All for one?

The protesting classes have been out in force and emboldened by Labour’s current massive poll lead, are doing what they do best, encouraging impotent hope. People who have never before marched are taking to the streets to ‘do their bit’ and swell the ranks, and presumably the word ‘solidarity’ is doing a lot of heavy lifting. But look who is leading the charge and you’ll see it is the same old union stalwarts and diehard class warriors.

Starmer is probably right to urge his MPs not to stand on picket lines because the rise of the left and their supposed championing of the common man is as bad for moderate Labour as it is for the Tories. The blues are, of course, the eternal enemy, so to the extent that such protests turn people against what they imagine the Conservatives actually stand for plays Labour’s way. And the terrible optics of the first skirmishes of the new Truss administration must surely push voters still further to the left.

But the danger here is that with a taste for socialist rhetoric and with the scent of blood in their nostrils, formerly moderate types may be persuaded to go full-Momentum and make the same mistakes that socialist agitators usually make. The assumption that this common man is more biddable from a socialist standpoint than from a small ‘c’ conservative position needs a critical second look. Because the ultimate aims of the left are a long way out of line with the aspirations of the average worker.

Positions on immigration, social justice, education, the role of the state, national sovereignty, defence, energy security, policing and the ever-widening identitarian movements reveal complex challenges, challenges which defeat thinkers across the political spectrum in terms of simple solutions. To take just one, immigration; why if immigration is supposed to be so good for us, has no government managed to convince the population of this beneficence?

Back in June this year ordinary, decent people found it frankly incredible that an unwashed mob could prevent police from carrying out their duties to detain and deport. But in the heads of the Peckham Peaceniks, they were doing god’s work, with the backing of certain members of the legal profession. Once, parents would proudly declare that their son or daughter was a lawyer. Today they could be excused for feeling let down and even ashamed.

The same sense of entitlement to action is seen with other extreme protest groups who willingly engage in disruptive campaigns which cause real harm to the ability of our common man to go about his business and earn a living. Extinction Rebellion, Just Stop Oil, the statue topplers… You may ask, in what world can their actions be right just because they believe it is? You have to wonder who gives such people the authority to carry out their sabotage when the police effectively stand down in their presence.

The left is intellectually lazy. In assuming without question a morally superior basis for their beliefs, they promulgate their simplistic portrayals of cruel Conservatism, of government against the people, of graft and corruption at the top, as if they would be above such human frailties. Moribund tropes about inequality wash up hard on the rocky shores of legions of underprivileged white workers who see not only no reward for their efforts but opprobrium for their skin colour. White privilege? Do us all a favour.

So, support the strikers, march through our city centres, protest all you like. But what are you achieving, other than a day out and a sense of camaraderie? Maybe this is enough, maybe you can convince yourself that you did your bit, that you are a part of the solution. Or, rather, have you just fallen for the fictions of a failed ideology, risen to the rabble-rousing rhetoric of the union blowhards?

What are you rebelling against?

What have you got?

Revolution is just not the British way; there is a reason that the Conservatives are the natural party of UK government, and while they may appear to have lost their way recently, I’m pretty certain that the perpetually enraged and warring factions of the alternatives have little to offer. The organised events of Enough is Enough are impressive in their reach, but will, I believe, achieve little as tomorrow we all go back to work and look after number one.

Give Truss a Chance?

The knives are well and truly out for Truss. If it was just the eternal opposition of Labourites this would be unremarkable. If it was just the puffed-up pontificating of that malodorous and wretched excuse for a human being, James O’Brien it would be business as usual. If it was just the former spin doctor and liar-in-chief, Alastair – raging bullshit – Campbell it would be laughed off as irrelevant, but it’s not just the usual suspects, it is everybody.

The Bank of England, the BBC, the EU, the IMF… and more besides. There is almost a queue of people awaiting their turn to do down the pound and in turn to unseat the fourth Conservative Prime Minister in less than a decade. If current moods are anything to go by, we might yet have another one before the next general election, such is the zeal for turmoil.

Chaos abounds. In every critical area you can imagine chaos and confusion is now the default mode. Name a sector – industry, energy, financials, law and order, education, health, care and society-at-large – and nowhere will you find a comforting sense of order. And so many seem to be heavily invested in perpetuating this state. Especially those who see themselves as political victims. Victims of Toryism, Trumpism, Brexit and, of course, Boris; nothing will satisfy these malcontents short of a complete collapse of everything. But their next step is unclear. You bring down the wall, perhaps, but what do you do afterwards?

It is clear that something needs to be done, that sanity needs to be restored to our national debate. Most ordinary people still think along the same lines we always did, but the conversation has been hijacked by those who will not admit anything other than their own thesis. Identity politics has split the national psyche asunder and allowed crank ideas such as critical race theory, gender issues and hate crime rhetoric to distort every utterance. If only they were given the chance.

In every speech, every policy, every initiative there will be something to offend somebody. And yet, instead of pushing ahead, somehow the storm-force winds of protest manage to keep the ship in harbour. We are sunk without a leadership with the balls to tackle all of this, and such a leadership would be mightily cheered on by the huge majority who feel powerless against the wokeratti.

And lest the anti-Brexit, anti-fracking, anti-oil, anti-white, anti-Tory, anti-justice mob pretend to themselves they are doing god’s work, let us not forget that none of them give a good goddamn for the country. They do this entirely for themselves. It is all about them. To the woke mob, solving any of our national problem comes secondary to the outright rejection of anybody with whom they disagree. Democracy is the tyranny of the majority, John Major said. Well, this is for certain the tyranny of the minorities.

We were and are warned about all of this. Douglas Murray, Jordan Peterson, Andrew Doyle, Tommy Robinson, Katie Hopkins, Christopher Hitchens and many others, whatever you think of them – and make no mistake, what you think of them is most certainly influenced by the perpetrators of national destruction – have been telling you for years. And yes, I deliberately included Hopkins and Robinson in that list because if your reaction to their names was revulsion, you may be a small part of the problem.

If you reject an idea, a notion, a warning, simply because of who delivers it, or if you embrace an ideological position for the same reasons you may be behaving rationally, but you are not behaving well. The march of the so-called progressives has been a long one and its roots lie centuries ago in the doctrines of Engels and Marx and it is carried on today by the extreme left factions of the Labour and Green movements. Its agitators are the young and foolish and the middle-aged and straight out cranky, and others like them who will never have to suffer the consequences.

The old society may have had its faults and it may have disadvantaged certain groups whose voices needed to be heard and heeded, but the breakdown of the social order portends far worse outcomes than its perpetuation ever did. The media is a never-ending rendition of new varieties of Project Fear; Project Doom-and Gloom, Project Bring Down the PM, Project Hate the Tories, and Project Talk Down the Country. If we can just learn to ignore the naysayers, hold our noses and give Truss a chance, we might find she has something to offer. If instead we listen to the haters we will never find out.