There is a great unsaid in British politics: an arcanum which has dominated the politics of the last 50 years, though it is never stated openly. But it is about to be revealed to the British public. There have been signs that the dam is about to break. It is almost inevitable because we have the imposing example of the United States before us, where the cat is out of the bag, the horse has bolted, and all hell has broken loose.
What has happened in the United States? Well, we have an election between two candidates for President, coming on the November 5th, where the candidate on the right is male, and the candidate on the left is female. In case you do not know: Donald Trump, Republican opposes Kamala Harris, Democrat.
American and British politics have an odd relation, since the former is a sort of avoidance, a sort of inheritance and a sort of abstraction of the latter: though the break happened in the 1780s, which is a long time ago: however it was late enough for us to bestow on the United States a taste for constitutional politics and for opposed political parties. However, American politics has remained open in a way that British politics has not. The House of Commons and its system (sometimes called Parliamentarism) is an elaborate machinery for allowing criticism of proposals to be heard during the process of enactment in such a way that it is possible to prevent anyone opposing a proposal after it has been enacted. This is a great thing, on one side: and we can sing hymns in Diceyan manner about it. But it is also a great triangulation (since it has three elements: neutral monarchy, ministers responsible to parliament, party politics): and a great triangulation which has the effect of dragging politics into Westminster and away from the populace: who remain interested only if they have Victorian habits of deference, respectability and reading newspapers.
What is the great secret of British politics? It is:
- Leaders of the Right can be female, but leaders of the Left cannot.
I know. It is not exactly a secret. But everyone supposes that it just happens to have been the case that the Tories have had Thatcher, May and Truss as leaders while Labour have had, er, exactly no one (unless you count Margaret Beckett, who was a caretaker leader in between John Smith and Tony Blair). But it is not that it has just happened to be the case. Nay. There is a rule. It is part of the logic of the system. And once the rule is broken, if it is broken, all hell will break loose.
Let me make exact predictions.
- Labour will only ever have a female leader if the Tories also have a female leader.
This will at least conceal the secret. But:
- If the Tories have a male leader and Labour has a female leader then all hell will break loose..
All hell will break loose? Yes. Our politics will come to resemble that of the United States as it is at this exact moment. All hell has broken out in America. Both sides consider themselves to be the saviours of democracy. Both sides convict the other of being a threat to democracy. The old political agreement whereby everyone acts or speaks within the pale of the constitution appears to be in tatters. Kamala Harris says Donald Trump is a fascist, a Nazi, Hitler – and so say all of the others on her side. They seem to believe it too. On the other side, Donald Trump says that the problem is not Kamala Harris or Joe Biden or any individual – the analysis is different – but that the system, the established order, the swamp, the military-industrial complex, the corporate elites, DC, New York and Hollywood, all of them, are locked into a path which is leading to the demise of the republic. Now, I do happen to favour one of these analyses over the other. Why? Well, it is more amusing, it is more intelligent, it is arguable rather than abusive, and it is also masculine. It is not ad hominem, but, I don’t know, ad imperium or something: against the system, not against the man, or, in this case woman. Notice how the woman Harris attacks the man Trump, but the man Trump attacks the system the woman Harris represents.
In the United Kingdom, our entire system is struggling to avoiding letting the cat out of the bag, letting the horse bolt, letting all hell break loose. A few years ago Keir Starmer was asked what a woman is. He answered in some grey and of course mealy-mouthed and mockable way, but in a way that nonetheless left the unsaid unsaid. What he could have said, if he had been an honest man, is the following:
- INTERVIEWER: What is a woman?
- KEIR STARMER. I can answer that. A woman is someone who can never be leader of the Labour party.
In archetypes – if Jung were still alive we would all be willing to admit that – right is masculine and left is feminine. The Labour party in England and the Democratic party in America are the parties of ostentatious care and justice combined with a fairly unscrupulous preferentiality and no uncertain capacity for survival-necessary hypocrisy. The Conservative party in England and the Republican party in America are parties of low-level criminality, boasting, neglect, derring-do, go-it-alone, and occasional capitulation to the hypocrisies of the fairer sex. I defy anyone to dispute this analysis. As I say, male archetype and female archetype. Left is anima, right is animus.
And so, and here is the great secret: we are not supposed to know this, or to be too aware of it. For then all hell would break loose. Marital discord. Unleashed feminism. Unrestrained patriarchy. The hell hounds of misogyny and misandry would be let loose: though I pause to observe how weak a word ‘misandry’ is. I leave you to supply a sharper word. Well, all hell is breaking loose in America: and why? Because it is the battle of the sexes. Not genders. The genders are all on one side. And in the United Kingdom, with our long traditions of fog and myth and empiricism (= the refusal to think which made Guizot in France and Hegel in Germany so jealous in the early 19th Century since they thought our political achievements depended on it), we want to keep the whole thing in the closet, under the carpet, behind the curtain.
The Labour party can be stuffed full of Rayners, Reeveses, Phillipsons, et al. It has always had its Webbs, Castles, Falkenders, Williamses, Harmans, Becketts, Mowlams, etc: but always a bit of ‘old unreconstructed’ in the central position: some stubborn little bit of grit like Wilson, Blair or Brown. What is Starmer but such a similarly reassuring sight? Labour can never be an unrestrainedly female party. For then the Tories will rise like Osiris after being awoken by Isis (on the despatch box, perhaps), and become the fully phallic political party that, presumably, Tate, Farage and Brand would like it to be. And the Labour party will be nothing but a repressive and bitter scold wondering why no one thanks it for free school meals, heat pumps, wind turbines, levelled universities and censorship.
Beware!
The selection of Badenoch over Jenrick, if it happens, is likely going to conceal the secret for another political generation in the United Kingdom. It is difficult to know whether to applaud, or despair over, the fact that politics, at the moment, is less invigorating than it is in the United States.
Dr. James Alexander is a Professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.
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.
When is an MP going to find the balls to ask about the shape of Starmer’s family. This raging hypocrite who was the first to shriek about the rotter Johnson should be held to the same standard for his inability to keep it in his trousers. Every time I see Starmer’s dead eyes I feel physically sick.
Do we know that he can’t keep it in his trousers? When I look at him I get the exact opposite impression, and wonder if he really is his sons father. Starmer always seems to have this odd expression on his face, as if he’s wearing womens underwear and it’s been riding up too high
Actually thinking about it, this would explain why he was raging about Boris’ multiple children so much. Starmer viewed Boris as an example of masculinity which only served to highlight his own lack thereof
It’s pretty credible there is a birth certificate etc and the mother is well known in labour party circles.
Am I bothered?
Channeling Catherine Tate there, Hux.
https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/kathys-tcws-week-in-review-2/
As Kathy Gyngell makes clear in this article we are now creating a class of political prisoners which should be not just upsetting but extremely worrying for all of us.
“WHILE IT’S been another good week for TCW it’s been an appalling one for freedom and justice in the UK – the freedom on which we once prided ourselves and for which so many people over the centuries have suffered or lost their lives – from Magna Carta, through Wat Tyler, Martin Luther, Latimer and Ridley (burnt at the stake for their beliefs), Thomas Paine, William Cobbett, John Wilkes, the Chartists, to name but some. If Tommy Robinson is sent to Belmarsh on Monday he will be the latest in the line of martyrs to this cause.
His arrest on Saturday, as one member of the small TCW team put it to me, marks the end of civil society. If ever there was a set of trumped-up charges this one will go down in legal history. He has been charged with terror offences for failing to provide his phone password.
The Conservatives took us on this path to repression. I used to call it the imposition of woke orthodoxy. That was kind. They did more than preside over a rapid diminution of our freedoms culminating in Lockdown. By their hate and online hate legislation they silenced public debate about the impact of their extreme immigration policy (which the invisible Yvette Cooper has since made no attempt to stop, the reverse in fact). It was under the Tories that migrant hostels housing preponderantly young males from Africa and the Middle East were inflicted on communities around the country. The fearful Tories also in the same way stifled any public critique of Islam, though, in its fundamentalist form, it is frighteningly antithetical to political freedom, freedom of belief and tolerance – all once integral western values.”
It is difficult not to disagree with Kathy.
The way I see it, whether you’re talking about UK or US politics, there’s both sexes on both main parties and both sexes voting for them. It doesn’t matter the percentage split, what matters is it’s both male and female choosing a side, period. There’s no need to over-think this , it’s a no-brainer.
I couldn’t believe how many celebrities ( lots whom I don’t recognise, as they must be just famous in America ) are endorsing Harris. It’s depressing and tragic.
Same as if you look at footage from a Harris rally and a Trump rally. Same will translate across to British politics, or anywhere else for that matter. This is the reality, which the sh*t-stirrers who want to reduce everything down to a blame game or male vs female issue, find hard to acknowledge. People are individuals, no matter what angle you’re coming from or how you want to spin the facts to suit your bias.
So how to square this circle? The logic is clear. There can only be one next leader of Labour.
Eddie Izzard!
Hmm. it seemed so obvious until I wrote the words.
“I pause to observe how weak a word ‘misandry’ is. I leave you to supply a sharper word.”
Man-hater or Lesbian.
Amusing. One flaw: Starmer is a woman, an old hag, a trull.
https://image.vuukle.com/18c48c35-505b-4942-a845-0c1cddf835b5-4ab3d879-da14-4632-a351-4a6605c8493f
Here’s another dirty little secret. The breakdown of how many paedophiles face judicial proceedings by ethnicity.
The results may shock. Well probably not.
I wonder if it’s a result of feminism? White men shrivel at the thought of a confident woman?
Pity if so, because the feminism I espouse doesn’t hate men – just wants an equal share of stuff and fair access to opportunities.
I like men who know they are men and there’s no greater turn- off than someone who cravenly capitulates to big-mouths. The ultimate yuk is the weirdo who wants to wear our knickers and become one of us.
In this article as in everything, it’s easiest just to blame women when everything goes wrong.
The picture heading this article is one of my all time favourites. Evah!!!
Yup – that and pictures of them wearing face nappies sum them up perfectly
I have added the recent one of him drinking from a gilded goblet to my list of T2K favourites.
I like to see them in the face nappies. They all wore them and voted for them. We should never forget that.
If I was a betting man I would put a bet on Angela Rayner as the next Labour Leader and Prime Minister, propelled by the backing of some parts of the Labour movement. Probably early next year as Starmer implodes.
Of course the whole of Labour may implode and then who knows…
My wife’s view that he has those 2 women just blow him to protect himself from being removed
Interesting strategy!
Yet another interesting article by this frequent DS columnist.
I wonder if one of his future themes will be the Ottoman Empire (1299 – 1922) and possible reparations for the millions of its European victims over centuries, with a special chapter on slave trade. He is after all well placed for a thorough search.
Fundamentally, Left wing politics is a war against reality.
Net Zero is a war against physics, thermodynamics, engineering and economics.
“Human Rights” is a war against the rule of law.
“Tax and spend” is a war against arithmetic