Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

I would say that I do live in a bit of an SNP echo chamber and have been shocked by some of the abuse I have seen. I have a relative who called a long standing labour activist (old labour) a traitor to her country for not voting SNP. Statements like that are outrageous.

I will also say I have seen a lot of abuse from the right towards the left, I know very few right wing people in real life (my area is traditionally Labour, now SNP) but have seen it online and had some directed towards me. I was called an idiot today by one of my right wing friends on FB for saying I want an independent Scotland to be part of the EU.

I will note that the Labour campaign here did seem to focus on SNP bashing, and to a lesser extent tory bashing (the tories were no threat locally) instead on any positives they would deliver.

I am on a couple of discussion groups related to my profession, it is a caring role which seems to be dominated by left wing voters. There are very legitimate concerns about austerity and the effect it has but anyone who has dared to stick their head above the parapet and say they were voting tory have been abused. Lets not even start on the trans issue on that board where the TRAs regularly flounce because it is a hostile environment for them, the increasingly vocal GC voices are accused of killing trans kids and the word TERF is thrown around a lot.

I don't understand the Putney/Islington infatuation with Momentum.

"noblesse oblige"

I've booked for the same tour RoLaren.

Sammy Woodhouse I mean! Wilson was the Lab candidate iirc.

identifying as our representation

Yes. "You don't have a voice, so we'll speak for you. NO NO, SHUT UP, we'll take it from here." And then on the other side, the Nigel Farages of the world pretending that they represent the real people of Britain because he goes to pubs sometimes and is therefore a Man Of The People. It is not what we need in a country with shrinking social mobility.

I notice the Lab candidate for Rother Valley who called women "trashy SWERFs" for campaigning against Spearmint Rhino - women including Sammy Wilson ffs! - didn't win her seat.

So in a strange way my mum found herself back in the sort of community she grew up in, and was happy there.

People don't really change, on a fundamental level. What you grew up with is always there no matter how much you try to reject it. I'm glad that she was able to spend her last years with people who cared about her.

In my early teens there were all sort of things I hated about the enmeshed communities both my parents came from but I appreciate them now, as well as the fact that they created the same around themselves to the best of their ability wherever they went as adults. My DH, who is not from the UK, is the same. Part of my issue with the people currently running Labour is that I can't imagine them ever genuinely connecting with or being fond of say your mum's carer and her family - there's an "improving the poor" tone to the way they talk about people outside their bubble that grates and comes across as contempt, like they assume anyone who didn't have the education they did is thick and their opinions therefore unimportant. I did get the education and would still say that my relatively uneducated parents were as bright or more so than anyone I went to uni with, and that the range of intelligence is the same in every class.

It's hard to put into words, what I see when the likes of Owen Jones or Ash Sarkar are talking about socialism, but I see the same disquiet in the way Janice Turner (Doncaster girl) writes about them. Lang calls it identifying as our representation, and honestly it's no more convincing than Jessica Yaniv identifying as a champion for gay rights.

Bath? BATH? We washed once a year in a grubby bucket in t'back court and were grateful for that.

Pic of coal in the bath or it never happened.

I'm as happy to blast OJ and the clueless Momentum brocialists and Labour's total inability to learn lessons from losing Scotland as the next woman, but I am very very far from cheering on someone like Douglas Murray talking about how Labour is full of rich metropolitan 'elites' while the Conservatives alone understand the true will of the people. Let alone talking about how the Real Working Class don't actually want a welfare state because family and lovely matriarchs will just sort out everyone's problems. Christ above.

(grew up in a Northern/Midlands town where my dad and brother worked in a factory, can provide whippet if this will provide sufficient evidence of Real People-ness.)

TheProdigalKittensReturn

I agree with you. My mother left her northern mining town with a scholarship to Oxford, quickly dropped her accent and never looked back. She was a tremendous snob. I was unhappy at boarding school and have always wanted somewhere I could belong.

The irony is that she lived her best life during a decade with dementia due to the kindness and commitment of people she would previously have scorned. Yes I was paying the carer, using my mother's money, but the quality of her care was based on her acceptance within a community. In part by me recognising that as an employer I needed to offer recognition and appreciation as well as cash. Human relationships are not just transactional. My instinct is that in our zero hours, contracted out world, people are yearning for something more. Hence Brexit and Boris, because Labour just don't understand.

And as a footnote, I had dinner with the carer last week when I was down clearing my mother's things. Her partner commented that he really missed by mum, who despite dementia was a huge character. So in a strange way my mum found herself back in the sort of community she grew up in, and was happy there.

That vitriolic abuse against voters has been an explicit part of left wing discourse since 2016

For me it goes back to Gordon Brown and 'bigotgate'.

I have never been all that particularly involved in politics, but I got roped into a local election one year and so got to chat with Barbara Castle who was on the campaign trail and about 80 at the time. She told me that she loved campaigning - it was the best part of politics - talking with people in the streets. By this she did not mean a bit of handshaking and smiling. She meant having a good old debate with ordinary people and being challenged.

I naively thought this was true of all politicians to some extent, so Gordon Brown's response was a shock. Rather than listen to what she said and maybe even turn her round to his way of thinking, it was just a branding. The way things have gone, it was not the isolated incident I thought it was but the direction things were moving in.

In case you missed it, the Grace Blakeley ding-dong on GMB he refers to is one for the ages and well worth catching up with. Surprised it didn't end with her taking on Jacqui Smith and Ayesha Hazarika in the car park:

m.youtube.com/watch?v=KawAKTrk2No

Doesn't Brighton have a massive homeless problem? Hardly something to emulate.

No, it goes back much further than that. At least to 2007 when the SNP had the temerity to take Holyrood, which is Labour's birth right....We Scots have been listening to their abuse for well over a decade. Not just from the Labour Party, but from the BBC, the Guardian, various celebrities and luvvies.

Couldn't agree more.

Yep, Arnold. I'm still finding myself sitting listening to my leftie English friends tell me what's best for Scotland and how to improve ourselves. Getting a bit fucking snappy about it, too, to be honest.

All right-thinking places must surely want to remake themselves in the image of Brighton, seems to be their thinking.

The word here is interconnected in reference to families/communities, and the elite view it with deep suspicion and/or bafflement. I've lived in both types of communities and both have their pluses and minuses, but if you're struggling in any way then it's the interconnected communities that will step in and help. If you get ill in Islington you better have enough money to pay people to take care of you, because your neighbors will either not care or be annoyed.

There are people I grew up with who I've haven't seen in decades, but if I ran into them tomorrow and they needed help I'd do something. If I go back to the town my family lived in when I was 13 people will still ask after my granny, and be sad that's she's passed away if they didn't already know, which they probably do. Even the family members who I don't get on with at all, we'd still help each other if push came to shove. This seems to utterly baffle people who'll cancel their supposed closest friends over an errant tweet.

Perking, I don't think that is so. I was lucky enough to employ a carer who was essentially the matriarch in a local working class family. Yes she looked after grandkids during school holidays (along with my mum who loved feeding the ducks with them), used her income to bail out family members who needed help, and much much more. But family was her life. And family are there for her, so her grandson helped me move furniture, her partner re-welded my mums wheelchair, and other family members were willing to undertake short notice over-night care. I, in turn, met her daughter when she had to make a trip to London, and have been able to use my MC experience to help sort out some bureaucracy stuff.

It is very different from London where Labour Councillors and lobbyists live in £million houses but only see neighbours when they pick up Amazon parcels. (Three in one day last week and barely a thank you!) DB who fits the Islington profile completely, down to the retweeting of Ash Sakar, has finally acknowledged the carers role. After almost a decade he has just asked me for her address so he can send her a Christmas card. I like having people in my life who I know and trust, so will keep my promise to stay in touch.

FWR is so interesting. I don't know anything about queer theory etc, but I observe. I don't understand the Putney/Islington infatuation with Momentum. It almost seems like an attempt to retain a position as a "ruling class" by co-opting minorities and victim hood. And denouncing anyone who dares disagree/question. And TRAs are the perfect victims to co-opt, first because there are not many of them, but also because many are white and middle class as well.

I've just booked my front row tickets to see Douglas Murray on stage in conversation with Andrew Doyle aka Titania McGrath next May. Swoon and yes, I know he's gay!

That vitriolic abuse against voters has been an explicit part of left wing discourse since 2016

No, it goes back much further than that. At least to 2007 when the SNP had the temerity to take Holyrood, which is Labour's birth right, from them, and heinously enact policies that were popular in Scotland without giving a thought to what London wanted (or middle England for that matter).

We Scots have been listening to their abuse for well over a decade. Not just from the Labour Party, but from the BBC, the Guardian, various celebrities and luvvies.

They should have listened years ago.

The question sometimes changes from "should women be kept at home to do the unpaid domestic work?" to "should women do the double-day, in order to do the unpaid domestic work and paid work?"

But men are generally noticeable by their absence in this question!

There used to be an assumption that women would be available for this labour, and employers used to enforce it by sacking women when they married.

Then employers encouraged it by underpaying women compared to men (because men "had a family to support") while women's contribution to the family was assumed to be domestic labour.

Now we're reaching a period where not only are many women in paid work with equal pay, but so are their grandmothers. The pool of women available to do much of the unpaid domestic labour is drying up. And although women doing this unpaid labour were described as "economically inactive", the economy is now, in fact, missing their labour.

Isn't "the family" often a euphemism for "unpaid labour by women"?

The left generally seem keen on not listening to different opinions. They don’t listen and debate, they silence and “no platform” any dissent. Free speech seems anathema to them, and they scream “bigotry” and “hate speech” instead of engaging calmly and rationally. This, combined with their barely concealed contempt for anyone who voted for Brexit, was never going to win hearts and minds.