values beyond the broad description of being conservative. A few things can be said for certain about them: they are on the right, they are opposed to the left, they are most numerous in America (but have counterparts in the UK and the rest of the Western world) and, most importantly, they’re strongly against the establishment of liberals and big business. In other words, their main enemy is the Third Way of Bill Clinton and Tony Blair.

This new movement is best described in this article by James Pogue in Vanity Fair. To find out more about this movement read that article. It’s full of detailed reporting from years of studying the American right. What I want to talk about is the narrative that bands the diverse bits of New Right into this uneasy alliance. Their shared worldview. Most of my analysis draws heavily on Pogue’s article and I wouldn’t be able to write this if it wasn’t for his excellent reporting. 

The Cathedral

The narrative that (broadly) unites the New Right is called “the Cathedral”, which is a term to describe the liberal (both small and big “L”) institutions in democratic society. The Cathedral was coined by blogger Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) who is a known “intellect” popular with the New Right. The Cathedral narrative is difficult to define exactly, but it loosely describes a series of political, cultural and civil society institutions that create the cultural and political power nexus at the heart of America. The Cathedral extends from universities to the White House, via newspapers and business board rooms. It has power and protects its hold on power. The New Right are against The Cathedral. 

The New Right’s war against The Cathedral is mainly a culture war. The political theories behind the idea of The Cathedral are complex (although, at times, they’re conspiratorial and outright terrifying) however, on the surface the New Right are engaging in the standard anti-liberal, anti-woke, culture war that has gripped the right globally. At first appearance, it’s all very normal. They are opposed to left-wing institutions, like universities, and support right-wing institutions, like the police. However, there is something else going on here.

The New Right take the culture war to extreme ends. J. D Vance - author of Hillbilly Elegy, the Republican Party nominee in the 2022 Senate election in Ohio and member of the New Right - said to Pogue in the Vanity Fair piece linked above: “I tend to think that we should seize the institutions of the left and turn them against the left. We need like a de-Baathification program, a de-woke-ification program.” Banning everyone considered “woke” from government and cultural institutions is extreme, even by the standard of grumpy online conservatives, but what makes this different enough from the rest of the right to earn the moniker “New Right”?

Young, energetic and cool 

What makes the New Right different is that they have a cool edge that people like Piers Morgan and Nigel Farage can only dream of. They might be fighting the same culture war, but the above mentioned perpetually peeved press provocateurs aren’t the vanguard of a new culture, they're the reactionary end of an old, dying one.

The New Right has a punk edge to it. I have been kicked in the head at punk shows more times than I can count, and I’ll say that these suit-wearing nationalists are not punk, but they have, consciously or unconsciously, appropriated the aura of punk. They’re not standing up for the poor and marginalised as bands from The Clash to Dream Nails have done. They’re also not the shout of pain from a downtrodden underclass like the Sex Pistols were. However, they do have the youthful rebelliousness of punk

What they also have is the claim they are fighting a dominant, puritanical culture and that they are smashing up the neatly ordered world of the establishment by not giving a fuck. This cool edge means the scene has on its fringes trendy figures like podcaster, actress, filmmaker, model and Instagram personality Dasha Nekrasova, mentioned in Pogue’s piece, who most people know for playing Comfrey in Succession.

The New Right and the disaffected left

The presence of people like Nekrasova indicates that the New Right is a countercultural scene with youth and energy behind it. It also highlights how many disaffected members of the left are flirting with this scene. Nekrasova and her co-host, Anna Khachiyan, talk on their podcast Red Scare about how they supported Bernie Sanders and Nekrasova has been described as Sailor Socialism, after a clip of her being questioned by an InfoWars reporter dressed as a an anime character went viral. Yes, I know. Internet.

Recently, Nekrasova has been photographed with Alex Jones and has shared memes on Instagram with statements along the lines of “the far-left and the far-right should unite to destroy capitalism”. It’s all very horse-shoe politics.

As these are New York scenesters we’re talking about, all of this is laced in about ten levels of irony, making it impossible to know how much of this is genuine and how much is for the lols. Has the cool thing for it-girl New Yorkers to do switched from socialism to nationalism? Maybe. I’m not cool enough to know.

Cool world 

Nekrasova is not the only instance of someone who used to be on the left being in the New Right. Notably Lydia Laurenson, Yarvin’s fiancé, who describes herself in Pogue’s article as having “a background in social justice”, is part of the scene. Pogue writes that Laurenson “was ‘horrified’ by ‘how the mainstream media covered the [2020 BLM] riots.… It was just such a violation of all of my values.’”

Tellingly Pogue adds: “She’d had a strange realization after she and Yarvin started dating, discovering that some of her friends had been reading him for years. ‘I found out that all these people had been reading NRx stuff just like me. They just never told anyone about it,’ she said. ‘It has been very striking to me,’ she said, ‘how cool this world is becoming.’”

There seems to be a mix of disaffected left-wing people in amongst the right-wing culture warriors. There is likely to be a mix of reasons for this. Some are people who may think the left has become too extreme. Some are people who supported Bernie and his plans for radical change, and now that this has failed, they’re looking for another radical programme that might succeed in bringing down corporate America. Some people just want to see stuff burn. Some have always been drawn to fringe ideas that are common to the left and the right. 

Families and meaningful work 

The fact that the New Right has picked up some support from disaffected members on the left isn’t surprising. The New Right is opposed to Reaganomics and the Third Way, neither of which is loved by the left. Pogue wrote: “They share a the [sic] basic worldview: that individualist liberal ideology, increasingly bureaucratic governments, and big tech are all combining into a world that is at once tyrannical, chaotic, and devoid of the systems of value and morality that give human life richness and meaning.” This is something most people on the left can largely agree with.

At one point Pogue asks Blake Masters - a venture capitalist, a Republican nominee for the Senate in Arizona, close associate Peter Thiel and one of the most public figures in the New Right - what victory would look like to him, and he said: “It’s just families and meaningful work.” He added: “So that you can raise your kids and worship and pursue your hobbies and figure out what the meaning of it all is.” 

Pogue writes that “pretty much anyone could agree with this” and certainly lots of people on the left do. You would struggle to find someone who doesn’t believe in families and meaningful work on the left. What the left and the New Right have in common is that they believe that our current economic system - created through years of Reaganomics, globalisation, Third Way politics and neo-liberal economics - actively prevents this. 

Culture war grand standing on Fox News

The narrative of the New Right includes elements of left-wing politics, which is why it appeals to disaffected people on the left. The cool edginess of the scene, and the fact that it might have a tangible impact, also attracts people who are dissatisfied with the current system.

It’s interesting to note that when figures from the New Right are in private talking one-on-one to Pogue, they say things that could, at least, be sympathetic to left-wing arguments. When they are on TV, they resort to banging the culture war drum and liberal/leftie bashing.

There is more to the narrative and political project of the New Right than just culture war grand standing on Fox News. Even when they are doing culture war bits, they aren’t doing standard right-wing culture war talking points. Yes, they are socially conservative and opposed to social justice, but the New Right is big enough to include people from the so-called manosphere who give tips on how men can pick up women for casual sex. The New Right isn’t down with Christian moralising, they claim to be more accepting than the totalitarian and puritan liberals/left.

Like British nationalists

It’s hard to get to the bottom of exactly what the political philosophy behind the New Right narrative is, or what these people believe. Partly because it’s a large scene with lots of different people in it. What links them together is a narrative about society, where it’s gone wrong and what needs to be done to fix it.

As this is an anti-free market right-wing narrative, British readers will assume this movement is like the BNP and other British nationalist parties, who are also known for their right-wing social policies and opposition to globalisation. (Mainly the immigration side, but they have a side order of class war and protect the NHS from privatisation to go with it.) 

Late Republican period

There is something to this comparison. The New Right’s flirtation with conspiracy theories and their love of authoritarianism is certainly something they have in common with British nationalists. Vance talks in Pogue’s article about America being in a “late republican period”; referring to when Julius Caesar seized power from the Roman Republic. For a candidate for public office in November’s election, Vance is terrifyingly relaxed about the idea of a military strongman sweeping away democracy. 

Mentioning Caesar an Ancient Rome makes the whole thing sound classy. If Vance talked about Benito Mussolini’s March on Rome or Adolf Hitler’s Beer Hall Putsch it would make him sound more frightening, but it’s probably closer to what the New Right has in mind when people throw around phrases like late republican period.

This is an intellectualised Trumpism. It takes blustering about elections being stolen and turns it into a narrative that encompasses ideas about how the state works, how culture is controlled and how political consensus is made (and broken). This may be an intellectual movement, but it can’t be overstated how anti-democratic this scene is. One particular exchange with Vance from Pogue’s article is worth quoting at length:

“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024,” he said. “I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”

“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—“he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”

”This is a description, essentially, of a coup.”

An elected Emperor

Most alarmingly, the New Right is opposed to liberal democracy or the checks on absolute power that have been slowly built up from the English Civil war onwards. America elects a president not an Emperor, which is what you would have if the checks of the liberal democratic system were removed.

The New Right appears to argue that winning an election gives you absolute power. Maybe they think electing someone to absolute power is a truer form of democracy than a system that has a legislature and courts to check the use of the leader’s power. If someone wins power in an election then they should wield it, they seem to say. The main, but not the only, problem with this is that people from Caesar’s days onwards have known that if someone is given absolute power, after winning an election or otherwise, before long you don’t have elections anymore. 

Warnings from women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour

Another thing worth pointing out about the New Right and their narrative is how many women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour are really scared by this predominantly male, white and heterosexual scene. Women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour are the ones who have had to fight for rights and protection under the current liberal (both small and big “L”) democratic system that the New Right rallies against. 

There are a lot of problems with liberal democracy; between the abolition of Roe vs Wade and police violence against people of colour, it's hard to argue that American liberal democracy provides equality and protection under the law. However, once this system is torn down by the New Right, the people who will be most vulnerable will be women, LGBTQ+ and people of colour who will have lost the (at least theoretical) protection offered by liberal democracy.

Pogue asked Yarvin why so many people were afraid of his movement and Yarvin’s argument is not convincing. He said that opposition to the New Right “is fundamentally in service of something that is far worse than anything, in your wildest nightmares”. In their words: you shouldn’t be worried about what we want to do with absolute power because the current system is worse. This is misdirection and deliberately avoiding the question. 

The price of getting attention 

One of the most telling parts of Pogue’s article is when he follows Masters on the campaign trail. Masters attends a gathering of non-city dwelling retirees, i.e. the principal Republican party members and voters, who aren’t particularly moved by his ideas on how we regulate tech companies and create more meaningful work. When the Q&A comes around, the Boomers only want to ask about how the Democrats stole the 2020 election from Trump, which Masters doesn’t deny. He then indulges their delusional fantasies further (if he doesn’t believe them himself). 

Whatever the New Right’s views on how the hegemony of Liberal culture, globalisation and big tech are sucking the meaning out of work and life, what’s cutting through is when they spread dangerous conspiracy theories about a stolen election and vaccines. Spreading these narratives is the price of getting attention in conservative America and the New Right are more than happy to pay it. The simple narrative of the Big Lie (Trump’s stolen election) drowns out any more nuanced or complex discussion.

In this way, the New Right is helping Trump and other much more thuggish authoritarians. If the New Right gets their American Empire (or whatever comes after the late republican period) I wonder how much the knuckle dragging authoritarians and Trump supporters will tolerate right-wing intellectuals. I am reminded of Winston Smith’s colleague at the Ministry of Truth, in 1984, who loves Big Brother too much and will likely get purged faster than someone who makes a minor slip up. Authoritarians want glum acceptance, not zealots.

Philosophically well-read useful idiots

The New Right has a well developed and complex narrative, which is also really scary when you look closely at their disdain for liberal democracy. They might be against globalisation, Reaganomics and the runaway power of big tech, and picking up support from disaffected lefties, but this makes them a better-read BNP and not a movement that will improve the world. 

What is most significant is that their narrative is spreading in American conservative circles and may well replace the Reagan era neo-liberal narrative as the dominant one on the right. Those of us on the left should be wary of this and be aware of how dangerous these people are in their quest for absolute power.

Despite their well developed and complex narrative, their professional appearance, air of cool and philosophical insight, they are often useful idiots for Trump and his simple right-wing conspiracy theories about stolen elections. They indulge this and other culture war bullshit to get attention. Ultimately it may destroy them, but they may destroy liberal democracy first.

Donald Trump picture taken by Gage Skidmore and used under creative commons.

The left needs to acknowledge the problem with the Green New Deal narrative, but it’s still our best hope against climate disaster

Support for the Green New Deal has become a shibboleth on the left. We’re very much in favour of it, but what exactly is it? Most people encounter it through frantic online discourse or tweets like this, which are quite abstract and are light on details of what the GND (Green New Deal) actually involves.

Underneath the discourse about the GND is a simple and effective narrative: if we do the GND, we can sort out the environment and get a more socially just society. This is a great bit of political communication. It bundles a lot of complexity up in one simple narrative that is hard to oppose. You would have to be a very swivel-eyed right-winger to be opposed to avoiding an environmental catastrophe.

Once you get into the weeds of the GND narrative it gets more complicated. There is a simple narrative for it: we need to stop the looming climate disaster, and a series of simple narratives against it: this is socialism by stealth, it will destroy the economy, it means we can’t eat meat anymore.

 Simple narratives

All these simple narratives overlook the complexity of the GND and what it involves. The focus on simple narratives has led to the GND coming to mean whatever you want it to mean, whether you’re for or against it. The repeating of these simple narratives has led to the GND being criticised from the left, including by Aditya Chakrabortty who wrote in the Guardian:

“Depending on which specs you had on, the green new deal either looked all-American and utterly painless – or it was internationalist and out for bankers’ blood. And down the years, the contradictions have only multiplied.”

The narrative in favour of the GND overlooks the inconsistencies in the GND itself. What will it cost? Who is the opposition to it, beyond the people who love oil companies so much they want to see the whole world burn?

The different flavours of Green New Deal

The reality of the GND is more complicated, and varies more internationally, than the simple narratives about it would have you believe. In the US, the GND is both a vague commitment passed by Congress and a more detailed plan (that Congress has not been presented in bill form, let alone passed) to fix the problems with the American environment and the economy.

In the UK and Europe, the GND is more about the transition to a green economy in a socially just way, closer to the plan in the US that is supposed to make good Congress’s commitment.

Chakrabortty wrote on the different flavours of GND: “For AOC and today’s US left, it is about jobs (albeit ‘green’ ones, a term far easier to deploy than to define) and infrastructure; for Lucas, Labour’s Clive Lewis and others currently pushing a green new deal through parliament, it includes citizens’ assemblies and a shorter working week. It is both ‘a green industrial revolution’ in the north of England and debt cancellation for the global south; both low-carbon Keynesianism and nationalisation of the energy industry.”

Embracing the complexity 

As well as the different meanings in different countries, the different flavours of GND contain lots of policies that are complex and distinct from each other. It’s easy to get lost in the policy details, which don’t communicate well and aren’t easily understood even by people who follow politics in detail. How much do we have to cut down meat consumption by? Is nuclear power part of the solution? These are big debates in themselves within the GND.

It is possible to talk about the GND and embrace its complexity, whilst keeping the focus on the narrative of “if we do a GND then we can sort out the environment and get social justice”.

John Oliver discussed the GND on his show, Last Week Tonight, in 2019. Oliver gets into the details in a funny and engaging way, as is his USP as both a comedian and a political commentator. This shows it is possible to engage with the complexities behind the GND narrative and keep your discussion accessible.

Policy suggestions

In under 20 minutes, Oliver covers the most important points. The right exaggerates what’s in the GND and how it will restrict our lives. The actual resolution passed by Congress doesn’t ban cars or meat. He says that the resolution contains: “No detailed specifics on how it will achieve its goals.” This is true and is one of the major flaws with the GND in America. He includes Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez saying that the resolution passed by Congress is supposed to start a conversation about what will be in the final plan.

Oliver goes on to suggest policies that could be part of the plan to achieve the GND commitment passed by Congress. These include more nuclear power, better public transport, carbon dioxide pricing and carbon dividends. All good things, but the cases for them needs to be made strongly to convince the public to embrace these changes as they haven’t been passed by representatives in Britain or America.

Whilst discussing the details, he sticks to the simple narrative of why the GND is good and necessary. Oliver said “the planet is on fire” but he also addressed the vagueness of what the GND has committed the government to actually doing.

Passing the Green New Deal into law 

What Oliver doesn’t discuss, and what those advocating for a GND frequently miss out, is what it will cost. He also doesn’t address the related and frequently overlooked problem of how the GND is supposed to be passed into law by countries, such as the US and UK, whose electoral politics have become bitterly divided over everything. Chakrabortty wrote in the Guardian article above:

“This isn’t just a debate over words; it is a battle between rival visions of the future. When Ed Miliband enthuses in his recent (and good) book, Go Big, about moving to a wartime economy with a vast ‘carbon army’ retrofitting draughty homes, he is talking about a green transition that is done to people rather than with them. And it turns voters off.” 

Even detailed discussion of the GND, like Oliver did on his show, overlooks these details because their complexity is too much for anyone who isn’t a professional GND advocate to embrace.

A simple and effective narrative

I can understand why GND advocates don’t address these complexities; a simple narrative will connect with people better. “Take back control” massively oversimplified the complexities of Brexit, but it was something people understood and could get behind. “Take back control” could mean whatever you want it to mean, so long as you voted for Brexit. Perhaps the same can be true of the GND. The narrative is simple so that it can be whatever you want it to be.

There is energy and momentum behind the left-wing movement for a GND and its support goes beyond the left. This is partly because the GND is underpinned by a simple and effective narrative of “if we do a GND then we can sort out the environment and get social justice”.

 For positive change

If we can get the narrative to spread further, then it will be an effective way of mobilising support behind a program to sort out the problems with the environment, our economy and society. However, it can only achieve this when it’s combined with policy specifics that address the inconsistencies in the different flavours of GND. 

The first stage of spreading a simple narrative about positive change is working well. Now, we need more consistency behind the GND and a way to explain the complexities of the policies contained within it in a way that highlights how they will improve all our lives.

All this is needed to turn support for a narrative into a program for political change. If we can do this, then the potential for the GND is massive. It could be the point where we start to reverse the hurtle towards a climate disaster. 

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Against the odds and my expectations, Joe Biden did okay in the midterms

When Joe Biden emerged as the front runner in the Presidential Election, way back in March 2020 - remember then? Oh, how little we knew - I’ll be the first to admit that I was sceptical. Biden has been a Washington insider for decades, meaning that he is old and that he is firmly part of the establishment, so he was unlikely to bring about radical change. Despite the many reasons to choose someone else, anyone else, to lead the Democrats he seems to be doing okay.

Even the Democrats were predicting that a red wave would roll across America in the recent midterm elections, but today it looks like the Democrats might even gain strength in the Senate. Holding ground in a midterm election is unusual, where disappointed voters kick against the government, but Biden appears to have fought off the best efforts of Republicans to deal him a body blow.

Perhaps after years of Donald Trump’s chaotic and ineffective leadership Americans are more ready to turn to establishment insiders who know how to get things done. Trump’s complete ineffectiveness at being President led to millions of deaths from Covid-19, whereas Biden has managed to pass through Congress climate change legislation, student debt relief and a bill to improve the competitiveness of American industry.

Modest achievements

Yeah, I agree, this is not an epic accomplishment and much of the legislation passed falls short of the huge efforts that are needed to tackle the biggest issues affecting America, and the world, from climate change to inequality. On the other hand, getting anything approved by Congress in the hugely divided and bitterly hostile American political system is an achievement. Trump couldn’t pass his healthcare bill, even with control of the House and Senate. 

The route to Biden’s popularity, or at least his lack of crashing and burning so far, might be down to low expectations. People no longer believe their government can do anything and only expect their politicians to hurl insults at each other. Biden is exceeding low expectations with modest achievements, but he is getting the government to do something, anything, whilst not taking every opportunity to worsen the political discourse. It doesn’t sound like much, but if you’re expecting a shit sandwich and get watery ham then you’re inclined to feel good about it.

Lessons for Labour 

Keir Starmer could learn from this. As the Tories appear to be doing everything to make the cost-of-living crisis and the economic situation worse, doing something, anything, would be an improvement. In the UK, we are also pretty cynical about government and politicians, so if Starmer can do anything, no matter how modest, to make the situation better he will exceed expectations. 

The lesson Starmer is taking from the States is that clinging to centrist policies, chasing middle of the road, socially conservative, voters who have moved right recently is the way to win. This strategy involves driving anything that even smells left-wing out of your party, which is apparently toxic to all voters. 

If that’s the lesson Labour wants to take from Biden, then its worth remembering that Biden did pass a large packet of climate change legislation and made progress on the key left-wing issue of student debt. Meanwhile this week Starmer took time out to say he was opposed to climate protestors.

Some small amount of progress

Biden has turned moderation and moderate expectations into moderate achievement, and because of this he’s not been crushed under a wave of Republican indignation. This is despite Republican efforts to paint him as a woke Josef Stalin. I’m pleased to see some hope and some small amount of progress on the big questions, like climate change and inequality, from America. This is very welcome after years of nothing but venomous rhetoric from authoritarian blowhards.

I do worry that this may be too little, too late. We need far reaching and radical change if we’re going to divert the tide of misery that is already rising all around us. It doesn’t look like mainstream left-wing politicians can provide this radical change, but it is, at least for now, not causing the tide to rise faster. I guess that’s something.

"Joe Biden" by Gage Skidmore is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Well that was fast. Hi and bye to Liz Truss. What new terror can we expect next?

I promised myself I would never start a blog with the cliche “so I haven’t blogged in a while”. It’s overused and everyone can look at the post frequency on your blog. However, when I sat down to write this blog, I did ask myself: what is “a while?” In blogging, a while is a few weeks. Turns out, at the breakneck pace of modern politics that’s enough time for a Prime Minister to come and go.

So, I must apologise. Partly for having my cake and eating it with that opening, but also for neglecting to write a post on Liz Truss as our new Prime Minister before her premiership is over. This post will have to serve as both her hi and bye, as let’s be frank, there isn’t enough to say about her to fill two posts.

The Truss debacle would be funny if it didn’t lay bare how fucked British politics is. Scratch that, it is funny as well as being terrifying; like a Jordan Peele film. Truss romped to power promising that everything will be sunshine and roses because she said it will be. If Labour ever tried anything so bold, they would be required to justify such a claim with the sort of peer reviewed evidence that no one understands 80 times before breakfast. If you’re a Tory, you can promise unicorns for everyone and no-one bats an eye lid.

Hiding under a desk

That is until the markets - the only god that the Tories still fear even if they no longer love or believe in anything moral or metaphysical - said no to huge unfunded tax cuts, and Truss was ruined faster than the interior decor of a London restaurant with a booking from a certain Oxford students’ club.

There is something deeply ironic about financial institutions, staffed largely by the people benefiting from the tax cuts Truss was trying to ram through, reacting so badly to her programme that Tower 42 nearly shot off into space. Is that where banks are based? I don’t know. I don’t go into the City, if I can avoid it.

The reaction was so severe that when Penny Mordaunt said Truss wasn’t hiding under a desk, everyone knew she probably was. Looks like we have found the point where bankers put the national interest above their own: it’s to bring down Liz Truss.

No one will miss her

Truss engaged in the fastest and most epic bout of bed shitting in British political history. I said a while back that this was terrifying. The terrifying part is that the Tories are still in power, and their MPs get to choose the person with the unenviable responsibility of sorting all this out. I’m sure that whoever the next Tory leader is, they’ll bear all our best interests in mind.

Still, you have to laugh. I have never seen anything fall apart as quickly as Truss’s premiership. Even with the relentless speed of modern politics, this has all been head-spinningly fast. I don’t think anyone will miss her. Most people didn’t even notice she was in Number 10.

The threat to Labour

Perhaps more significant than Truss’s departure is what goes with her, which is the vision of a low-tax, low-regulation, Brexit Britain. Brexit continues to cause economic chaos, but no workable way forward presents itself. Turning the UK (or London) into Singapore-on-Thames didn’t even get off the launch pad.

So, what’s next? Are the Tories going to give levelling up another go? Or will they start a huge culture war over immigration or cars to try and close the gap in the polls. Who knows, but whatever they try it will be dreadful for the 90% of us who are more worried about heating our homes and doing the weekly shop, than which bundle of class privilege shoved into a suit the Tories choose as the next PM.

The biggest threat to Labour, looking pretty content right now with their massive poll lead, is that the Tories dig up austerity as their key narrative. As I write this morning, we may be hours away from fiscal conservative Rishi Sunak becoming PM, which makes this look even more likely.

Re-running the 2015 election

The Tories may be unable to re-run the 2019 election, with Boris Johnson doing his usual routine and Keir Starmer cast in the role of Jeremy Corbyn, but they may be able to re-run the 2015 election with Sunak saying that there’s no money for all this nice Labour stuff and that he’s the man to make tough decisions about the nation’s finances, whilst Starmer performs an Ed Miliband tribute act of not challenging austerity but pointing out the Tories are mean and that the economy is weak.

It didn’t work in the considerably more stable 2015 and it won’t work against the unfolding economic disaster of the present.

I wonder if we will ever be nostalgic for Liz Truss, the way some terminally short minded people are about David Cameron and Theresa May? Or is this really the low point for British politics? We’ve had a PM so incompetent that they managed to fuck up giving banks tax cuts to the point where banks destroyed her. I guess this is the point to make a joke about chaos with Ed Miliband, but that’s one cliche I won’t touch.

“I've seen things... seen things you little people wouldn't believe”

I will leave you with his sobering thought: there’s a bit of cheese in my fridge that has seen three Prime Ministers and two monarchs. I’m not in the habit of asking dairy products for wisdom, but what this chunk of cheddar can teach us is that things can change quickly in politics. We’ve had three PMs whose terms have been shorter lived than Roy Batty.

My advice to Labour is that the polls look good now, but the Tories are about to do one of their reinventions they do whenever they are threatened. Be prepared for the political terrain to become considerably less favourable.

Photo of Liz Truss from Wikipedia and used under the United Kingdom Open Government Licence v3.0.

It’s nice to feel good about Labour, for once

It’s odd to feel optimistic about the Labour Party after the spectacle of Labour conference. Especially a Labour conference that began with enforced singing of the national anthem underneath a giant union flag.

It was a bizarre sight, which resembled a scene featuring the villains in a particularly unsubtle action film, trying to make a heavy-handed point about nationalism written by someone who has only read the crib notes on It Can’t Happen Here. How do you know they’re the bad guys? Forced prostration in front of a giant flag.

Labour are clearly worried about being seen as unpatriotic, a slight that hung around Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 election campaign like a concrete breeze block. More accurately, they’re worried about being seen as unpatriotic by a specific group of socially conservative, economically centrist Tory/Labour swing voters in Labour target seats. Everyone else who is alarmed by the increasingly absurd patriotism arms race is supposed to suck it up or vote Green. I guess. If you want to. I mean, look at Brighton Council.

Actual policy proposals

What is all this for? To get Labour into power? Well, that’s a means to something else and not an end in itself. Unless your view of politics is “go red team, boo blue team”. Don’t get me wrong, I’ll boo blue team at any opportunity, but I want Labour to do something with power and not just have power for the sake of it.

Which is where, bizarrely, I end up being optimistic. Labour did actually announce some stuff they would do with the awesome power of the state, which … deep breath … sounded good.

Like building a green power supplier to provide cheap, environmentally friendly electricity, which will tackle the climate crisis and the cost of living crisis. Or re-introducing the 45p tax band (if the Tories ever get around to abolishing it). Or building more social homes to help tackle the housing crisis. All this stuff is good. I can’t complain.

Will it happen?

A question lingers over whether this will happen. Keir Starmer has promised left-wing policy before and gone back on it. Looking around, we can see that if he does win the next general election, the nation’s finances will be in tatters and spending increases will be limited. Starmer may also be in coalition with another party with their own ideas.

Despite this, I do feel optimistic about Labour for the first time in a long time. The poll lead is good and there is a policy offer I can support. Yes, I would prefer something more radical, but this package is hard to oppose on its own terms. 

Don’t be complacent

As socialists, we shouldn’t be complacent. The Tories are wounded, but that’s when they’re at their most dangerous and their most unpredictable. Polls can change quickly, especially in an election when the disinterested masses make their voices heard. When the fever of campaigning begins and the insults start flying, poll leads can disappear. When this election comes it will be a nasty one. I’m not looking forward to it.  

For now, it’s nice to feel good about Labour for once. We’ll see how long this lasts.

Labour Party picture taken by Andrew Skudder and used under creative commons.

What happened to Starmer the Remainer?

In July, Labour leader Keir Starmer told Cit AM that the UK can I have a better economic future outside the EU than inside it. We’ve come a long way from the former Shadow Brexit Secretary who was seen as the anti-Brexit bastion in Jeremy Corbyn’s shadow cabinet, the man who was pushing for a second referendum and frustrated all of Corbyn’s efforts to find a compromise between Labour’s Leave and Remain supporters by reminding everyone of the perils of Brexit.

During the 2020 Labour leadership race one Starmer supporter and Labour Party member told me that “Starmer is not a Remainer, he’s a Rejoiner”. Two years on this statement is laughable.

What happened?

Since Starmer became Labour leader, he has whipped the party to vote through a Tory hard Brexit that is causing misery and economic damage from Lisburn to Dover. It’s worth remembering that Corbyn (the secret Brexiteer, supposedly) successfully blocked the hard Tory Brexit, whereas Rejoiner Starmer nodded it through without so much as a whimper.

What happened to Starmer the Remainer? The easy explanation is that Starmer the Remainer has gone the same way as everything else Starmer once stood for.

Before becoming Labour leader, Starmer made a series of explicit pledges and implicit promises that he has boldly gone back on now he is leader. He told Labour Party members what they wanted to hear to get elected. Be that those on the left of the party who wanted continuity with Corbyn on nationalisation, social justice and the environment; or soft left Remainers who wanted Britain to stay in the EU.

The leopard has changed his spots

Now he’s safely in power the leopard has changed his spots to win over socially conservative Brexit and 2019 Tory voters who aren’t keen on nationalisation, social justice, environmental policies or Remain.

More fool us for believing a politician would stick to his word, but how has he gotten away with this? Labour Party members from Corbyn supporters to Remainers (sometimes the same people, sometimes not) seem pretty placid, considering we’ve all failed to get what we ordered - regardless of what we thought we were ordering.

Part of it has to do with this new Starmer’s desire to not rock the boat and say things broadly popular with the establishment. The right-wing media are less likely to attack him now that he’s on the terrain they’re happy with. Also, the lack of mainstream left-wing news reporting means this isn’t getting much coverage beyond Novara Media and these august web pages.

The evidence on Brexit mounts up 

It’s worth noting that when a general election rolls around, and if Labour are polling strongly against the Tories, the right-wing press may well use Starmer’s duplicity against him. Not out of any love of scorned Corbynistas or Remainers, but to make Starmer look like any other lying politician. No better than Liz Trust.

I find it incredibly surprising that Starmer has got away with all this (so far). I’m more surprised that he got away with the transformation from ‘Mr Brexit Is Bad And We Shouldn’t Do It’ to ‘Mr We Must Nod Through A Very Tough Tory Brexit Because Of Daily Mail Reading Boomers’, than I am about how much he fucked over the socialists in the Labour Party.

As a Labour socialist I’m used to people being unkind to us, butt I’m genuinely really surprised by how fast the liberal establishment has forgotten how awful Brexit is, even as the evidence of how bad Brexit is mounts up.

False pretences

There are many arguments in favour of Starmer’s lies on the grounds that they are strategically sound. However, if you care about the public perception of politicians, you should care about Starmer’s lies. No politician should be in office on false pretences.

I believe that Starmer’s lies will catch up to him one way or another. Then again, I keep expecting the best from politics and getting the worst. I do strongly believe that the left, be you a socialist, a Remainer, or both (like me), you should expect better than we have with Starmer and not settle for being played for fools by the Labour leadership. One thing we all have in common is that Starmer lied to us.

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

Two years into Starmer’s leadership we can see that he is not the leader we voted for

We’ve had over two years of Keir Starmer’s leadership of the Labour Party and what do we have to show for it? Not much of what was promised when he stood for leader. And a lot of stuff that wasn’t promised. That’s what. 

Starmer’s pledges to Labour members are not what we have now. There was nothing about throwing out party members for meeting with proscribed organizations before they were proscribed. Nothing about not supporting striking workers during a cost-of-living crisis. Nothing about working with Peter Mandelson.

I’ve been had

I’m sorry to say that I chose Starmer as my second preference candidate. I did this largely because of his 10 pledges that contain reasonable centre-left Labour priorities, from social justice to tackling the looming environmental disaster. I must admit that I have been had. Starmer won’t nationalise industries in line with his pledge, which I foolishly believed he would stick to.

When the leader of the opposition won’t criticise the government’s repugnant scheme of sending asylum seekers to Rwanda on the grounds that it’s a violation of their human rights and it’s completely immoral to do this to vulnerable people, you have to ask yourself: what is the point in this leader of the opposition? Remember, Starmer stood to be leader of the opposition on his record as a human rights lawyer. 

False premises 

I feel like a trick has been played on me. I thought I was getting the moderate left, not a Labour Party determined to chase the votes of angry boomers in former Red Wall seats and sees no popular prejudice it’s not willing to pander to. We have a Labour Party that wants to win over the public, but so long as the public doesn’t include striking workers or left-wing activists.

Starmer became Labour leader under false premises. He has gone back on so much of what he promised that I feel confident saying this is a different leadership from the one that was voted for. What we have is like ordering a gourmet beef burger in your local gastro pub and then being served a deep-fried turd covered in puke. Then, when you complain, you’re told: “that’s politics” and “you didn’t take the commitments made in the menu seriously, did you? Don’t be so naive.”

More competent management

Will any of this make a difference? Well, you can already hear rumbles in the Starmer-sympathetic press that he needs to stand for something to win. The fact that Labour is outpolling the Tories is largely because Johnson self-destructed and this leadership race is making them all look awful, not because of anything Starmer has done.

William Hague said: that Labour wins when it owns the future, so, what is Starmer’s vision for the future if it’s not going to be those 10 promises? Is it that a man with a sensible haircut who isn’t massively incompetent will be in charge? Don’t get me wrong, the Tories corruption is utterly shameless, and needs to stop. I’m sure Starmer will be less of a train wreck than the Tories, but that’s hardly a future to get excited about. A more competent management of the slow decline of human civilisation into the inferno of climate change isn’t an appealing vision of the future.

I have written before about how Labour needs ideas to tackle the huge issues facing British society, from the cost-of-living crisis to the looming environmental disaster, and they need a narrative beyond basic competence if they’re going to inspire enough people to win an election.

Untrustworthy

Can we trust someone who went back on the commitments they made to be Labour leader? The most recent of which is Labour announcing that they will not renationalise the railways, energy and water companies, despite this being one of Starmer’s pledges. What commitments will he make to become Prime Minister, and will he fulfil them?

Starmer shouldn’t be leader if he can’t be held to what he said. He also shouldn’t be leader if he cannot support striking workers. The clue is in the name: the Labour Party. 

This does beg the question: who should take over? Andy Burnham is popular but he’s off being mayor of Manchester. Wes Streeting would jump at the chance to pander to as many socially conservative sympathies as possible as a way out of the culture war.

The left’s candidate

Who would the left’s candidate be? There’s no clear front runner. The Corbyn project appears to have died with Corbyn’s chances of becoming PM. Through a combination of a lack of planning and unwillingness of left Labour MPs to seize the crown, there is currently no successor to the Corbyn project.

When coupled with Starmer’s changes to the party’s rules for leadership elections, it looks increasingly unlikely that any left candidate would even make it on to the ballot paper. 

So, we have an illegitimate and ineffective leader with no clear successor. Labour has a lack of talent, partly because most people don’t believe that politics can change anything and don’t bother entering the field. Couple that with the abuse you get, why bother?

Front bench failure

Starmer may be in office on false pretences, but I don’t see a way forward. Labour clearly has no interest in being a socialist party or representing the views of young or left-wing people. Unless these young people agree with everything some mythical Red Wall ex-Labour voter thinks about strikes, the EU and Corbyn.

I don’t see any of the other front bench MPs behaving differently if they were leader. Labour has become another party chasing the votes of reactionary, socially conservative, angry about young woke people, anti-strike boomers. Changing the leader won’t fix Labour. Maybe it’s time we looked elsewhere. 

"File:Official portrait of Keir Starmer crop 1.jpg" by Chris McAndrew is licensed under CC BY 3.0

What are the limits on free speech and how are they being tested?

What are the limits of free speech? I know, I already sound like a closet Stalinist just for asking that, but the question should be considered. There are a lot of “free speech absolutists” about, (mainly on Twitter) but even though many people claim “there should be no restrictions on speech,” they don’t mean that absolutely 100,000,000%.

What about child pornography - should that be allowed on free speech grounds? Or counterfeit money? Is my right to free expression being suppressed because I cannot create an artwork that looks exactly like legal tender and then engage in a “performance” where I hand over this artwork to an unsuspecting barman in exchange for large quantities of craft beer from a local micro-brewery?

You might think I am being facetious, and that’s because I am. There are many who claim they oppose all limits on free speech, no matter how offensive the speech is, but still oppose my performance art. People saying “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it,” (and incorrectly attributing this to Voltaire) in reality don’t die so that I can use speech to get free beer. So, the answer to the questions raised above is technically yes, but practically we cannot allow counterfeiting even if it restricts some freedom of expression.

You’re not entitled to a platform 

My point is that almost no-one believes that all speech and expression should be allowed, or that ANYTHING can be defined as free expression. Once you accept that, the debate is all a matter of the degree that we apply limits to speech.

Related to this is the point that you can have the freedom to say whatever you want, but you don’t have a right to a platform. Can I make a speech entitled “Why I hate Margaret Thatcher” to my local East London Conservative Club and demand that all members be present? Of course not, that’s pointlessly antagonistic and obnoxious. Are they suppressing my free speech by not allowing me to do my talk and insisting that people turn up? Again, of course not. I can say whatever I like about Thatcher, but no one has to listen.

This applies to tech platforms, which are a form of private space. They get to decide what we can say on them, within existing laws on discrimination, fraud, etc. If you tweet an opinion and people tell you you’re wrong, that’s not a threat to your freedom of speech. Threats to freedom of speech are when you get fined or thrown in jail for expressing an opinion.

The bull in a china shop experience

Earlier this year, podcaster and internet personality Joe Rogan was thrown headlong into the debate like an angry bull hopped up on testosterone injections jumping with complete abandoned into a convention of extremely delicate china retail. His case is illustrative of the limits of free speech and what the consequences of crossing those limits should be.

Rogan, for the lucky people who haven’t heard of him, is a comedian, MMA commentator and host of the world’s most listened to podcast. In the show, he sits down with people and shoots the shit on everything from wrestling to politics. He has a huge platform and famous people are keen to reach his highly engaged, largely (or exclusively) male fan base. Past guests have included a who’s-who of people you want on your podcast including Kanye West, Elon Musk, Jordan Peterson and Bernie Sanders.

Criticism of Rogan 

Rogan is a divisive figure on the left, although he has his fans. He has also had some unpleasant, less famous, people on his show, including Ben Shapiro and Carl Benjamin (aka Sargon of Akkad - the anti-feminist YouTuber and not the Akkadian Emperor from the 23rd century BCE, although the latter would be a more impressive podcast guest). There are people on the left who hate him in a knee-jerk way and say he’s as right-wing as Peterson, Shapiro and Benjamin because he’s had them on the show.

I’m not a fan of Rogan, although I haven’t listened to loads of episodes of his podcast. It’s worth noting Rogan endorsed Sanders in the 2020 Democratic Party primaries and does have left-wing guests on his show. I don’t think Rogan is as right-wing as Peterson, Shapiro and Benjamin, but he has given them a big platform to spread their views.

Some have argued that the left doesn’t like Rogan because he sends out the wrong cultural signals by not dressing like a cool liberal type (whatever that is supposed to be), being a blokey-bloke, talking about MMA and having insufficient quantities of beard-scratching academic talk on his show. There is probably some truth to this, and like/hating Rogan has certainly become a shibboleth in some political circles. Rogan certainly shouldn’t be pelted with milkshakes for talking about MMA and doing monkey impressions on his show, although these things don’t make me like him more.

Rogan, vaccines and free speech

I do think there is a problem with Rogan, and it’s not just his choice of guests (although the world would be a better place if we fired Benjamin into space aboard one of Elon Musk’s rockets). The problem is that he doesn’t challenge his guests' opinions, so whenever Benjamin says that feminism is poison, Rogan nods thoughtfully and asks him to elaborate further. He’s no Jeremy Paxman. He’s not even Andrew Neil. But he does have more influence over how people think than anyone other than Rupert Murdoch or Mark Zuckerberg.

Rogan’s misadventure with freedom of speech is that he had Dr Robert Malone on his show who said Americans were “hypnotised” into wearing masks and taking the vaccine. During the discussion, Rogan also said that if you’re young and healthy you don’t need to get the Covid-19 vaccine.

It’s irresponsible at best for Malone to be given Rogan’s platform during a pandemic. Having a platform the size of Rogan’s means his words and his guests' opinions can cost lives, especially when discussing vaccines that are (I can’t believe I am writing this) already controversial in America. You might think differently. Let a thousand think pieces bloom.

Consequences

Rogan faced little if any consequences for this, but what did happen is illustrative of the debate around freedom of speech. He hasn’t faced arrest, a fine or persecution from the state. There has been a lot of online outrage, but his show is still as popular as ever and still books high-profile guests, so it’s hard to argue that the online outrage is a threat to his freedom of speech.

Use your speech to criticise others’ use of speech

Rogan’s podcast is hosted on Spotify, a tech platform, which as discussed, can choose who it wants to give a platform to. It’s worth pointing out that Rogan is far from the worst person on Spotify. Neo-Nazi punk band Skinful’s music is available there (no, don’t listen to the racist skinheads) and podcasts with a much smaller following than Rogan’s spread much more conspiracy theories and disinformation than his does. No-one notices, because it’s the internet. If Spotify dropped Rogan over what he said (which they won’t), they would be at best inconsistently enforcing whatever rules they have.

Rogan did, and should, face criticism for what he said and for allowing guests who have anti-vax views on his show during a pandemic. I don’t think what he did deserves the state to intervene, such would be warranted in the case of child pornography or the counterfeiting beer-buying performance art mentioned above. If it could be shown that a specific individual didn’t get vaccinated because of the podcast and died, this would be closer to shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre and might warrant state intervention, but proving it beyond all reasonable doubt would be difficult.

So, use your speech to criticise others’ use of speech is the place we ended up. Only get the state involved when there is a clear case for harm being done. This doesn’t account for the huge power imbalance caused by Rogan having a much bigger platform than the people criticising him. Although, artists such as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell used their freedom to do business however they want to withdraw their music from Spotify over Rogan’s episode. (For the record, Neil Young and Joni Mitchell are cooler than Rogan, and I don’t care what you think.)

Political speech as entertainment

There are those who will defend what Rogan said on the basis that you’re allowed to say anything you want, free speech and all that. However, as discussed above, everyone believes that there should be some limits to your freedom of speech. So, if we all agreed that restricting some speech is necessary then maybe start with the “comedian” who brings anti-vaxxers onto his hugely popular podcast during a pandemic.

The Rogan debacle speaks to a deeper trend, which also touches on the limits of speech. It’s a trend that has arisen as comedy (Rogan is notionally a comedian) and other forms of entertainment get more political in these exceedingly dark, dangerous and more serious times. It’s a trend that has come about through the growth of social media, podcasts and other new ways to get your speech out there via new technology.

Entertainment has become more political, both in terms of what is said and who makes it (i.e. who has access to the vast platforms provided by the BBC or Twitter). The problem is some comedians (and I use the term loosely when applied to Rogan) are engaged in a double standard: they want all the rights associated with free speech that everyone has but none of the responsibilities.

Rights and responsibilities 

Politicians, campaigners, political journalists, etc. have special responsibilities when it comes to their speech. The things they say matter. They affect how other people understand politics and take political actions, from voting to protesting. This responsibility is not to spread misinformation, conspiracy theories or narratives that damage people’s faith in our democratic system.

This doesn’t mean that the state should get involved with their speech (unless it can be shown they have used speech directly to hurt someone, e.g. shouting “fire” in a crowded theatre). It does mean those engaged in political speech should respect the responsibilities outlined above. 

Abdicating your responsibilities

Many podcasters, comedians, YouTubers, social media personalities, etc. do not exercise this responsibility. They use the fact that they’re entertainers as an excuse for why they don’t need to think about what they say or who they have on their show. They argue that we're not meant to take what they say seriously. Rogan himself said: “I’m not a doctor, I’m a fucking moron and I’m a cage fighting commentator who’s a dirty stand-up comedian who just told you I’m drunk most of the time and I do testosterone and I smoke a lot of weed. I’m not a respected source of information, even for me.”

Although this line is quite funny in a self-deprecating way, it does neatly remove all responsibilities from Rogan for broadcasting (potentially life-threatening) disinformation. Rogan may be a self-declared moron, but people still take what is said on his show seriously. When Rogan invites someone like Benjamin on his show and doesn’t tell jokes, but does ask political questions about the big issues facing society, then they are engaging in a political act, and as the host he has responsibilities.

Serious business

Rogan and other shows that mix politics and entertainment are clearly not just entertainment. Many have all the iconography of serious debate. These shows can’t be both light entertainment and serious discussions. If it’s a debate, then people like Rogan have a responsibility to make sure our political discourse is not damaged by letting anti-vax doctors or people like Benjamin say whatever they like. If they are light entertainment, then they shouldn’t address serious subjects in this way.

I am not saying comedians can’t be political or that politics can’t be funny. Good satire is an important part of our political discourse. This is why it’s painful when the BBC brings back Spitting Image and it’s awful. What I am saying is that if you are a comedian saying something political or trying to be funny and political, then you need to recognise your responsibilities and not hide behind being a comedian when you get criticised for abdicating your responsibilities, like Rogan does.

Lack of oversight 

What I’m allowed to say in the pub is different from what I’m allowed to say on a televised political debate going out to millions (even if we are addressing the same topic) as the discussion in the pub will not have the same effect as a discussion on TV - or on Rogan’s show with his millions of listeners. The audience is different, which means the responsibilities are different, which affects your free speech rights. You have different responsibilities when you handle a toy gun and a real one as the effect can be very different.

Anyone can set up a podcast or YouTube channel or twitter account and say whatever they want to potentially an audience of millions. Obviously, not all YouTube channels or Twitter accounts have the same reach, but they all have the same level of oversight - i.e., almost none.

Rogan has built an audience for his podcast, starting from being not a particularly well-known comedian to becoming one of the most famous media personalities on the planet. He’s not a journalist and doesn't have the skills to cross-examine his guests or deconstruct their arguments. Usually, he barely challenges them at all. He doesn’t challenge people like Benjamin as much as I would challenge a friend during a discussion in the pub. He also doesn’t have any editor (journalism editor, not a sound or video editor) thinking about the news quality of what is being put out.

The citizen-creator-political-journalists media

Rogan isn’t the only interviewer who doesn’t challenge his guests enough. I have listened to podcasts, watched TV interviews and read profiles in news organisations, from the very new to ones centuries old, and I have noticed many professional and experienced journalists allowing their subjects to say outrageous, inaccurate or downright false things unchallenged. Poor quality editorial standards are not unique to YouTube channels and podcasts, but at least having an editorial process is a good start.

We didn’t need to invent indie media to have bad editorial standards, but now that the reach of indie media is enormous and the power of what you say (on a topic like Covid-19 vaccinations) can costs potentially thousands of lives, maybe it’s time to think about how we ensure quality in what is put out there. Hopefully, exposing the problems with Rogan and his lack of editorial oversight will give everyone pause to think about the standards of their content. Although, I won’t hold my breath.

If we’re going to have citizen-creator-political-journalists, where anyone can create a piece of content on politics (or any other subject) put it out there and get a huge audience then we all need to understand our responsibilities, as well as our rights. Free speech is a good thing. Having citizen-creator-political-journalists is a good thing. They mean that voices outside the mainstream, the large publications and big broadcasters get heard. However, we do need to remember our responsibilities and act accordingly.

Tackling the problem

We shouldn’t reach for state involvement in speech as the means to solve the problem of journalists/podcasters/YouTubers/internet personalities (whether they started putting out content today or are working for a centuries old newspaper) not acting responsibly with their speech. Using the state to heavily monitor journalists is a bad idea.

The state shouldn’t police the people who criticise and expose the wrongdoings of the state more than is absolutely necessary. You’re free to say what you want and not get banged up in jail, but we need to exercise some judgment in whose free speech we listen to.

Just a guy chasing downloads

Free speech improves our democracy and politics, but we can’t have free speech without the responsibility to not spread disinformation and to challenge an interviewee. We need to be more grown-up than Rogan has been over this and stop trying to abdicate the responsibilities that come with having a huge audience because he’s a comedian on Spotify and not an analyst on CNN.

Rogan won’t face any consequences for spreading misinformation about vaccines. He shouldn’t go to jail over what he said, but maybe his star should be taken down a peg or two. I wouldn’t recommend his podcast because he’s not a deep thinker or someone who engages with issues in a substantive way. He’s Just a guy chasing downloads and social shares. He’s allowed to do that, but don’t indulge him.

A better conversation about politics

Would the world be a little less right-wing without Rogan and the platform he has given to people like Peterson, Shapiro or Benjamin? Yes, probably, but he’s not the biggest issue facing the left. He also gets credit for endorsing Sanders.

There are limits to what you are allowed to say because your words can hurt people. The state should react to the clear-cut cases of harm (child pornography, shouting “fire” and then creating a stampede that kills, etc.) but we need to exercise good judgment to keep the state’s role to a minimum. That said, we all do believe in some restrictions on speech (again child pornography) so political actors pretending to be comedians like Rogan shouldn’t hide behind either free speech absolutism or the double standard that they are a comedian and not a political actor.

We need more responsible content creators, not people like Rogan who hide behind double standards. Although whilst it remains free to start a podcast or a YouTube channel there will still be bad editorial standards. We shouldn’t get rid of podcasts that are free to set up, we should be savvy information consumers and not indulge people who say anything for attention. Even if we agree, on some level, with the bullshit they are spreading. This is the way to get to a better conversation about politics where more voices can be heard.

How George Orwell predicted our very online political discourse

In 1945 George Orwell wrote Notes On Nationalism, which describes how “nationalism” makes people impervious to facts. Reading it recently, I was astonished by how little had changed. Memes and Twitter flame wars might be incomprehensible to Orwell, if he were alive today, but the basic way we argue about politics has hardly changed.

In the essay, Orwell describes how nationalism warps people’s thinking. Nationalism was as serious a political problem in 1945 as it is now, but what Orwell described as nationalism is not the belligerent belief in a nation-state to exclusion of all others. What Orwell examines in the essay is better understood as ideology.

Orwell defines nationalism as “identifying oneself with a single nation or other unit, placing it beyond good and evil and recognising no other duty than that of advancing its interests.” He goes on to say: “Nationalism in the extended sense in which I am using the word, included such movements and tendencies as Communism, political-Catholicism, Zionism, Antisemitism, Trotskyism and Pacificism.”

Competing ideologies

Why he didn’t say ideology and used the word nationalism instead I don’t know, but his use of nationalism fits the term ideology. Most people think an ideology is having an ‘ism’, such as feminism, socialism, etc. People typically associate isms with the left or the extreme right, although they can be many ideologies that don’t have a handy one-word phrase to sum them up. They can be as all-encompassing as any ism, but are also more difficult to describe, more opaque and correspondingly more difficult to convince someone that they have an ideology. Yet, nonetheless, they are ideologies.

One of the key aspects of nationalism that still applies today as much as it did in the 40s, is that for a nationalist, everything is about the competition of your ideology against others. Orwell wrote: “A nationalist is one who thinks solely, or mainly, in terms of competitive prestige. He may be a positive or a negative nationalist - that is, he may use his mental energy either in boosting or in denigrating - but at any rate his thoughts always turn on victories, defeats, triumphs, and humiliations.”

This perfectly sums up the world of 24/7 news and social media discourse, where those who follow politics like it’s a sport constantly keep track of the scores, the owns, the dumps, the who-is-ups and the who-is-downs of it all. Politics isn’t a debate about competing ideas, but about competing scores on who has delivered the most public humiliations to the other side.

Focusing on the dunk

Related to this is that the very online discourse focuses on minor political exchanges, rather than the big issues facing the world. A dunk on an unpopular MP or commentator will be shared more widely than actual news (sometimes even making it to the front page of newspapers). The discourse favours witty putdowns or dumps over what’s happening in terms of legislation, the economy, debates, etc.

The same was true in 1945 when Orwell wrote: “Moreover, although endlessly brooding on power, victory, defeat, revenge, the nationalist is often somewhat uninterested in what happens in the real world. What he wants is to feel that his own unit is getting the better of some other unit, and he can more easily do this by scoring off an adversary than by examining the facts to see whether they support him. All nationalist controversy is at the debating-society level. It is always entirely inconclusive, since each contestant invariably believes himself to have won the victory.”

A small victory in Twitter discourse is of much more interest to a nationalist than a substantial news story about rising costs of living or health policy. Also, to nationalists any exchange can be a victory. Hence you can see two different stripes of nationalists tweet the same clip of two people shouting incomprehensible things at each other and both claiming the unintelligible noise is their side is owning the other. As there are a lot of nationalists on social media, our discussion is not engaging in substantive issues.

Double standards

Following on from that, Orwell wrote about something I had assumed was an entirely modern phenomenon: the bold-faced claim that when our side does something (usually bad) it’s okay, but when the other side does the same thing it’s beyond the pale. Orwell wrote: “A British Tory will defend self-determination in Europe and oppose it in India with no feeling of inconsistency. Actions are held to be good or bad, not on their own merits but according to who does them, and there is almost no kind of outrage – torture, the use of hostages, forced labour, mass deportations, imprisonment without trial, forgery, assassination, the bombing of civilians - which does not change its moral colour when it is committed by our side.”

This double standard appears to be eternal. Witness Remainers deploring the Leave campaign’s underhand attempts to influence the Brexit referendum’s outcome with lies, dodgy Facebook ads and possible Russian interference - whilst also saying without a hint of self-awareness that if there were a second referendum the elderly shouldn’t be allowed to vote, as they won’t experience the long-term consequences of Brexit.

These are both slightly different attempts to influence the outcome of a vote and can be summed up by Orwell saying: “The sense of right and wrong becomes unhinged also. There is no crime, absolutely none, that cannot be condoned when our side commits it.”

Commentators are like astrologers

Orwell also described the modern social media political talking heads. “Political or military commentators, like astrologers, can survive almost any mistake, because their more devoted followers do not look to them for an appraisal of the facts but for the stimulation of nationalistic loyalties,” he said. Commentators can make any number of ludicrous or inaccurate statements on social media and never lose their following of people who agree with them.

From backers of the Iraq war to people who called the Brexit referendum wrong, or who claimed Brexit would be easy, to the million online talking heads who said that all Labour needed to do was get rid of Jeremy Corbyn and put a sensible Remainer with a neat suit in his place and they’ll be 20 points ahead, for a commentator who shares your nationalism there is no amount of mistakes that cannot be forgiven.

People who claimed that Saddam Hussein definitely had WMD and this was a fact, are still political commentators favoured by those who share the New Labour ideology. Have they admitted they got the biggest call of the 2000s wrong? Of course not. There’s no need to. Just keep posting to those who share your ideology, and no amount of mistakes will tarnish your reputation in your follower’s eyes.

The truth is out there, but we don’t care

Related to the endless rounds of ideological dumping is the process of how rhetoric takes the place of truth. Orwell wrote: “What were the rights and wrongs of the Warsaw rising of August 1944? Is it true about the German gas ovens in Poland? Who was really to blame for the Bengal famine? Probably the truth is discoverable, but the facts will be so dishonestly set forth in almost any newspaper that the ordinary reader can be forgiven either for swallowing lies or for failing to form an opinion. The general uncertainty as to what is really happening makes it easier to cling to lunatic beliefs. Since nothing is ever quite proved or disproved, the most unmistakable fact can be impudently denied.”

Did Boris Johnson lie about the benefits of Brexit? Was Jeremy Corbyn in league with the IRA or the SWP? Was Clinton’s email server illegal? What happened when Narendra Modi

was governor of Uttar Pradesh? Was austerity a means to transfer wealth to the rich? The truth of these things are discoverable and many talented journalists spend years writing on these topics, publishing detailed long reads breaking down the facts, and they reach fewer people than a post in a Facebook group or a viral tweet. Posts that are high in rhetoric will be lapped up by the nationalistic supporters of a side over a detailed investigation any day.

Nationalism is escapable

We think that modern politics is conducted differently than it was in the 1940s. We have created 24/7 news, legions of political commentators, the social media dunk, and the viral tweet, but the way we do politics for the nationalists haven’t changed much in the intervening 77 years. What has changed is that all this is inescapable because social media is in everyone’s pocket and the latest bad take is only a twitch away.

There is some hope as not everyone is a nationalist. Even people who are nationalists aren’t nationalists all the time. Orwell wrote: “One has no right to assume that everyone, or even every intellectual, is infected by nationalism. Secondly, nationalism can be intermittent and limited. An intelligent man may half-succumb to a belief which attracts him but which he knows to be absurd, and he may keep it out of his mind for long periods, only reverting to it in moments of anger or sentimentality, or when he is certain that no important issue is involved.”

So we’re not doomed to forever comment wars and cycles of takes and dunks, but as communication technology brings political debates more constantly into our lives, the problems that Orwell identified have got worse. It’s a shame to think that these problems are worse now than in Orwell’s time, but at least we are aware of these problems. If we can summon the will to change how we do politics, we can make things better.

Branch of the National Union of Journalists (BNUJ)., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

It’s Johnson’s success and not his downfall that shows the way forward for Labour

Boris Johnson, the worst Prime Minister of my entire life - as I was born in 1985, that’s really saying something - is finally shuffling off the stage in utter disgrace. Like an unwanted party guest - who shat on your sofa and then out of sheer brass insisted he stay for one more spliff and another bit of Karaoke - has finally realised that literally everyone wants him gone so he is finally going. Maybe now we can clean the shit stain off our democracy and try and save something of the evening.

It’s either the most ironic or unironic piece of Westminster history that Johnson was ultimately undone by his lying. He has lied his way through several careers, but finally his lies over the appointment of Christopher Pincher as chief whip have brought the whole house of cards down in a huge, undignified tumble. Now he’s a disgrace and the whole nation sees him for who he is: an inadequate chancer out of his depth and only worthy of derision.

I watched his embarrassing resignation live on air. In just over six years I have seen three Tory PMs stand humiliated on the steps of 10 Downing Street and offer a bitter resignation. First David Cameron, after gambling it all on a referendum he lost. Then Teresa May, brought down by the Brexit deal she once hoped would make her more popular than Margaret Thatcher at her height but ultimately couldn’t pass. Now Johnson, undone by his own worst instincts. Despite all of this, the Tory party is still in power.

More free market fundamentalism

Good riddance to bad rubbish as far as Johnson is concerned. The next question is: which of the various flavours of awful will be the next Tory leader? There’s a whole range to choose from, from the terrifyingly posh to the terrifyingly right-wing. There’s those who want to cut the state back to the size it was in 1935 and those who want to cut it back to the size it was in 1855. There’s those who want stupidly low taxes and those who want dangerously low taxes. There’s those who want to start a culture war over trans rights and those who want to start a culture war over immigration. A real diversity of candidates.

My instinct is that the Tories will go in a different direction from Johnson for the next leader. Someone not quite so comfortable with lying and being so boldly corrupt. Most likely, the Tories will choose someone more into the free market. Tory MPs weren’t keen on how much Johnson was up for using the state to tackle the problems of the country. They prefer the unfettered forces of capitalism to sort things out. That hasn’t worked in more than 40 years of neoliberalism, but that hasn’t dampened the Tories enthusiasm for it.

The lesson for Labour

Johnson’s humiliation has left Labour riding high in the polls. However, a new leader could change all of that. The biggest risk to Labour is from a Johnson-esque populist. Someone keen on divisive culture wars, which cut across the coalition that Labour needs to win over. However, for such a populist to be a success they need to offer more. They need to offer ‘levelling up’, i.e. using the state to address the economic, cultural and political inequalities in this country by investing in places that have suffered in the last 40 years. Johnson talked this up (although he did little) and it won him popularity. There’s a lesson in this for Labour.

The Tories will be lining up more rounds of austerity, with some tax cuts for the people they like thrown in (that’s pensioners, corporations and the wealthy for those who haven’t been paying attention). Austerity will be bad for all the voters Labour needs to win over, from young Remainers living in cities to retired Leavers living in small towns. Johnson won by running against the previous nine years of Tory austerity. Labour should run against it too.

Labour should avoid being drawn into arguments about the deficit and tax levels. They shouldn’t be drawn into a debate about whether the state can fix the problems of the country. Five minutes ago, the Tories were all up for fixing the problems of the country (largely created by them) with state power. It was popular. Labour should make a pro-state, pro-levelling up argument. The way to beat the next Tory leader is to learn from Johnson’s success and not rely on his ignominious downfall to win Labour the next election.

"Boris Johnson at Conservative Party Conference" by conservativeparty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

What should the left do (and stop doing) to help the situation in Ukraine

Before we start, I want to say that the best thing you can do to help the people of the Ukraine is to donate to appeals that aid Ukrainian refugees or, if you can, volunteer to take in a refugee, or to support groups trying to help civilians inside the Ukraine. These are simple things that can make a much bigger difference than any amount of tweeting, arguing back with talking heads or writing long rambling blog posts. 

There are left-wing policies, which comrades have been pushing for years, which will help the situation, such as not allowing Russian oligarchs to launder their money through London or making it easier for refugees to live in the UK. The Tories are finally doing the latter, better late than never, and making it easier for Ukrainian refugees to come to the UK, but this hasn’t translated into more solidarity to refugees from elsewhere. Now the government has announced plans to send some refugees to Rwanda.

Another thing is to remember arguments we made during previous wars, such as The War on Terror, about all Muslims not being responsible for the actions of a few, or that we should be wary of a wave of Islamophobia caused by the conflict. Now, we need to be wary of Russophobia; a Russian person working in a bar in East London has no say over the action of their country. They shouldn’t be held responsible for it, and they don’t need anyone’s earful about the actions of the Russian military.

Stalinist eye roll

Another thing is to make sure you aren’t inadvertently sharing Russian propaganda online. And no, this isn’t becoming a vague rant about ‘Stalinists’ amongst the online left. There must be almost no-one in the UK who thinks that Stalin was a good idea and implying that there are many leftists who think so is just silly.

I guess the accusation of Stalinism implies that the person is a Tankie or, more accurately, an authoritarian Marxist-Leninist. I’m opposed to authoritarian Marxist-Leninism, but again, no-one thinks that Vladimir Putin is a Marxist-Leninist (unless you just assume he is because he’s Russian and so was Lenin).

If you are far-left enough to call yourself a Marxist-Leninist specifically, or a communist more generally, and you think that Putin’s invasion of Ukraine is a step towards the worldwide proletarian communist revolution, then you need your head examined. However, this probably only applies to about three people in a pub in Clapham. All this is to say I’m not sure what it really means to call someone a Stalinist today, so let’s park all the accusations of Stalinism.

More disclaimers

Real talk for a second: it is possible to share pro-Putin or Putin adjacent narratives, usually inadvertently, without having to tweet: “Go Putin! Russia is da bomb!” I want to have a talk about how this can happen and what to look out for. If you think I am joining some kind of mainstream media pile-on against lefties for not being sufficiently pro-war with Russia or anything like that then you can stop reading now. I want to have an honest chat about the effects of the stories and content we share online.

Whilst we’re doing the disclaimers, just so that you don’t think that I am joining the chorus of people accusing anyone who disagrees with the Labour Party line on NATO as being pro-Putin, I am aware that some have taken this as opportunity to accuse the left - or anyone even remotely critical of NATO or Western foreign policy – of being one of Putin’s useful idiots. This is an oversimplification. However, I have seen lefties - many inadvertently - sharing Putin propaganda online.

Right, with all that said, let’s get to it.

Pro-Putin narratives

There’s a range of narrative that you can share that supports Putin. Yeah, there are some people who are spreading Putin’s message because they believe it, but these are very rare. Only an idiot can look at Putin - a regressive, conservative Christian, nationalist - and think there is anything remotely left-wing about him.

More worryingly, there are those on the left who are inadvertently spreading Putin’s narrative that Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his government are a neo-Nazi regime or have links to Nazi groups. Some on the left are sharing these narratives because they hate what liberals like, which right now is Zelenskyy.

Centrist cringe

Yes certainly, the love for Zelenskyy has taken on a weird edge in some outlets. I find articles like this one as cringe as the next guy does. It’s very strange that he is being treated like he’s a plucky, loveable underdog in a sitcom, not a man involved in an actual war. He’s not Ted Lasso and this war isn’t something to entertain people in between seasons of Love Island.

The centrist liberal stanning of Zelenskyy is more than a little detached from the reality of the war and is not much help to Ukrainian civilians. Yet, that doesn’t mean the people who hate the very online centrists should start hating Zelenskyy, or spread misinformation that he has links to neo-Nazis. Ukraine’s history with Nazism is too long and complicated to get into here, but I do feel some of this is fed by stereotypes of Eastern European people being on the far-right.

We’re all as bad as each other

Then there’s the people who say they’re all as bad as each other: West, East, US, UK, Russia, Ukraine - they’re all just as flawed as each other. This is a Putin narrative as it is something he says himself. He promotes the view that all nations are equally morally flawed to justify his repression of his own people. Don’t share these types of posts. Saying that the West and Putin’s Russia are the same is a massive oversimplification not worthy of any thinking person on the left.

Putin’s Russia is a much worse place to be than Britain or America, which are deeply flawed societies. Putin murders opposition politicians and represses free speech far beyond what happens in the West. At least 8,000 people have been arrested for protesting the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There are eight letters in the Russian phrase for “no war” and even holding up a piece of paper with eight asterisks on it can get you arrested.

I am opposed to how our class of political and economic elites re-create their own power and use tools, nefarious and otherwise, to influence people to support them. I don’t like how much power muckraking tabloid newspapers, incendiary TV news channels and attention hording social media platforms - all owned by billionaires – have over the range of political views that are considered allowed by polite society. All this is bad, but it’s not as bad as what Putin does in Russia.

A list of war mongers

Saying that Putin’s Russia is a worse place than Boris Johnson’s Britain doesn’t undermine us criticising our own government and society for its many flaws. You can say that you’d rather live in the UK than Russia, but the UK is still rubbish.

Of all the shitty things about the US and the UK, the most relevant to this discussion is that we invaded Iraq on a flimsy pretext, and that those responsible for many thousands of deaths and the collapse of a country have faced no consequences. This is terrible and should not be forgotten. George Bush, Tony Blair and Putin are all war mongers with blood on their hands but that doesn’t make them interchangeable.

Saying Putin is a worse authoritarian and a worse war criminal is not to diminish how bad the invasion of Iraq was and the effect it has had on that country and the entire region: creating instability and misery for millions. The people responsible for this disaster are still part of the legitimate political discourse, a fact which blows my mind on a regular basis.

Enraging and deeply stupid 

Some of these Bush and Blair era politicians show no self-awareness of what they did and the role they had in it. Condoleezza Rice recently said on Fox News: “When you invade a sovereign nation, that is a war crime.” She also added: “It is certainly against every principle of international law and international order.” This level of hypocrisy is both enraging and deeply stupid.

At least George Bush Jr had the decency to condemn his own invasion of Iraq when he said: “the decision of one man to launch a wholly unjustified and brutal invasion of Iraq.” The only issue with this is that he was trying to condemn Putin and not make amends for himself.

Criticising NATO and Western governments

The left should be critical of NATO and its long-term strategy. Keir Starmer’s hard-line on NATO criticism isn’t in the spirit of free debate and it doesn’t help us understand how this conflict came about. Besides, you can criticise NATO and still say that Britain should be in it. My view is that it was a mistake to try and expand NATO closer and closer to Russia, but that doesn’t mean we should now abandon Ukraine to be destroyed by Russia.

Criticising NATO is not just a far-left idea. Henry Kissinger said Ukraine shouldn’t join NATO and the Pope has been critical of NATO. People from across the political spectrum have said that enlarging NATO would be seen as a threat by Russia. Starmer would consider the Pope’s and Kissinger’s view too left-wing to be allowed in the Labour Party.

We should also be critical of Western governments’ role in Putin’s gaining his stranglehold on power. He was considered an ally in the War On Terror and we turned a blind eye to his activities in Chechnya, then Georgia, then Syria because we didn’t want to get involved or run the risk of triggering a larger conflict. The British and American governments hold some responsibility for what has happened and the left mustn’t let this be forgotten.

Blaming the left

It’s possible to advance left-wing narratives and not fall into the trap of spreading Putin’s propaganda. It just requires some thought before posting. What the left also needs to be wary of is those taking this as an opportunity to blame the left for the conflict. Apparently, everything from trans-rights to “cancel culture” is responsible for Putin feeling confident enough to invade Ukraine, or has taken the machismo out of the West’s response. As if Joe Biden was thinking of cancel culture when he decided not to fire American missiles at targets in Russia as soon as Putin’s army crossed the border.

You can’t move for some right-wing hack saying that students with purple hair creating safe spaces on campuses, or people in London drinking craft beer and wanting housing to be slightly more affordable and jobs to be slightly better, are the ones responsible for Russian tanks rolling through Ukraine.

I’m not sure what the left is supposed to have done. Neutered the West’s resolve by not loving soldiers so much they want to throw hundreds of thousands of them into the jaws of the mechanised death machine? Apparently, any deviation from right-wing politics makes us militarily weak, so debates about colonialism must be forever silenced so that more space can be created for loving war so much that every country in the world quakes in fear of the West.

A love of war and Putin

Behind all this admonishing the left for the wussification of the West is a disturbing right-wing streak of thinly disguised praise for Putin. “He’s a real man,” they seem to say, when claiming that the problem with the West is that we care about things other than the problems that can be tackled with huge armies and an obsessive, uncritical worship of the military. Putin doesn’t care about toilets for non-binary people, or making universities more open to poor or BAME people, or climate change, they say. That’s what makes him strong and able to invade other countries. How this isn’t praise for Putin and saying we should be like him, is beyond me.

There’s also those on the right that give Putin cover. From Nigel Farage to Tucker Carlson, there is an entire ecosystem of right-wing shock jocks and nationalist politicians eager to praise Putin openly and spread his narratives. These people have big audiences, and they use them to spread disinformation about the invasion. We should make sure that no one ever forgets these people’s support for Putin.

My main response to this conflict is that I don’t want a war that could easily turn nuclear and even if didn’t could leave Europe devastated. Sorry if that makes me a soy boy cuck for not being really up for mass death of a hitherto unimagined scale? Is that really what the right wants? A huge war? And if the so-called man in the street isn’t so keen on massive wars as he used to be, isn’t that because the recent big wars, like the War in Iraq, were started on flimsy pretexts, were badly managed and generally made the whole situation worse?

Condemn Putin and help refugees

The left should condemn Putin wherever possible. He’s a belligerent right-wing nationalist who abuses democracy, represses his own citizens and now is inflicting enormous amounts of destruction on the people of the Ukraine.

We should be vigilant, criticise those who need criticism and do whatever we can, big or small, to help the people of the Ukraine. Remember that anything you can send or give, financially or in goods or services, to help a refugee or a person in a conflict zone will do more to make this terrible situation better than a billion tweets or Facebook updates.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

Even if Johnson resigns, Labour still needs a strong narrative

Is Boris Johnson’s goose finally cooked? The man who seems impervious to scandal and shame faced a no-confidence vote this week. Maybe there is a limit to what you can get away with in politics.  

What can we learn from this? Is it that eventually your misdeeds will catch up with you? You can only be shameless and slide out of any scandal for so long? Or is it that this scandal, Partygate, is one that people outside the circles who follow politics like it’s a sport care about?

Most people don’t care that Johnson lied about the benefits of leaving the EU. They think all politicians lie and people don’t mind the lies they like. Partygate is different, as we all went through the pandemic and made sacrifices, whilst in Number 10 people were partying like it was 1979. It also plays into the public perception of the Tories that they look down on the little people.

What should Labour do?

The vote on Monday has fatally wounded Johnson. He’s now a dead man walking. This poses a tricky problem for Labour. What to do when there’s a change of Prime Minister? Most likely there will be another leader from the right of the Tory party, as that’s what the membership will opt for in the final round of voting. Perhaps someone keener on culture wars and cutting taxes than Johnson, with less of a need to be liked by everyone.

Jeremy Hunt is on manoeuvres and it’s my belief that he poses the greatest threat to Labour. He’s standing on competent leadership, better morals and being opposed to corruption. In other words: everything that Keir Starmer uses to differentiate himself from the Tories.

With Hunt in charge, what would be the difference between Labour and the Tories? Well, the Tories would be in government so their announcements would matter.

Saying and doing nothing

The Tories stole Labour’s policy of a windfall tax on energy companies, and Labour somehow managed to not turn this into a political victory. The Tories are raising taxes and planning large scale state intervention in markets, and Labour aren’t using this as an argument for their policies or as an opportunity to make them look more reasonable to the voters. 

I guess this would involve saying something or doing something, which is against the Labour strategy of being quiet until the voters decide they have waited patiently long enough and it’s their turn for power.

If Labour cannot score with such an open goal, then what chance do they have of winning a general election? None. If they can’t find something to say as inflation soars and people across the country, across age groups and across the political divide are driven into poverty by the cost-of-living crisis, then when will Labour have something to say? 

Think Big

It’s said that in a time of crisis, when the old ideologies collapse, political parties reach for whatever is lying around. This is how neoliberalism or Chicago School economics seized the Tory party in the 80s. It’s how state interventionism seizedthe Democrats in the 1930s. There’s plenty of good ideas lying around. Labour need look no further than the book Think Big, written by former Labour leader Ed Miliband, to find some good left-wing policy ideas.

From the Green New Deal, to citizen assemblies, to universal basic income, via ways to revitalise trade unions in the gig economy and ways to get young people more involved in politics, the book is full of ready-made policy proposals that could be the basis for a narrative of how Labour is changing the country. Just open the book, flip through, and choose a page at random.

Labour needs something to say

Yet, Labour doesn’t do this. Most likely out of fear of being monstered by the press - which will happen anyway - and a need to seem non-threatening, like the guy sitting quietly in the corner of a rowdy pub. He may seem non-threatening, but he’s unlikely to be elected Prime Minister.

If Labour can’t think of anything to say, or a narrative about how they will improve Britain, at times like this, then it doesn’t matter if Johnson stays or goes. Another Tory, centre or far-right, will win an election if they have something, anything, to say to the people.

"Boris Johnson at Conservative Party Conference" by conservativeparty is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Let’s not fall for the false divide over fuel protests

A few weeks ago The Labour Party, in I guess what is called a fit of pique, called on Twitter for a ban on people protesting at petrol stations. This was after a group called Just Stop Oil blocked motorists from filling up. This heavy-handed response from Labour is somehow both surprising and completely unsurprising. 

It’s unsurprising because Labour clearly wants the votes of Boomers, who will only give up their car keys from their cold dead hands, over the votes of young people, who think we need to phase out fossil fuels, to, y’know, save the lives of every living thing on the planet.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the fact that we are a divided society. You could be forgiven for imagining the UK is split between people blocking tankers from delivering fuel to petrol stations, and people gladly running over these protestors so that they can get a full tank and then complete the school run. In this lazy comedy sketch, not even good enough for the terrible Spitting Image revival, the protestor is wearing tie-dyed homemade clothes and the motorist is driving an SUV.

An absurd divide

In this analogy, Labour is on the side of the homicidal motorist and determined to push away the planet-loving hippy. This is because … well why? A hatred of protestors who disrupt the lives of ordinary salt-of-the-earth types? A desire to crush the radical left? A need to win the support of working-class, no-nonsense, socially conservative Red Wall voters? A desire to distance the party from Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership? (We assume the hippy is a Corbyn loving Remainer and the motorist is a Brexit supporter who used to vote Labour under Tony Blair, but voted Tory in 2019.)

Does it come from a desire to represent decent, hard-working ordinary people who haven’t had a proper pay rise in years, who rely on public services that have been slashed by austerity, and are now having their quality of life eviscerated by the twin dragons of inflation and rising costs of living? These people are too busy trying to feed their families, pay their spiralling household bills and make it to the end of the week without collapsing into depression. These people don’t have the bandwidth to worry about next month, let alone decarbonising by 2050.

Maybe Labour shouldn’t be the party of the hyper-online, comfortably middle-class activist set who have the free time to block petrol stations because someone else is paying for their room and board. Or maybe they should, these actions might be the last chance to stop environmental devastation, and these activists are focusing on the big picture, while the rest of us are worrying about whether we have enough Tesco Clubcard points. Pick a side Labour! Goodie or baddie? Which one is which?

Twitter and elections

This division is, of course, absurd. Not everyone who drives hates the planet or is so focused on their own woes that they don’t care about the world their children will be adults in. Most activists aren’t a caricature of middle-class school student politicos, a latter-day Rick from the Young Ones, come to life to bore us to death. Society isn’t so starkly divided. Only on Twitter and at elections, where we force everyone into one or two camps for one day and use that to decide what will happen for four years.

So why choose one side or the other, Labour? Well, this announcement was made over Twitter where it pays to be single-minded. Twitter is not the place for nuance.

Big and small pictures

The tweet does indicate a preference about the type of voters that Labour wants to win over, and they’re more likely to be motorists than environmentalists. I’m sure Kier Starmer and Labour care about the environment and want to do something to avert the looming climate catastrophe. They also want to help people struggling through the week. People for whom not being able to fill up their car might mean they can’t take their kids to school or go to work. It’s possible to be on both sides.

We should reject the binary of the short-sighted motorist and the class-privileged ignorant activist. It’s good that Labour wants to use politics to improve the lot of the struggling ordinary families, who maybe haven’t read the latest ICCP report but do care about the wider world and the future.

On top of this, sometimes we need activists at a petrol station to remind us all of the bigger issues that will affect us all sooner or later, and these activists need the support of the party from the part of the political spectrum that isn’t in bed with those profiting from making the world worse and destroying the climate. Labour has responsibilities to both ordinary people and activists. It shouldn’t jettison one over the other because of a false binary created by angry discourse.

Being on both sides 

I get it, if for one day, Labour needed to be unnuanced on Twitter to not get monstered by the right-wing press. Although, that will happen anyway, so let’s not compromise too much to avert what’s definitely going to happen.

The rest of the time we need to remember that these discourse battle lines bear no relation to how most people live their lives, and the struggles they face. Struggles that Labour could help with if it gains power. Poverty and cost of living pressures need to be addressed, but so does the environment or it will make everyone’s lives worse.

Labour needs to be on both sides of these false divides. Helping ordinary people and saving the environment should both be crucial priorities for the next Labour government.

"Extinction Rebellion-11" by juliahawkins123 is licensed under CC BY 2.0 

Tory Brexiters are ignoring Northern Ireland because it’s inconvenient

Last week Boris Johnson was in Northern Ireland, attempting to renegotiate his own protocol that has given his party so much of a headache that you do have to wonder what he was thinking when he signed it. That’s a joke. He never thinks. 

Johnson agreed to this protocol way back in 2019 (remember then? Oh, how innocent we all were). The thing about this protocol, and the larger Brexit agreement it’s a part of, is that there are no new options that have appeared between 2019 and now - and there never will be.

The Three Brexit problems

The three issues Johnson faces now are the same as the three he faced back then. One: the Tories want to set their own (read lower) standards than the EU so they can’t have a customs Union with the EU. This means we need checks on goods moving between the UK and the EU. This creates a problem for the UK’s only land border with the EU in Northern Ireland.

This brings us to two: as Northern Ireland has been a site of conflict within living memory, and the border is largely arbitrary - cutting through communities and in some places people’s homes - the idea of making this a big deal border with loads of checkpoints and guards is a really bad idea. An even worse idea than Brexit.

This leads us to problem three, the one that Johnson chose to ignore and has been a pain in his ass ever since: an open border between the UK and the EU in Northern Ireland means there must be checks on goods moving between Northern Ireland and the mainland if the UK wants to set its own standards on what’s allowed.

Northern Ireland drama

By ignoring problem three, Johnson created an Irish Sea border between one part of the UK and the rest, which has upset the DUP who are now refusing to join a new government in Northern Ireland until this barrier is gone. As far as they’re concerned, Northern Ireland is as much a part of the UK as Somerset, and it shouldn’t have a border or different trade agreements.

Last week was also the next (and final) chapter of a different Northern Ireland drama, but this one was a much funnier one: the Channel 4 sitcom Derry Girls. The final episode dealt with the referendum on The Good Friday agreement and the protagonist’s 18th birthday. The two tie together into a message about stepping forward into the future.

One character, Granda Joe (Ian McElhinney), whose life would have covered the entirety of The Troubles, gives a passionate monologue about how the violence and fear of The Troubles could become a thing of the past, with his infant granddaughter perched on his knee for a neat visual metaphor. The episode ends with the characters voting for The Good Friday agreement before heading home. The final shot shows Granda Joe leading the polling station holding the hand of his granddaughter who can grow up in a world without fear of bombs and soldiers on the street.

Lack of thought

The finale is a touching reminder that peace has to be strived for and compromises need to be made, but if we’re willing to work hard and with a little faith in each other we can leave behind for our children and grandchildren a better, less violent, world than the one we inherited.

I don’t know if Johnson or anyone on his staff watched the finale of Derry Girls before going to Northern Ireland, but they should have. Pro-Brexit politicians have paid little heed to Northern Ireland as they pushed for the most severe exit from the EU they could get. During the campaign, between trading blows on the economy and hollering about immigration, Northern Ireland was hardly mentioned.

Whilst Theresa May’s government was melting down over Brexit we didn’t pay enough attention to how the Brexit the Tories were pushing for would undermine The Good Friday agreement. When Johnson was barking about getting Brexit done, did we think what the implications for peace were?

Northern Ireland is far away

Brexiteers have pretended Northern Ireland doesn’t exist for too long because it makes their ideal, low-regulation Brexit more difficult. To be honest, most Remainers only care about Northern Ireland when they can use it as a stick to beat Brexiteers with.

Brexit is pushing Northern Ireland closer to joining the Republic of Ireland, which I assume the Tories don’t want. They are the Conservative and Unionist party after all, and the ‘Unionist’ part was about Ireland before it was about Scotland. I’m sure they don’t want to see a United Ireland. So why does everything they do make it more likely?

Well, they care about other things more. Managing rebellious backbenchers or getting more trade freedom out of Brexit is much more important to the Tories than whatever happens in Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is far away, and unhappy backbenchers crowing about trade policy are in Westminster. Besides, the Tory Party doesn’t even field candidates in Northern Ireland.

Sleep running into danger

We’re sleep-running into political upheaval in Northern Ireland and maybe even a return of violence to the region, which was a common occurrence as recently as Live Forever by Oasis being in the charts. Not exactly ancient history.

The pressure on Northern Ireland will only get worse until this government makes Northern Ireland a priority, or we get one that does. We cannot keep ignoring the effects of Brexit on Northern Ireland and hoping that another round of Tory led negotiations will solve them. It won’t.

EU flag image created by Yanni Koutsomitis and used under creative commons.

What Labour should not learn from the French election

I have to say that I breathed a huge sigh of relief when Emmanuel Macron was re-elected as President of France last week. Not that I harbour any love for the centrist French premier, who has spent his first five years in office drifting to the right on social issues (particularly around immigration and Islam), picking fights with France’s unions and trying to cut back the country’s social security safety net. 

There isn’t much to love about Macron, between describing himself as the Roman god Jupiter - no really - and trying to do Thatcherite reforms to the French economy, just at the time when even the centrists in Britain and the US are realising that cutting back the state with a devil take the hindmost attitude isn’t a good idea.

Whatever your criticism of Macron, I think we can all agree that Marine Le Pen is much worse. She’s the type of far-right to make Nigel Farage look positively tepid. I would fear for non-white French people and immigrants (much more than I do already) if she was elected. So last week I breathed a sigh of relief and opened a bottle of Chambolle-Musigny to toast the centrist dad’s favourite politician's re-election.

We demand something slightly better than the authoritarian far-right

Macron won easily, although not as easily as last time, because his opponent was so awful. This is a damning indictment of centrism. The only argument for what Macron offers is that it’s better than an objectively awful alternative. It’s hardly a banner to rally around or a shout that will echo through the ages. “We demand something slightly better than the authoritarian far right.”

What will Labour leader Keir Starmer learn from this? That it’s possible to win by appearing like the much-hated “establishment politician” when your enemy appears to be much worse, most likely.

This is the argument that British voters want a competent bank manager type politician as Prime Minister. This is how David Cameron beat Ed Miliband, the argument goes, and how Boris Johnson (looking a lot less like a competent bank manager than Cameron) beat Jeremy Corbyn (who looked even less like a competent bank manager).

An establishment political tradition

If Starmer is betting on Johnson/The Tories looking as off-putting as Le Pen and her National Rally, so that he can win the same way as Macron did, he’s in for a rude awakening. Le Pen carries more baggage going into an election, not the least her father’s name that is inescapably associated with the extreme right. As such, the French media and voters show her less deference than the Tories get.

Also, Johnson and The Tories are the government, so the argument of “you must not let this dangerous person near power or they will destroy everything” doesn’t work when Johnson is already PM. Even if Johnson’s time as PM has been a disaster and he shouldn’t be given more power or allowed to stay in power, past disasters don’t have the same scary quality as possible future disasters.

Finally, Johnson is not Le Pen. He’s part of an established and well-known political tradition and falls within The Overton Window or bounds of “normal politics”. The Tory party has moved to the right substantially in the last six years, but many people still associate it with great leaders like Winston Churchill or moderate, centre-right figures like Ted Heath.

Le Pen and the National Rally doesn’t have that history making her seem more reasonable. She is clearly outside what most French voters see as acceptable, despite her attempts over the last five years to look more like a normal politician. Politicians from establishment traditions, from the Tories to the Republicans (both US and French Republicans) are acting more and more like the far-right, but the successes of far-right figures like Le Pen has been making mainstream parties adopt her fringe views, and not stopping herself been seen as a fringe politician.

Uninspiring continuity

One takeaway from all this is that it’s possible to win without offering the electorate any substantial possibility of change. Even in the angry, constantly upheaving, “things cannot go on like they are” 2020s - where the only roar is the roar of protests demanding things be different - it’s possible to win by offering centrism, continuity and establishment values.

Again, I feel this doesn’t apply to Starmer’s Labour as Johnson isn’t seen in the same light as Le Pen. Also, Starmer isn’t offering continuity because he’s not in government. Still, all this does demonstrate you don’t have to be particularly inspiring to win. Starmer can take some comfort in that.

The other takeaway that Labour is likely to embrace wholeheartedly is that it’s possible to win by completely ignoring left-wing voters. Macron has talked about how he’s listening to the anger of right-wing voters, giving more justification for them to at least flirt with voting far-right in the future to get what they want.

Listening to the left

Macron has said: “I know that many of my compatriots voted for me not to back my ideas, but to keep out those of the far-right,” but during the campaign he didn’t say much about reaching out to left-wing voters who supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the first round. Despite his economics being “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” I’m not wild about a man who wants to ban the veil. Let’s just say that Mélenchon’s social views aren’t in line with what I consider to be the modern left.

Macron also seems to have little interest in those who voted for the centre-left Socialist Party, led by Anne Hidalgo who, as mayor, has put making Paris a modern green city at the heart of her agenda. Hopefully, Macron is aware that he won this second term because of left-wing sufferance and his statement about people not backing him for his ideas is more than words, i.e. a genuine desire to listen to people who objected to his policies in his first term as president.

Too close for comfort

I don’t think there is much that British left-wing politicians can learn directly from this French election. The Le Pen factor is crucial. Johnson and his government are in the same plane of awfulness as Le Pen, but they cling to the “legitimate” side of the right/far-right split in the minds of many UK voters. They have the veneer of acceptability that comes from being in a party that has been in and out of power for centuries.

It’s good that a dangerous far-right politician didn’t become the leader of the world’s sixth-largest economy, with a huge military and a massive civil infrastructure to bend to their will. Although, I’m not too hopeful about the future, in France and elsewhere, as this election was too close for comfort.

Everyone’s hot takes on the Ukraine invasion are causing me to lose the will to live

What could be the greatest tragedy of my life so far is currently unfolding in Ukraine. Although, pitching the genocide of the Rohingyas in Myanmar, the Syrian Civil War and other untold tragedies against each other in the worst bracket of all time seems in especially bad taste.

Yet there is plenty of bad taste to go around. From commentators stating that war has returned to Europe for the first time since 1945 - as if the Yugoslav wars and the Kosovo crisis didn’t happen - to war reporters saying this feels different because the war is in a country of white people, sorry I meant a “civilised” country.

From surfing the never-ending hot take machine that is the Internet, I can see that as well as all the bad taste, we have people stupendously missing the point. This includes everyone trying to make the invasion about themselves. As if you, sitting in a Victorian townhouse in Hackney reading about the invasion via the Guardian app on your iPad, can imagine one-tenth of what it is like to live with the possibility of having a Russian missile crash through your apartment block at any moment.

The lowest point for Europe

I don’t have much to add on a geopolitical level, other than this is terrible and breaks my heart every time I look at the news. So, I will reserve the rest of this article for sniping at people on the internet who are taking the lowest moment for Europe – at least since I first got a passport and started taking boozy holidays in Germany - as an excuse to fill the internet with absolute drivel.

This includes, and is not limited to: the people who think that this has been caused by Brexit; the people taking this as an excuse to blame everyone for everything; the centrists calling everyone to their left a Putin apologist; and the armchair military commanders who accuse anyone questioning anything NATO ever did as somehow being part of a plot to bring down the beloved international order so that a self-obsessed, murdering authoritarian can roll tanks across the UK.

On the other hand, there are those laying the blame at the feet of NATO with massive enthusiasm for online finger-wagging, acting as if a perfectly constructed witty Twitter put-down will make a difference to people suffering on the ground in Ukraine. My advice to the energetic liberal owners of social media is to take ten minutes off from dunking on internet loudmouths to donate to the causes collecting goods for refugees. That will make a difference. Being a keyboard hack won’t.

All imperialism is bad

There are also the rare, but annoyingly vocal, pro-Putin lefties. This tendency has been greatly exaggerated for the purposes of meme wars, but it’s still irksome to come across useful idiots mainlining Russian propaganda, ‘because BBC’, and spending all the livelong day accusing everyone except Putin of being responsible for the war that Putin *checks notes* started.

As George Monbiot put it: “The people who have amplified these excuses are not, as they claim, anti-imperialists. They are rightly opposed to western imperialism, but will bend over backwards to accommodate Russian imperialism. Some are paid stooges. For others it’s ‘my enemy's enemy is my friend’.”

Trust me when I say that even if the US or NATO is your enemy, Putin is not your friend. Also, if you have gone past “all imperialism bad”, through “American imperialism is the worst”, and ended up at “therefore Russian imperialism good” then there really is no helping you. Allow me to bastardise the Dead Kennedys and say: “Putin lefties fuck off!”

Do something

Then there are the ceaseless centrist soldier-hugging “do somethings” who, as usual, are spending a lot of time on Twitter after the divorce. I understand this desire to use the power that the West has to improve the situation, but I am not sure what we can do, apart from what we are doing. Even the Tories are trying to get Russian money out of the City of London, which is surprising, although, of course, we should have done it years ago.

Closely allied to the “do somethings” are the beard-scratching liberal intellectuals who have lots to say on this (columns to file and all that) but not a lot to offer. You don’t need a degree from Oxford to notice that the invasion is awful, but if NATO does anything that even smells like attacking the Russian army, that will lead to a (likely nuclear) war with Russia. It’s painful to realise that there is very little of immediate practical effect that the West can do without risking the life of every living thing on the planet. Countries with nukes get to act awfully. I don’t know, maybe we should have gotten rid of the nukes in the 60s.

The sensibles weigh in

King of the Sensibles, Jonathan Freedland, summed it up when he said: “This then, is the choice. Do we want to live in the world described by Zelensky, where democratic states are protected by an international system of rules, however flawed and inconsistent that system might be? Or do we want to live in Putin’s world, governed by the law of the jungle and where the only right is might?”

As a weedy, pathetic, unconfident and awkward man who resorts to saying all my mean things online, I don’t want to live by Putin’s law of the jungle. It sounds awful. But how do we stand up to ‘might makes right’ without getting into a fight with a nuclear-armed, trigger-happy thug? I don’t think appealing to Putin’s sense of justice and fair play will work. I want the sensibles to tell me how we make the nuclear gangster stick to the international system of rules, however flawed and inconsistent that system might be, in a sensible way. I have been thinking on this all week and can’t work it out.

Freedland went onto say: “Putin does not care if his people suffer. He’s priced in the hit to his oligarch pals, just as he’s priced in the loss of Russian military lives. For him, conquering Ukraine – and removing the example of a democratic neighbour that might show Russians a different life is possible – is worth it.” Freedland is making the point better than I am that all this crying of “do something” is pointless.

The view from the right-wing bellends

Then, of course, there are those who have taken this as an opportunity to swipe at the left, because why break the habit of a lifetime? This includes the Telegraph, who said that an RMT tube strike was in sympathy with Putin. I guess we’re at the point where we can say anything in print, no matter how deranged, and if it vibes with our readers then it’s okay. I’m not going to stoop to the Telegraph’s level for a joke. I’m going to say that anyone who believes that headline needs to stop sniffing glue as it’s fucking up their brain.

Then there are those who blame ‘the woke’ for this. On some level, you have to admire their enthusiasm for culture wars in a month most people took off from flogging their hobby horse out of respect for the dead. Then again, you don’t get to be Ben “King of right-wing Internet bellends” Shapiro by taking a break from blaming the woke for everything that’s wrong with the world.

Although, he’s really outdone himself this time: claiming that the West having a greater range of pronouns available (read being accepting of trans people or non-binary people) makes us look weak and thus has emboldened Putin. I guess you could blame peace-loving, tolerant, accepting social justice warriors for a violent conflict triggered by a homophobic, belligerent nationalist. That makes perfect sense. The only alternative is that the conservative patriotism that Shapiro and his ilk spouts is really to blame and that the Republicans he shills for are just a less effective version of Putin.

Belligerent conservative nationalists

Conservative nationalism is rotten all the way down. Whether you are policing people’s bathrooms or invading your neighbours, the belief that there is a God-given traditional order to the world - and that all these young people with their pronouns, dyed hair, respecting people of different colours, identities & faiths, and Tiktok accounts are debasing this natural order - is causing most of the misery in the world.

Remember, Steve Bannon took time out from being a throbbing caldron of online hate to back Putin for being anti-woke. But expressing that doesn’t get Shapiro retweets from people who follow MMA, so, as usual, everyone must be whipped up into a fury at vulnerable minorities whilst Putin, a belligerent conservative nationalist himself, is laughing all the way to his ammo store.

Nukes are bad

Whilst all this is going on, Putin and the self-important hardmen who claim to be the leaders of the free world are hurtling us ever closer to a nuclear war. Maybe we shouldn’t have a global political system that encourages the most venial, pole-climbing, ambitious, selfish and self-important people to struggle to the top, and then give them the power to destroy the world.

We might be about to find out that nuclear dick swinging is more than just a disturbing way that world leaders decide who’s the alpha dog in the military-industrial kennel and has real world risks. Of course, saying nukes are bad is about the same as being a Communist, despite Joseph Stalin’s love of the bomb. We did have a political leader in the UK who said nukes were bad and he wouldn’t use them, and everyone thought this was the same as surrendering to Putin.

So, the free world is led by big tough men who will use nukes and won’t be pushed around by, er, big tough men with nukes like Putin. Apparently, this is all in our best interest as we were all told when politicians of the left and the right voted for more nukes at a time when millions relied on food banks. Special mention must go to the liberals auditioning for a role in Dr Strangelove who said that nukes were bad, but we need them, although we should never use them. Peter Sellers turned over in his grave at that one.

Get off Twitter

So now we have political leaders, left and right, falling over each other to say they will use nukes against Putin. This race will continue right up until the moment where they do use nukes against Putin and everyone and everything dies. At least then they will have finally achieved the long sort after end of history.

Yeah, you can tell I’m really angry at everyone right now. Because you’re all obsessed with your hobby horses and not helping anyone. Maybe I should just get off Twitter and go for a walk, whilst I still can.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

There is no challenge to the narrative that the Covid-19 emergency has passed

The response to Covid-19 transformed politics, but now we’re sliding back into regular politics. Covid-19 hasn’t gone away, even if the new Omicron variant is less deadly. But the emergency politics of Covid-19 is going away. 

This is because the narrative that Covid-19 is extraordinarily dangerous and requires an emergency response from all of society is being replaced by a narrative that the extraordinary danger has passed, even if Covid-19 itself hasn’t passed. No leading political figures, both politicians and press, are challenging this shift or presenting an alternative to it.

It’s worth taking a look at how this has happened over the last few months.

The end of Plan B restrictions

A few weeks ago, Boris Johnson announced the end to all Plan B Covid-19 restrictions as part of his attempt to save his premiership. Not that many new restrictions were brought in during the pre-Christmas Omicron surge. Here in England, things were considerably more relaxed than in Scotland and Wales. The reason why we didn’t have many new restrictions imposed on us (even after the end of the Christmas period) is that Johnson couldn’t get his cabinet, his MPs, or his party to support them.

To get the restrictions that were passed through parliament, Johnson relied on Labour. Being a Prime Minister with a sizable majority and needing the opposition to pass key votes is humiliating for any Prime Minister and maybe one embarrassment that Teflon Boris is unable to shrug off. Johnson looks weak, vulnerable and likely to fall at any moment.

By supporting Johnson’s restrictions before Christmas, Labour was propping up a Prime Minister they could let die the death of a thousand cuts. I can see why Keir Starmer doesn’t want restrictions, which he views as vital to saving lives, to fail. Although, turning his support for the ailing Prime Minister into a sermon on how Labour is a patriotic party seemed a little heavy-handed.

Johnson clings to power

Allowing Johnson to cling to power to get Covid-19 restrictions passed and claiming this is all for the good of the country is just another example of how Starmer is out of touch with most voters. Yes, lots of voters (especially those Labour needs to win over) consider themselves patriotic, but a public address that resembles a Command and Conquer briefing isn’t what they had in mind.

Starmer’s enthusiasm for lockdowns is another way he is out of step with the country. He is attempting to look like a decisive leader who cares about the health of the people, in contrast to Johnson who dithers and then reluctantly decides to act when the hospitalisation numbers go from alarming to critical.

Everyone dislikes lockdowns and the public distrusts a leader who is very enthusiastic for them, even if it’s for the right reasons. The fact that Johnson had to be dragged by overwhelming evidence into lockdowns is in line with most people's attitudes, i.e. I’ll do it if I must.

Arguing with people in their head

A lot of the public discourse around lockdowns does appear to be people arguing with opponents who only exist in their heads. People reluctant to enter another lockdown are arguing with the mythical very pro-lockdown person; as if there are many people excited to stay home all the time and not see their friends or family.

Meanwhile, those concerned about the rising number of cases are arguing against the vanishingly few people who think Covid-19 should be allowed to let rip, the healthcare system, the disabled and the elderly be damned.

Almost everyone sits somewhere in between these extremes, willing to lock down to prevent a huge spike in Covid-19 fatalities but finding the mental health or financial effects of lockdown hard to bear. They don’t want people to die, but don’t want to be indefinitely entombed in their homes either.

Everyday politics

The political situation is changing as the disease becomes a part of everyday life, not something strange and alarming that requires special emergency measures. Covid-19 is still scary but, like a looming climate disaster or a war with one of the world’s authoritarian nuclear armed regimes, it’s a terror that is now a part of normal politics.

People are being forced by their employers to work, even if they’re sick with Covid-19. That’s normal for the flu and other infectious diseases. People are working from home if they’re sick and have a job in the knowledge economy, which is also normal. A disease is killing lots of old people and putting massive pressure on the NHS in the winter, but this is largely being shrugged off by the Conservative government as something that happens and not something that needs a political solution. All very normal.

At this point you’re probably screaming into your pillow about how we have ended up with the worst parts of Terry Giliam’s Brazil and Terry Giliam’s 12 Monkeys. Shifting the burden of preventing the spread of a disease that kills thousands of people a year onto low paid, poor and insecure workers is not something that Covid-19 invented. Neither is shrugging and hoping that the problem goes away every time the NHS lets out a desperate scream of agony in the run up to Christmas. Catching Covid-19 might be worse than catching the flu, but in many ways our political system is treating Covid-19 very much like the flu.

Becoming endemic

The pandemic produced an emergency response. Two years of restrictions, three lockdowns and two Christmas panics later we’ve managed to jab almost everyone and found out that Covid-19 is not like measles, where one jab gives you all the protection you need. Covid-19 is more like the flu where jabs are helpful, as is good hygiene and wearing masks on public transport if you think you have it, but not something that’s going away anytime soon.

Covid-19 is becoming endemic and is thus colliding with normal politics. The public and politicians will no longer accept emergency response measures. We need to shift to a long-term response. Endemic doesn’t mean Covid-19 is going away and saying it’s becoming like the flu is saying that it will kill lots of people each year and put huge pressure on our health system, but people will largely ignore this.

We will feel the impact of Covid for years to come - there will still be deaths, illness and other losses - but fewer and fewer political ramifications. Unless one political party or politician can find a way to tell a story that weaves Covid-19 in with other political debates to present a vision of the past and future that motivates voters at an election, we will carry on much as we are.

Conversations about death

On Twitter some are saying things along the lines of: “We need to have a conversation about how much death (mainly old and disabled people) is acceptable to get back to normal.” This is to remind us that many thousands of people (mainly old and disabled people) will die if we exit the emergency politics phase of Covid-19 and allow it to become a part of regular politics.

Although shocking, these statements are not having a political impact because they are not creating an alternative narrative to “the emergency has passed and thus Covid-19 is becoming part of normal politics”. If we don’t want Covid-19 to become like the flu (deadly to many but without political consequences) then we need to tell a story about what society will be like when we seek to minimise Covid-19 deaths.

No alternative to the status quo

I don’t know what this society will be like and I’m not hearing much about it. There are no answers to Covid-19, only questions. There are no suggestions, only angry shouts. This isn’t an alternative to the status quo.

There is no coherent alternative to Covid-19 becoming part of normal politics and normal life. No clear call to what we should be doing differently. This means the era of extraordinary measures will end and it will be back to normality, with Covid-19.

2021: The year we failed to rebuild

2020 was one of the most eventful years of my life, as every aspect of my existence was turned on its head. By contrast, 2021 was a diminishing returns sequel. A lot of the plot was repeated, but in a tired and boring way. 

At the end of 2021, we haven’t moved much from where we were a year ago. A new Covid-19 variant is causing a surge in cases, further restrictions look imminent and the NHS is under massive strain. At least the government didn’t screw up the vaccine role out and we got to have some fun over the summer.

Politically, it appears that very little has changed either. The Tories still have a stranglehold on power that isn’t letting up anytime soon. Labour are still nowhere close to an electoral breakthrough, even after the Tories have spent another year presiding over chaos, mass death, and scandal after scandal.

Johnson’s goose is cooked

One thing that has changed is that Boris Johnson is no longer sitting pretty in Downing Street. He will most likely finish out the year in Number 10, but it looks unlikely he will be living there next Christmas.

A succession of scandals has meant that, finally, both his party and the public have turned against him. The rank hypocrisy at the heart of Tory rule has been exposed to the nation. Whilst we were all dutifully staying in, and not attending our loved ones’ funerals, Number 10 was enjoying Christmas parties or cheese and wine in the garden.

Johnson is a serial liar and has long been the slipperiest person in British politics. Journalists, campaigners and opposition politicians have tried to hold him accountable for his actions, but he always greases his way out of actual consequences for the things he says and does. Now, this particular greased-up goose appears to be cooked. We have finally found a line of moral reprehensibility that the public (and Tory voters) do care that he crosses.

No thanks to Labour

Johnson appears to have lost his election-winning mojo and the Lib Dems have taken a safe Tory seat in North Shropshire. How long can a party, where a lot of people despise Johnson, keep him around now that he is a drag on their electoral performance and not a boost? Well, Boris, if it isn’t the consequences of your own actions.

None of Johnson’s newfound unpopularity is due to the opposition. In a year where Covid deaths have soared, inflation looks set to spiral and the government is beset by scandal, the Labour Party has taken this opportunity to do nothing.

We’ve had the first full year of Keir Starmer’s leadership and it has been so full of nothing that it’s hardly worth writing about. The only thing that Starmer has shown any effectiveness in doing is organising against the left of his own party. Other than that, Labour lost the by-election in Hartlepool and even I, someone who follows politics closely, cannot tell you what Labour stands for.

What does Labour stand for?

Under Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, Labour stood for socialism, the end of neoliberalism and a politics based on using the government to help address the country’s deep structural issues, from inequality to the environment. When Corbyn left, there was a lot of noise about how the serious grown-ups were back and the grubby socialists with their wild, unworkable ideas about reducing inequality and helping poor people were gone. Now, after a year of the grown-ups being back in charge, we can see that their clever plan to win back power was to do nothing. Well, I am impressed. Never has so much noise been made by so many about so little. It’s truly remarkable.

Starmer himself has broken many of the pledges that allowed him to win last year’s Labour leadership contest by a large margin. We were reassured that he was Ed Miliband, but with a little more polish, and many Labour members were happy with that. Mentioning patriotism 69 times in every communication wasn’t what we had in mind. Whatever the thinking behind Starmer’s lack of action, it doesn’t appear to be working. At the end of another terrible year for the government, the way forward for Labour doesn’t appear to be any clearer.

Democrats and reality against Republicans

Across the pond, we see a bigger and louder version of the same problem. Joe Biden was the great hope of the left a year ago. The Democrats offered a model of moderation, avoiding divisive social issues and focusing on competence and the economy as a way to beat populism. One year later, the great hope appears to be more of a damp squib. The Democrats’ Build Back Better program looks unlikely to pass Congress and Biden has not bridged America’s political divide.

The strategy of compromise to produce change has led to compromises on the plans for change and ultimately a compromise on nothing. America is as rabid as ever, and over a year on from the 2020 election, a staggering number of Americans still believe the complete bullshit that Donald Trump actually won. Even to the point of invading the Capitol building earlier this year and killing five people. If the Dems can’t win with reality on their side, then there really is no hope for them.

Meanwhile, China wants to invade Taiwan, Russia wants to invade Ukraine, Ethiopia is invading itself, the sea is trying to invade the land and Omicron wants to invade my body. If we really are planning on using Covid-19 as a chance to build a better society we had better get going on that. Because everyone with authority is at best doing nothing and at worst making everything, well, worse.

The dominance of the right

Globally the left appears in dire straits. The Danish Labour Party won an election by offering radical left-wing economic policies (yay) but also, er, rallying against refugees. I would be worried that Starmer would get some bad ideas from this, but that would require him to express an opinion. The right has seized the initiative by blustering about many voters’ problems with the neoliberal economic order. By promising to ‘level up’ or take on Wall Street, many former left-wing voters have switched to the right. 2021 was not the year they came home.

It has to be said that much of this switching has been caused by fears (stoked by the right) of immigration, trans people and young lefties with dangerous, radical ideas like treating people fairly and not dying in one of those tornadoes made of fire they now have in Australia. If you’re voting for Johnson or Trump because you hate trans people having the freedom to be themselves, or refugees looking for a place to call home, then you have no right to call yourself left-wing no matter who you voted for in the past, what union you’re in, or whether you hate people who went to Eton as much as the next person.

A dangerously radical platform

It’s easy to say that the left should run away from the debates that turn boomers the colour of Abbot Ale at their mere mention, in the hope of winning these boomers’ votes to do something as yet undefined about all the terrible things happening in the world. That plan isn’t going well in Britain or America, and it also involves shafting the young, ethnic minorities and everyone whose ideas about sexuality are more complex than whatever passed for sex education in 1963. That’s not a left I want to be a part of.

We can see where the Tories’ levelling up agenda has got us. The Northern leg of HS2 has been scrapped. So, the plan to level up the North is to build trains in the South. Remember, you can’t trust the Tories to sort out regional or any other kind of inequality. The left could be making hay from all this. Labour can rebalance the economy and make sure that women and people of colour don’t have to fear the police, all whilst not having illegal parties when people are dying. That shouldn’t be a dangerously radical platform. That should be common sense.

Time is running out

There was a part of the year where it looked like the pandemic was over and we might get some normality back. Now, that seems like a beautiful dream that we had to wake up from and smell the omicron-flavoured cheese. The sense of politics returning to normal was short-lived and everything, politics included, seems to be back where it was at the start of the year.

In 2021 we failed to rebuild or make anything better for the world. Now we are 20% through the crucial decade to avert the looming environmental disaster, and the best we have to show for it is a lukewarm commitment from COP26 this year. The left needs to get serious about the change we can and should offer the world. The established organs of Labour and the Democrats aren’t going to do it, so we have to do it ourselves. And do it now. Time is running out.