The 2024 election will be bitter and nasty

Now that 2023 is fully underway and turning out to be quite grim, let’s spend some time worrying about 2024? 

There will most likely be a general election next year. There must be one by January 2025 and the Tories will not want to have an election in January, when everyone is feeling cold, depressed and low on money, or an election at the last possible minute, when a surprise scandal can derail everything at the worst possible moment.

That means spring or summer next year is a good bet for the next election. Rishi Sunak must be hoping that inflation will subside, the strikers will either give up or he will find some legal way to force them back to work, and some form of economic growth will return. If he can sort these things out, he might think he has a shot at winning an election and call one.

A shield against being called woke

There’s a lot of ifs in the above, but quicker reversal of fortunes have happened in recent years. If Sunak can’t deliver at least a few modest accomplishments, then the only option will be to go full culture war and spend all day accusing Labour of being so woke they want to ban curtains or some bullshit.

If this cultural war tsunami bounces off Labour then maybe all of Keir Starmer’s pandering to the prejudices of angry, socially conservative Boomers will have achieved something. Maybe Starmer has come up with a winning strategy, that by saying that there’s little difference between Labour and the Tories on immigration he is building a shield against the electorally toxic accusation of wokeness.

Possibly. However, this shield will have to stand up to the strongest battering that the right-wing press can throw at it. When everyone from the Prime Minister to GB News is screaming that Labour is the vanguard of the woke Stasi, and that they will critical race theory your grandma, then whatever Starmer has done to purge left-wing people from Labour will make no difference. People will still think he is woke.

Keep the focus on the economy

There is another way that this can backfire, which is that the electorate may be unmoved by a culture war. Yes, Sunak might be gaining on Starmer in turns of personal popularity by making a strong stance against small boats, but most voters are still more concerned about their energy bills and mortgage payments.

All the time Starmer spends parking his tanks on the Tory’s lawn on issues such as immigration is time he’s not spending talking about the issues he’s most likely to win on: cost of living, inflation and the economy. If I were advising Starmer, I would recommend he keep the focus on the economy, instead of deliberately pissing off the people drinking artisan coffee at places overlooking the Regent's Canal because he thinks this will win some voters in a former mill town.

The rumble in Islington

Then there’s the situation in Islington. A large proportion of the election coverage will focus on Jeremy Corbyn’s run as an independent. Aside from formally testing the idea of whether people vote for parties or candidates, this race will profit no-one on the left.

It will be a huge distraction for Labour while they try to sell their program of government to the country. It’s a big tactical blunder on Starmer’s part to create the circumstances where a huge distraction will arise at the most crucial moment.

Corbyn should be pissed off at how he has been treated. He’s represented Islington for Labour for decades and having that taken away is nothing short of an outrageous slap in the face. Labour Party members should also be angry that the chance to choose their local MP has again been taken away from them.

Keep the focus on the Labour left

For socialists, this will once again mean spending huge amounts of energy defending Corbyn instead of building up a socialist movement that goes beyond the fanbase of one man. It also means that other decent left-wing Labour MPs, such as Clive Lewis or Zarah Sultana, could get chucked out of Labour for supporting Corbyn, which will only hurt the socialist movement more.

I find myself agreeing with veteran Labour left-winger Jon Lansman that Corbyn’s energy would be better spent leaving parliament to spend more time on politics, as Tony Benn said. Corbyn would be a great figurehead for a socialist movement outside parliament, which is where the momentum is at its strongest and is likely to make the biggest difference.

The socialist movement in parliament and communities

The socialist movement in parliament has faltered since Corbyn lost the 2019 election. This is largely because we thought that we were electing a left-wing leader in Starmer. We weren’t. He has used the power of party leader to push the left of the Labour Party as far out of view as possible. After setting the agenda for two general elections, socialists find ourselves marginalised again.

This is mainly because of Starmer’s lies, but it is partly because as socialists we made little effort to expand our movement beyond support for one man. As soon as a socialist stopped being leader of the Labour Party, socialist politics disappeared from the national stage.

There are movements in communities across the country, from Extinction Rebellion to ACORN via many local campaigns, which are making a difference and need a parliamentary voice. When the next election comes, we should spend our time getting sympathetic socialist Labour MPs elected to support the wider socialist movement in the country.

Past leaders stayed on

I also agree with Lansman that Michael Foot, Neil Kinnock and Ed Miliband were not forced out of the party after losing a bigger share of the electorate, and Corbyn’s loss is the reason the NEC is citing for not letting him stand again. It’s very unfair to push Corbyn out of the party for this reason when there is no precedent for this.

Labour should let Corbyn stand as an MP for the party, mainly so that this race doesn’t dominate the news during the election. It would be the sensible thing to do. Socialists should also not let our strong feelings about Corbyn give Starmer the excuse he’s looking for to get rid of other left-wing Labour MPs.

If you want to piss off Starmer, help get more left-wing Labour MPs elected. That will cause trouble for him and could be very effective for the left in the event of a hung parliament.

An ugly campaign

There are known unknowns in the next election as well. The SNP’s recent implosion could put Scotland back in play for Labour, but not if Starmer leans into the SNP’s narrative that the three UK wide parties are all regressive English social conservatives at odds with Scotland’s long history of progressive radicalism.

Tactical voting is likely to be bigger in this election than any previous one. This could lead to a coordinated exchanging of Labour and Lib Dem votes in an informal anti-Tory alliance to swing marginal seats. However, socially liberal Lib Dem voters might be put off by Starmer’s lines on drugs or anti-social behaviour. This is especially true of young voters, who find themselves politically homeless following Starmer’s lurch to the right.

An election is coming and it will be bitter and nasty. The Tories won’t give up power easily. They’re wounded, which is when they’re at their most dangerous. There’s no-one they won’t demonise or stir up hatred against to win this election. As socialists, we need to be ready to fight this ugly campaign when it comes.

Polling station image taken by Rachel H and used under creative commons.

Ten Days at the Space attempts to be as radical as the Russian Revolution

We may be living in revolutionary times. Extinction Rebellion are taking to the streets to prevent a climate catastrophe and the amount of workers on strike has not been this great in 50 years. It’s only natural that this potentially revolutionary moment is reflected in art.

This is why I was excited to see Ten Days, which recently finished its run at The Space theatre in the Isle of Dogs, a play that shows the revolutionary possibilities of the present by connecting now with the most famous revolution of all: the Russian Revolution.

The play charts the ten days that led to the Bolshevik’s revolution in Russia in October 1917 (by the Julian Calendar used in Russia at the time). It’s based on the account written by American journalist John Reed, who had an astonishing level of access to the senior people behind the revolution at that crucial time. His account is the most compelling and comprehensive of those fateful days that shook the world.

A radical approach to theatre

This new stage adaption of Reed’s book was written and directed by Matthew Jameson and performed by BolshEpic Theatre. It attempts to be as radical in its approach to theatre as its subjects were in their approach to politics. This included pay-what-you-are-able pricing and means to draw the audience into the radical events of the play (more on that later).

At nearly three hours Ten Days is a long production, but it’s still a condensed version of the events leading up to the revolution. Jameson himself plays John Reed and moves through the action to narrate events. Jameson made the sensible decision to cut many of the long speeches that Reed reproduced in great detail, which gives the play a fast pace that helps offset its long running time.

Many short scenes keep the drama focused on the narrative of a country hurtling toward revolution and the small cast cope well switching between different characters and locations with minimal set and costume.

The appeal of the Bolsheviks

The production’s great strength is how it captures the rising tension as the situation escalated in St Petersburg in 1917. You feel the growing frustration as the unpopular provisional government continued to prosecute a disastrous war whilst failing to deliver meaningful improvements in living conditions. This caused the Russian people to look to Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov - aka Lenin - and the more radical Bolsheviks - who offered peace, land and bread - as the solution to their problems.

The play captures the frantic feeling of those crucial days, as Reed does in his book. Ten Days is filled with the possibilities of radical change following the February Revolution that many felt had not changed Russian society enough. Frenetic uncertainty was seized by the Bolshevik’s to lead a second revolution in only a few months.

This is mainly achieved through a strong script and a series of great performances, notably Matthew John Wright as Lenin and Oyinka Yusuff as Leon Trotsky who form the core of the play. With many cast members assuming many different roles of both historic figures and representatives of broad social groups, it helps to have these two actors as anchor points portraying the two most important people in the story.

Bringing the history to life

As well as capturing the mood of the time in an entertaining way, there are lots of small details in the play that go beyond Reed’s book and show that Jameson knows his subject matter. All of the key factions and historical figures are included, which is a lot of people for a small cast to represent.

Many important historic details, which less well researched accounts overlook, are included; such as the February Revolution beginning with women marching on International Women’s Day, or the fact that the storming of the winter palace was more of a quite creeping in through a backdoor than the spectacle staged by Sergei Eisenstein in his film October: Ten Days That Shook the World.

The play also includes many of the comedic moments of the revolution; such as Lenin’s enthusiasm for disguises, the delay in beginning the October Revolution that was caused because a comrade at the Peter and Paul Fortress couldn’t find a red light to signal the Bolsheviks and Kitchkin declaring himself leader of all of Russia when he barely controlled the Winter Palace in St Petersburg.

Modern parallels and modern culture

The radical history is very entertaining, but to become a transcendent work of art this needs to connect with how the audience feels right now. Many modern parallels are drawn out; from strikes, a cold winter, inflation, a useless and unpopular government and above all a feeling that everything is getting worse, everyone has had enough and change is needed.

Modern language is used in the script to reinforce the point, such as references to “snowflakes” on the left or fighting in Ukraine. Recent dance music was played in the intermission, whilst a video was projected onto the stage approximating how cable news would cover the fateful ten days if they were happening right now. Following the climax, the cast exited to the sounds of Pig With The Face Of A Boy’s Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris, which ended proceedings on a humorous note.

Rising to the revolutionary moment

Not only did the play attempt to make its radical themes relevant to the modern day, it also attempted a radical use of the medium of theatre. Red flags were handed out to the audience, who were encouraged to wave them, participate in the chanting and to keep our phones on to take pictures during the performance.

The audience (at least at the performance I attended) didn’t rise to the revolutionary moment. We behaved like a traditional audience, watching events in silence and not participating. The fact that the people were hesitant to act when presented with something radical was itself a more powerful metaphor for the present political situation than the historic parallels that Ten Days drew out.

Are we ten days away from a revolution?

Despite the audience not embracing the more radical parts of the show, I was impressed by Jameson and BolshEpic Theatre wanting to create a piece of art that captured (the spirit at least) of the revolution in avant-garde art that was unleashed by the Russian Revolution. Their imagination and creative use of a small theatre, minimal set and props is inspiring. Revolutions, artistic and political, come about by radical ambition and it was great to see this alive in the 21st century.

Ten Days is a great dramatic play about a key moment in 20th century history. It is more than an entertaining retelling of historic events. This play is urgent, relevant and has something to say about contemporary politics: i.e. when people are suffering we may only be ten days away from a revolution.

Monument to Lenin image created by Watchsmart and used under creative commons.

Saying Gary Lineker should lose his job over a tweet is biased, after what Andrew Neil and Jeremy Clarkson got away with

Conservatives are defending free speech. Gone are concerns about insulting god or Jesus.  The right is defending the freedom to scream abuse into someone’s face. Don’t like it? Then you must be a snowflake.

Of course, the right’s support of free speech is not universal. Toby Young and his Free Speech Union hasn’t rushed to the defence of Gary Lineker after he was cancelled by the BBC for expressing his opinion of the government. The Tory politicians and culture warriors, keen to accuse the left of being against free speech, were very keen to suppress Lineker’s free speech when he said something they didn’t like. 

Similarly, the brigade who defended peoples’ right to offend others, when those being offended were Muslims and trans people, get pretty offended when you criticise the government or soldiers or patriots. They then seek to cancel the offender as much as possible.

Moonlighting for the right

There is a clear hypocrisy in how Lineker has been treated. He tweeted his opinion from his own Twitter account and has faced consequences for it. These are now rescinded because these consequences detonated the sport of football for a weekend and people noticed.

Meanwhile, Andrew Neil was able to be chairman of the Spectator (a publication that positions itself slightly to the right of Ivan the Terrible) whilst working in BBC news, and this was considered fine. Jeremy Clarkson was allowed to write a column in The Sun at the same time as hosting Top Gear, which no one minded. Not even when he claimed on The One Show that striking workers should be shot in front of their families.

My view is that, when not on the BBC’s time, people should be allowed to say, write or tweet whatever they want. If Neil wants to moonlight for the Spectator that’s fine, but Lineker can tweet whatever he likes about the government. The problem with this position - or whatever the actual BBC position on impartiality is - is that it isn’t being consistently enforced. This is bias.

Soapboxing on how nasty the Tories are

The Clarkson case is worse. Not only was Clarkson able to voice his views on the BBC’s One Show, he was able to use his supposedly impartial BBC general car themed entertainment show to slam London Mayor Ken Livingston over bendy buses and whatever else was grinding Clarkson’s gears that week.

If this is allowed, then surely Lineker can tweet about politics on this private Twitter account. It’s not like he’s soapboxing on how nasty the Tories are in between the highlights of the Leicester/Arsenal match before turning to Ian Wright (or someone else I vaguely remember from collecting football stickers in the 90s) for his opinion.

Don’t listen to Joe Rogan

We should allow for as much freedom as possible in our laws, whilst using the power of the state to constrain speech only in the case where it is causing harm. That’s the legal argument for free speech, which I laid out in a previous post. However, the issue of free speech extends beyond what’s allowed under law.

I previously wrote that Joe Rogan shouldn’t face legal consequences for allowing Dr Robert Malone on his podcast and spreading anti-vaccine nonsense, but I wouldn’t recommend listening to his podcast where the ill-informed are allowed to say whatever they like, confidently and without push back.

Similarly, if you don’t like what Lineker said then don’t watch Match of the Day or follow him on Twitter. I hear there are other football shows and Twitter feeds out there.

Muzzling people you disagree with

What Lineker faced was clearly disproportionate and unfair. It’s not fair that conservatives get away with a lot more, especially when what they’re saying isn’t going out via the BBC itself (as in the case of Lineker’s tweet).

Also, if you think that Ricky Gervais or Dave Chappelle should be able to say whatever they want about trans people and face no push back, but Lineker should lose his job for exercising his free speech, then it’s time to admit you just want to muzzle people you disagree with.

That is also not defending free speech. The left are supposedly snowflakes and against free speech, but the right is pretty keen on shutting up anyone they disagree with. What happened to Lineker shows that there are many on the right who want to silence anyone who disagrees with them. Defenders of free speech my arse, is all I say to that.

Populism isn’t popular but still politicians want the support of populist voters

 We live in the age of populism, apparently. This is a time when politicians say what people are thinking and don’t follow mainstream orthodoxy set by the Economist and the Financial Times. Okay, so why are politicians so unpopular with everyone? Young or old, left and right, we all hate politicians. Is the populist message not getting through?

Of course, when we say populism, we mean a certain type of right-wing populism. The Donald Trump or Nigel Farage anti-immigration type. If this is populism, why does everyone I know hate it? From the Boomers to Zoomers, everyone I know, they all can’t stand Trump or Farage. How popular is populism? And more importantly, who is it popular with?

I probably do live in a bubble, along with all those Boomers and Zoomers that I know, but then again so does the person who gets all his politics from The Sun or Ben Shapiro, and his “populist” anger is validated by politicians on the left and the right who talk endlessly about the “legitimate concerns” of people who rage about immigration all the live long day. However, my, and my Boomer and Zoomer friends, concerns about the environment are not “legitimate”. 

Legitimate concerns about housing

Yes, most people (in Britain at least) are sceptical about immigration. However, housing consistently ranks amongst the most pressing issues in voter’s minds, yet our so-called populist politicians don’t speak on it. It’s not just the people of East London - who all work in social media and then chow down ramen and craft beer at the weekend, whilst living in tiny flat shares into their late 30s, (y’know, not real people who don’t have “legitimate concerns”) - who are concerned about housing. Still Generation Rent aren’t considered populists.

From Workington to Warwick, housing is too expensive, private renting is poorly regulated, conditions are bad and even people with really serious need can’t get social housing. Surely, this is a cause for populists to take up? Especially, considering how many MPs have second homes or are landlords.

As Samir Jeraj wrote in the New Statesman: “Ending no-fault evictions brought together an unlikely alliance, from Michael Gove and Shelter through to radical grassroots groups who physically block evictions.” Ending no-fault evictions would be popular, piss off “elites” - i.e. the wealthy property owners, wouldn’t cost much and would also land a blow for the ground down everyperson. Isn’t that supposed to be the point of populism?

Populism isn’t popular

Is populism, perhaps, not what we have been led to believe it is? Maybe it’s not the roar of resistance by the ground down many against the powerful few, but instead a policy and communications programme aimed at activating the support of a certain set of voters? Y’know, like everything else in politics?

Populism isn’t popular with everyone, just a small group of people. The Farages and Trumps of this world are popular with a certain section of society and are toxic to almost anyone else. Both of their big electoral accomplishments, Brexit and the 2016 US election, were only achieved because both Farage and Trump had oppositions that were broadly unpopular - the EU and Hilary Clinton.

Who are the populists?

Who are the people who love populists? They are typically white, usually (but not exclusively) male, live in small towns, are older and didn’t attend university. Those last two are certainly the most important. These people are anti-immigration, anti-London, anti-mainstream politicians, anti-woke, anti-young people. 

Despite the claims that they are the overlooked masses or members of the working class, (see the discussion on “what is the working class” in this essay) they are more likely to be home owners or even private landlords. The more you look at it, the more populism seems to be the whims of a certain section of society.

What is unpopulism?

It’s not just housing. The environment is a key issue where there is a lot of public agreement, but little action from Westminster. However, agitating against Net Zero Emissions and in favour of the “man in the street’s” God-given right to drive whatever car he wants as much as he wants is the next major front for the populists. 

As Adrian Wooldridge wrote in the Economist’s Bagehot column: “On environmental policy, increasing numbers of Conservative MPs, such as Steve Baker, an influential backbencher, worry that attempts to reach ‘net zero’ will go down badly with the red wall. A growing crowd of right-wing MPs, columnists and think-tanks, such as Net Zero Watch, are pressing for a referendum on the topic.” 

Wooldridge goes on to discuss what he calls “unpopulism”: the idea that populist policies are not broadly popular, but do appeal to a certain section of society. He wrote: “The first signs of unpopulism emerged during Britain’s departure from the European Union. Politicians of all stripes argued over minutiae such as data-protection rules and phytosanitary standards. Beyond broad principles, few ordinary people cared. Yet in that debate, proverbial voters with a striking tendency to repeat MPs’ own views on, say, membership of the customs union, kept cropping up.”

Not the will of the masses 

This is not an age where populists are fighting on behalf of the downtrodden many against the rich few. Campaigning on wages, health, housing and the environment would be more popular than the right-wing culture wars the populists are serving up. ‘Populism’ boils down to the whims of older, socially conservative, non-university educated older people in small towns. It is not the will of the masses.

Ironically this description overlaps with Essex Man, or Mondeo Man, who were personas targeted by Tony Blair and New Labour. Winning their support gave Blair huge majorities, but also meant that politics was geared towards the interests of a small section of society that had swung the 1997 election for New Labour. Rail nationalisation was out, as it didn’t appeal to the conservative leaning Essex Man, and rhetoric about bogus asylum seekers was in.

These people rewarded Blair for all the attention he gave them by voting for Brexit and then kicking Labour out of Blair’s old seat of Sedgefield. Blair could win the votes of Essex Man, by pandering to his prejudices, but he couldn’t convince him of the importance of EU membership for the nation’s prosperity.

What is popular? 

Now Keir Starmer is targeting the new persona of “middle-aged mortgage man” - who looks a lot like the old persona of Essex Man, except he lives in the North or Midlands. Again, these older, home owning, socially conservative voters are the only people whose opinions matter to Labour. Their every prejudice about the woke, the young or protestors must be pandered to and their views must not be challenged. 

These voters may be key for Labour winning the next election, but what they want isn’t necessarily popular with the whole nation. Furthermore, Labour has adopted the view that no one else’s views count. A radical programme of economic transformation would be popular across the whole country, but Labour is only interested in pandering to the small minded prejudices of people who own homes and have security. 

We would be better off if we didn’t focus so much on what so-called populists offer, or what the people susceptible to populism want. From Blair to Brexit and now Starmer, populist voters get what they want a lot of the time, but still see themselves as overlooked outsiders rallying against the mainstream. We should focus instead on what is popular: improving health, housing, wages and the environment.

Polling station image taken by Rachel H and used under creative commons.

Yet another tedious Prince Harry hot take shamelessly written to get clicks

The term ‘media circus’ seems like an understatement when applied to the week-long carnival of news stories, commentary and social media hot takes that have been unleashed by Prince Harry’s autobiography Spare. He’s up there in the big leagues of the hot air generators, sitting pretty alongside the Greggs vegan sausage roll. He could challenge the reigning champion: Brexit.

The rolling news coverage, digging into every aspect of the book and every anecdote about the Royal Family within it, means this book will be a big seller. It’s the first political/cultural phenomenon of 2023, and thus it is the latest battlefront in our never-ending culture war.

The dividing line of the latest hot take frenzy is simple: Harry is woke, liberal, left-wing, young, rebellious, feminist and post-colonial. The rest of the Royal Family is traditional, conservative, right-wing, old, establishment, manly, orderly. Choose your side, then spend all the hours of the day either praising Harry or damning him. Those are your only choices online this week.

Fanfare for the tedious culture warrior 

Of course, the tedious culture warriors are happy to oblige, especially on the right. There’s good money in being an anti-woke, conservative reactionary online. Like all internet money making hustles, from cryptocurrency to property speculation, there are many people willing to throw their lives into it in the hope of being super successful.

Could you be the next Piers Morgan? You could be. It only takes the right tenor of weariness, outrage and hostile sarcasm. Why not spend all your time performatively dunking on whatever the left-wing hate figure of this week is? Right now, it’s Prince Harry. Next week it will probably be Bluey. I don’t know. I don’t decide this shit.

Too silly to be believed

All this has produced a lot of breathless shouting, occasionally punctuated by moments of surrealism that, had been written as satire in an Adam McKay film, people would have said that’s too silly to be believed. Chief amongst these moments was when The Express praised the Taliban for their response to Prince Harry saying he killed 25 people in Afghanistan. Now that the right has decided Harry is the woke main character of the week, it means anyone who criticises him must be right. 

There is an entire cottage industry dedicated to dumping on Harry - and anyone else who becomes the lefty hate figure of the moment - generating clicks, retweets and shares from the perpetually outraged and perpetually online, all in the hope of one day having a show on GB News. 

This right wing media ecosystem (not too dissimilar from the ecosystem made of compressed vomit and spilt beer in a Wetherspoons carpet) consists of people like Darren Grimes (for those who don’t know, basically the Richard Hammond to Piers Morgan’s Jeremy Clarkson) who spend all day thinking of ways they can be performatively rude about the woke to get retweets from people with Union flags in their profiles and who take selfies wearing sunglasses in their car.

How did we get into this sorry state?

This isn’t the first time this bullshit has been spewed all over our collective consciousness, and the event/hot take process reached absurdity a long time ago, but it’s worth reflecting on why we mainly well--adjusted people have to suffer the Piers Morgans and Darren Grimes of the world. At least so this blog can have some intellectual credibility, and not just a series of rude comments about people with bigger followings than me.

At this point I should include my obligatory nod to James Williams and his amazing book Stand out of our Light: Freedom and Resistance in the Attention Economy, which really is the definitive text on everything that is wrong with social media and the internet. Seriously, if you read one book on this topic, read this. Williams, formerly of Google, details the different ways that social media alters our behaviour by distracting us. Crucial to the Harry hot take tsunami is Williams’s description of how social media obscures our starlight - aka our leading light or our higher goals and values. 

In a nutshell, social media changes our behaviour by altering our goals to be that of social media platform: i.e. time on site, likes, comments, engagements. We have all become convinced (and the very online more so) that loads of retweets or likes are advancing our political goals, which draws attention away from meaningful political action. 

The art of the dunk

This means politics for most people has become less marching and campaigns, and more online dunks on Prince Harry or Jacob Rees-Mogg. Or even dunks on Darren Grimes dunking on Prince Harry, or dunks on those dunking on Darren Grimes, etc. etc. until we are completely removed from the original cause of all this dunking and are lost somewhere in the warren of online discourse, like the people in The Machine Stops whose preferred interaction with the world is reading commentary on commentaries of mediated realities. 

Harry, and the hot take volcano that has erupted around him, is just this effect turned up to 11. It’s the combination of social media obscuring our starlight and our tribal online behaviour.

My hot take (as if we needed more)

For the record, my take in the whole thing is that, yes, the media was racist towards Meghan Markle and, yes, the Royal Family exploited Harry for their brand management, but the idea of a socially just royalty is a contradiction in terms.

Harry may want to reform the institution, but it would be better abolished. Especially, now that the Queen has died. Anyone calling themselves a socialist should think twice before advancing the agenda of someone with a royal title, who will never have to worry about his material needs, and whose stated goal is being accepted back into the world’s most unequal institution. An institution that has at its core the idea that some people, such as Princes, are born better than other people.

Ultimately, I want a world without people of colour being media main characters just for clicks and where families don’t do nasty things to each other, but I also want a world without people being given palaces because their family has an incredibly tenuous connection to Alfred the Great.

And in the end the dunks you take is equal to the dunks you make

It’s the right engaging in the media riot that Harry has unleashed that has made this book (and its likely follow up) a success. So, if the Darren Grimes of this world are really this angry with Harry for disrespecting the Royal Family, they should ignore him so he can’t make money doing what he currently does in books and on TV. I suspect they don’t really want him to go away or else they would struggle to find things to rail against for attention. They would have to go back to manufacturing outrage about vegan sausage rolls.

Certainly, we should all ask: what is the point of endless rounds of breathless hot takes about Prince Harry? What is this achieving and for whom? Is it just providing another Windsor with a new income stream via free publicity for his book? Is it just generating material that the Morgans and Grimes can use to make people even more outraged than they were before, to generate their own income streams? Personally, my politics aren’t a way for someone else to make money.

After we have thought about this, we should then think about what we want to do to make the world a better place. It’s probably not dunking on Darren Grimes, even if he is a dickhead, and making fun of him is fun and writing this has helped me past the time on this train ride to Nottingham. I would rather we all did something to improve this shopping trolley fire of a planet than yell at each other online. I really want people to stop thinking that yelling at each other online is how we make the world a better place.

"Prince Harry at Maxxi Museo announcing the winning design for the UK's Pavilion at Milan Expo 2015" by UKTI [closed account] is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

2022: The year everything got worse

I can’t remember a time when I finished a year feeling less optimistic about the future. During the last two Covid-19 ravaged years, I clung to hope that once we were out the other side of the pandemic things would be better. Oh, how foolishly naive I was. 

A year ago, the omicron variant made it looked like Covid-19 was planning a late pandemic comeback. One of the strange things about 2022 was how little the pandemic was in the news (or Brexit for that matter). The virus is still out there, killing people, but we have collectively decided to stop caring. Even the Queen managed to die of something normal, and dodged Covid-19. 

It was a year without Covid-19, but not a return to normality. The world has been rocked by economic shocks and military conflicts. We’re angrier, poorer and more ground down than ever. Each new headline only makes things worse. I just opened BBC news and read a story about child murder. 

The stupidest political misfire in history

Well, I may be tired and depressed, but one person who is having a merry Christmas is Keir Starmer. Labour is currently ahead in the polls, leading on the all-important economic competence metric, and looks likely to win big in the next election. Labour hasn’t done much to earn this lead. They sat back whilst the Tories repeatedly shat the bed and then smeared excrement everywhere whilst they were trying to clean it up. 

This year we’ve had three Prime Ministers. Boris Johnson finally faced consequences for something he had done and was booted out by his own panicked party, we then got to enjoy the spectacle of Liz Truss being PM for 45 minutes. In that time, she got to meet the Queen (who promptly died) and then detonated the economy by freaking out bankers with a bungled plan for rich people to pay less tax. Her budget may be the biggest political misfire in history, if not the stupidest. 

Now Rishi Sunak is Prime Minister and doing a Tory greatest hits show, featuring right-wing crowd pleasers such as sending migrants as far away as possible and austerity for everyone who doesn’t have a townhouse in Kensington.

The valid concerns of middle-aged mortgage men

After the populism of Johnson and the right-wing libertarianism of Truss, Sunak is styling himself as a sensible moderate. He and Starmer are busy wrestling over the same narrow band of centrist, wealthy, older voters who will decide the next election. Labour call this ideal voter, the only voter whose opinions matter and whose concerns are valid, middle-aged mortgage man. Be prepared for a lot of focus on what the Daily Mail is saying in the run-up to the next election. 

All this leaves me quite depressed. I’m pleased that Labour is ahead in the polls and there is a chance we might finally end the crippling nightmare of Tory rule, but I daren’t get my hopes up. Partly because of Labour’s ability to not only miss an open goal, but to somehow burn down the whole football stadium instead, but also partly because I’m not sure Starmer will be much better than Sunak.

Hopefully, he will reduce the staggering rates of homelessness, food poverty, fuel poverty and LabBaby Christmas numbers 1s. The most desperately needy need a government that will help them, instead of handing out lucrative public sector contracts to their rich mates. However, will Starmer do much for the millions of people who are not at the sharpest end of the sword, but are struggling after decades of below inflation pay rises? People such as young people in cities who don’t have mortgages? Probably not.

What about the people who want something different

Who will speak to the people who want things to be different? The people who want politics to not be entirely focused on what homeowning swing voters in Essex are angry about this week. The people who are sick of only hearing from people with a manic hatred of everything not British, and a vindictive desire to publish the poor, need a champion. 

Who in politics will speak for striking nurses and train drivers? Who will speak for the people whose work our society relies on and are being pushed into poverty by the rising cost of living, but aren’t middle-aged swing voters with a mortgage? The people who - whisper it - thought Jeremy Corbyn had some good ideas. Not Starmer's Labour party.

What does Labour stand for? I don’t know and I spend A LOT of time reading about politics. Labour conference this year was opened by the singing of the national anthem, producing pictures that made the party look like the villains in an unsubtle action film making a broad point about nationalism. Is this what middle-aged mortgage man wants? Frankly, it looks silly.  

We need an alternative to the alternative

Labour is for whatever the people who masturbate over the flag are for. They’re on the side of the people who post disgusting breakfasts on Twitter and claim it costs 33p to make before blaming the hungry for being hungry. This is the only alternative we have to the corrupt and heartless Tories? What is the alternative to the alternative?

Everyone from Workington to Walthamstow and Lerwick to Truro is having their livelihood assaulted by the rising cost of living, their retirement savings wiped out by inflation, their daily life ground down by low wages, whilst suffering from bad housing and worrying about the creeping march of the angry people who have very clear ideas about who isn’t British and what should be done about them.

This year we had a 40-degree day in London and arctic cold in December. Most of us want all this to stop, but what is the electoral button we press to make it happen? Vote Green? I don’t know. Have you seen Brighton Council lately?

The retro comeback we didn’t want

70s retro is back in. The energetic London punk scene is a good thing, but inflation, far-right marches and economic uncertainty aren’t good. Nurses, train drivers, tube drivers, postal workers and many more are downing tools as it’s the only way to stop all the terrible things I listed above from ruining their lives.

Of course, Labour won’t back working people organising for a fairer (read not punishing) deal. At least we now have Mike Lynch, a man who goes on TV and calmly points out the problems with this country. It’s good to see someone say: “We are all been ground down and people are right to stand up and ask for something better.” I wish Labour would do that, but I guess they’re too worried about what a 50-year-old cabbie from Hartlepool with a mortgage called Graham thinks about nurses. Everyone else likes nurses and is grateful for what they did during the pandemic, but Graham thinks strikes are the sort of thing people in London do and thus Labour won’t support them. 

Inflation and the cost of living might be bad, but they’re nothing compared to the looming climate disaster. Another year has ticked by, and we have once again failed to make the essential changes to our society and economy that are needed to stop the sea swallowing small island nations or deserts expanding, driving everyone into over-packed, poorly administered and conflict-riven cities. I’m sure only good things can come from that. 

Biden and Trump 

In the US there is at least a nominally left-wing government. Does this offer a vision for the future? Well, Joe Biden has been able to pass some legislation tackling issues from the climate to student debt. None of it goes as far as I, or many left-wing activists, would like, but it’s at least a step forwards. 

America is already gearing up for the 2024 Presidential election, with Florida governor Ron DeSantis being the latest terrifyingly right-wing person who wants to have a pop at being President. Can’t say I’m thrilled about the prospect of ten or so white male boomers spending two years arguing about who can be the worst to migrants, whilst accusing each other of being woke. At least Donald Trump is facing criminal charges for trying to overthrow the government. Well, if it isn’t the consequences of his own actions. 

Shits around the world

Speaking of angry pasty boomers who should never be allowed in charge of nuclear weapons but for some strange reason have loads of them, Vladimir Putin has won the much-contested biggest shit of the year award for invading Ukraine and unleashing the unending horror of war on the Ukrainian people, and the unending horror of war-based hot takes on everyone who does politics online.

As humans continue to flush the environment and our own civilization down the toilet, we’ll see more of the strongmen of the world throwing their weight around to enlarge their already gargantuan egos. This is likely to be a long and bloody conflict, setting the tone for many long and bloody conflicts to follow, unless we can find a democratic counterargument to the popularity of authoritarian strongmen. 

Emmanuel Macron won re-election in France, showing that the centre can prevail against the far-right. Borrowing heavily from the Starmer playbook of “offer little that is encouraging but point at how awful your opponent is,” Macron has earned himself another few years to not tackle the problems of France or the world. 

Rage against the woke

As the climate worsens there will be more waves of migration and more disruption that only fuel the fire of people like Marine Le Pen and Eric Zemmour, who seek to exploit fear and xenophobia to gain power. The left needs to be ready to argue for migration and for helping the less fortunate, not bow to popular prejudices that will only help those who seek to demonise people from other places who are in need.  

Whilst we’re starting arguments, let’s not forget the word of the year, “woke”. The beetroot-faced people of the world spent 2022 being angry at everything from pride flags to Dr Who casting, which they claim are attacks on Western civilisation. Being woke is apparently a dangerous ideology that's a threat to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, like Stalinism.

The march of dangerous woke young people who don’t want to be boiled alive by the climate can only be stopped by the vigilant efforts of boomers with large public profiles and lots of money leading a charge to slay the dragon of wokeness. I’m sure that Piers Morgan, Jordan Peterson and John Cleese want to do everything they can to make the world a better place. 

Tedious culture warriors 

Runners up in the hotly contested tedious right-wing bore of the year award included Darren Grimes, everyone who writes for the Spectator, everyone who has been on GB News and everyone pontificating about the woke or “snowflakes”. Bonus points if you do it whilst lifting weights, so that you look like a hybrid of a person and a sack of potatoes.

At least we can all enjoy Elon Musk ruining Twitter and himself. I can’t think of a better pairing than the world’s former richest man and dull culture warrior, and the hell-site plugged into the darkest part of our collective consciousness. They deserve each other and I hope that they make each other miserable. 

Musk is so thin skinned that he has to be on the side of the right-wing trolls as he can’t stand to be mocked by them. Now he owns the world’s most expensive midlife crisis Ferrari and is making his ineptness at business clear for all to see. Musk is final proof that capitalism isn’t meritocratic, but instead rewards rich pole climbers who are full of hot air.

We can but hope

Musk schadenfreude aside, it has been a pretty grim year. We’re all feeling the pinch of multiple economic and social crises, and I can only imagine how much worse it is for people not as privileged as me.

What is the alternative to this misery and how do we get it? Well, it’s not coming from the Labour Party, the Democrats, En Marche, or any of the global centre left establishment parties. They’re offering reheated old orthodoxies, like an attempt to make last night’s disappointing takeaway seem like something fresh and exciting by bunging it in the microwave for two minutes.

The world has changed a lot in 2022, mainly for the worse and I’m not optimistic about the future. The only option is to hope that all this misery will eventually breed the critical action needed to build something better. We can but hope. The only alternative is to descend into despair, which won’t help anyone. 

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

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