Culture

An Alternative Proposal for the BBC

Guest Contributor6 Comments

BBC archive centre entrance

by Douglas Carter

I want to pay more money for product from the BBC. 

That’s not an intentionally incendiary sentiment. In terms, it’s exactly the correct phrase. I wish to go on paying the licence fee and augment my subscription for additional product the BBC already owns. Product of which, in fact, the BBC has custodianship for decades before I was even born.

In that, I do not wish any reader here to be paying extra for the BBC in an involuntary manner. In fact I’m in full agreement with those who will be reading if they can’t justify to themselves paying for a product they are likely to at least not use. Or very possibly in terms of broadcast product, despise; and to whom the notion an individual can be legally hounded for non-payment for a licence linked to a product they don’t use is an affront.

I’m going to suggest something the BBC will resist with energy. However in principle this should be looked at as ‘difficult’, but not ‘insurmountable’.

The BBC will operate on the principle of ‘insurmountable’. 

I’m talking about the BBC archive.

The BBC has an archive of records which aren’t just pre-broadcast recordings. They have many tens of millions of celluloid stills and unused and unedited materials of all kinds. Nobody can see them. Or use them. Even previously broadcast programmes they retain but cannot release for subsequent access. 

At this stage when I first discussed this with my friend, and Blog custodian, Sam Hooper, I gave him a link to a thirty-five year old YouTube BBC News bulletin. A particularly mundane and unremarkable one. I do not link it here since I feel confident that somebody linked to the BBC, somewhere, will feel under an obligation to strive to have YouTube take it down.

I have no idea why somebody would have uploaded it to YouTube – it was an unexeptional day’s news and of no particular interest to myself. But they obviously cared sufficiently about it to do so. However, the recording in terms is not strictly legal. It’s not really supposed to exist and whilst I can watch it illegally, the BBC would block me attempting to buy a copy of this news bulletin from them.

In context, in your own mind, name yourself a personal enthusiasm – Sam here might choose an orchestral rendition of a piece of which he is immeasurably fond. YouTube it, and see how many pieces are from BBC recordings. It won’t take you long, whether art, sport, news, even weather forecasts. Few of which you can buy from the BBC. Recordings in the archive but forever immune to access by the Licence Fee payer.

The subjects listed were associated with a BBC broadcast will have had BBC photographers in attendance taking reels of celluloid film of the events. These will have been taken in cameras funded by the licence fee payer, the reels of film funded by the same source, and those lucky people also paying for the development of those reels. However, that’s as far as their participation is welcome. No ordinary licence fee payer can access those photos. To reiterate, I don’t know why somebody would wish to access those photos. But if they exist, I see no logical reason the BBC should act to prevent a paying enthusiast securing photographs via this method?

Neither should such an enthusiast nor researcher be under any obligation to give justification or reason for such access.

Under the current terms, these celluloid films will be digitized for future prosperity. So, whilst nobody today can see them, they will be perfectly preserved so in two hundred years time, nobody can see them then either. For the life of me I cannot explain to me the logic of that. (I’m talking about BBC-originated product and staff – not material from contracted-out sources who will usually be quite happy to have people purchase matter from their historic archives).

The restrictions the BBC – and other broadcasters – must follow are subjectively logical and historic. Very frequently they act to protect intellectual property for brief showings of – for example – film clips or music videos, the copyright for which the BBC does not own. However, it’s quite simple to demonstrate those restrictions have been definitively breached. Jericho’s walls are tumbling down. The BBC cannot police the internet to remove recordings – and if they attempted to do so, their efforts would be just a drop in the ocean. It would also be a waste of resources.

Instead I would wish the BBC to be directed, compelled, by Government to recognise the collossal cultural and historic wealth at hand in the Archive and make use of it. I want the government to tell the BBC to sell me what I want, if they already have it. I want the government to tell the BBC to take my money, whether they like it or not. So, not only am I not complaining about paying the licence fee, I want to pay more. I’m not trying to take it illicitly, I’m happy to pay for it. Whilst the BBC makes ‘some’ of its archive available, it’s via very narrow terms of reference. Step outside them, and they will not attempt to assist.

Other restrictions, in a very small and limited example in a vast minefield, relate to royalty payments for programming staff and broadcasters who can no longer be contacted. There is a precedent. Gordon Brown permitted the Treasury to take funds from UK bank accounts which had been inactive for a specified period. I understand those funds can be returned to the legitimate custodian with relevant supporting evidence. I suggest income from accessing the archive be put in trust – say – with the support of ‘Equity’, the performers Union, so the relevant funding can be suitably and fairly accounted for, and disbursed. Just one simplistic aspect of a complex problem.

But the BBC can take a lead on this. It has, as a corporation, as a brand, taken long-pride in describing itself as a ‘world leader’ in its fields. It can, it should, recognise the internationally-agreed rules can no longer sustain with the existence of the internet and open a dialogue to have all broadcasters – state and private – internationally, to open their archives fully. The release of this material will add incalculably to cultural and historic resource and to continue to deny this material to paying customers defies logic, is already subject to widespread breach, and continued application to failing legislation is dogmatic folly. This is a wealth belonging to the licence fee payer, effectively the UK taxpayer. If the BBC can’t work out how to make money from it then they should not be its custodian. But to continue to hoard all this material unseen and unused is simply and morally insupportable.

A proposal. That a voluntary ‘Upper-Standard’ Licence fee be made available, at a cost of £350 per annum total. That the licence fee holder be permitted to download, permanently, an additional two hundred hours of BBC archive footage of any and every kind, and up to, and including, one thousand still images of any and every subject, from the entire archive held.

As a very limited ‘for example’, I’d buy every broadcast edition of ‘Newsnight’ across the period of the 1982 Falklands War, with associated unedited and unbroadcast material, and access to all celluloid film reels taken in-theatre and in the buildup of logistical forces in the UK prior to deployment. Doubtless somebody else would wish the same access to footage of their favoured football team.

I don’t want to steal it, I want to pay for it. If the BBC won’t let me buy it, give it to somebody else and let them sell it to me.

I don’t use what the BBC is churning out today, and have not for some years now. It’s not good enough, I don’t watch it or listen to it. I do believe its output has become very heavily biased in political and social senses. That’s academic. But I continue to pay the licence fee and I want what the BBC is custodian of, to pay extra for it. And I want the government to recognise the discontinuity and compel the BBC to assist in unwinding this Gordian Knot. 

It will be very difficult. I’m not pretending this is a simple proposal by any means. But as I’ve already established, ‘difficult’ is not ‘insurmountable’. It will depend on the sincerity of the BBC in recognising a balance between its charter obligations and acknowledging the incalculable unrealised value of the Archive it resides upon. It will also depend on an approach by those above it to smell the coffee. 

Last but not least, a recognition that the status-quo is demonstrably broken on the matter. But if the BBC holds out on this, pretending the problem is too immense to assault, then their Archive is a folly. Its reason to exist will become existence in its own right, and for no other purpose. 

 

Very many thanks to Sam Hooper for permitting me space on his Semi-Partisan Politics weblog to air this view.
BBC logo 1970

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General Election 2019: Results & Analysis Live Blog

Samuel Hooper4 Comments

General election 2019 - Boris Johnson - Jeremy Corbyn - Jo Swinson

 

13 December – 6:03AM

I  have mostly moved over to Twitter for the remainder of my election night results commentary, so for now will leave you with this:

https://twitter.com/SamHooper/status/1205350489421946880?s=20

 

In due course I will try to write something about what this election result means for Brexit, for the Union and for the future of conservatism – as the British political realignment takes another giant step forward.

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13 December – 2:22AM – Labour Civil War, #2

 

I’m inclined to agree that this is the best course of action from a Labour Party perspective (though notably it means contesting exactly the same new ground that the Tories are trying to claim as their own). However, the unrepentant centrists within Labour will doubtless try to use Corbyn’s failure to shoehorn their way back into power and influence, despite having learned nothing from their past failures.

I’ll say it again: Jeremy Corbyn’s tolerance of antisemitism, agnosticism on Brexit and overall bad leadership does not magically erase the past sins of the Labour centrists, who presided over the broken old political consensus which finally received its coup-de-grace with today’s general election.

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13 December – 1:50AM

Hot take analysis – Whither Scotland?

 

The SNP government in Holyrood has been a never-ending catalogue of incompetence and failure, yet in their eternal wisdom Scottish voters seem to have returned a huge caucus of SNP MPs to Westminster. This will only increase pressure for another independence referendum and cement Scotland’s position as a failing one-party member state of the UK.

I’m inclined to say that we should give Nicola Sturgeon her second Scottish referendum, even though it would be an unjustified repeat of 2014 pushed for by sore losers. This time, Scottish nationalists will have  to make the case for independence as a small country outside both the UK and the EU, plaintively applying for readmittance to the European Union on unfavorable terms. They would have to adopt the Euro and likely Schengen, which would create a whole host of delicious problems that would make the Northern Ireland Brexit issues look simple by comparison. Perhaps, unlike last time, the separatists would push for independence without publishing a plan of the kind which was so mercilessly dissected by the media and unionists in 2014, running instead on vague phrases and platitudes. Maybe they could print some lies on the side of a campaign bus.

I think that Scottish nationalists would lose another referendum by a wider margin than last time. Ultimately, the SNP has never been able to make a non-partisan case for independence. The whole thing is bound up closely in anti-Tory and anti-English hatred, and has never been an inclusive movement capable of taking onboard Scottish conservatives and others. Nicola Sturgeon’s entire schtick is that the UK is an evil right-wing dystopia that Scotland needs to escape, making it impossible for her to reach out to her centre-right countrymen. And assuming that the UK leaves the EU without suffering major economic disruption in the short term, Scottish independence well and truly becomes the reckless departure from the stable status quo, versus remaining in a closely integrated political union with the rest of the UK.

And let’s not forget the Russians! It’s clear that Vladimir Putin and all of our geopolitical foes would rejoice at the breakup of the UK, the diminishment of our union and the potential threat to the continuity of the UK’s nuclear deterrent (given that our ballistic submarine fleet are based in Faslane, Scotland). Why then should Scottish unionists or the rest of the UK accept a referendum loss, in the unlikely event that the nationalists win? Why would they not simply wage a campaign of obstruction, as Continuity Remainers did with Brexit? Why would they not scream “Russian interference!”, which will certainly be attempted in any referendum on behalf of the nationalists, even if it does not succeed in making a material difference? All of the anti-Brexit arguments and Continuity Remainer hysteria deployed by the SNP will be turned round 180 degrees and fired straight back at Nicola Sturgeon if she attempts to force Scotland out of the UK.

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13 December – 12:19AM

Hot take analysis – Whither identity politics?

The British progressive left have gone all-in on importing a US-style identity politics culture war into Britain, from embracing every last aspect of avant-garde gender theory to adopting awkward terms such as “people of color”, carefully noting their pronouns and generally bowing down to what comedian Dave Chapelle termed the “alphabet people”.

Doing so made perfect sense to urban progressives with international social networks, all of whom now speak a political language barely comprehensible to anyone else (or even their past selves from as little as a decade ago). But has this embrace of hardcore identity politics and the politics of perpetual victimhood also helped to sow the seeds of progressive defeat in this election?

Recall, Jo Swinson famously stumbled as she attempted to give a definition of “woman” in a radio interview the other day. She and her Liberal Democrat colleagues have gone all-in on progressive identity politics, with its painfully stilted nomenclature and unforgiving cancel culture. Now, multiple sources suggest that Jo Swinson is in danger of losing her seat.

Does all of this go some way to suggesting a “common sense” repudiation of divisive progressive identity politics in Britain? Perhaps. But one scarcely hopes to dream that this represents the high water mark of the identity politics movement, whose activists generally take defeat as a sign that they need to double down rather than question their direction.

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12 December – 11:58PM

Hot take analysis – Labour civil war

Okay, so what is likely to become of Labour, if the final result conforms anywhere close to the exit poll? Clearly it will spell the end for Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership, but what comes next? Corbyn and his supporters have been working away for several years to broaden and cement their control of the Labour Party machinery and governing apparatus, in addition to which it seems unlikely that their defeated activists are likely to throw their hands up in the air and disown the hard-left platform on which they ran. So what prospects of Labour centrists retaking control of the party? And would this even be desirable?

From my perspective, it would be something of a tragedy if Jeremy Corbyn’s disastrous election allowed discredited Labour centrists to retake the party and waltz back in to power and influence having really done nothing to earn the privilege in terms of having updated their thinking or atoned for their past sins which led to the rise of Corbyn in the first place. Yet there is a real chance that the British electorate’s rightful rejection of Jeremy Corbyn (likely due in no small part to horror at Corbynite antisemitism) will allow that ghastly band of Labour centrists and machine politicians – people who more than anyone represent the old pro-EU political consensus which has now been rejected in multiple elections – to claim vindication.

Already we see two competing narratives start to form as talking heads spin their stories on the news networks. One story (pushed by a stone-faced John McDonnell) is that Labour’s disastrous result is about their opposition to Brexit, pure and simple, and in no way a verdict of the party’s otherwise hard left turn:

 

But the other story is that the Brexit agnosticism / Remainerism preferred by the centrists is A-OK, and that Labour’s defeat rests entirely on Corbyn’s shoulders. Which of these stories gains the upper hand and becomes the Official Narrative will go a long way toward determining who takes over from Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, and the nature of opposition to Boris Johnson’s Conservative government.

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12 December – 11:35PM

Conservative Victory Catastrophization Watch, #2:

 

Until progressives and Continuity Remainers learn to at least hide their outright hatred for half the country (there’s no point expecting such extremists to ever actually think better of their fellow citizens, but at least they might try pretending) they will continue to suffer electoral setback after electoral setback – and ever see them coming until the votes are counted.

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12 December – 11:11PM

Conservative Victory Catastrophization Watch, #1:

https://twitter.com/jacobisanadult/status/1205250774625923074?s=20

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12 December – 11:07PM

A poll for you all to consider:

https://twitter.com/SamHooper/status/1205261785005248512?s=20

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12 December – 10:31PM

On economics and identity:

 

The old truism seems to be proved correct once again.

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12 December – 10:27PM

And now, a moment of schadenfreude

Gosh. It’s almost as though spending three years:

  • fighting a furious rearguard action against the result of a democratic referendum which everybody previously promised to respect
  • pretending that a very milquetoast, centrist Tory party was somehow analogous to the rise of Hitler and Nazism
  • repeatedly tolerating the cancer of antisemitism and allowing antisemites safe harbor in the Labour Party
  • embracing every virtue-signaling, low-intellect celebrity endorsement that Twitter could amplify
  • acting as though one has a monopoly on compassion, virtue and reason

are a terrible formula for electoral success. Who could possibly have predicted that embracing a campaign of being utterly insufferable might fail to persuade many of the same people whose votes you needed but just could stop insulting for three long years?

Continuity Remainers in Labour, the Liberal Democrats and the SNP – enjoy the fruits of your labour. The frustration and sorrow you doubtless feel is richly, richly deserved.

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12 December – 10:00PM – EXIT POLL RELEASED

At some point you just need to pick a direction, set a course of action and follow through on it. If the exit poll is remotely correct and the Tories are heading for a majority of around 86, then Britain can take at least one step forward in a roughly discernible direction rather than shuffling round on the spot with our ankles tied together.

Also, it’s worth noting that political parties hardly ever successfully renew themselves while in government – partly because the biggest majority comes first time round, followed by a tacking back toward the centre as the majority is threatened and chipped away in subsequent elections. But while the Tories certainly have not shown any real policy ambition during the course of the election campaign, might a solid majority and the political assurance that it brings be the shot in the arm that they need?

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12 December – 9:43PM

We get the politicians we deserve

One of the themes of this election has been the unpalatable choice of leadership options – both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn being hugely flawed, often unlikeable and polarizing individuals. But rather than bemoaning the poor choice before us, maybe we need to look closer to home. We continue to reward these individuals with our votes, make excuses for their failings, believe the best of them in light of all available evidence to the contrary, and cheer them on with our social media accounts. But do we also effectively demand that politicians lie to us, before hypocritically complaining when they do so?

Paul Goldsmith advances the argument:

I will leave you with these two thoughts…imagine if Boris Johnson told millions of Leave voters the exact risks of both his deal and a possible No Deal Brexit over the next few years…imagine if Jeremy Corbyn told voters that it is very possible that people other than the top 5% of income earners would have to pay more tax, or future generations pay off more debt, to afford his policies…would they win elections? No.

We know this because the one time this was tried..by Theresa May in 2017, who, thinking she would win a massive majority, attempted to address some serious issues such as social care and tried to remove the ‘triple lock’ on pensions and refused to promise no tax rises. She lost the Conservatives’ majority.

Politicians lie because voters don’t want to hear the truth, and until we wake up to our responsibility for that, we deserve the politicians we get.

Many people in both the pro- and anti-Brexit camps have no interest in examining their simplistic “buccaneering Global Britain” or “friendship ‘n cooperation with Europe” tropes, choosing instead to believe that leaving the EU is an end in itself or that remaining in the EU by overruling the 2016 referendum result is okay because the EU is either fine or can be magically fixed on a whim, and that doing so will have no negative consequences.

Even those of us who claim to want smaller government tend to squeal a lot when the bits of government activity we actually like are suggested for a trim. And hardly anyone seems willing to peel back the embarrassing Cult of the NHS, that last remaining bastion of blinkered British exceptionalism, which insists that our healthcare service is the envy of the world (yet strangely not copied by any other nation on Earth) and also perpetually on the brink of collapse.

We demand exponential improvement across a whole range of areas, but are unwilling to tolerate any real disruption or change to achieve it. In these circumstances, do we not actively incentivize politicians to lie to us, telling us that we can have everything on our wish list for free, and that the only thing currently preventing us from having them is a lack of imagination or belief in whatever Utopian idea is being peddled?

Given all of this, it is probably fair to say that we have the politicians we deserve. And when the votes are all counted, I imagine that whoever we put into 10 Downing Street will also be richly deserved.

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12 December – 9:21PM

Prediction

Not much point in making a prediction at this point, other than to be proved laughably wrong in 40 minutes’ time, but if pressed I would predict a small-to-modest Tory majority, probably enough to get Boris Johnson’s Brexit “deal” over the line but with the tiresome rainbow alliance of progressive parties continuing to act as an effective obstruction to anything but the blandest and most non-controversial domestic legislation.

I hope I am wrong, and that the Tories secure a more robust working majority – not because I admire Boris Johnson or much like the present incarnation of the Conservative party (getting Brexit done and unleashing Britain’s potential is not a programme for government or an effective diagnosis of our national challenges) but because the alternative of another hung parliament and enfeebled minority or coalition government is worse. Britain has been drifting – on domestic policy, geopolitically and every other way – since 2016, and at some point it is necessary to stop arguing, pick a direction, commit to a course of action and let the consequences (rather than outrage on social media) shape the next steps.

Not that I expect it to happen happen, but if Jeremy Corbyn were to somehow become prime minister I believe that while it would be bad domestically and awful for our international standing and national security, the more radical parts of his domestic agenda (on taxation, nationalization and so forth) would be largely fought to a standstill by obstructive centrist forces fighting a rearguard action. Lord knows that they have honed their skills in this regard, doggedly holding up Brexit since 2016.

In such an unfortunate scenario, Labour’s appalling tolerance of antisemitism would likely continue unabated, and while this would be unimaginably worrying for Britain’s Jewish community and an appalling indictment of the Left in general, Labour’s anti-Jewish animus would likewise fail to translate into any kind of government policy thanks to the forces of restraint and moderation described above.

Anyhow, 30 minutes to go now. Let’s see just how wrong I am.

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12 December – 8:39PM

Welcome!

Welcome to this live blog of the 2019 UK winter general election results. Yes, for some inexplicable reason I have decided to come out of blogging semi-retirement to offer semi-partisan hot takes on developments as they occur tonight and tomorrow morning.

I’m sure I will quickly come to regret this decision and/or give up half way through. However, I intend to keep going for as long as things remain interesting and there are still issues and arguments to dissect, advance and rebut. If things die down on here, I’m probably still ranting away on Twitter @SamHooper.

Please feel free to share your thoughts using the Comments feature, by emailing me at semipartisansam@gmail.com or engaging with me on Twitter @SamHooper.

 

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Christianity And Open Borders, Cont.

Samuel Hooper2 Comments

Mark Seitz

Here we go again

Rod Dreher has an angry, searching piece in response to the news that the Catholic Bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, has apparently been joyfully intimidating American Customs & Border Protection Agency guards into allowing already-rejected or returned migrants from Central America back from Mexico into the United States, in open violation of the law.

Dreher:

I admire religious leaders who are willing to defy unjust laws. But I gotta ask:

Are borders unjust?

Are laws forbidding foreigners to come into the United States the same thing, morally, as laws forbidding black people to eat at the same lunch counters as whites?

It seems clear that Bishop Seitz is saying yes to both questions, and not just saying it, but putting it into action by helping migrants break the law. I find this appalling, to be frank, because borders are just. These migrants do not have a moral rightto cross over into the United States. That is not to say that they should not be allowed to cross, eventually; it is to say that they do not have a moral right to do so, as Bishop Seitz asserts, and that the higher good nullifies US law. I dispute that.

However, if you support what Bishop Seitz did, then explain why the laws establishing and defending borders are unjust. It is true that not all laws are morally just — but why is the law by which the people of the United States determine who can enter the country, and under what conditions, morally indefensible? Perhaps you agree that borders are just, but believe that in this particular crisis, they should be ignored for the greater good. Why? What is the limiting principle?

Of course, all of this is blithely cheered on by a mainstream and prestige media who are so deeply biased in favor of extremely permissive immigration reform (if not de facto or fully open borders) that they report only on the “heartwarming” story of the the Kindly Old Churchy Man helping the downtrodden without even thinking about the untold harm that such combined acts of performative altruism do to the cause for real immigration reform rooted in the real world and political reality. Often utterly unaware of their own bias, the media report only the feel-good story to bolster the Narrative without exposing their audience to the broader questions at stake.

(Though as an aside, it is amusing to note the brief period of flattery, praise and kudos that Bishop Seitz will receive for doing this deed, in many cases from people who will immediately pivot toward describing him as an authoritarian, antiquated, misogynistic white male when the immigration lawbreaking delirium fades and they remember the Church’s stance on abortion.)

At this point, I think it is worth repeating what I wrote in April last year:

This is manipulative schmaltz of the worst kind. All of it. Anybody can harvest quotes from the Bible to build a case that Christian compassion involves rolling over and doing whatever a particular activist wants at that moment in time. But what we lack in this argument (and we see this over and over again in Christian arguments for mass immigration or open borders) is any acknowledgement that the immediate benefit to one new incoming migrant is not the only important consideration at stake.

When Jesus performed miracles there was no tradeoff, with one individual newly afflicted by the disease which Jesus cured in another, or the alleviated suffering of one person displaced onto somebody else. Nobody died because Lazarus was raised from the dead. Those who were healed at Gennesaret by touching Jesus’ cloak were not offset by a similar number who were struck down in their place. Uncontrolled mass immigration does not work like this. While there is a clear personal benefit to each marginal unskilled migrant  (and we are talking economic migrants here, remember, not refugees) allowed into a developed country, there are offsetting costs to be considered, too.

Sometimes these costs are tangible and quantifiable, such as the additional burden on infrastructure, services and the welfare state. Other times these costs are uncertain and appear only in the form of risk (such as risk to public order or national security). But the net effect is that the “good” done by letting in unlimited numbers of unskilled migrants from poor countries is offset by a commensurate cost. And this cost is no less important or worthy of consideration just because it is diffused across society as a whole rather than concentrated on one individual.

More:

We know that these negative costs of open borders will be incurred, and that they will be borne by society at large. So why is it more Christ-like to prioritise one over the other? Welcoming the stranger is absolutely the right thing to do when there are no offsetting costs to that act of charity, but what if welcoming the stranger causes a completely innocent third party to suffer harm? What we see, though, is many Christians prioritising the needs of the former over the latter. And in a way this is understandable – the benefit to the migrant is obvious, easy to measure and enjoyable to bestow, while the cost to society is diffuse, sometimes intangible and only detectable on the macro level, not at the individual level. Choosing the tangible and immediate over the intangible and time-delayed is a natural human instinct, albeit a harmful one in this instance.

So perhaps the real question we should be asking ourselves is this: does Jesus want us to think purely from with hearts, or does He also want us to engage our brains?

Viewed this way, the emotionally incontinent “Jesus would let in all the migrants” line of argument is becoming increasingly tiresome and threadbare. Maybe He would, and maybe not – perhaps instead He would work miracles to improve the broken and dysfunctional countries which feed mass migration in the first place, rather than feeding an urban leftist’s fetish for infinite diversity. Presuming that Jesus would opt for the immediate solution, the easy answer, the quick fix, grant the superficial human desire rather than the deeper human need, is to fundamentally misunderstand how Jesus’ ministry unfolded. Claiming that Jesus would advocate open borders is to subscribe to an incredibly two-dimensional, aging hippie version of Jesus, one which reduces the Son of God to little more than a genial Santa Claus figure.

Dropping everything and working for the immediate benefit of the person in front of us is not necessarily in the interest of millions of other deserving people beyond our vision. Sadly, our loaves and fish do not miraculously multiply; ultimately, we can only improve the common good by teaching the five thousand how to bake and fish for themselves.

It is also very telling that the “Jesus would let them all come in” brigade only seem to want to apply His teachings so far as they can be twisted to support open borders. The activists who go to protests chanting “no human being is illegal”, the often-wealthy coastal leftists who support unconditional amnesty for all and the establishment mediawho make a point of proudly failing to distinguish between legal and immigration, very few of them would open their New York or San Francisco homes to those cities’ many homeless, share their shiny new Tesla car to help a poor family do the school run every day or hand over their iPhone X to whomever demanded it. Yes, some profess a willingness to pay a higher marginal tax rate themselves in order to fund more plentiful public services, but that is about as far as it goes – keeping the needy firmly at arm’s length. Otherwise, their “generosity” actually consists of nothing more than calling for the government to tear down borders and disregard immigration law, and loudly screaming that anyone who expresses doubt about this reckless course of action is a racist.

But the costs of unskilled immigration (for the kind of mass immigration entailed by open borders would inevitably be of the unskilled kind) tend not to impact the wealthy enclaves where the cognitive, financial and social elites live, falling instead on far less privileged groups and communities. Many of those calling for open borders or more immigration in the name of Jesus also conveniently stand to get cheaper maids, gardeners and cleaners as a result, or live in neighbourhoods where the principle consequence of immigration is a wonderful explosion of diversity in art, culture and food. They are not the ones who typically rely on increasingly stretched public services, compete for low wage jobs or live in areas of higher crime or social tension. Nestled within gated communities or exclusive neighbourhoods, many will be insulated from the kind of widespread social unrest which the implementation of open borders would quickly deliver.

These activists are, in effect, disguising their naked self interest as generosity, benefiting economically and making themselves feel good and progressive while pushing nearly all of the negative externalities of mass immigration onto others. Jesus, let us remember, said nothing about giving away one’s neighbour’s possessions – the whole point is supposed to be one of personal devotion and sacrifice. The Jesus 4 Open Borders crowd, on the other hand, seek largely to give away something which is not theirs, promising to bear a cost which in actual fact they have every intention of palming off onto people further down the social ladder. How very Christian.

While immigration activists love to tout the many economic benefits that immigration brings, and rightly so, they generally neglect to point out that there is often a (significant) time lag between the marginal new immigrant arriving and local housing and infrastructure expanding in proportion to service the increased population. In fact, unless deliberate steps are taken by local and national populations, that increase might never happen at all. Even in the best case where the marginal immigrant is a net fiscal contributor, this does not instantly make the freeway a fraction of an inch wider or add a few thousandths of a new bed to the local hospital. This necessary growth in service provision requires political direction and civic planning, and must often be commenced in advance, long before the tax revenue stream from the new immigrant comes online (thus requiring deficit spending in the interim).

Now imagine a situation where developed countries receive greatly inflated numbers of new immigrants who are not in a position to be immediate positive fiscal contributors due to language, cultural or educational barriers which may also hinder quick and easy assimilation into the host country’s culture. Not only do housing and infrastructure continue to lag behind demand, now social tensions are also likely to spike, leading to scenes which make recent anti-immigration protests look like a model of peaceful, reasoned civility. We may well be looking a riots. Martial law. Deepening social division, violence and even deaths.

This kind of environment is not one in which great prosperity is easily created. Unless open borders were implemented everywhere in a coordinated way there would likely be a brain drain of the most educated and productive native citizens (many of whom had likely cheered on open borders while possessing the ability to skip out of town the moment their Utopian fantasy turned into a nightmare) to other more sensible developed countries with functional immigration systems, leading to a self-perpetuating spiral of decline among those advanced Western countries (and it is always Western countries – activists are not demanding that Japan drop its exclusionary immigration practices) which decided to throw open their borders.

In short, one does not have to play the tape forward very far to realise that there are alarmingly few steps between implementing a policy decision which makes woke, “no human being is illegal”, Jesus 4 Open Borders activists feel warm and virtuous on the inside and a situation where everything that makes their country an attractive destination for mass immigration in the first place is utterly snuffed out. Open borders is the kind of rash, ill-considered “Jesus, take the wheel!” policy proposal which its most ardent advocates would never replicate in any other area of their lives.

But of course, none of this matters. Christian immigration activists can adopt the “good-hearted” open borders position at zero cost to themselves, knowing that fully open borders (and the chaos that would be unleashed) will never plausibly be implemented. Campaigning for open borders is an opportunity to appear compassionate without having to either dip one’s hand into one’s pocket or seriously risk the unravelling of one’s present, privileged existence. And rather than wrestling with the far more thorny questions of why so many countries remain so dysfunctional and deeply unattractive to their own citizens, and driving solutions to help those countries help themselves, many Christians can opt instead to abdicate the intellectual work and simply shroud themselves in moral outrage that evil Western governments don’t let anyone and everyone breeze into the country.

In the case of mass migration, Christian outrage would be far better directed at the fact that all too often, the West ignores or downplays pressing questions relating to the root cause and does little to help solve the drivers of continued poverty and instability in much of the world, often actively contributing to the problem rather than helping, be it though haphazard military interventions or discriminatory trade policies. This criticism would be absolutely justified, though the solutions are nowhere near as simple as clamouring for open borders.

It may not fit quite so neatly on a protest placard, but I am personally inclined to believe that the more Christian thing is to wrestle with these difficult questions and to make intelligent national and personal self-sacrifice in targeted areas to improve the lot of poor and unstable countries, while pressing for an immigration system which is fair and non-discriminatory to applicants and seeking to find the optimal “sweet spot” where the benefits and costs of immigration, however defined (and it should be an expansive measure) break even.

I’m no theologian, but something tells me that a well-considered policy which diligently aims to deal with the root drivers of mass migration is both superior and more authentically Christian than a rash, emotion-driven and deeply harmful policy whose primary benefit is to make overwhelmingly privileged, first world activists feel better about themselves.

Open Borders book

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Faith, Doubt and Brexit

Samuel Hooper6 Comments

Anti Brexit march

A warning about the disturbing fundamentalism of Continuity Remain and the anti-Brexit crusaders

In the course of arguing on Twitter this evening, I received back the following piece of friendly psychological analysis from a longtime follower and antagonist.

The text reads:

“You are almost always wrong, as if you’re from another planet. I’m starting to feel pity, not sure if for you or for the people who have to suffer the consequences of what you keep saying with grave conviction. Please take a step back and reflect.”

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Now, I don’t necessarily take issue with the charge of being “almost always wrong”, nor even the insinuation that I hail from extraterrestrial origins. But the funny thing is that I am actually a rather introspective person, and do spend quite a lot of time stepping back and reflecting on my beliefs and political worldview – perhaps in fact never more so than now, when law school has limited my available time to write.

Also, having never attained any level of fame or recognition from my writing (save a solitary appearance on the BBC and the very occasional retweet from a famed Twitter bluecheck journalist) I have not been subject to the temptation to lapse into permanent “transmit mode”, that gnawing need to be seen by my legions of followers as an all-knowing sage, privy to Great Knowledge and the secret schemes of the political elite.

In fact, performing a word count search on my blog reveals that the word “introspection” appears over 30 times in more than 20 articles – usually in the context of me demanding that certain politicians, journalists or other actors engage in some introspection as to their recent behavior, and precisely because I hold myself to this standard of regular self-reflection and accountability.

So I do take it somewhat personally when it is suggested I “take a step back and reflect” on my position on Brexit, because that is something I frequently do anyway. Having begun my age of political awareness as a devout europhile and even ardent euro-federalist, I already know many of the arguments in favor of the EU and against Brexit inside-out, without needed to hear mangled recitations of them from the Continuity Remain lobby’s telegenic campaign mouthpieces. In some cases, I was spouting many of those same tedious lines about “friendship ‘n cooperation” while pro-EU “celebrities” like EU Supergirl and Femi Oluwole were probably still watching children’s television rather than the evening news.

Having been on a journey from ardent euro-federalist (I once proudly wore a polo-shirt emblazoned with the Euro logo, soon after the single currency’s launch) to reluctant supporter to resigned leaver to committed Brexiteer, I have naturally examined and re-examined my views and the evidence supporting them on repeated occasions. That’s what it is to change one’s mind. And when it comes to the question of Britain’s European Union membership, I would always sooner listen to someone who once held an opposing view only to change their minds – whichever side they ultimately end up on – because at least I then know I am dealing with someone who has likely evaluated conflicting evidence or willingly exposed themselves to alternate viewpoints. The result is almost always a more productive exchange of ideas, and the avoidance of those dreary social media debates where two ideologues simply sling dueling talking points at one another with no intention of engaging in real debate.

Thus I continually questioned my beliefs before I started taking a more outspoken role in the Leave movement. Was the EU really as harmful to our democracy and impervious to attempts at reform as I had come to believe? Were many of the benefits of EU membership really replicable through other means that did not involve supranational government? Was the EU actually the best we could hope to do in terms of looking at governance beyond the nation state at a time of globalization? Were there realistic prospects of spurring that broader international discussion through Brexit, or would it be an act of national self-mutilation that had no ripple effects beyond Britain? Would it be better to just bide our time sheltering inside the European Union while we waited for someone else to finally address the pressing issue of balancing global governance with national (and local) democracy? Does it look like anybody else is about to step up to the plate and begin that work? Is the EU actually going to step up, admit its past failings and respond in a humble new citizen-centered way?

I also inevitably thought about how history would judge the positions I took and the statements I made, particularly at a time when social media records every throwaway remark or careless retweet, creating a rich seam of information that can be used by the unscrupulous to destroy one’s reputation and career. If Brexit was likely to fail and its opponents succeed in portraying it as a doomed nationalist spasm fueled primarily by xenophobia, was it worth the risk of me sticking my head above the parapet and supporting it? With so many powerful people on the pro-EU side, Remainers never seriously had to worry about being viewed by the history books as a latter-day Nazi if Brexit succeeded despite their opposition – they had more than enough manpower in the political, commercial, academic and cultural arenas to effectively absolve themselves from any blame for standing in the way of Brexit if it did lead to good things. Not so Brexiteers – like the American revolutionaries who would have been hung for treason had they not prevailed, history’s judgment would likely be merciless to Leave advocates and voters if Brexit did not go well, even if the fault was that of saboteurs determined to ensure that it not succeed.

Even after winning the referendum in 2016, I questioned my choices. The very next day, as Brexiteers toasted victory, I travelled with my wife and friends to Greece on holiday. As we passed through the EU flag-starred lane at passport control, I again asked myself if my decision to support Brexit had been a mistake; whether the EU, imperfect as it is, was the best we could do; whether it were better to remain in a vast bloc and regulatory superpower that looked likely to centralize further and become more powerful, even if it meant the further atrophy of British democracy, in order to remain “in the club”.

And of course the dismal events of the past two years – as Article 50 was triggered prematurely and without a plan, negotiated ineptly by a government sorely lacking in expertise, held to account by a Parliament full of MPs who cared more about appearing superficially knowledgeable or striking partisan poses than actually understanding the important minutiae on which everything depends, watched over by a debased and infantilized national media which either failed to contain its bias or do its due diligence – only led to more such introspection. Was it all a terrible mistake? Was there never anything good to be won? Was it inevitable that things would end up this way, with our government, opposition and legislature beclowning themselves in front of the world on a daily basis?

Yet after all of my questioning, my answer remains the same – Britain was right to vote to leave the European Union. I was right to campaign for Britain to do so. Even now, we are right to pursue Brexit and to resist those who would like to simply maintain the status quo in our governance and relationship with the EU. The fundamentals have not changed – indeed, Continuity Remainers seeking to overturn the result have generally still not bothered to discern precisely what those fundamentals are, in order to better communicate with Leave voters.

I do, however, wonder whether my far more famous and eminent counterparts on the Remain side have ever once engaged in the kind of introspection and self-questioning as to their stance of opposing Brexit and uncritically embracing the EU that I perform on a routine basis regarding my opposition to the project. And I strongly suspect that many of them have not.

Do you think for a moment that James O’Brien, LBC’s anti-Brexit polemicist-in-chief, as ever once taken a break from his task of finding the most inarticulate, confused and angry Brexit supporters to “defeat” in argument on his show to question any of the fundamental issues about the EU and Brexit that I and other Brexiteers consider every day?

James Obrien Brexit LBC

Do you think that eminent celebrity academics like AC Grayling ever once take a break from rending their garments and peddling conspiracy theories on Twitter to consider whether they might themselves be trapped in a closed ideological echo chamber which prevents them from fulfilling the basic academic and scientific duty of exposing their dogmas and hypotheses to scrutiny and criticism from alternative perspectives?

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Do you think that grandees like Tony Blair and John Major ever really stop and reconsider the pivotal moments in their administrations, and ask themselves whether they might have ever misjudged the march toward greater EU integration without public consent? Or is it more likely that they are simply desperate to cement their legacies rather than concede potential error?

Tony Blair and John Major warn against Brexit

Do you think that progressive-left religious leaders like the vast majority of bishops of the Church of England – people who are supposed to unite the nation in faith but who have often chosen instead to use politics to divide us while idolizing a slick salesman’s vision of European unity – have ever prayerfully reflected on their behavior?

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Do you think that issue-illiterate, virtue-signaling woke celebrities like Gary Lineker and Eddie Izzard ever engaged in a serious evaluative process of understanding valid complaints about the EU and the driving forces behind Brexit, or is it more likely that their publicists simply spotted a good opportunity for them to effortlessly win acclaim from the chatterati?

Gary Lineker celebrity Remainer Brexit

Do you think that the self-regarding doyens of the prestige international media ever take a break from communing with Bono to learn the causes of populism in order to question whether their very actions might contribute to the problem, and whether their uncritical acceptance of the legitimacy of bodies like the European Union (and consequent feeble scrutiny of them) was harmful to the very democracy they claim to defend?

Fareed Zakaria Bono Populism Brexit

Do you think that the plum voices of the BBC ever take a break from smearing UKIP voters or flatly declaring without evidence that Tory MPs belong to the “far right” in order to question whether they are really promoting the cause of truth and serving the whole of society?

James Naughtie BBC bias journalism Brexit - ERG conservatives far right

Do you think that shamelessly biased Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow ever actually seriously considered whether he was wrong to negatively highlight and criticize the number of “white people” attending a pro-Brexit rally in Westminster?

Jon Snow Brexit Protest criticise white people journalism media bias

In all of the above cases, I believe that the answer is probably “no”. Convinced of their righteousness from the start, these individuals and many others switched into permanent transmit mode on 24 June 2016 (and in some cases long before), never once subjecting themselves to the discomfort and potential cognitive dissonance of questioning their own assumptions.

Maybe these people have actually forfeited the public trust and the right to their bully pulpits in the media.

Maybe when evaluating how Brexit is being attempted, resisted and portrayed in the media, we should ask ourselves who is actually engaging in an intellectual exercise of any kind, and who has simply lapsed into triumphantly bleating articles of faith, with little questioning of their own side. I would argue that many of the latter can be found in prominent positions on the Continuity Remain campaign, or at the apex of those organizations and industries which most strongly support it. And ironically, many of them can also be found publicly marveling at the inability of Brexiteers to reconsider their stance, question their dogmas and change their minds.

The truth is that Brexiteers have had nearly three years of unremitting exposure to the scorn, derision and hatred of many of the most respected and influential groups in our society – the politicians elected to our Parliament; the people who staff our civil service, lead our educational institutions, run our largest companies, lead our charities and edit our newspapers; the people who act in our favorite films and television shows, entertain us with their stand-up comedy or represent us at the pinnacle of professional sports, literature, music and the arts. Three years of this unremitting negativity and hostility from opposing forces in the most powerful reaches of the country; three years of embarrassing failure after failure by the people tasked with executing the decision we made at the ballot box on 23 June 2016, and still there is no overwhelming desire among Brexiteers nor the country as a whole to scrap Brexit and remain a member state of the European Union.

You could say that this is emotion over reason, that it is faith over fact, that it is a desperate act of confirmation bias by people who simply don’t want to admit to themselves that they were wrong. But every single one of these attack lines is also a piercing dagger which can just as easily be aimed right back at the heart of the Continuity Remainer “resistance” movement – people who despite being rebuffed at the referendum against all the odds and opinion polls have still not engaged in any kind of meaningful introspection at a group or individual level, and many of whom never once questioned their stance on Brexit, prior to nor after the referendum.

We are continually told that Remain voters and their movement’s heroes are more highly educated – even more moral – than those of us who had the nerve to imagine a future for British democracy outside the European Union. We are told that they are stringent disciples of reason while we are base creatures motivated by nativist superstition and easily led astray by nefarious outside influence. But it’s all a total sham. Theirs is a priesthood with no monopoly on fundamental truth, just a desperate faith in the European Union as the solution to problems which it has shown no capacity to meet.

There is indeed an emergent quasi-religious movement in Britain, one which holds its truths as unquestionable dogma, which views nonbelievers as automatically “lesser than” and which blindly fetishizes a flag as representation of all that is good and true in humanity. But the new faith militant in British politics is not the fractured and browbeaten Brexit movement. It is the Cult of Continuity Remain, and the banner under which it triumphantly marches bears the twelve yellow stars of the European Union.

 

EU flag body paint

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Don’t Expect The Independent Group To Rescue Britain’s Broken Politics

Samuel Hooper3 Comments

Antichrist - end of the world

Chuka Umunna? Former choirboy, but most definitely not the Messiah…

In my limited spare time since commencing law school, I have been attending a wonderful Bible study group for graduate students, organized by the university’s Catholic Student Center. Having plodded our way methodically through the New Testament, last week we reached the Book of Revelation and alighted on the topic of the Antichrist – antichrists being false prophets preaching a deceptive gospel, and also a specific figure cloaked in seeming holiness and authority, whose arrival would presage the second coming of Christ.

In other, totally unrelated news, British politics seems to have been roiled in my absence by the defection of eight Labour and three Conservative MPs from their respective parties to form a flashy new association called The Independent Group. In selecting a spokesperson for their group, the breakaway MPs nominated Chuka Umunna, the ex-Labour politician best known for describing himself as Britain’s Barack Obama. As we shall see, this was a revealing choice – elevating a man who models himself on the US president who promised hope and change, delivered the former in spades back in 2008 but so little of the latter by 2016 that the people elected Donald Trump as his successor.

The cast list of TIGgers (yes, they actually call themselves that) on the ex-Labour side is a veritable who’s who of frustrated New Labourite centrists whose slick career ambitions have been put into stasis since Jeremy Corbyn’s takeover of the Labour Party and wholesale rejection of the Blairite/Brownite technocratic tendency (though some credit must be given to MPs such as Luciana Berger, who also had cause to flee the appalling, metastasizing antisemitism within Corbyn’s hard left faction). On the ex-Tory side, we have the likes of Sarah Wollaston and Anna Soubry, politicians whom one would never have guessed to be conservative in the first place but for the fact that they campaigned wearing a blue rosette during general election season.

The TIGgers had a number of justifications for their decision to leave their former parties (though notably, none had the courage to call a by-election and allow their constituents to positively affirm their presence in Parliament under a new party affiliation). Those coming from the Labour Party repeatedly stressed the antisemitism continually exhibited by those close to Jeremy Corbyn and tolerated by the Labour leadership, though their claims that it was the deciding factor fail the credibility test since antisemitism on the hard left and ultra-progressive wings of the Labour Party is hardly a new and surprising issue. More telling is ex-Labour Mike Gapes’ bitter complaint that “the Labour leadership is complicit in facilitating Brexit” – the idea that the Labour Party might support a policy popular among the party’s traditional voter base being too much for him to comprehend. Meanwhile, ex-Tory MPs like Anna Soubry complained about prime minister Theresa May’s dogged approach to Brexit and what they called the party’s reliance on the Hard Brexit fundamentalist ERG group of MPs and a takeover of the party by “right-wing, hard line anti-EU” forces.

All of this was covered portentously and near-reverentially by a Westminster journalistic class who tend to jump at any opportunity to breathlessly report on personalities instead of policy (the details of Brexit still eluding many of them) and which is near-uniformly progressive in socio-economic ideology and stridently anti-Brexit in particular. Thus we were treated to gushing hot takes by the likes of ex-PM Tony Blair (“embrace the spirit of insurgency!“), a Guardian journalist overcome with admiration as these courageous rebels dined at Nando’s, The Scotsman (which swats away inconvenient observations such as the fact that “they have no vision, coherent policy platform or leader”) and readers of the hateful EU propaganda rag The New European, who are desperate for the TIGgers not to subject themselves to by-elections and the indignity of seeking democratic approval of their party betrayal.

Naturally, all of this praise has gone to the TIGgers’ heads, and what started as an act of pure political calculation has now become in their minds an almost heroic declaration of political independence and bold purpose. Hence self-aggrandizing pronouncements such as this:

Heidi Allen thinks that “the two big parties [are] demonstrating more and more every day that they are not up to the challenges facing our country”. This is the same Heidi Allen who campaigned under the Conservative Party banner without a whisper of complaint in 2015 and 2017, maneuvering hard to get that coveted initial constituency selection in the first place.

And here is The Independent Group’s London branch, acting as though it is an oasis of reason in a desert of conformist thinking:

You would think that a brand new political party – a group whose ranks are filled with MPs who had the supposed “courage” to quit their parties and risk the wrath of their constituents because of their overriding concern about the country’s direction – would be positively fizzing with alternative policy ideas and solutions to the national problems they quietly tracked for so long before making their big move. You would be wrong.

But that’s fine. Maybe TIG is understandably reticent to commit themselves by announcing headline policies at this early stage, while they are still trying to woo other potential defectors and grow in strength. We should, though, still be able to parse a sense of what this radical new party stands for by analyzing the famous speeches and policy initiatives of its star members, right? “Oh, Bob? He’s the one who wants to create a network of community colleges to retrain people whose old careers are under threat from globalization and automation.” “Rachel? Isn’t she the one who called for a national Apollo Program for education, criticizing Britain for shooting for the middle with education outcomes and exhorting us to catch up with world leaders like South Korea and Finland?” “Rupert has a great plan for constitutional reform to bring government closer to the people and make leaders more accountable”. “Ayesha actually had the courage to reject calls for her to post a public love-letter to the NHS on Valentine’s Day, saying that we need to stop deifying the healthcare service and look to other countries for examples of best practice”.

Again, tumbleweeds. The British political firmament as a whole is hardly blessed with a multitude of bold, original thinkers, and such figures certainly aren’t among the fabulous seven, the daring eleven or whatever number of forgettable non-entities currently comprise The Independent Group.

All of which is a great pity. As this blog has noted over and over and over and over and over and  over again, Britain has entered a period of political discontinuity – a time when the existing political settlement, with its narrow range of policy options, are no longer adequate to the challenges at hand. Such periods of discontinuity require politicians to think the previously unthinkable in terms of policy solutions, not to flee their former political parties in an outrage that people are actually starting to do so.

As described in the influential Stepping Stones report:

In normal times a majority is enough. The task of government is to steer a basically healthy socio-economic system past hazards which are primarily external, while ensuring that the system’s fabric is maintained and making improvements to it here and there.

But once the system itself starts to show signs of fatigue, instability, disintegration, then we start to talk of discontinuity. In discontinuity, solutions can only be found by breaking constraints which we had assumed were unbreakable. It is not enough to settle for policies which cannot save us, on the grounds that they are the only ones which are politically possible or administratively convenient.

So what is The Independent Group’s grand unified theory for fixing Britain? Besides thwarting Brexit, they don’t have one. But they did roll out their very first policy initiative with tremendous fanfare:

Today we launched a petition calling for an end to the Government’s four-year freeze on working age benefits. Ending the freeze on working age benefits would lift 200,000 people – who are working, but struggling to make ends meet – out of poverty.

We believe that all policy should be evidence-based, especially when that policy affects some of the most vulnerable people in our society.

There’s no reason to persist with the final year of the freeze, especially when the past three years significantly exceeded the savings originally envisaged.

Is this the best that the courageous breakaway radical thinkers of British politics can do -a feel-good policy about relaxing benefit freezes? As part of a broader overhaul of welfare policy, this may indeed be a valid and “evidence-based” approach. But The Independent Group have not conducted any such broader review of the welfare system; they simply cherry-picked the low-hanging policy fruit designed to appeal to middle income swing voters, without any consideration of the knock-on effects on public finances, incentives to work or anything else. There’s certainly no bold leadership here, no telling difficult truths to the public about necessary trade-offs in public spending.

Indeed, The Independent Group will not be able to formulate meaningful policy on any number of issues, welfare included, being comprised of defector MPs from opposite parties with different views on the subject. If the party is to survive for any length of time, it would have to strike a balance between the ex-Labour and ex-Tory factions, and would likely produce policies almost identical to any government or opposition which sought to woo the same swing voters by meeting them where they are (rather than doing the much harder – but necessary – job of convincing them that they, too, need to update their thinking about what is both desirable and politically feasible).

Contra Heidi Allen’s complaint that the two main parties are “not up to the challenges facing our country”, The Independent Group exists precisely because the two main parties were captured by forces which seek to overturn the “old established politics” – Labour by the Corbynites with their faith in 1970s-style, red-blooded socialism and the Tories by the ultra free trade zealots of the ERG (though on non-Brexit matters, the Tory Party remains as uninspiringly centrist and authoritarian as it ever was – a fact which Anna Soubry and Sarah Wollaston should have valued, given the fact that they emblemize that sentiment within the party). The two big parties may not yet be responding to this period of discontinuity the right way, but both are shifting their thinking. It is The Independent Group who seek to stand athwart history, yelling “stop!”.

These are not People of Action, bristling at the stultifying ideological confines of their former parties. Rather, they are Captains of Inaction, career machine politicians who thrived on the Old Politics – that comforting bygone era when New Labour would be nanny statist and indulge centre-left interventionist tendencies as the Tories accused them of socialism on steroids, while the Tories would be ever so slightly less nanny statist and interventionist as Labour screamed that they were a libertarian Ayn Rand dystopian outfit made flesh.

However much they may strut and preen, the TIGger MPs are not frustrated free thinkers yearning to push the boundaries of the Overton Window in British politics or advocate for daring new solutions to the problems we face in the early 21st century – they are establishment refugees seeking a lifeboat to take them back to the New Labour, centrist consensus of the 1990s and 2000s. The root of their discontent is not the fact that British politics has become stale and conformist – their anger stems from the fact that the two main political parties have reacted to voter dissatisfaction by moving in direction which reduces their own personal influence (and/or hopes of future high office).

Pete North, welcoming what he sees as the death of centrism, puts it better than me:

Progressivism (whatever that actually means) has become a byword for sanitised cellophane wrapped politics which produces the androgynous clones like Chuka Umunna designed for maximum media inoffensiveness. Like Ken dolls one wonders if these people even possess genitalia. The political version of morning TV magazine show presenters. And as repellent as they are, these people don’t actually know anything.

This much has been made abundantly clear during the course of Brexit. They have no idea why we voted to leave, and no idea how we got where we are, or indeed how to get ourselves out of it. Instead of seeking to understand what is upon us, they have invested all of their energies into sweeping Brexit under the carpet with a view to going back to their consequence free normality where they soak up media attention but take on none of the responsibilities and obligations.

It is telling that the new Independent Group have elected to promote themselves on a handful of recycled populist slogans. They speak of a “different way of doing things” under the “ChangePolitics” hashtag, with all the self-awareness of a diarrhetic hippo. Chris Leslie in all seriousness went on BBC Question Time to tell us “The big political parties want to keep everything as it is” when this bunch are the very essence of the establishment – the rotting corpse of centrism.

Frustration with Britain’s dysfunctional politics is quite understandable, and the growing realization that something has broken beyond repair is encouraging to witness. But to see in the cast of The Independent Group anything resembling salvation from our problems is to put one’s faith in a false prophet.

The politicians who made headlines by flouncing out of their respective political parties aren’t preaching a bold new gospel which the country can get behind. They aren’t currently preaching a message of any kind at all, beyond a furious opposition to Brexit and the inchoate yearning for a return to the time when uttering bland platitudes about Tory heartlessness or Labour profligacy was all it took to sustain one’s political career. If anything, these are avowedly Old Testament politicians, furious with incomprehension that their message no longer resonates in New Testament Britain.

As a general rule of life, it it looks too good to be true, it probably is. The Independent Group doesn’t even manage to look good on cursory examination, but even if one finds oneself falling for their polished Twitter hashtags about changing politics, the point remains that given the rather pitiful raw material at their disposal, The Independent Group’s promise of political renewal is indeed too good to be true – no matter how strongly one wishes that Chuka Umunna and his unlikely gang were the real deal.

 

Antichrist

The Independent Group

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