The writer is in Australia.
There’s a reason that the highest rated Sky Australia TV show is the Sunday morning Outsiders show, hosted by Rowan Dean, the fearless editor of the Speccie Australia. In part that’s because the prism through which that show tries to understand the world is a very powerful one. In today’s democracies there are the technocratic insiders. These people like to think of themselves as the “expert class”. In rough and ready terms this is the bureaucracy. This is the tertiary professoriate and Vice-Chancellors. This is the corporate top end of town. This is the NGO sector, including most of the churches. This is the lawyerly caste and judiciary with its love of undemocratic international law. This is the managerial class. And most definitely this is the legacy press or mainstream journalist caste. These are the people – and obviously I speak in general terms as there are nonconformists, iconoclasts, dissidents and mavericks in all groups – who believe that the expert class (a.k.a. themselves) generally makes better decisions than mere plebs (a.k.a. your average voters). Hence their commitment to democratic decision-making is thin, paper thin. The more of society’s calls that can be passed over to quangos, tribunals, unelected judges, supranational bodies, public health supremos, the WHO and various UN bodies, economic insiders, bureaucrats and the administrative state generally the better they like it. These are the insiders. The anywhere people.
By contrast, the outsiders are those who do not share the worldview of this insiders’ caste. These outsiders do not buy the economic claims made on behalf of mass immigration. They know they lose out when there’s cheap money, money printing, asset inflation, imported cheap labour and the rest. They want assimilation not the cultural relativist platitudes – the trite slogans that don’t stand up to any sort of examination – that undergird the West’s genuflecting at the altar of a now-discredited multiculturalism. They value patriotism and think their country one of the best ever to have existed, not some egregiously wicked outlier that requires near daily absolution in the form of virtue-signalling acknowledgements of country and de facto racist constitutional amendments. They despise the whole DEI industry and Net Zero idiocy, and not just because both are productivity and merit killers. They can tell you who is a man and who is a woman. As outsiders with heterodox views beyond the so-called Overton window, free speech is far more important to them than to insiders whose views are never likely to be silenced. (Why worry overly much about protecting free speech as an insider where your views align overwhelmingly with those of the mainstream media, the HR departments, the inner-city coffee shop crowd and are not regularly dubbed as racist or far-Right simply for being a millimetre different to the prevailing zeitgeist – albeit they were bog standard opinions a mere 30 years ago?)
And that brings me to the British, French and American elections. All of them are at least partially comprehensible through this lens of insiders versus outsiders. The fact is that in general terms, rich people and insiders no longer vote Right. They vote Left. Fifty or 60 years ago it was different. Not today. So any purportedly conservative party such as Britain’s Tories that goes to multiple elections since 2010 promising each time sharply to cut immigration and to fight the good fight against the woke barbarians, against the democracy-enervating lawyerly caste, against the identity politics brigade, against the Left-wing media, against the big spending, high taxing state, and after each election actually makes things worse on each front has to expect its core voters ultimately to revolt and simply to stop trusting anything it promises. So it was last week when Britain’s Conservative Government was deservedly smashed. (For what it is worth this is yet another Right-of-centre lockdownista Government to lose. Good! Lockdown thuggery, fear-mongering policies, crushing small businesses and genuflecting to a public health clerisy that got near on everything wrong is way, way worse coming from conservative governments who all should be voted out for this alone.)
This is not to say the slaughter of the Tories in Britain was an endorsement of the Labour party. It clearly was not. Keir Starmer’s Labour party won nearly two-thirds of the seats (411 out of 650) with just 33.8% of the vote – the lowest of any majority winner since 1919. That’s lower than Jeremy Corbyn got losing in 2017 and only one percentage point more (and half a million votes less) than Corbyn got losing again in 2019 (yet it’s 200 seats more). The voter turnout was also appallingly low, just under 60% of eligible voters. Meanwhile Nigel Farage’s Reform party did what it set out to do, namely to crush a supposedly conservative party that had governed down the line as a Tony Blair-type social democrat outfit with wokery in its DNA. Reform came from near on nothing to scoop up over 14% of the vote (to the Tories’ 23%). So together the two outpolled Labour comfortably. And recall that in 2019 Boris and the Tories took 43.6% of the vote.
In my view this was necessary. The tired refrain of “we’re at least a smidgeon better than Labour” is just a recipe for a conservative Government that does nothing for conservatives and moves ever Leftward. Query: Name anything that 14 years of a Tory Government delivered for conservatives? If you get past one-and-half items then you and I have different definitions of “conservative”. At some point that sort of fecklessness and taking your core voters for mugs simply has to be punished and punished severely. The voters did that to Team Cameron/May/Johnson/Truss/Sunak. Yes, the next five years will be awful. But at least there is hope for improvement going forward. The Tony Abbott type line “we can work from inside to get the party back on track” has been shown by experience to be an empty promise. You just encourage the wets and Lefties who have taken over the party – a good few of whom are laughably trying to run the line that the British Tories had become too Right wing.
So congratulations to Mr. Farage and Reform, who were the second biggest winners in this election despite getting only five seats (the Lib Dems getting 72 seats on 600,000 fewer votes because their votes are all concentrated in chardonnay-sipping Teal type areas). I am prepared to bet the Tories now pick a far more conservative leader to try to woo back the over one-third of their base who deserted them.
Readers can apply the same template to the French election. It is outsiders abandoning established political parties. And in the U.S. as well. Donald Trump is despised by the great and the good because he actually advances and tries to implement policies for outsiders. Despite his immense wealth he is a consummate outsider. This threatens the establishment class. It causes the journalist class to become Pravda-like in its willingness to do anything to defend Joe Biden and the side of politics it personally prefers. Luckily after the pandemic nobody much amongst outsiders pays any attention to what the legacy media think or want. The most important election this year, or any year in decades, is the U.S. one in three and a half months. And things are looking better and better for the Don. Fingers crossed.
James Allan is the Garrick Professor of Law at Queensland University. This article first appeared in Spectator Australia.
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Are looking better…assuming the election goes ahead
What do you mean?
“The most important election this year, or any year in decades, is the U.S. one in three and a half months. And things are looking better and better for the Don. Fingers crossed.”
The full paragraph. It would not surprise me if another event impacted the US election. Be that war, bird flu or something else.
Agreed.
For those who have forgotten this is what a conservative prime minister sounds like….
https://youtu.be/ZVPTGAttU0s?si=Nd9s0GAuCC4jXxYC
Oh yes great article. ———You have a choice, the world of John Locke or the world of Karl Marx.—–One wants you to have natural rights because of your humanity and other wants you to have rights government decides you can have. But ofcourse when you get your rights from government, the same governments can just take them away again.
—–The Technocrat thinks you are too dumb to know what is good for you and will remove your freedom by determining what level of prosperity you can have. (Net Zero). The Marxist Agenda is one that is very popular with simpletons and the young, because who could object to “fairness” and “equality”?
Today Marxism lives on via the “Environment” and Brain Sussman explains in his book “Climate Cult” the thinking from one of the world’s biggest environmental Marxist groups, Greenpeace, in their own words “Human Rights express the rights of all people to be treated equally, to live their life in safety and freedom, and to be protected by their government. So many of our human rights, such as the right to life, health, food and an adequate standard of living are adversely affected by climate change. We see the evidence for this, for instance, with each new extreme weather event and the devastation that ensues, such as death and the destruction of crops and property. Without further action climate change will continue to devastate people and the planet, and human rights will continue to be violated”
But the environmental movement has been hijacked. Their anti-capitalism is perfectly served by climate change fear and policies that seek to utilise nature against freedom and prosperity which they feel should not be in the hands of individuals, but in the hands of governments. Climate Change then full of unvalidated claims for which no real empirical evidence exists is the excuse for policies that seek to control wealth and resources just as Marx and Engels envisioned, and back then they were well aware of how the environment could be used for these purposes. Oh how they wish they were alive today, to see Sustainable Development and Net Zero foisted on an unsuspecting public who mostly still think all of this is about “Saving the Planet”
The sad thing is that the entire Political Class are in on this scam and there are no longer any Tories who oppose it (Except Braverman, Farage etc) and so for that reason it is necessary that the Tories were “Smashed”.
Farage when talking to J Peterson said about c02 “I don’t understand the science”, but all you need to understand is the basics, and look through history and see the catalogue of errors through the decades and read the quotes from the Horse’s Mouth the Club Of Rome.
First Division commentary varmint.
Tip o’ the hat.
I tip my hat to the experts and scientists that don’t have their hands out for government money, and who are still dedicated to the profession called “science” which is the genuine search for knowledge, rather than the “official science” that governments want to fund. —-cheers.
It is a fact that the most generous financiers/sponsors of all of the so called anti capitalist and woke organisations/movements are hugely rich and powerful people. Would it not be a stretch of the imagination to think for one minute that they seek to elevate human rights, net zero, and a multitude of ‘isms over the aggregation of more money and power for themselves and their business interests? Are the various left wing activist organisations therefore not just useful idiots pushing an agenda that really is that of the rich and powerful? Rather than western governments moving towards full blown Marxism are we not moving towards unbridled corporatism?
There are basically three classes in Britain, those that contribute in some way to producing the wealth of the country, those who suck up more and more of that wealth and those who clamour for a greater share of the wealth whilst at the same time finding ways not to contribute to it.
Or more succinctly, the rulers, the workers and the shirkers.
The most important lesson for young people : Government is not your friend. It’s a parasitic entity that wants to take all your money and give nothing in return.
Most of the western democracies are now saddled with a bloated public sector that is draining the life out of them.
The shirkers and the rulers are just parasites, so we have a host and parasite model.
The Conservatives are a busted flush, but denial means they can’t accept it.
Small C conservatism however is alive and kicking and clear blue water is now increasing between them.
I hope and pray the likes of Suella understand that and don’t waste time, energy and reputation on pursuing the rotting corpse.
How was she on Jabs, Climate & Lockdown. Hate to spoil the Suella show but the list is a good litmus teat.
There were a few backbenchers who consistently voted against covid restrictions, the rest were useless.
I take it that included her then. Shame, she has some good ideas!
No politicians are perfect but the scamdemic was a big red line for me.
Are you sure?
Small c conservatives don’t support welfare states or Socialist collectives like the NHS, but I don’t see any clear blue water out there, just pans being banged and people on large combined family incomes snuff.ing in the trough to get subsidised child care so mumsy can have a career.
I agree I’m afraid.
They were not smashed. They are the official opposition, and 6 million people still voted for them despite 14 years of Blairism crowned by the scamdemic, and their being a credible conservative alternative.
Agreed. 121 seats is not ‘smashed’. Hopefully there’ll be a few resignations triggering by elections (Buy elections? Bye bye elections?) or defections as the party infighting continues. I just wonder whether conservatives will win in the battle for the name Conservative and Unionist Party. I rather doubt they’ll resolve this in time for the next GE.
I agree with you. They have enough seats to ignore the Tory members and voters in their hope that Labour will cock up and the Tories elected by default.
I think the actual change will come from the Muslim parties who do not feel they get enough share of the power and wealth and will want to establish their own insiders and broadcast media.
Their ideology will also clash with the present education and cultural ethos and be hard to resist.
Agreed. Points I have been making for some months now.
The Conservative Party was meant to be smashed. It was a controlled demolition but so incompetent was the Party they even fecked up their own destruction. Smashed would have been fifty or less seats but they managed 121. They couldn’t run a Bring and Buy stall.
Nadine Dorries would agree with you.
Correct. Severely wounded and hopefully terminally, but smashed they weren’t.
I think they will return in one or two terms, perhaps in a coalition with the illiberal undemocrats
That is not in the script tof.
As I have posted previously the Conservative Party represents a link to Olde England and for that reason it has to go. Labour will disappear too and certainly by 2029 if we last that long.
I think this will play out over a longer period, though I’m not optimistic about what we’ll end up with. I think fake Tories are quite handy for the establishment as a way of hoovering up sleepy conservatives who don’t realise they’ve been had – 6 million of them at the last election!
I think there is merit in your “sleepy conservatives” comment.
I was clearly overly optimistic about the scale of the Tory defeat but honestly 6 million people (not just people, but “conservatives”) voted for them after 14 years of betrayal. Bloody hell!
Clueless Drones!
Aye, a barrier to Reform.
Major was a deception then talking about green fields & Cricket matches. My farther was an old school conservative and was a fan, but obviously had no idea of the mendacity of that traitor.
Ron – that was exactly my Dad’s position. He thought Major was a good guy. But his eyes were opened when he realised the full extent of Major’s love affair with the EU.
“genuflecting to a public health clerisy that got near on everything wrong is way, way worse coming from conservative governments who all should be voted out for this alone”
Are you talking just about the politicians because the medical professionals didn’t f**k up when they changed their view about countermeasures on a dime, that was political and above their pay grade don’t you think?
Unfortunately, the Not-a-Conservative-Party wasn’t smashed enough. After the treachery of the last 14 years it should have been completely obliterated, and it wasn’t.
Although it was a pretty good start.
Technocratic Government by the ‘we-know-best’ insiders, was the system invented by one Sig B Mussolini to be the structure of his State directed economy.
This quasi-Socialist Statism survived the War because the ‘insiders’ running the Governments of Germany (National Socialist), Italy (Fascist), France (Vichy) during the 30s and war years also survived to carry on the tradition, not just domestically but also in the structuring of the post-war European Coal & Steel Community, which begat the EEC, 1958, which begat the EU, 1992.
It was important to punish the Tories – and yes Labour is no improvement – but otherwise a clear signal would have been sent, a Party in Government can abuse us and trample on us as much as they want but we’ll still vote for them. Sadly the wipeout wasn’t total.
(Of course the British public do welcome perpetual abuse from ‘our’ NHS and keep banging pots and pans to celebrate. Maybe one day… )
That message is there for Labour too – the same fate awaits, so perhaps it will curb their excesses.
The ‘solution’ we keep hearing is Proportional Representation. Do its promoters actually look at Government round the World ‘elected’ under this system? Oh I know, the system we choose will be different.
There is a reason why PR appeals to small Parties, like postal ballots, it’s the only chance they have of getting snout in trough as not enough people actually support them.
Certainly constituency boundary reform is necessary and a reduction in the number of MPs, but ReformUK has large electoral support and should be able to get enough in future – particularly after 5 years if Labour – to make it a main contender, or does it really want to be in a coalition with Greens, Lib Dems and the Muslims?
The Whigs/Liberals were once the biggest Party, but almost disappeared in the 1920s – now its remnants are in the Lib Dem Party, overtaken by the Conservative Party with small beginning in 1834, and then the small Labour Party which emerged at the end of the 19th Century.
It is wise to consider that Labour and Conservative Parties might not dominate as the main Parties for much longer.
Excellent analysis.
The only “solution” is for the electorate to bloody wake up and realise the state is not going to solve all their problems for them. Not going to happen.
The tories losing was the best thing to happen to British politics – installing the labour lot was a necessary evil but hopefully only for one term! Lets see how Reform shape up!
Reform are making the right noises up to a point. The sacking of Ben Habib so soon after the election looks like a monumental clanger but details are sketchy, nevertheless if they have screwed up it does not bode well.
According to a Reform candidate they were not going to play at ‘Party Whip’, so he has some explaining to do. A Whip system is anathema to the fake democracy!
86% voted for net zero parties who supported lockdowns, vaxx passes and mass immigration. The Tories are still the official opposition and got more votes than Reform. I don’t see much sign for optimism.