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

We also need a return of evening classes for adults, at affordable prices.

I remember my grandparents both taking (in my granny's case) and teaching (in my granda's) vocational courses at FE colleges in the evenings. Both for qualification purposes, but also for life skills (such as DIY) and for the camaraderie that comes from pursuing an interest with like minded people.

I am a huge believer in education for education's sake but of recent years that concept seems to have been watered down to only include academic education when there is so very much more to life.

packingsoapandwater your posts are fab.

My elder brother took the 11+, went to grammar school and did A levels. Wasn't particularly gifted academically so didn't pursue education further. I am of an age when the 11+ and grammar schools were being got rid of so ended up going to what was now called a comprehensive school but was actually still a secondary modern in a fairly depressed rural area. Careers 'guidance' was either farming or forces for the boys, or nursing or catering/retail for the girls. No sixth form so we had to move schools to do A levels and I didn't bother.

Girls were just written off as baby machines or shop girls. I know nursing is now a degree career but in the 70s it was seen as much more of a care role than a career.

Blair's insistence that most young people should go to university means that now in my 50s with no degree I am finding it so very hard to find a decent job, even though some of the so-called graduates I've worked with in the past couldn't string a sentence together, couldn't spell, couldn't use grammar correctly - and didn't know that accurate communication matters.

I have never again been able to earn enough to buy my own home after I lost my job and therefore my home in the 90s recession. I now live in another depressed rural area in the north and even though property prices are amongst the lowest in the country, I still can't afford to buy.

At least it isn't as crowded up here as it is down south but that's because there's little work - even the immigration population doesn't want to live here.

Haven't RTFT yet but just popping on to say that I agree 100% with what RedToothBrush had to say a few pages back. I can see the decay of a close-knit community and the resentment of incomers (in bulk, some with arrogance, aggressive driving and zero clue about local life). It's happening very fast, and is very resented.

My observation is that most politicians have no idea of the value people place on their communities, or of the value of a solid community to social well-being, the upbringing of children and so on. They piffle on about social cohesion with no clue about how it really works and the complicated informal networks that underpin it.

That feeling of alienation had a lot to do with the Brexit vote. And it hasn't been tackled.

@packingsoapandwater I think you have just eloquently voiced the thoughts, feelings and fears of every northern, Labour brexit voter excellently. The fact the party they had always been loyal to first ignored their fears and then called them thick and racist for voicing them meant that they had no choice but to vote Tory. I don't think that JC and his cronies have any idea of the damage they have done in the Labour "red wall" constituencies or that it will take years for these voters to forget that betrayal and ever vote for them again.

Blair's insistence that most young people should go to university means that now in my 50s with no degree I am finding it so very hard to find a decent job

This is an important point. Having so many graduates has not really created more graduate jobs so much as shifted the entry requirements for jobs that don't really need a degree.

I work in library services. We have very low staff turnover. I've been in post 20 years and barely don't count as a newbie. I have older colleagues who left school at 16 and joined the library service, never to leave until retirement.

I do have a degree myself, which was, in fairness, relevant to my original position, but it is noteworthy that not one single person who has been employed in the last 20 years doesn't have a degree, and for the most part they are not the slightest bit relevant or needed. We degree holders are no better at the job than our left school at 16 peers.

PS and yes, being called a bigot or an idiot because you gave the elite a black eye by voting for Brexit is not going to bring those voters back onside.

Excellent thread, really worth reading.

Might add my own perspective, in case it's relevant. I'm an EU migrant working in a middle-class job, and, I can't deny it, I was shocked by the Brexit vote and for a while took it quite personally.

But the last three years have convinced me that there are indeed two sides to this, that Brexiteers aren't 'bad people', and that successive governments have mishandled immigration as a policy issue. Scrapping the GCSE language requirement was particularly idiotic, and I have never understood why a Labour government would do such a thing, de-skilling its workforce in a globalising world economy.

I've also begun to understand that for middle-class liberals and lefties, Brexit is an identity issue first and foremost. They don't care about the economic arguments - just like their opponents!

^I am a huge believer in education for education's sake but of recent years that concept seems to have been watered down to only include academic education when there is so very much more to life.^

And even then academic degrees are a mixed bag. I am not sure a sociology degree from Sheffield under Prof Sally Hines will equip young people with transferrable critical, analytical and research skills that will give them a head start in real life jobs.

Oh, but it will equip them with the ability to identify 'offensive' and 'problematic' behaviour ...

@AutumnRose1
I’ve also been told off for blaming academics

Oh, please, feel free. I think academics have done a huge amount of damage. I've been looking at academic Twitter over lunchtime and have nothing for contempt for the bewildered and angry reaction to this election result, and the complete lack of self-awareness. For all their supposed intelligence they just don't see that their woke SJW bubble is a cult, an intolerant religion that demands complete capitulation. And that everyone else can see through it and voted accordingly.

I am also not white, and what you say about identity politics really resonates. I feel completely othered by my university's equality and diversity activity. If I'm not being made to feel inferior because my sex is no longer recognised (complete capitulation to gender ideology), then my skin colour is being drawn attention to, when it hadn't been since the 1980s. Making it obvious that your role on an interview panel is to not be white does not feel to me like progress.

Thanks for the link to the Andrew Doyle video, btw - I enjoyed that.

So to say "you should have worked harder at school" in order to get a better job, well, that assumes you went to a school where it was possible to "work harder" to get somewhere. And it assumes that working harder at school equates to the ability to get a better paying job. These things are simply not givens in my area of the North.

Some people don't realise the the social contract has been well and truly broken for many people.

Additionally on the race/nationality issue, a few points: the importation of US racial discourse means having a concept of whiteness and blackness that tallies with theirs. Whereas in the UK and Europe generally, the vast majority of people have white skin but identify according to nationality. A Croatian person is white, as is a Norwegian person, but the two people wouldn't necessarily consider themselves exactly the same racially. Americans do because they are very mixed. Black Americans have no way to trace their ancestry because the majority were bought and sold as slaves, and many have white ancestors also. Whereas here black people have (for example) Jamaican or Ghanaian backgrounds so there is a different cultural background. (I'm aware of slavery in the West Indies of course)
It's not a binary (!) black/white thing. In the US there is a "white" culture, memes about acting white, not being able to dance, not seasoning food etc that would seem odd to an Italian or French person.
So yeah, as mentioned by an earlier poster (Lang?) we have imported their obsession with race and not addressed our problems with class.
Someone shared some old Conservative posters on social media recently and there was one (low res so I couldn't read the copy) with a picture of a black man/same advert with an asian man stating that Labour called him "black" but the Tories called him British. It was in a list of "problematic" old election posters.

It's the concept of Civic Nationalism btw, that we are united by nationality and accept different races into the mix provided they are/become citizens and follow the rules in general.
I'm oversimplifying but I'd argue that the bulk of the country agrees with this kind of outlook as it has an inherent fairness to it. It maintains stability for the indigenous whites and means immigrants have a clear path to acceptance and security.
(The idea doesn't work if there is racism!)

Ironically the US has previously been very big on Civic Nationalism in theory (all pledge allegiance to a flag etc etc) but let down minorities in practice, like sending black soldiers on suicide missions in Vietnam and letting GWB serve in the National Guard at home.

Just posting this for lurkers who might not know of it as an idea.

Social cohesion is the root of a lot of this. From benign localism to xenophobia.
Feminists rightly objected to women getting landed with caring roles.
But it's good for society to have a large proportion of active engaged people at home, in extended familial and commu city networks .
Pity its so shit for the individual. But old folk being looked in on every day, for example, by a selection of dd's and dil's and neighbours is A Good Thing.

I think people do miss that kind of life. (Even the dd's and dil's - to be honest they're still doing it trying to as well as pay the bills).
That whole set up is threatened by lack of local jobs and infrastructure, by immigrants who haven't long roots

I live in a small old fashioned town. What everyone aspires to: steady job for the man. Part time near home for the mum. Near to elderly parents, siblings, homely things.
Nothing wrong with that but its ignored. I suppose the people who are setting policy are the go getting ambitious type and no side understands the other.

For all their supposed intelligence they just don't see that their woke SJW bubble is a cult, an intolerant religion that demands complete capitulation. And that everyone else can see through it and voted accordingly

GC,
I think that this is tied to the freedom of speech issue which is facing such an existential threat. During the last ten years or longer, an environment has been created in which people are unable in certain contexts, academia for example, to openly say they voted Conservative or Brexit. These are not regarded as valid political choices, but as evidence of profound evil. This Manichean view dominates in the echo chambers on Twitter and Facebook. It leads to absurd assertions like Theresa May was leading an extreme right wing fascist government. And these assertions are not challenged because the audience contains no dissenters.

I'm not being made to feel inferior because my sex is no longer recognised (complete capitulation to gender ideology), then my skin colour is being drawn attention to, when it hadn't been since the 1980s. Making it obvious that your role on an interview panel is to not be white does not feel to me like progress

That’s a grim indictment of the regression which seems to be happening. Douglas Murray uses this metaphor of a train pulling into a station, reaching its destination and suddenly veering off track, careening into the sidings. It’s sad that this is happening

And even then academic degrees are a mixed bag. I am not sure a sociology degree from Sheffield under Prof Sally Hines will equip young people with transferrable critical, analytical and research skills that will give them a head start in real life jobs.

Well, there's always the third sector merry-go-round where they can fuck up service users' lives with the wank Sally teaches them.

Bitter? Moi? Perish the thought.

The best ways I can think of to illustrate the way an American framework for understanding race (and ignoring class) has been imported is young British people talking about eating Mexican food or wearing sombreros as appropriation and an urgent issue to tackle. Yes, in the US this is huge, particularly post Trump and his bloody wall, but there are hardly any Mexican people in the UK. It's just not a political issue in a British context. Meanwhile, try explaining the situation that Polish people in the UK find themselves in to a woke American, and thus also to their woke British admirers of a certain age, and you'll hit a brick wall of why would anyone be prejudiced against them, they're white, how is this even an issue?

I feel like the fact that a lot of Americans don't really see Brits who're not white as Brits plays into this too, since they're having a massive influence on the woke uni educated younger generation. I once struggled to explain to a bunch of young Americans why going to see Tricky was like a warm hug of 90s nostalgia and felt like a bit of home when you're far away to me - they just didn't seem to get how that feeling of warm fuzzy familiar this is home for a white Brit could be attached to someone who's black. It's just such a different way of looking at things that attempting to import it to the UK just doesn't work, and I think that's why a lot of what are clearly meant to be woke anti-racist commentary from the young people influenced by that feels so jarring. They're attempting to analyse British social dynamics from an American perspective. And having imported the American refusal to engage with class issues too they're left totally unable to comprehend how Brexit could have happened.

(This is coming from someone who would have voted Remain, and whose Scottish family did. It took me a shamefully long time to understand why the vote went different in other parts of the UK.)

(Good posts, FlyingOink.)

Theresa May was acting in ways which were fundamentally illiberal manner which were against the principles of a liberal parliamentary democracy.

But that's also a different argument about whether that was about Brexit. May had a long track record of acting in a way which over stepped her power whilst as home security. It was right she was challenged.

Part of the problem here is a lack of understanding this and how a majority government is incredibly different to a minority one.

May failed to really engage with both sides early on which could have prevented a lot of misery of the last three 3 years. Until she outlined her version of Brexit which was much harder than had been proposed by anyone pre ref, plenty on both sides would have been fine with a soft exit.

May then had this idiocy about triggering A50 before having things in place which then meant she put herself in a weak position both with the EU and her own party. Her response was to piss off everyone and play everyone off.

Accountability is an important part of a functioning Liberal democracy - I completely agree with the university freedom of speech stuff. May tried to dodge it.

On the flip to that I have said for sometime the Remain side missed their window to push back for remaining. It was in the summer and autumn of 2016. I do think there was an argument for them to stop no deal but there two groups of MPs - those who did so to stop no deal and strike a deal and those who used it as an opportunity to try and reverse the ref.

Failure to recognise the moment to back down and compromise now means Brexit is likely to be harder than May proposed. I found that idiocy.

And there was an inability of remain and soft leave to come up with a coherent plan in much the same way that leave didn't have a plan when they won the ref.

A lot of what's been said here isn't dissimilar to what I've said about education and community for a long time.

It has frustrated me as the failing of both have been enormous. I do think that there is a real problem incoming about corruption and oligarchy in the UK though and far less accountability than there should be which Brexit has enabled, although it is part of a preexisting trend rather than a cause of it.

May was spectacularly inept and was promoted way beyond her ability. She managed to reduce Cameron’s majority to a precarious alliance with the DUP and her myriad failures as Home Secretary haunted her as PM. However, to suggest that she was ‘far right fascist’ is absurd.

you'll hit a brick wall of why would anyone be prejudiced against them, they're white, how is this even an issue?

This is a fundemental problem with the whole 'woke' worldview. Skin colour is the only ethnic difference they seem to recognise, with no understanding of wider cultural, religious, linguistic, and interwoven historic differences and alliances that exist across not just Europe, but Asia and Africa.

Sadly in doing so they miss all the rich and vibrant 'diversity' right on their doorstep. Their ignorance of the different countries that make up the UK (never mind the regional variations within them) never ceases to astound me, and was typified by Corbyn himself not realising Scotland is a different country with a different legal system. How lacking in curiosity do you have to be to spend 30 odd years in parliament and have completely failed to notice that minor detail?

May was spectacularly inept

I think she was bad at communicating - both listening and speaking - but I do believe she read her briefings, which I think is more than Johnson does.

Given America's own history with the "no dogs or Irish" signs on businesses and all they really ought to know better, but it's all been flattened out a bit.

This is such an interesting thread.

Picking up on the issue of May I think there were a number of ingredients. One was the glass cliff - she was undoubtedly given the job because all the men recognised it as a poisoned chalice. There was also an element of the Peter Principle. She managed her home office brief competently albeit without imagination, and with a draconian streak that I (as a lefty, but also as someone who cares deeply about civil liberties) found terrible. But as PM she was woefully out of her depth.

But the real problem with May was that as a Remainer, and as a draconian former home secretary, the only way her limited imagination allowed her to make any sense of the Brexit vote was through the lens of immigration control. (Lord Ashcroft's poll the day after the referendum asked people to identify their reasons for voting as they did, and only 50% of leavers had immigration as their top concern - so slightly over 1/4 of those who voted overall).

She then was prepared to sacrifice everything - a Norway type EEA deal, the Brexiteer's desired freedom over trade deals and desire to escape the regulatory orbit of the EU, Northern Ireland, everything, on the altar of "must control immigration." The end result was "BRINO" which not surprisingly pissed off both Remainers and Leavers in the house of commons.

Also yy to how the "woke" immerse themselves in a very American-centric understanding of race which doesn't carry across to Europe at all. (It always cracks me up when they start banging on about "listening to indigenous voices"... that'll be Wales and the South West, where most of the descendants of the Ancient Britons live, then.)

To be honest from what I've seen I'm not sure your average American is any more on board with 'wokeism' than people here are.

There seems to be a lot of disquiet about it effectively reintroducing segregation, about certain ethnic minorities being discriminated against for being too successful, about the same box ticking rather than trying to address real inequalities that we see here.