I‘m currently on a speaking tour down under, banging the drum for free speech, so am watching my country go to rack and ruin from 10,000 miles away. I remember a palpable sense of a cloud being lifted when Gordon Brown left Downing Street in 2010, not least because, following the inconclusive election result, it looked as though Labour might cut a deal with the Lib Dems and cling on to power. I was particularly relieved when Michael Gove was appointed Education Secretary because it meant the free schools policy was part of the coalition agreement that David Cameron had thrashed out with Nick Clegg and I’d spent a year struggling to set up a school with a group of other parents on the assumption it would become easier after the election. Over the next four years, I co-founded four free schools and became the country’s leading advocate for the policy. I didn’t realise at the time that education reform would be one of the few – the very few – successful policies the Conservatives could point to after 14 years in Downing Street. Needless to say, Labour has pledged to take a sledgehammer to Gove’s reforms in spite of the evidence, both domestic and international, that they’ve boosted educational attainment. Expect England’s schools to become more like those of Wales, where Labour has been in charge since 2009. In the latest PISA assessments, Wales was shown to be the worst performing nation in the U.K., significantly below the OECD average.
That cloud has returned, obviously, although my fears about not seeing sunlight again until 2034 have receded. Yes, Labour has won a landslide, but it’s not quite Starmageddon. According to the exit poll, his landslide, predicted to be the largest since 1832 in one eve-of-election poll, is in fact smaller than Tony Blair’s in 1997, although not by much (170 v 179). More encouraging, if the exit poll is to be believed, is that Labour only managed a vote share of 36%, significantly lower than in 2017 under Jeremy Corbyn (40%). By contrast, the Tories and Reform won a combined share of 43%. Sir Keir has won a landslide but not a mandate – his own majority is down by 16,000 – although I doubt he’ll be constrained by that.
The Left of the Labour Party will point to the fact that Starmer polled fewer votes than Corbyn – we don’t know that for sure yet, but it looks likely – and dispute that Labour only won this election by tacking to the centre, just as the Right of the Conservative Party will argue the Party didn’t lose by abandoning the centre ground (which is the prevailing orthodoxy among ‘One Nation’ Tories, believe it or not). And they’d both be right, in my view. In spite of Starmer’s victory, technocratic managerialism – or “stakeholder capitalism”, as Klaus Schwab calls it – hasn’t exactly triumphed in this election. The Uniparty – that is, the Conservative Party under Sunak and the Labour Party under Starmer – got a bloody nose in the sense that the two main parties received an even lower share of the vote – 62% – than they did in 2010 (66%). That’s a lower share than in 1983 at the height of the SDP‘s popularity (70%) and worse than in either of the 1974 elections. Indeed, lower than in 1923, when the two main parties won 68.7%. You have to go all the way back to 1918, when the Liberal Party hadn’t yet collapsed, to find Labour and the Conservatives collectively polling a lower vote share (59.2%).
The superficial take on the result is that the U.K. is bucking the anti-technocratic trend sweeping the rest of the globe, particularly France where we may be witnessing the death throes of the Fifth Republic. But look beyond Labour’s landslide and the real story of the last six weeks is the rise of Reform and the lack of enthusiasm for the two centrist parties. Indeed, if we had PR in the U.K., as they do in the EU, we might now be looking at a Right-of-centre coalition with a populist leader at the helm and a move away from the Uniparty’s position on immigration and Net Zero, as well as its uncritical embrace of sectarian identity politics. We may have to wait another five years before that happens, but it seems unlikely, to put it mildly, that Starmer’s premiership will breathe new life into this calcified ideology. Much more likely is that a succession of policy failures, leading to a financial crisis, civil unrest and rolling black-outs, will be the death knell of technocratic managerialism. In 2029, the British electoral may finally vote for real change.
John Gray was very good on the imminent collapse of technocracy in a piece for the New Statesman on June 19th:
The recent YouGov survey showing the long-dreaded “crossover”, with Reform 1% ahead of the Tories, was the moment technocracy hit the rocks. Rule by technocrats means bypassing politics by outsourcing key decisions to professional bodies that claim expert knowledge. Their superior sapience is often ideology clothed in pseudo-science they picked up at university a generation ago, and their recommendations a radical political programme disguised as pragmatic policymaking. Technocracy represents itself as delivering what everyone wants, but at bottom it is the imposition of values much of the population does not share. A backlash was inevitable.
Populism is, among other things, the re-politicisation of issues the progressive consensus deems too important to be left to democratic choice. Immigration was one such issue, climate policy another. Both have stormed back into the political realm.
Gray’s conclusion struck me as particularly prescient:
In functioning democracies, technocracy rarely works for long. Relying on scraps of academic detritus, its practitioners struggle to keep up with events. Even when their theories are sound, they do not legitimate their policies. Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact, but science cannot tell you what to do about it. Conflicting values are at stake, some of them involving major losses. What entitles a caste of bureaucrats to make these tragic choices for the rest of us?
While the populist revolt is gathering momentum, Labour is going all in for technocratic management. Rachel Reeves proposes to give the Office for Budget Responsibility a greater role in approving fiscal policies. The recent record of the Bank of England does not inspire confidence in such bodies. In times as uncertain and clouded as ours, devolving the powers of government to rule-bound institutions is a fast route to ruin.
The challenge of the next five years, assuming this is a one-term government, will be to stop Starmer and his army of blobby bureaucrats vandalising the English Constitution – or, rather, continuing the process of transferring power away from Parliament and into the hands of judges, officials, quangocrats, regulators and international bodies that was begun by Tony Blair and which the Tories did nothing to reverse over the past 14 years. In the Daily Sceptic, J. Sorel has warned repeatedly about this constitutional vandalism (see his articles here) and elsewhere David Starkey has been raising the alarm. This will be a last ditch effort of the professional managerial class to resist the coming populist revolt – to neuter parliament so effectively that when the insurgents arrive in Downing Street in 2029 and start pulling the levers to stop mass immigration and abandon the ruinous carbon emission targets nothing will happen. Number 10 will belong to the ‘dignified’ part of the constitution, along with the House of Commons and the House of Lords, assuming it hasn’t been replaced by a Senate of the Nations and Regions, God help us. Although, as Matt Ridley pointed out recently in the Spectator, the Blob is already in charge in key policy areas.
Preserving the English Constitution won‘t be the only challenge. Trying to keep the Conservative Parliamentary Party united over the past 14 years has been like herding cats – one reason we’ve had five Prime Ministers in that period. What hope, then, of uniting two Right-of-centre parties? Already, a schism has opened up between the different factions on the Right of the Conservative Party about whether to admit Farage, with Suella Braverman arguing for and Kemi Badenoch against. I’m fairly confident the next leader of the Tory Party will be a Right-winger, not least because the Left’s strongest candidate, Penny Mordaunt, lost her seat in the early hours of this morning. But if it’s Kemi, she’s going to have to patch things up with Farage or risk facing a repeat of what happened on Thursday at the next election.
The other story of the night, of course, is the emergence of the Muslim Vote, with pro-Palestinian candidates having taken several Labour scalps at the time of writing. If the Right can unite and the Muslim Vote turns into a fully-fledged political force, that could lead to a reversal of Starmer’s fortunes in 2029. Just when you were breathing a sigh of relief about the demise of the SNP, another ethno-nationalist party has sprung up – only in this case, the nation state its supporters owe their allegiance to is Gaza rather than Scotland. That’s bad news for the country, but could be good for the Right. If Starmer criminalises Islamophobia, allows Sharia courts to flourish and changes the law to permit Muslim prayer in schools in an attempt to stop Labour haemorrhaging support to the Muslim Party, that would open up a clear dividing line between the Nat Cons and the radical progressive-Islamist alliance. Queers for Palestine versus Pensioners For Britain. I think the Faragists wold win that contest.
So not a good night for conservatives like me, but I’m not convinced it heralds a two-term Labour Government. On the contrary, we may be glimpsing the outline of a Right-wing coalition that could sweep to power in 2029.
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Depressing but predictable outcome. On the topic of free speech it remains to be seen just how much this will be further impacted ( and abused ) with Labour in charge. Ayaan Hirsi Ali covers this here;
”In the UK there are already de facto blasphemy laws. But under pressure from the Islamic lobby, which is growing in power, an incoming Labour government contemplates introducing legislation which would irreversibly damage freedom of speech and stifle any ability to criticize radical Islam.
Among their various manifesto commitments, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party have promised to upgrade the British state’s focus on “hate crime.” This should be a chilling prospect to anyone who knows how these laws are wielded in Britain.
Now, a Labour government wouldn’t have to criminalize “Islamophobic” speech to effectively introduce a blasphemy law through the back door. Simply the adoption and proliferation of the concept in policing, the work force, and guidance for public bodies would be enough to radically change the way Britons feel comfortable speaking about Islam.
There are three ways in which Labour have committed themselves to pursuing this course of action in their manifesto. Firstly, they intend to introduce a new Race Equality Act, designed to enforce ethnicity pay gap reporting, that will “strengthen protections against… discrimination and root out other racial inequalities.” Second, they will upgrade the monitoring of Islamophobic hate. Presumably one possible purpose of such monitoring is to justify the introduction of further anti-Islamophobic measures, whether in terms of legal penalties or softer but no less effective social pressure. And finally, they have mooted the creation of an ethics commissioner in Parliament with the power to censor elected officials.
The impact on speech in the workplace would be grave, bordering on dystopian. It is little comfort to know that you won’t simply be thrown into prison (for now) for making an oblique criticism of radical Islam, if you might, instead, easily lose your livelihood and have your life destroyed by overzealous Human Resources managers or vexatious activist colleagues for speaking your mind.
It would have a huge impact on media and reporting as well. This definition of “islamophobia” would be adopted by the BBC and by Ofcom, the UK media regulator, which would radically undermine accurate reporting of anything which might offend Muslim sensibilities in Britain. ”
https://www.restorationbulletin.com/p/labours-backdoor-british-blasphemy
The time has arrived to stop obeying these attempts to cosh and control, the time has arrived for those of us who rebelled during Covid to rebel here, to ignore stupid and divisive rules, to say no to EDI, and base decisions on character and competence and not on the basis of skin colour, religion or orientation, if enough of us refuse they will fall, if we comply we fall.
That sounds great… I take it you don’t work, or perhaps you’re a sole trader? Good luck with the revolution, anyway…
The Right is not united, we could learn something from the Islam guys if nothing else.
Judging by the election result, the “right” is 20% of those who voted – Reform basically and a few other fringe parties. I don’t count the Tories as “right”.
According to Starkey Starmer’s Manifesto never mentions free speech. Didn’t Starmer collude with the CIA who were going after Julian Assange. Resist!
If they take away everything and a man has nothing more to lose, they had better lock their doors and sleep with one eye open. The anger will be very great and rules will be abandoned
And underlying it all is the loss of confidence in the whole system, if you take account of the turnout percentage. It might have been higher than average in some places – such as Leicester South. Not quite as low as many local elections, but it’s moving that way.
Labour’s Vote Share 33.9%
Share change +1.7
Yet now with 400 plus seats, roughly 200 more than all other parties combined – who between them have aprox. 64% of the votes.
Democracy. Lol.
Sadly, people are conditioned to unelected judges via Supreme Courts, ECHR, overturning democratic decision.
Absolutely spot on!
Even better-
Libdems 3.5 million votes = 71 seats.
Reform 4.1 million votes = 4 seats.
Why on God’s f***ing earth do you believe it would be more ‘democratic’ to elevate parties to the constitutional role of shaping the political opinions of the electorate¹? In Germany, the AfD sits in a lot of parliaments. And it has exactly zero political influence because while it represents about ⅕ of the votes of the people, the ⅘ representatives would prefer putting this ⅕ into concentration camps rather sooner than later and this won’t change until the AfD adopts everything the people financing the ⅘ parties want, from replacing trees with windmills to making puberty a criminal offense punishable by chemical and physical castration.
The Austrian FPÖ used to be a right-wing populist party to the point that EU sanctions were enacted against Austria when it became part of a government for the first time there. Obviously, it quickly fell in line after realizing which side of the bread is the buttered one.
What happened to the Italian Melon™ who reportedly won an election? Has she done anything against illegal immigration accross the Mediterranean?
¹ The constitutional role assigned to them in Germany.
When the imbecile Davey and Co are convincingly outvoted by Reform, yet ‘win’ fifteen times as many seats, it must surely chime that FPTP needs a rework. As The Stranglers sang, “Something Better Change!”
Yes Toby you just summed it up pretty much as I would have done myself. We now have a government who are about give us ———-“Change”.——–ha ha haa jeez. ———They got elected by telling people that is what they were going to give them. There is an old saying that people get the government they deserve and when you vote for a Political Party that can only offer you “change” then you most certainly get what you deserve. This is the most utterly pathetic slogan I ever heard, and it means absolutely NOTHING
And there will be no change but an all out push to continue what the Oxbridge Civil Service policies.
And those of established professional organisations or corporations. Elected national politicians are some way down the pyramid structure, or pecking order, compared with those. Anyway, the stock exchange doesn’t seem to be scared about it at present.
I rather think we are going to be short-changed..
No question.
In the DT a journalist has the cheek to blame the public for this. The real fault lies with the media which shuts out any discussion of real issues and feeds them the pap the journos want them to consider.
I know because I heard it directly that Reform have addressed important social and oilitical issues but none of them made it to the electoral marketplace as presented by the media most people imbibe.
“This is the most utterly pathetic slogan I ever heard, and it means absolutely NOTHING”
On the contrary, it means everything as far as Kneel is concerned. As the saying goes…
If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like a duck – it’s a chicken.
I fear that the British people are actually mostly thick when it comes to politics. Voting for Labour because the tories didn’t do what you wanted….mental illness.
My mother in law thinks like this. She votes for the Illiberal Undemocrats because she thinks they are halfway between Labour and conservatives. A stuck in the 1960s view of what they really are.
I suggest we muat form protective groups because the disorder and crime that will start in Britain under this vile, mindless, communist Labour government will be very great. The polizei stasi will be too busy dancing with gay people, protecting just stop oil activists and bending the knee to blacks and browns, to deal with these crimes. And it will obviously be racist to tackle any immigrants who are committing a crime, because we owe them for our evil empire. Vigilante groups will be needed.
I fear that the British people are actually mostly thick when it comes to politics. Voting for Labour because the tories didn’t do what you wanted….mental illness.
This describes it very neatly: Trying to cure the problem that a car is headed towards a wall by accelerating. I cannot really fathom why anybody could be so mad to actually try this.
In ignored news, I got recently told that we’te in the middle of a summer Corona wave and should count overselves lucky when Starmer doesn’t reinstate the mask mandate at the earliest possible opportunity. There’s doubtlessly lobbying by people with deep pockets and deep public health for that already.
90-something second places for Reform, mostly in the north, east and Wales.
They are now the challenger party in these seats and, as Nigel said, Reform is now coming for Labour.
Behind the posh specs Starmer looked terrified as he realises he is in charge and the buck will stop with him. It will not take long before he is attacked by his previous chums in the MSM and the BBC. Bring it on.
The BBC love him as he is their chief technocrat.
I don’t share the optimism here. More than 80% of those who voted, voted for some variation of a left wing consensus party. The Tories are still the official opposition, and will eventually get back in, and I think Reform will slowly fade, sadly. The sad truth is that most people in the UK seem to like Big Government.
The rolling blackouts might decide that. I heard a Lib-Dem on the radio saying how they will hold Labour to account if they fall back on Agenda 2030. Old people freezing to death? it’s the greater good. I also think the Dems focus on sewage was a tactic to avoid admitting they’re full on Windmills & Solar Panels that many in Wales do not want.
John Grey states that “anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact”.
It isn’t.
By stating that, he falls into exactly the same trap he correctly identifies in the Technocracy, namely that they’re easily swayed by pseudo science on the basis of poor education and susceptibility to fashionable ideas.
Yes, I thought Toby might have noted his personal disagreement with that statement.
And we have had a lot of discussion about it on here. At best, if there is any human input, it is not proven what our proportion of it might be, compared with the rest of nature. Crass over reaction to emerging events appears to be quite common, though.
Quite so. Even if you accept it as fact, you really ought ask “so what?”. A climate that is a couple of degrees warmer would be a nicer climate.
He also forgets cue bino!
Bono
“anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact”.
Thanks, you beat me to it.
As far as I am concerned anyone uttering statements such as this is displaying a degree of ignorance that is simply wilful. Whenever I see this I find it difficult to accept whatever position the author sets out to make.
It’s not as if their is a shortage of articles and evidence to refute the “anthropogenic climate change” nonsense because they appear daily. John Grey is a journalist not fully cognisant of his subject.
Games for the peasants. So many enjoyed dressing up for the day.
After the EU election, a ‘lefty’ German journalist stated that the Greens now had two years left to ram through as much of their policies as they can without any regards for political casualties in the hope that the damage done in this way will be irreversible. And I fear that’s what’s going to happen now.
As Edstone Millibang already stated: It’s irresponsible to let trees grow in the countryside while inner-city welfarelims have to pay electricity bills. Therefore, we’ll put an axe to anything which seems even remotely green in order to replace it with the kind of nice concrete structures our more prominent donors would like to erect with taxpayer money.
To quote the musical drama Lipstick on your collar….He needs shagging by the neck!
“…so effectively that when the insurgents arrive in Downing Street in 2029 and start pulling the levers to stop mass immigration and abandon the ruinous carbon emission targets nothing will happen.”
2029 will be too late as four more years of mass migration is maybe all that is needed to allow this country to be captured. How many men of fighting age have come up the beaches at Dover so far?
Excellent points, well made.
No idea what sapience is though.
I’m not sure either. Something to do with knowing stuff I guess, as in homo sapiens, “sapere” which is Italian for “to know” in the sense of knowledge as opposed to knowing for example a person which is “conoscere”.
[ sey-pee-uhns ]
Phonetic (Standard)
great wisdom or sound judgment:
‘He did much to inculcate the image of a good prince, demonstrating his sapience at Oxford and doing justice with rigor and compassion.’
the capacity to be self-aware:
‘Language existed long before there was writing, emerging most likely at the same time as sapience, abstract thought, and the genus Homo.’
New one for me too. I will give it the odd outing in some future posts.
Nice one! Sapience is in short supply.
To some tune.
I dont know if you’ve ever come across something called Google. It tells me that Sapience is the ability to apply knowledge or experience or understanding or common sense and insight.
Thats for the downvotes. I though my average was falling below my usual levels…
Wise i think. This id HP i can google in seconds.
Far worse than any success that comes from Labour’s use of state power to address issues, are the ‘solutions’ that no one will like in practice. Such as on-shore wind turbines.
The labour manifesto such as it was was stitched together from the unworkable and the unaffordable. Its going to be interesting to see what happens when it meets the rocks of reality.
And the Greens will hold their feet to the fire, not that they need much encouragement. This is where Farage needs to drive home to the sleeping serfs that these people work for Globalists. He has been underwhelming on that so far.
The ”top-gear’ factor
As LAbour sweep into power you may be interested in this you-tube clip where MGUY discusses the effects of Labours planned EV policy on cars, motoring, the economy and the public.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2S0UU4pnlo&list=TLPQMDUwNzIwMjSJgPyM7qFpNg&index=2
I think much of the motoring public will start to find Labour’s EV policy a tricky and bumpy ride. It could be the first area where Labours shine starts to tarnish, especially if Stallantis carry through with their threat to close down car plants.
Well said Noel:Noel Gallagher launches stinging attack on ‘woke’ Glastonbury and festival revellers (msn.com)
“Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact,” Since when?
Exactly!
Where is my comment?
Many were concerned about immigration, so much so that other issues didn’t get a foot in the door. With me you didn’t even need to go further that what was the Rona fascism. Some based guy on the TV was asking what happened to the 36 billion, the guy standing in for Vine just answered….’There will be an enquiry set up to deal with that’, yeah right!
Every political movement attract people with a messiah complex…”I know exactly what to do”. When these people clash, the result is fragmentation – the People’s Front of Judea breaks away from the Judean people’s Front. The great difficulty now is to turn reform into an organised, effective movement where internal debate is possible, but the leaders share “collective responsibility” for a coherent manifesto. It has to be said that Farage may be an obstacle to this happening. There needs to be a critical mass of “big beasts” in Reform to keep his messiah complex under control.
“… Right-of-centre coalition…”
Because eternal, unremovable coalitions like in the EU work so well and are just what Britain needs.
What is needed is a reduction in MPs to around 500 and constituency boundary reforms so each is about the same population size, and to split the demographics to avoid ‘safe seats’.
Even group of 500 people is much too large for any kind of productive discussion and can only sort-of function when most of these ‘representatives’ never do anything save collecting their pay and voting how party leadership wants them to vote.
Headlines should be examined more before considering the text. They may be designed as click bait but they refelect the values of the editors. This is NOT the end of Uniparty. It is a big setback for the Tory branch which the other branches will not really want to be terminal.
What Reform have to do is position themselves with a clear alternative programme with which the Tories can and will disagree.
The biggest constraint on Starmer’s technocratic government will be the very Blob that Tony Blair empowered. He will find it very hard to push change through, without explicitly taking on the technocrats.
And yet expectations on his own side are sky high. Given the size of his majority, his supporters will expect huge and rapid change.
He will also start losing by-elections. That happens to all governments. In his case, however, it will take the shine off his Teflon coating.
His inability to deliver change will be ruthlessly mocked by the populist Right, especially Nigel Farage.
I am not convinced that Kemi is on the Right however. She is a typical Conservative. If the party turns to her, it will propel the party further down its decline.
The truth is, the Conservatives, including Kemi, have no answer to Nigel Farage. They are too riddled with technocrats themselves to take on Labour.
Farage won’t be joining the Tories. He may well end up taking in real Conservative refugees as the Conservative Party marches on towards its inevitable destiny, of merger with the Liberal Democrats.
What a line up of treacherous ghouls in that picture.
What a shame abortion wasn’t more freely available back in the day.
The right must cooperate, collaborate and coordinate against Labour. Make lawfare against them, collectively. Harass, undermine, distract and attack them (politically and legally). Use their tactics on them. We must start a political war against the islamo communist bloc.
Join New Culture Forum Locals group, Together and Free Speeh Union to help enable this fightback
We nearly outnumber them in votes, ans have more backbone than them.
When Grey says “Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific fact” he should be said “Anthropogenic climate change is an evidenceless belief”.
Given that Starmer has now appointed Sir Patrick Vallance as science minister, it will scientific fact as much as lockdown was a scientific necessity.