Douglas Murray on intolerant politics

[BovaryX]

There is an interesting article by Douglas Murray in the DM about the authoritarian, identity politics which have alienated Labour voters and triggered a paradigm shift in the political landscape. It covers some of the themes which Lang GC Pencils and others have been discussing in light of election result.

It is a divide between people who have real-world concerns and those focused on niche and barely significant ones...How, you might ask, have we reached such a state? There is a clue in the Labour Party’s dysfunctional reaction to its catastrophic defeat on Thursday

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7793275/DOUGLAS-MURRAY-Britains-divide-ugly-intolerant-Left-rest-us.html

He's cribbed that all off threads off here, hasn't he!

Yep! I reckon there’s some credits missing...,

Fab article.

I have just spent a decade commuting between central London, where it is not uncommon to know people who live in £3 million houses, send their children to private schools and who cover their Twitter with Momentum stuff and Ash Sakar/Owen Jones stuff, and the seaside town where my elderly and unwell mother lived. In the latter I was meeting care workers, and health workers and tradespeople. They were voting Conservative. Momentum was not offering them anything. And the fear was that they would end up paying the bill for the various Labour promises.

(Not helped by having to tiptoe around a sensitive TG care worker, but that is another story.)

One key observation for me was the extent to which extended family provided social safety networks in traditional working class communities. I benefited. If my mother was unwell, I was able to quickly arrange 24 hour care using the carers extended family. The careers grandchildren often went with my mother to the park etc, and she sort of became an honorary grandmother. I assume similar happens in red wall constituencies. It is not just about the state and welfare. I am not sure the London Labour hierarchy really understand that.

I demand a byline! LOL!

I was saying on another thread that the Red Tory/Blue Labour wavering section of the electorate now appears to hold the electoral balance of power in England and probably Wales too.

You probably couldn't get much more metropolitan elite than Douglas Murray (and I still view him as an Islamophobe, sorry) but honestly - look at the difference between him as right wing metropolitan poshie and the Labour Wokeistas as left wing metropolitan poshies.

It's fucking embarrassing for the posh left that Murray understands what ordinary people think and they don't - and not only don't, don't even want to.

I like Dougas Murray very much and, as usual, he is spot on.

One key observation for me was the extent to which extended family provided social safety networks in traditional working class communities.

Queer theory again, I'm afraid. It has little but contempt for the integrity of the family. But, if you're an ordinary pleb, and your state safety nets have been removed by neoliberal capitalism, the integrity of family is vital.

Murray understands what ordinary people think and they don't - and not only don't, don't even want to

Yes. It’s that idea that the voters have failed the party, not the party has failed the voters. That vitriolic abuse against voters has been an explicit part of left wing discourse since 2016. It’s unsurprising millions of voters have turned their backs on this rabid intolerance

Absolutely agree 100%.

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.

where it is not uncommon to know people who live in £3 million houses, send their children to private schools and who cover their Twitter with Momentum stuff and Ash Sakar/Owen Jones stuff, and the seaside town where my elderly and unwell mother lived. In the latter I was meeting care workers, and health workers and tradespeople. They were voting Conservative

Needmore
You know what’s interesting? Labour has become the party of the 0.01 per cent elite. And its elite continually demonstrate a visceral contempt for the voters it claims to represent. It’s quite fascinating how Labour is becoming the party of intolerant ideologues and insufferable snobs

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

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.

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.)