The rise of the word ‘zero’ in our politics is significant. The number ‘zero’ signifies extirpation, destruction, annihilation. It is the number of absolute negation. But in politics, since no one wants to absolutely negate themselves, we can say that the purpose of ‘zero’ is to eliminate the other: not only to defeat one’s enemies but dance on their graves. As such it is what I call a ‘bad one’. Any politics of zero is in fact a politics of ‘bad one’.
Numbers are interesting. Nowadays we tend to look at them dispassionately, as if they are neutral, and equal in value. This has been a long consequence of the quantification of existence. The quantification of existence was not fully established in the West until around five hundred years, as before then there was no number for zero. (Ask yourself what the Roman numeral for zero is.) In the end, the Medieval West was forced to adopt the Arabian ‘cypher’, which was itself derived from an Indian novelty. At first this was a mere place holder in calculations. But eventually it became a number.
When 0 became a number, there was a shattering revolution. This was the invention of a distinction between ordinal and cardinal numbers: that is, a distinction between 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 1, 2, 3. For thousands of years 1 was first, 2 second and so on. But with the invention of 0, 0 was first, 1 second, 2 third and so on. In truth, of course, one could begin counting anywhere. But this remarkable number zero soon led to modern mathematics, logarithms, calculus and so on: in the last five hundred years we have seen the spilling out of negative numbers, complex numbers, irrational numbers, infinitesimals, quaternions.
This revolution made numbers boring: markers for mere quantities. Before the revolution numbers were interesting. They were not viewed dispassionately. They were not neutral, place-holding symbols. They were supposed to reveal truths about the universe. One is one and all alone and ever more shall be so. Two’s company, and three’s a crowd. (Change the numbers and these claims make no sense.) The Pythagoreans built an entire religious cult around the most important numbers, 1, 2, 3, and 4, marvelled at the way an octave was produced on a string by dividing it by two, and wrote poems to the Holy Tetraktys. Numbers revealed the music of spheres. This sort of assumption is still evident in tarot and zodiac. And I think most of us still depend on these numbers without knowing it.
Everyone disagreed about how many important numbers there are, but I would say the Pythagorean four takes us to the limit of what we can meaningfully think, when we are thinking quantitatively. One is unity. Two is division. Three is reconciliation. And four is necessary, as it is the number of ordering diverse entities when one is unable to reconcile them. So, as everyone knows, we have the great singular Gods of religion (1), we have the Yin and Yang or the Manichaean principles of Good and Evil (2), we have the Christian Trinity of Father, Son, Holy Spirit (3), and we have four seasons, four rivers, four gospels, four horsemen of the apocalypse, four empires, four winds, four points of the compass, four humours, etc (4). Go beyond four, and things simply fall apart.
Zero blew a great gaping hole through all this. So we have been, for at least half a millennium, in the age of zero.
This probably had an effect on politics. If ‘one’, whether ‘good’ or ‘bad’, is monarchical (one god, one law, one king, etc.), then ‘zero’ is something else – utopian or anarchical, say, possibly republican. This would explain a lot. But zero has blown into politics explicitly in the last few years. By ‘explicitly’ I mean that for the first time we hear a lot of political propositions put forward in terms of the number ‘zero’.
Here are some examples:
• “Forget about Net Zero, we need Real Zero,” Greta Thunberg, January 2020.
• “The UK needs a Zero-Covid strategy to prevent endless lockdowns,” Devi Sridhar, January 2021.
• “We need to pledge collectively to achieve carbon neutrality – Net Zero – by the middle of the century,” Boris Johnson, September 2021.
• “TalkTV registered zero viewers during primetime broadcasts,” Guardian, May 2022.
• “Zero Tolerance For Hate Speech, Nike And Adidas Step Up,” Forbes, November 2022.
• “Net Zero will be solved by innovation,” Rishi Sunak, January 2023.
This sort of language is bad. I began by saying that ‘zero’ is a ‘bad one’. What I mean by this is that the old one, or 1, the one of philosophical unity or religious harmony, was an ideal and wholly inclusive one. It was a ‘good one’: meaning that everyone was saved or everyone was included. Bad ones have existed ever since the first tribe slaughtered the another tribe. The first zero politics took the form of slaughter. For thousands of years zero politics has taken the form of war, especially total war: the reasoning is ‘We are good’ and ‘They are evil’, therefore ‘They should be destroyed.’ Carthage should be destroyed. And the Saracens. And the Jews.
We deplore this warlike politics of ‘bad one’ or zero. Consider Ukraine, where Russia is condemned for playing a ‘bad one’ gambit on the great chessboard of the world. But our new-fashioned, technological, peaceful politics has engineered fine new forms of zero politics. Even Hitler anticipated it with eugenics. But in the last few years we have found beautiful zeros in Woke, Climate and Covid politics. Everywhere we hear: We shall eliminate the virus, we should reverse anthropogenic global warming, we believe in science, we refuse to tolerate hate.” All of these are examples of a zero politics.
The oddest thing of all about zero politics is that its exponents like to pretend they are not being ‘political’ at all. They want to appeal to simple, unarguable goods, which, whether scientific or moral, are not to be questioned. Questioning them is taken to be a sign of being political. But the whole thing is a trick. They have found that denying that they are political is a very effective, perhaps the most effective, way of being political. To see the trick: read the Guardian, watch the BBC: or even read the Times: anyone, for instance, who has gone back to masks in the last few days.
Zero politics appeals to politicians because they want to depend on our warlike propensities while also wanting to avoid the morally deplorable obvious ‘bad one’ of declaring some other people ‘evil’ and ourselves ‘good’ in the old aggrandising imperial way. They prefer our enemies to be viruses or conditions. But if our enemies have to be human, then it is better if they are not the old-fashioned enemies, but the new boutique post-modern enemies who are only our enemies because they refuse to be friends. These people refuse to be friends because they exhibit ‘hate’: where ‘hate’ is defined as anything redolent of the old discriminating politics of slavery, racism, empire and patriarchy. So if anyone expresses the wrong sort of opinion, and can be associated with the old discriminating politics in any respect, they can be subject to the worst sort of calumny, called ‘cancellation’. ‘Cancellation’ being a euphemism for the zeroing of someone.
I haven’t yet mentioned diversity. Diversity is a term often used in ‘zero’ politics, especially on the politically correct side. Diversity sounds good: it is diverse, surely it refers to plurality? Well, technically. But, in fact, ‘diversity’ is simply a totem to establish who is ‘against diversity’. The apparent infinity of ‘diversity’ resolves down into a ‘bad one’: it is concerned with eliminating all of those who are against diversity (and who are against anything perpetuated under the cover of the term ‘diversity’).
Anthropologists used to say that primitive man could only count to three: “1, 2, 3, many.” If this was true, then primitive man was way ahead of the advocates of ‘Zero Covid’, ‘Zero Carbon’ and ‘Zero Tolerance’, who can only count to one, and a bad one at that. It is not to the credit of Oxford and Cambridge that they have founded new entities called ‘Zero Institute’ and ‘Cambridge Zero’. Nowadays, academics only seem to be able to count to zero.
Politics, any good politics, depends on being able to count to at least two. “One, two”: and by this I mean a good two, not a bad two. A bad two is just a bad one all over again. “Here I am, there you are, now we fight to the death.” But a good two involves recognition of otherness: “Here I am, there you are, we are different, let us make something of this.” Two is the primitive number of legitimate opposition, of balanced government, of compromise, of give and take. It is the number of marriage. It is, as the economists say, not ‘zero sum’: because each side in a dispute comes away with something. In a ‘zero sum’ encounter, one side gets nothing. I am not saying ‘two’ is the most important number – 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all important – but it is worlds better than ‘zero’. Oxford and Cambridge are going to slowly have to remember how to count to two.
In sum, a zero politics is a zero sum politics.
I would suggest that word ‘zero’ be stripped from our political language. Stage one, perhaps, is that we insist it should be referred to as the ‘z-word’. I jest, but the point is serious. Nothing worthy is going to be achieved by using the word ‘zero’ in politics. It is a destructive, extirpative, hellish word.
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The Tory plan presumably is to steal Reform’s policies. How dare they after the mess that they created?
Reform should have been saying this and more over the last few months – 1st mover advantage…
I think ditching net zero was in their manifesto.
David Kurten has from the start. Reform has been talking about scrapping it but Heritage Party had as a policy to stop Agenda 2030.
I know they’ve said some similar items – but why not on billboards or, god forbid, on the side of a bus etc? Why are they so low profile on it?
Are you referring to Heritage or Reform? Heritage doesn’t have the financial capital, unless Musk or someone takes an interest.
Mostly meant reform – don’t know so much about Heritage, but thought they looked good last year when I did briefly look. Sadly I think the name / positioning is not going to be ‘dynamic’ enough these days, rightly or wrongly – it feels like ‘staid/safe/don’t change anything cos we don’t like change’…
As I said – rightly or wrongly – the detail behind their thinking may be excellent. Any more thoughts you can share on them?
No mass deportations?
Do some more planning Kemi.
According to the interview between Wotton & Lowe, in some Tory event they told Rupert to avoid the ‘mass’ when talking about deportations. But with thousands invading, and I will use the word invading, we can’t not deport en masse.
Poor Planning and Preparation = Piss Poor Performance = Conservative Government… such as it was.
She has abandoned a specific target. Do not credit her with abandoning the whole daft scheme. That is what she wants sceptics to believe while retaining enough room to persuade green members that she wants what they want, just not quite yet.
I don’t have a problem with the idea of cutting down our reliance on fossil fuels. There is only a finite amount of them available anyway, and one day they will run out, although that certainly won’t happen by 2050.
Nor do I have a problem with introducing cleaner and greener ways of living. But where I differ with the unthinking masses and with the majority of politicians is that we cannot rush to introduce technologies that are untried, so expensive that they will push us into debt (both nationally and personally), or such a poor replacement for the traditional technologies that they result in lower living standards and life expectancy.
Balance is needed. If there’s a call for that, then it’s a good thing.
Some say fossil fuels are from the core of the earth, therefore hydrocarbons. Anyway, the main argument is that carbon dioxide is causing climate change that they cannot prove.
“Cleaner and greener” ways of living. So you are part of the loonie-parade.
That is harsh. I recycle my food waste, directly on the garden, or via the Council, which turns it into plant food which is spread on local fields. Nutritious free fertiliser makes perfect biological and economic sense, with the added benefit of no waste to dispose of. It is cleaner and greener. and not remotely loony
But doesn’t that attract rats to your garden?
Untrue. Fossil fuels don’t exist. Rocks don’t make hydrocarbons.
Clue in.
Abiotic processes create hydrocarbons not dead dinos, not ‘devonian algae’ and by definition these are natural, renewable.
Since 1920 the ‘end for oil/gas is nigh’ song is played every year.
And every year it is wrong.
No indication she’s rejected the “climate change” hoax.
If elected, they will be implementing their own ‘oven ready’ Net-tard zero plan, to ‘get it done’ and save the Gaia. ‘Yes we rejected Net Zero in 2025, but that was the wrong Net Zero. This is the right Net Zero, verified by the WEF’.
Just watch. Since when have the Tories actually done anything to benefit the country? And I am to believe them now?
We were told by successive goverments that we’d lead the world into net zero. So off we went, heading into the vast unknown, setting the example for others to follow, blazing a trail… At last a leader of a major party has looked round and realised that we’re on our own.
That was my thought. Whilst I also agree with the more granular assessment outlined in other comments. Even if partial or conditional, for a “legacy” party leader to say the things she has must be welcomed.
There is also the undemocratic aspect of all this, the fact that it was pushed through in 90 minutes with little debate. Signing us up to legally binding unknowns was reckless to say the least. Wonderful legacy Mrs May, wondered why those speeches paid so well.
Yes it’s so nice to see a leopard change its spots.
The UK has just moved its cztbon emissions off-shore to China for example.
“The public made it very clear that the Conservative Party needed some time away from government. Our job now is to use that time wisely – just as Margaret Thatcher and David Cameron did in the generations past.”
Stop it Kemi, I can’t stop laughing. Thatcher – yes, you’re spot on. But Cameron of hug-a-hoodie and husky-riding in The Arctic wilderness? Was that time spent wisely? The ruination inflicted on us by Cameron (and subsequently) May and Johnson has left the country in a far worse state than they inherited.
Triggernometry podcast held Boris to account NOT! I will take it back because I just saw a clip if I’m wrong but I would put money on it they never lambasted the pig over the mandates that violated the Nuremberg Code.
Still no admission that the science behind the premise of man-made climate change is shaky, to say the least. And for that reason, I’m out.
It might be helpful to differentiate ‘climate change’ from ‘man-made climate change’. This is a nuance which Net Zero fanatics don’t dwell on…
Exactly. When you look at the science as a whole, there is evidence that global temperatures have fluctuated naturally over millennia, not just in the last couple of centuries. I have yet to see any credible scientific evidence that humans have made any significant change to global temperatures and thus to the climate.
Funny thing they were talking about this subject this morning where a Tory MP mentioned “nobody mentions the benefits of CC, to which the girl answered maybe champagne in Kent. Did it not occur to her that the Romans beat us to that!
Of course not! I blame the schools.
It’s a circular argument. Mankind causes global warming, global warming is happening, therefore this proves Mankind is causing it.
Climate does not exist as an observable, tangible phenomenon, it is a statistical analysis of past – over long, long periods… thousands of years – of meteorological data.
Climate change cannot be observed or “happening” as it is an historical data-trend, which is non-linear.
If we wish to know how or whether the climate system changed in current times, we need to wait 5 000 to 10 000 years.
Yes it was all sounding good until that bit wasn’t it – I’m guessing she has to add that, as she thinks the first challenge back will be ‘so the tories deny climate change?’ Line…
Like the word racist, they can’t fall back on that forever.
Kemi, you were doing well until,
“I often say that when you want to help someone, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they need to hear. We have to tell the truth”
Try telling us that the truth is that MMCC is an untruth.
Hypocrisy, hypocrisy, hypocrisy – there’s three truths for you. Praising Cameron for preparing? He took the Miliband lunacy and turbocharged it and then Boris Johnson poured rocket fuel into the engine. The Conservatives spent fourteen years destroying the country and laying the groundwork for Miliband to return and salt the land that they had laid waste to. She now wants us to trust her? Forget it
Tories say they’ll abandon net zero is not the same as Tories abandon it. But a moot point in any case, given the size of Labour’s majority
Climate change and “the environment” are two very different things, you goddam moron!
Boris Johnson revealed the same idiotic muddled thinking in his Triggernometry interview.
It was an astonishing moment. The moment that it became completely apparent that the people in charge don’t make a distinction between climate change and pollution and a clean environment. It’s all one big muddle for them.
This idiot has just shown she doesn’t either.
That’s why are are in the mess we are in.
I’ve checked Google maps and I just can’t find where. “The Environment” is. An island, undiscovered continent, a State somewhere?
In fact despite checking daily, I just cannot see climate out the window – whether it’s nice climate today, better than yesterday. Nor has play at Lords ever been suspended due to bad climate, no flights delayed or cancelled due to bad climate.
We live in a World of abstractions it seems.
Did the Nigerian:
1) Issue a grovelling apology for the climate-change-related bollocks inflicted on the country by the Tories for the 14 years they were in power?
2) Promise to remove from the Party those MPs and associated hangers-on who pushed the agenda?
Rejoice!
“The greatness of the UK is forged by the sacrifices of our ancestors”
Whose ancestors?
Not hers, for sure.
This comment has been deleted. Play the ball, not the man
My comment criticising the Nigerian woman who wants to represent the Indigenous British People as their Prime Minister was also deleted.
So much for Freedom of Speech, and the Human Rights of the Indigenous People of the British Isles, as guaranteed by the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples to protect their own culture, language, traditions, religion, ancestral homelands and ETHNIC IDENTITY from destruction by invading alien cultures and ethnicities.
“HYPOCRITE!!!” Heretic.
What, like the sort that you want to shut down and censor whenever somebody posts something you disagree with? Like how you ceaselessly troll me around the comments sections telling me to “stop your endless whingeing!”, merely for posting my view points which are opposed to yours, because apparently YOUR right to free speech trumps MINE? Have you heard yourself, you bloody two-faced, racist, mysoginist prat?
Freedom of Speech?
You wouldn’t understand the concept of free speech if it bit you on your highly unpleasant arse!
Imagine the reaction in Nigeria if a Blonde Swedish Woman decided to run for President of Nigeria and gave speeches to the Nigerians saying…
“The greatness of Nigeria is forged by the sacrifices of OUR ANCESTORS”.
The ancient dinghy divers, not the modern day ones.
Yes, her brazen hypocrisy is just nauseating.
I don’t think they’ve abandoned anything.
Guido’s analysis is more accurate
https://order-order.com/2025/03/18/kemi-net-zero-impossible-by-2050-but-wont-scrap-policy-altogether/
Just like with the ECHR. They were pussy footing for 14 years.
Agree with all the comments but overall verdict is – the Overton Window is shifting. Drip, drip, drip.
You could say Trump started that too. Also regarding Trump, all those Pardons may be null & void because apparently Biden didn’t know anything about it and an Auto pen was used in all the signatures so it is all being passed to a Judge. Don’t know why it wasn’t reported on over here, it’s quite a bombshell that.
Oh absolutely he moved the window a long way.
“..There will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” Luke 15.10
This is where you pays yer money and takes yer choice. Does she believe herself. Does anyone else believe her. Is she ‘turning the supertanker’ one degree at a time, slowly opening the truth of Nett Zero and MMGW to full scrutiny. Or is she just wearing Nigels coat of many colours and hoping we don’t notice.
It will be interesting to watch for any movement in the Governments position too. There have been a few minor expediences, but nothing substantial as yet.
That is one advantage Reform have over the Uniparty — Reform have been banging on about scrapping Agenda 2030 from the start. Tories have had 14 years just to start the conversation. But is Farage really up to the job!
This is pretty unconvincing. The plans for Net Zero by 2050 are not only impossible, they were a scam from the start. Fleece common people to make Dale Vince types insanely rich and halfway ossified communists in the UN bureaucracy happy. Nobody needs a better Tory plan how to deal with climate change. A change of the political climate is needed here, namely one which gets rid of all these useless leeches. The weather in future is something people will have to deal with in future, just as we have to deal with the weather today and the claim that we can control the weather somehow, especially, the weather 20 years from now, is seriously preposterous when we cannot even reliably predict if it will or won’t rain from one day to the next.
I have been complaining how in the last week or so, the weather has been colder that your average March in this country.
Ah, that would be the climate collapse. It’s got so hot that it’s become moderately cold. Wake up at the back there.
Hear, hear!
How can anyone be so foolish and gullible as to be taken in by this crass attempt to steal Reform’s policies, as Bill Hickling has said?
”There has never, ever been a detailed plan. Ed Miliband’s Climate Change Act 2008, no plan. Legislating for Net Zero in 2019, no plan. A multi-trillion, 30-year project touching every single aspect of all our lives was decided in 90 minutes without a single vote.”
This was Conservative Party policy for 14 years, as was flooding the Country with millions of non-compatible, net economic cost, welfare dependent immigrants legal and illegal.
The so-called Conservative Party are the entire reason for our social and economic destruction and the return of the Marxist-Socialist Labour.
Get lost Kemi – fool me once shame on you, fool me twice shame on me.
It was a stupid attempt to give Theresa May a legacy. Another failure to add to the long list of Conservative failures over the past 15 years.
If the UK has had an energy policy at any time in the lest 3 decades, would they point me to it? The only proper energy minister I recall in that entire time was Amber Rudd. She lowered the renewable subsidies by a huge amount, ending deals on which we had IRR’s of over 15% at a time when interest rates were almost zero, because she could see through the rubbish ideas which Cameron had brought in to placate the Loony Libs
“And I am not debating whether climate change exists, it does..”
Oh dear oh dear oh dear.
I am hoping she means that the climate changes, as it always has and always will. But I don’t think so. I think she means man made climate change. Which, most definitely, does NOT exist, Kemi…