Everything appears to be on the move, recently. I am having and overhearing conversations that would have been relegated to late-night dinner tables with trusted friends or hushed corners of a pub somewhere (although even that could soon be impossible with the government defacto banning of public discussion). The idea that Liberalism is working out just fine and progress is being made is, even at the most generous reading, beginning to look rather untenable. To the more cynical, and some might argue more observant, it’s apparent that Liberalism and its application of equality absolutism to every gamut of humanity, has led us to the disaster we see unfolding in the UK.
This has led to somewhat of a revalation for me personally. I wrote many frustrated letters to several MPs during the Covid Lockdown years, appealing for them to consider the defence of “Liberal Democracy” in the face of massive state overreach as something to take seriously. I must admit, I cannot read my letters now without cringing. I assumed that, as someone who considered themselves a classical Liberal, the rot within the UK political establishment (and beyond) was an aberration of the philosophy; something to be corrected so we could return to “the proper parth™”. It has taken me until now (yes, embarrassingly late) to realise that I was a fool. Liberalism was always going to end with us at this point.
The decree of absolute equality across people means they can be assumed as transplantable, interchangeable economic units and has resulted in the pursuit of GDP at the expense of everything else. Indeed, why should there be any concern over what importing 700,000-900,000 people a year from predominantly non-EU countries might do to to a society, as long as the GDP figures increase?
References to the nature of Britain’s history are of little use and, in my opinion, only serve to highlight the concern. Mention of the Norman invasion is often blithely thrown up as a reason to discount concerns over mass immigration. But if massive cultural change can be induced by some ~10,000 Normans (~0.4% of the total population of England at the time) arriving then how is that to assuage concerns/questions when the numbers are increased to nearly a million people in a single year? For multiple years?
What would those possible concerns be? Well the dissolution of the UK into “communities” with interests and loyalties to countries other than those of the UK presents an obvious risk of Balkanisation of the island. This is a very serious and real issue that the 2024 electoral results showed was already happening.
To select a few examples: In the last election four independent MPs were elected solely for their position on the Israel/Gaza conflict (Shockat Adam, Adnan Hussain, Ayoub Khan and Iqbal Mohamed). Iqbal Mohamed has since given a speech in Parliament defending first cousin marriages, recongising this is something that south-Asian cultures are a fan of.
Labour’s Jess Phillips, who narrowly kept her seat by squeaking 693 votes over Leanne Mohamad (a “British Palestinian”) faced agressive shouting and heckling during her speech at the count because of the Israel/Gaza conflict, although she applied her usual misandry to the situation and blamed “men” in general for the abuse.
Conservative MP Bob Blackman bizzarely pivoted to Indian Nationalism in order to keep his seat (his constituency of East Harrow was reported as 10% Hindu at the last census in 2021) and faced criticisms of “islamaphobia” in Parliament from MP Naz Shah. This is after large scale rioting in 2022 in Leicester between Indian Hindus and Muslims. It’s worth mentioning that Naz Shah has also used her time in government to argue for legislation against people drawing depictions of Muhammad.
Similarly, Bedford’s Labour MP Mohammad Yasin decided that his priorities were in lobbying Pakistan’s PM to build an airport in Kashmir because their constituents (the “Kashmiri disapora”) were complaining of the journey times by road. One might question why Mohammad didn’t run for office in Pakistan if this was his political aim, since he could actually have more effect on Pakistani infastructure projects over there than in the UK.
I could go on. In every one of these constituencies there will be people who are struggling with the every day of life in the UK. There’s a multi-decadal housing crisis, water and transport infastructure failing, shortages of school places, nationalised health system failing, defence failing, record high energy prices, spiraling unemployment and the looming economic collapse of the treasury to name a few. We have plenty of very critical issues to be dealing with. But instead our politics is being increasingly derailed by third world tribal conflicts that the majority of British people don’t really care about.
But it’s not that Liberalism doesn’t know about this. It just doesn’t care. GDP is the kingdom, the power and the glory. If doing a thing increases GDP, even at the margins, it is forever thus a ‘Good Thing™’. For those that have concerns over foreign sectarian voilence erupting on their streets, we have Fraser Nelson to calm you with graphs and explain how the riot outside your house isn’t happening and, even if it were, it’s a Good Thing™. Because GDP.
But it’s beginning to come undone. We’ve been chasing this GDP optimisation for decades now and, while the latest government has really thrown the accelerant on the fire, every previous government for 30 years has failed to address the growing problem of; what is a nation once it is reduced to an ever-churning mass of “economic units” from around the world? What commonality are we to gather round in order to persuade those newly arrived away from their home cultures? Is the newly invented, homeopathically diluted, milksop set of “British Values” really enough to convince anyone to assimilate into a cohesive, unifying nation? Considering we are talking about tribal conflicts that span, in some cases, centuries, are ultra-generalist concepts like “rule of law” and “tolerance” really going to cut it?
These are conversations our nation should have been having since 1997 but the public were persuaded to avoid even mentioning the issue under threat of being deemed “racist” or, whisper it quietly, “far right”. Instead we acquiesced into becomming what Starmer identified as an “island of strangers”. Indeed, when even the most managerial-class milquetoast PM has had to admit this, it seems these conversations can no longer be repressed. Liberalism is dead and there are no GDP figures that will convince the apostates back to the fold.
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