A central feature of the cultural hegemony of our ‘new elite’ is that it is sustained by pharisaical levels of hypocrisy. We’re currently being treated to an example of this in the form of the Suella Braverman non-crisis that is dominating the airwaves, and which provides what it is nowadays fashionable to call a ‘teachable moment’.
To briefly explain for overseas readers: Suella Braverman was until today the Home Secretary here in the U.K. On Wednesday last week, she wrote a piece for the Times (available behind the paywall here) in which she expressed some fairly mild criticism of the way in which protests in London were being policed. Her accusation, which almost anybody will notice to be true, was that the Metropolitan Police simply don’t treat all protests on the streets of London in the same way. If it’s BLM it’s kid gloves. But when it’s anti-lockdown protestors, it’s truncheons and tear gas. Braverman then reminded the police that it was important to enforce the law properly when it comes to pro-Palestinian marches (a large one of which having been planned for, and since carried out, last Saturday).
The wailing and gnashing of teeth that followed was truly extraordinary. Braverman, it seemed, was violating an ironclad principle of the English constitution, which is that it is never acceptable for a member of the Government to say anything whatsoever that might be interpreted as havig anything to do with police ‘operational matters’. Braverman’s article, it was hinted darkly, was setting us on the slippery slope towards a police state, in which the Government orders the police who to arrest and directs the force to silence political enemies. This was categorically something up with which we could not put. And today Braverman has duly been dismissed from the Cabinet.
Of course, there is no such ironclad principle of the English constitution – or, if there is, it is one which is routinely ignored by everybody. British readers will cast their minds back a mere nine years, and recall the then-Home Secretary Theresa May turning up at a police conference in Bournemouth to accuse them of having “contempt for the public” and to call them out for their racism – particularly in reference to ‘stop and search’ tactics – and sexism. Or they might cast their minds back a bit further to remind themselves of then-Home Secretary Jack Straw’s comments expressing concern about “wide variation” around the country in the way in which police were using “out of court” penalties. Fresher faced readers might recall Matt Hancock when he was Secretary of State for Health and Social Care “backing the police” who fined two innocent Derbyshire women for daring to go for a walk together around a lake during the winter lockdown of 2020-21 (one of many, many, many, many, many interventions by Government ministers in what would properly have been called ‘operational matters’ during the lockdown era, a large proportion of which seemed to concern whether somebody should be arrested for eating a scotch egg in a pub, or something). In none of these cases was the politician in question sacked from the Government, and in none of these cases did the columnists at the Guardian unite in mass fits of pearl-clutching. There was a bit of mild finger-wagging directed at Hancock regarding the Derbyshire incident, but he suffered absolutely no political consequences for his comments. I don’t recall there being anything said about Theresa May’s comments about stop-and-search in 2014 other than praise for her ”bravery“.
It is difficult to express in polite terms, then, what utter bollocks it is to claim that there is some supreme constitutional norm holding that it is illegitimate for an elected politician, or even a member of the Government, to remind the police that their job is to evenhandedly enforce the law. If anything, the truth is the opposite: this is among the job of elected politicians, and rightly so. The separation of powers is violated when a member of the executive directs the police to arrest an individual, or intervenes in a criminal prosecution. But Braverman’s article did nothing even approaching that. The people complaining about it are by implication either not thinking things through properly or being disingenuous – or both.
But then, enforcing constitutional principle, as anyone sensible can see, is the last thing on anyone’s minds here. This is plainly not about the rules: it is about Braverman. And Braverman is rapidly becoming the most interesting political figure in the country – one of those rare individuals, like Boris Johnson or Donald Trump, who so enrages members of the new elite as to give rise to a unique ‘derangement syndrome’ of their own. She has achieved this by daring to give voice to a significant chunk of the electorate, who are a bit socially conservative, and also by being a Right-wing woman who is a member of an ethnic minority. Being a bit socially conservative in itself enrages the new elite, and her being a conservative non-white woman dangerously discombobulates their asinine and simplistic view of the moral and political universe. They therefore necessarily visit their ire upon Braverman as the avatar of everything they hate and fear in public life.
So much I think is fairly obvious. There is, though, something deeper going on in this story. A while back, I wrote a piece for the Daily Sceptic in which I drew readers’ attention to the important concept of artificial negativity. The essence of this concept is that hegemony can only really secure its position through a plausible narrative of necessity. If the hegemon acknowledges that it is in fact the hegemon and that its victory is total, it will deflate like a sad hot air balloon. Instead, it must present the situation as being one in which the forces of truth and justice, which it embodies, are permanently engaged in a life-and-death struggle with a rotating cast of various powerful and dangerous baddies. This is how the members of a cultural elite motivate themselves and get themselves up in the morning, and how they strengthen their cultural dominance. “What the country needs is yet more of what we represent,” the message must go. “Because without us, dangerous fascists like Suella Braverman are poised to take charge.”
Ritualised episodes of confected crisis like this one are therefore entirely characteristic of a society that is in the grip of a cultural hegemony. And, when we look at the subject from this perspective, things begin to make a lot more sense. Our new elite hates Suella Braverman, but if she didn’t exist, it would have been necessary for them to invent her. To get the juices flowing, threats need to be imagined, and dangers manufactured. One of these dangers, absurdly, is a Tory Government sweeping to power and installing authoritarian rule. That the Tories have been in Government since 2010 and done absolutely nothing of the kind shows us just how absurd this fear actually is. But it is important to remember that it isn’t a genuine fear – it is a kind of cosplay which the new elite participates in to work itself up for yet more entrenchment of its own position. The shrillness and outrage is palpable, but it is really within the same category as a Violet Elizabeth tantrum – it is theatrics for a particular purpose, which is cementing power. Rishi Sunak, in giving in to this tendency, is therefore exhibiting nothing but the rubber spine of a weak parent unable to resist acceding to his child’s demands so as to secure an easy life; but then I suppose that’s hardly surprising in a conservative politician in the U.K. in 2023.
Dr. David McGrogan is an Associate Professor of Law at Northumbria Law School. He is the author of the News From Uncibal Substack.
To join in with the discussion please make a donation to The Daily Sceptic.
Profanity and abuse will be removed and may lead to a permanent ban.
I’m glad you’ve closed down London Calling. Because your interlocutor has gradually transformed from a reasonable right wing dandy into some species of cultic fruitcake, complete with thin skin, it became impossible to sustain discussion. In the first place he responded with peevish insults to the first suggestion of disagreement; and worse, his “theories”, for want of a better word, boil down to a childish belief in a tribe of all powerful bogeymen. I stopped listening months ago for just this reason. Not only did JD reject the perfectly obvious point that there will never be a single explanation for all things; not only did he dismiss the role that accident plays in life, he wouldn’t even accept the perfectly proper point that in “woke” we are dealing with a tide of intellectual fashion among the whole educated class. No, for him it was bogeymen. At this point I have just heard the typically moderate and generous Young-point that JD is not mad, he’s just evangelical. Well, that sort of Christianity verges on madness in any case, does it not? Anglican, Catholic and Orthodox faith allows for science and reason – free-floating, late-comer’s amateur Protestantism amounts to a belief in UFOs and the Loch Ness Monster. It also explains his appalling sympathy for Islam – among the deadliest enemies freedom has ever had. Finally, to Mr Dixon, no it is not an insult to be called an ethnic nationalist. Ethnic nationalism is there in the belief systems of Churchill and de Gaulle and is wholly distinct from the beliefs of their famous German antagonist.
Clearly there are at least twenty-six religious nuts who worship at the shrine of Little Jim and his fight against the all-powerful Bogeymen. They can’t seem to muster an argument between them. What a surprise!
Like all religious fruitcakes, anything that it is beyond his intellect to understand is ascribed to a god or gods.
This is true of religious fruitcakes but not true of the more rationally religious, for example Dr Johnson, who had little truck with efforts at “theodicy” and dismissed all certainty as to the particular intentions or interventions of God.
And he would certainly not have ascribed all our misfortunes to some ongoing cabal of human agents as it seems the “born again” James is happy to do.
Indeed, with his obsessive focus on particular individuals he is close to viewing them as supernatural powers; and worse, he sees them as involved in a conspiracy over centuries.
Here we meet the ultimate nonsense which mutters darkly about secret societies, Freemasons et al – really, little better than taking Dan Brown seriously. And this, I fear, is why he reacted in such a prickly fashion – or so I understand – to some phantom accusation of anti-Semitism, for that is the really nasty creature which lurks at the end of so many such “rabbit-holes” – and he knows it.
Happily, he is clearly resisting that particular temptation; but one wonders how long it will take to overcome his resistance? After all, a once rational individual now rejects opposition, ascribes every evil to a thousand year conspiracy, denies evolution, palaeontology, the routine precautions of due scepticism and in their place relies on childish, fairy-tale explanations with horrible antecedents and horrifying possibilities. In claiming to be down this “rabbit hole” he evinces a last, uncomfortable sense that he is losing touch with truth; is, perhaps, giving out a final distress signal in hopes that someone might rescue him.
This, ultimately, is why I stopped tuning in. He needs help.
I stopped listening to London Calling simply because the show notes told me in too great a detail who thought what about which topic, so there was no need to listen.
I continued listening to hear Toby calmly and logically dealing with the ever more extreme Delingpole outbursts. I quite like JD and although I tend to dismiss his theories, I found it interesting to listen to them.
Interesting? Surely it was embarrassing? Like listening in on a private session between shrink and fruitcake. As for liking the poor fruitcake, well – he was once likeable, in his downright, right-wing hedonist days. Now that he’s a particularly aggressive member of some sort of pensioners’ Christian Union, complete with American Bible-bashing, he must be quite ghastly to meet.
Like all religious fruitcakes, anything that it is beyond his intellect to understand is ascribed to a god or gods.
Richmond was the capital of the Southern states in the Civil War. The men North of Richmond are yankees and bankers etc
Anthony wasn’t saying he lived there – he’s in NC I think
Good listen and good restaurant dish!! I used to listen to London Calling from the beginning, so will miss friends trying to work stuff out but there was getting less discussion about what might be happening.
I feel more optimistic after listening thank you but I wonder if one of you could listen to JDs latest podcast with the nice Irish guy about covid but worrying if he is right !?
Tuning in next week !
The ad-lib of “Re-wolving the Guardian” was so good that you must make the film. Toby drooling over the Moonbot trans-wolf going through Owen Jones like butter shows Toby’s inner psychopath, the more sinister for his veneer of urbanity.
I might add that I walked my dogs for years among leafy NJ suburbs less than an hour from NYC, happily co-existing with occasional bears and coyotes. Coyotes are half-wolf in the Eastern US and the ones I saw looked as big as wolves. Picking ticks off the dogs was more trouble.
It is hardly surprising that the podcast failed. It is one thing to punctuate something compelling by advertisements but times have moved on and there is no pretending that things are normal anymore. Such a conceit runs contrary to evryone’s lived experience and so such a podcast just gets consigned to background noise like a dog barking in the back garden. I don’t give advice except to say that God hates a coward most of all.
La Proudman is a wank-stain on the fabric of humanity
I was thinking skid mark. Even a wankstain had a degree of potential at some point in its existence.
Sadly I have reached a point with several sets of friends with regard to views on issues like leaving the EU, Covid, Lockdowns, Masks, “Vaccines”, Net Zero, DIE (yes there are HR managers among my friends). With one group we have had to agree not to discuss political issues. Another group (predominantly career long public sector employees) I have let go because we cannot talk about anything much any more due to their deep immersion in their narrative, which is infuriating.
It’s nuclear Toby, just say new-clear, not Dubya’s mangled nu-cu-lar. And regarding the crazy plane lady Nick, you should probably watch this, it may be helpful:
https://youtu.be/pInk1rV2VEg
NEW PODCAST OUT FROM THE REAL NORMAL PODCAST!
We’re back on the airwaves talking about the ‘Bibby Stockholm’ and her massive hull…plus we’re picking the bones out of light fingered museum curators. We cover the awful story of Lucy Letby, whilst also chatting about the usual madness that swirls around the woke, namely Graham Linehan.
https://therealnormalpodcast.buzzsprout.com/1268768/13442825-ep-53-get-your-big-bibby-stockholm-s-out
PLUS SILLY SONGS you unfortunate proles!