In political terms, 2023 was significant. For a start, this might have been the last year in which the Tories govern the UK for some time. They are heading for almost certain heavy electoral defeat, and if they move even further to the right thereafter, as seems likely, maybe to political oblivion.
The consequence of the Tory's political infighting and collapse as a cohesive political party has been the creation of a void in the centre-right of UK politics, which the Conservatives have vacated. To near-universal dismay, Labour has decided to fill that gap. As a result, there is now no party on the left-of-centre in the UK that has any current prospect of forming a government under a first-past-the-post electoral system.
The LibDems are doing well as a consequence of this situation but, at present, have little more to say or offer than Labour, except on proportional representation. For most, they do, therefore, remain a party of protest rather than a party of choice.
In England, the Greens are, in that case, the only real alternative choice, but the number of seats where they are viable is tiny, although I hope that their representation grows at the next election, simply to make the points that electoral reform is essential.
In Wales, Plaid Cymru, for all their own faults (and they did not have a great year) are the only obvious alternative to Labour, especially now that Mark Drakeford has left, leaving a largely unknown new leader in charge with the likelihood that they will be under Starmer's control being high.
Looking at Scotland, it has been a fascinating year. The SNP will want to forget almost everything about it. The Scottish police enquiry into Nicola Sturgeon's activities appears to be unusually protracted. I cannot be alone in wondering why. But what was really interesting was that the support for independence, after a brief stutter, appears to have survived this apparent political blow. There is good news in that. The idea that Independence is only an SNP issue might have been consigned to history, and that will be of significant benefit in the future.
All this being said, the obvious conclusion is that the rightward drift in politics in 2023 has been significant, dangerous, and to most people, deeply unwelcome.
A majority in the country do not think that migration is the biggest issue that we face and are instead well aware of the important role that migrants do and will play in our economy as our existing population ages.
Meanwhile, as millions of households suffer from increasing debt, those same sane people also understand that the economic policy that has been pursued by the Tories, to which Labour is also committed, has to be wrong for the country, as well as for them. A growing sense of anger on this issue is bound to become apparent, most especially if interest rates are kept artificially high for a long time under a new Labour government.
On top of this, whilst the Tory culture wars undoubtedly feed the prejudices of some in our society, many more are aware from their lived experience of just how toxic many of the right-wing claims are.
However. the number of people turning the news off is growing. The genocidal actions of the Israeli government have created a revulsion in many that means that they can no longer face the images coming from that war. Ukraine was bad; Gaza is one hundred times worse. The failure of too many politicians to appreciate this has been another contributor to the breakdown in the relationship between both our leading political parties and the country that they seek to represent.
My suggestion that follows is to my word for the year. That is disconnection. People are alienated from politics, the news, economic policy, the toxic language of the media, the imposition of a culture war that they do not want, the language of hatred that too many politicians use, and the political system as a whole, which most now realise cannot represent them. As a result, they know that there must be something better that could be done. Equally, they are aware that it is not on the horizon as yet. The consequence is disconnection.
That disconnection is either worrying or the precursor of change. I obviously hope that it is the second. Either way, I am not expecting 2024 to provide any answers to any real questions when we already know that the outcome of the general election will be the return of another government dedicated to fiscal austerity, utterly pointless fiscal rules, hopeless spending cuts, monetary policy of the worst sort that economic theory has to offer, and total failure to deliver for the needs of the UK as a whole.
No wonder more than 30% of people in Wales want to leave the union, with that number running at around 50% in Scotland. If you asked people in England how many wanted to leave Westminster behind I suspect that you would get a pretty high percentage as well. That is what disconnection looks like. That is what we will see in 2024.
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This sort of disconnect plays into the hands of pro-establishment figures and institutions as it is those electors that desire improvement and removal of the current status quo that are most likely to walk away when offered a choice between two near-identical options of no-change.
I’m currently involved (on the peripherary) of the Jamie Driscoll campaign – and building engagement even at this level is proving to be very heavy going to say the least.
While it most definitely is not my choice of how to do politics, I suspect that any sincerely left-wing, progressive or socialist movement will make little headway without having first installed an instantly recognisable individual to lead the campaign and one that acts in a manner that they find easily relatable (some nice, obvious and complimentary statements) as there’s little precious little interest or patience for more than the briefest of explanations about policy amongst many of the people that I and my colleagues interact with.
I fear you maybe right
In relation to disconnection, I have been following Politico’s ‘Poll of Polls’ and it is noteworthy that although Labour has maintained a lead of 19-20% over the Tories, the TOTAL for these two parties has been sliding. In late October it was consistently around 72-73%; in mid-to-late December 68%. The main beneficiary seems to be Reform, but I suspect that the most noteworthy outcome of the forthcoming election will be the lowest turnout for decades.
Interesting
Perhaps that is because ‘those electors’ are as disconnected from the Left, as the Right. The Right has a characteristic strategy of claiming they speak for the majority, with marked indifference to whether they do, or not – unless, of course they are being outflanked to the Right (for example, the Scottish Conservatives are endemically incapable of winning an election, describe defeat as victory, and thus scarcely even try; but they routinely claim that they alone speak for the Scottish people). The Left, it seems to me does not claim so much; but nevertheless expects the electors to shape up and vote for them, because the esoteric Left they represent has cornered the market in righteousness; whether or not the electors even understand or care what they mean.
Writing only for myself, I believe in what is most likely actually to work, and adapt to changing circumstances in an imperfect world; for the betterment of most, and with particular attention to those most deprived of decent life standards; and only for as long as the specific solution works. I believe that in the long run, that is also likely to be the most effective, cost and investment efficient solution- for everyone. In most cases it requires government to do most of the heavy lifting, and the biggest risks; acknowledging that neither Government or the private sector can, frankly ever be entirely trusted. Everything else is ideology, and candidly a waste of everyone’s valuable time.
John S Warren mentions that the Scottish Conservatives persistently “claim to speak for Scotland” while standing no chance of ever winning a majority in elections here. Labour are increasingly following this line too with much premature talk of winning most Scottish seats in the next UK General Election and using this to “justify” that they speak for Scotland.
If anyone is any doubt who speaks for Scotland just look at the persistent 50% support for Independence: they speak for Scotland and why would they vote for Labour, the Tories or LibDems whose policies exclude the possibility of Independence being considered? It seems likely to me that any gain by Labour in Scotland is more likely to be at the expense of the Tories than SNP. Alba might gain a few seats from SNP, but its core target is independence, as is that of the SNP. Damage could be done to that cause by splitting the independence vote, but the SNP is currently the only party capable of managing all the bureaucracy and negotiations that will inevitably arise in any successful independence campaign and, for that reason alone, I would hope that the electorate might be able to work that out.
In addition Salmond is by now a “yesterday’s man”: a good campaigner, but the revelations of the famed court case will have decimated the female vote, while his clumsy handling of the currency issue in 2014 has lost the confidence of all who witnessed it; his previous vocation working for RBS is described as ‘economist’, but his insistence on keeping the GB Pound after independence would have been disastrous for Scotland and was simply swept aside by Osborne and Darling refusing to permit it. Those who understood those matters in the pro-independence camp can never forgive him. Put this and the split-vote issue together and my conclusion is that the SNP vote will not be seriously affected by Alba. The main problem for Independence currently is that the SNP is undergoing a generational change, with old-guard politicians handing over to much younger colleagues who have far less experience and therefore diminished public exposure.
Thanks Ken
Wholly agreed re Labour in Scotland
I do not see Alba winning anything
Chris, are you on Facebook?
Lots of people on Facebook are supporting Driscoll and passing his messages on for next May. I even know someone in France who is sending his messages to her relatives and friends in the North East.
Everyone who has been to his meetings is impressed, particularly those up here who live in redwall seats. We know we have to vote for someone next year. It will be Jamie. Starmer shot himself in the foot when he banned him. You can see that by the amount of money he got very quickly as soon as he decided to stand as an independent.
Once we have an independent mayor in the North East we will realise that we don’t have to vote for the main two parties. However, we do need socialist independents, not just any old independents. The independents vote along with the tories on every vote in Durham County Council. We don’t want that.
Those Q&A sessions are great Jen (I’ve been to enough of them) but they mostly attract people already interested in Driscoll. Out on the streets, most people still have no idea who he is or confuse his post with that of the North Tyneside Mayor. The campaign itself is stagnating quite badly (those Q&A sessions while numerous are about the only campaign tool being employed at the moment) while Labour’s candidate is receiving invitations to give Ted Talks and getting some pretty serious positive publicity from them. I’m glad that you support Driscoll but currently his prospects of success in May are poor. Both he and his team need to get their collective act together very rapidly to stand any chance.
Its not the news I want to bring – I’m campaigning for him, but as things stand, the fact remains that he and his team are simply not doing enough to win.
A good write-up for him in the Chronicle.
https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/news/north-east-news/north-east-mayoral-election-2024-28339973
Nothing that Kim McGuinness promises that he hasn’t already started doing as North of Tyne Mayor. North of Tyne includes the whole of Northumberland already, doesn’t it?
He has links with weownit about transport and they will be supporting him and not the labour candidate.
I prefer to be positive about him. I know people who have always voted labour who will vote for him as he gets things done. They are also ashamed of what Starmer has done to him.
Good luck Chris,
Jamie has done much good as Mayor, we supported his initial fundraising. S8ncerely hope he can win
I just discovered today that since 2014 the British Government has had a Happiness Unit in Whitehall.
Well, not any more as they have just closed it. The Tories have given up on making people happy (did they ever try?). No surprise there, then.
https://inews.co.uk/opinion/government-can-happier-promises-2827312?ico=related_article_inline
Thanks for the link MarP: Wow, who knew? A secret department with a task made impossible by the policies of the people who set it up. That explains why the public has never heard of it or seen any publication by it. In other words the staff were literally paid for nothing out of public funds for 10 years. Hey ho – anything is possible in the UK, just don’t expect much of it to make sense!
It was a Cameron idea, now dropped when he is back…..
I heard about the ”What Works Centre for Wellbeing” when it was first set up. The fact that, in the mean time, I had totally forgotten the existence of the government’s centre is testament to how much difference it made.
At the time there was a lot of talk about wellbeing and nudging. I suspect Cameron was merely using a fashionable idea for sake of publicity and was not really serious.
For me, there were a number of events that demonstrated a disconnect by politicians from the electorate:
1 A lurch from social capitalism to predatory capitalism
2 The Labour Party not working with the Left wing, but kicking them out, undemocratically deselecting candidates, and working for the Tories.
3 The Tories wish to leave the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR)
4 Weakening the right to protest, so much so, that not only were journalists arrested, but people for praying (I’m an atheist)
5 Discovering that Prevent Counter-terrorism strategy lists “socialism” as a concern.
Sources
☑️ The Enablers of Predatory Capitalism, The American Prospect (2022) https://prospect.org/culture/books/enablers-of-predatory-capitalism/
☑️ “Margaret Hodge admits she did everything she could to prevent Labour winning an election”, The News Agent, X, https://twitter.com/jrc1921/status/1730607362577158398
☑️ “Former Labour Staffer ADMITS Bringing Down Corbyn”, YouTube (2023), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nIzHq_BeknI
☑️ Tories could campaign to leave European human rights treaty if Rwanda flights blocked, BBC News (2023) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-66438422
☑️ “Senior officers ordered ‘unlawful’ arrests of journalists at Just Stop Oil protests”, The Guardian (2022) https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/nov/23/senior-officers-ordered-unlawful-arrests-of-journalists-at-just-stop-oil-protests
☑️ “Police apologise to Christian campaigner arrested after ‘silently praying’ outside abortion clinic”, LBC News (2023) https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/police-sorry-abortion-clinic-silent-prayer-arrest/
☑️ Prevent duty guidance: England and Wales (2023) “Section 5. Left-wing, anarchist and single-issue ideologies” https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/prevent-duty-guidance
Thanks
https://skwawkbox.org/2023/12/29/video-ukraine-ambassador-ukraine-had-agreed-peace-deal-with-russia/
This is appalling. The war in Ukraine could have been over, instead of escalating, if it hadn’t been for the US and UK. We need to pass this around as much as possible.
At the same time the events of what happened at Bucha were revealed. This gave them an idea of what the future could hold.
Ukraine was told the US and NATO would support them. You have to realise Putin intended to take the whole of Ukraine back into Russia and thought the ‘Special Military Operation’ would over in a fortnight. So did many western analysts. The initial defeats of the Russians gave them pause and only press for the territory they captured.
I can’t find the original but it is summed up here.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-60562240
The Ukrainian leadership saw an alternative to a virtual capitulation on Russian terms. They wouldn’t be resisting as they are if they didn’t believe in the war.
just one alternative https://www.workersliberty.org/story/2022-11-16/nonsense-about-ukraine-peace-talks
Surely without the US and UK there wouldn’t be the support there has been for the Ukraine (by denying Russia the right to a neutral border country as promises) and the carnage there, and also the utterly inhumane genocide in Palestine which has been ramping up for decades.
Britain needs to cut its umbilical cord to the USA which is gradually taking over security systems in Australia and pulling countries into its anti-China agenda as well.
It’s an extremely dangerous world out there and much of it is rooted in what the USA wants.
Fair comment and agreed about the disconnect, but my main concern with the Tories will be the money that will still pour in to the party no matter how far right they become. This threat cannot be overstated and they need to be watched.
Correspondent John S Warren said :“I believe in what is most likely actually to work and adapt to changing circumstances in an imperfect world; for the betterment of most, and with particular attention to those most deprived of decent life standards; and only for as long as the specific solution works. I believe that in the long run, that is also likely to be the most effective, cost and investment efficient solution- for everyone.” But he doesn’t say what it might be. Others have tried.
In this regard, (harking back to an earlier thread) history is a matter of vivid record rather than imperfect recall, all the more convincing in our age of multimedia. Here is a report on the growth of London’s East End from the beginning of the 20th Century. Then, as now, life pivoted around the condition and availability of housing. The judgments and conclusions drawn then by Jack London might apply equally to present circumstances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kDsWyeGUyXA
In ‘Earth4All. A Survival Guide for Humanity’, https://www.clubofrome.org/publication/earth4all-book/ on pages 14-15, there are 24 graphs showing the impact of the industrial revolution on nature and society from 1750, which was gradual until 1950 when it began to expand exponentially towards converging tipping points that threaten the persistence of life on earth.
In Britain my generation, born in the 1940s, was possibly the only one to genuinely benefit from neo-liberalism, taking shape in a ripple from 11+ entry to grammar school, swelling to a wave of working class entrants to higher education in the 1960s and about to inherit the earth.
It turned out the future was not ours to embrace; not in our vision of a golden city on a hill, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8h7E5rtnFH4 brutally extinguished by carpet bombing in Vietnam, nor miserably drowned from a lifeboat of aspirants for home ownership capsized by refugees from the working class committed to everybody being better than average.
But then, defeat need not be ignominious if we garner some useful conclusions. The bulk of global warming science research warns of an impending cataclysmic and conclusive collapse but some of it suggests that there might be a best course of action(s) we should be committing to that might preserve some vestige of hope for a future. .https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z4EGUQm4soY&t=30s
“In Britain my generation, born in the 1940s, was possibly the only one to genuinely benefit from neo-liberalism, taking shape in a ripple from 11+ entry to grammar school, swelling to a wave of working class entrants to higher education in the 1960s and about to inherit the earth”.
That achievement wasn’t neoliberalism. The door was slowly closed on all that – by neoliberalism unleashed.
As for not offering the substance of an answer to everything. I was writing a brief comment on the barren nature of left and right, and making a general plea for a humane, empirically informed philosophical pragamtism; not writing a thesis, or a manifesto.
On the theme of disconnection Liz Truss’s honours list was released at 10.30 yesterday evening. Another sign of our broken “democracy “.
I propose a different word and interpretation: political void.
I do not disagree with your characterisation of the various parties, and broadly speaking they split into: the vaccuous (2), and the ineffectual/no-hopers (Lib dems and greens).
This is very very dangerous territory. It only needs a person, or group of people, able to articulate the woes of the country and the solutions to these woes. Corbyn started to do these things – but was stopped and it is questionable that he/his group could have delivered. This does not mean that somebody else will not step forward.
In the past, the hurdle of the mass media needed to be overcome (took +10 years in Weimar Germany). However, the Internet and its social media spawn have lowered these barriers. Couple that to a general reduction in the ability (note that word) to think critically (ref: FT article on same) and the ground has been laid for something potentially very nasty indeed. My money is on something emerging when “the loyal opposition” gets into power and there is zero noticeable change.
Mr Corbyn failed because he was easily (mis) characterised as a pacifist and traitor who believed in talking to “enemies” and finding ways of making peace. (Add in the hostility of the neocons, who would have done anything to prevent him taking office, and he was doomed.) The next person to propose a solution to the woes of the country (and Braverman and Badenoch are already tuning up to do so) will be a very different sort, but warlike and patriotic enough to win over those voters who were so easily persuaded of Mr Corbyn’s lack of fundamental Britishness.
The best book I got for Christmas is Poetry for the Many, compiled by Corbyn and McCluskey, with foreword by Melissa Benn and contributions from Loach, Rosen and Maxine Peake among others.
I live in a redwall constituency, and I know that even if it wasn’t disappearing before the next election that it would never be tory again.
Why would anybody listen and take notice of the lying deceiving tories again? They couldn’t even get Brexit done.
Corbyn wrote a poem himself, the last in the book, called Calais in Winter. He wrote it on his way back from a recent trip.
Even those people who wanted the borders to be controlled know that Corbyn is right about Calais, and that people should not have to live in such conditions.
They also know he’s right about Ukraine and Palestine.
Are you also suggesting that Corbyn isn’t a pacifist?
His latest group is the Peace and Justice Project.
Here precisely is why Starmer is utterly disconnected and of no long term use to the country. At root he doesn’t understand the consequences of human beings using money!
“orthodox economics does not actually theorize money, so much as it theorizes . . . its irrelevance.”
Page 3 of the following paper:-
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4585801
For all intents and purposes Starmer may as well have had a lobotomy!
Thank you
To read later
If I may add – a link which another poster offered in a related blog:
https://lawandhistoryreview.org/article/forum-christine-desans-making-money-roy-kreitner-reenergizing-political-economy/
Mrs Desan features prominently in both. Certainly the Law & History Review article is thought provoking.
The other big issue that human beings need to grapple with in addition to the true basis of money creation is our entanglement with things and whether AI can be used to help reduce the downsides:-
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265841569_The_Entanglements_of_Humans_and_Things_A_Long-Term_View
As we turn to the new year, I found myself reflecting on the the 2016 Brexit campaign and its aftermath. In briefly turning over the detritus of the Brexit record, I was struck by the undercurrent of immigration running through or underneath the public debate throughout. I looked back on what I had written at the time.
By 2023 net immigration to the UK had reached almost 750,000; seven years after the Brexit vote was going to give Britain back control; and in terms of the Brexiters main purpose, assert that control over immigration. Clearly it didn’t work; but I discovered the warnings that the Conservative-Brexiters solution wouldn’t work had been aired in the campaign. Even I could see what a Conservative Brexit Government would actually do; and it would not reduce immigration. If I could see it; surely they should see the problem? Surely the public could work it out? Clearly the Conservatives didn’t want to see it; and their supporters simply can’t face up to the mess they have created and do not understand. The design of Brexit was thus, at best presumably to mislead the voter.
I found I had written about immigration in a Bella Caledonia piece, in March 2020 (https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2020/03/01/neither-brightest-nor-best-the-new-uk-government-immigration-policy/). I made this quite obvious point:
“Let us look at official British immigration statistics. We are leaving the EU. EU citizens already do not feel very welcome, therefore we would expect EU immigration into Britain to fall; and it has fallen, but this is simply to miss the point. The proposition of Brexit was to take back control of Immigration, and to reduce the immigration numbers to the UK (forcefully promoted, whatever the consequences). Britain always has had control over non-EU immigration, and curiously has never done anything to use that control to reduce non-EU immigration in any meaningful way; it is just used as a self-regulating trade-off with EU immigration. We are merely now going through the process of switching from EU to Non-EU immigration, and are now in the middle of resetting the pipeline to point in a different direction. Do not expect anyone to look closely at anything. Non-EU immigration has actually increased, indeed it slowly gathering pace to replace the lost immigration from the EU. This was always going to happen. It was obvious and inevitable; indeed there can be little doubt that it was what the Conservative Government wanted to achieve; an election victory to execute Brexit (and triumphantly claim to have reduced EU immigration); with the target no doubt of not actually reducing net immigration to the UK at all.
Net immigration to the UK from the EU for the year to June, 2019 was 48,000. Non-EU immigration was 229,000. Non-EU immigration (which has already always been under British control) is now almost 5 times EU immigration. For comparison, ONS statistics for 2014 (provisional) were net EU immigration 142,000; non-EU immigration 168,000. In fact, as the ONS pointed out in 2014: ‘Net migration of non-EU citizens has been higher than net migration of EU citizens since 1980’; until around 2013. Almost nothing here is quite what it seems, or follows the contours of the slipshod politics”. This analysis was supported by a Table of ONS immigration statistics, year to September, 2019 (Long Term International Migration).
I also wrote about the same failings on Conservative immigration policy and its real purposes in Bella Caledonia, in 2017, before we had left the EU. There, in response to a comment from a critic who voted for Brexit, largely to reduce immigration I replied with these observations: “When we leave the EU immigration will NOT slow. It will slow from the EU, but it will simply switch from the EU to the non-EU; for two reasons. First the economy will not grow without immigration. London will not function without immigration. This does not only apply to ‘high-fliers’ either: immigration is required from the Ph.Ds to the cleaners and fruit-pickers. We have insufficient native resources in both. The WTO or similar deals with India or whomsoever will require an element of open borders.
Second, I predict that UK immigration will not fall significantly at all, whatever the government rhetoric or the promises given. The immigration system will go on leaking like a sieve. I suspect within a few years immigration rates will be higher than ever; just that it will almost all come from the non-EU. Immigration will not fall but it will be distorted by the Government attempting to pretend that they are ‘fixing it’, when they aren’t fixing it, and can’t. They will make a complete mess of the system and declare a triumph.
My single qualification to that scenario is that the British economy ‘tanks’ completely after Brexit. This is quite possible, if not probable. This is the only scenario in which immigration rates slowing is likely – in the real world – to occur. Look at this statistic: in 2015 53% of immigration to the UK came from the EU. 47% came from the non-EU (House of Commons Library, ‘Migration Statistics’, Briefing Paper SN06077, 7th March 2017; Table 1, p.12). Almost half. It is very, very easy to pick up the EU immigration slack simply be re-directing it elsewhere; provided of course you can do the international trade deals (with the key provisions in these deals being non-tariff regulations – like immigration). A big ‘if you can do trade deals’: and If you think “
‘immigration’ is going to be ‘fixed’ (ie., reduced) by Brexit, I suggest you are quite wrong, and probably being ‘conned’ by politicians who change shapes like Proteus, and their political colours like a chameleon. Only if the British economy is on the floor, out-cold, are you likely to be right. Take your pick”.
I made mistakes. Even with the economy on the floor, on the edge of recession, immigration increased; or perhaps the policy Conservative-Brexit policy was just to lose control of immigration altogether. I suspected the Conservatives would ignore their undertakings to their voters, and perhaps allow immigration to increase, but not to the extent that transpired. In any case, immigration increased from 240k in 2019, to 745,000 by 2023. The difference is not explained by small boats.
Little to disagree with – but if I may, it begs the question – why (& from where) are people coming? What makes the Uk such an attractive place to want to go to?
Possibles: possibly less affected by the climate disaster (hmmm), rule of law(ish) (perhaps… compared to … Yemen?) , jobs (even given poor pay?).
I don’t have any answers to the above, & I have yet to see something substantive. Perhaps time for the academics to turf it over, or perhaps they already have?
I do not think the UK is unique. Globalisation and digital technology have changed the world; and in combination have shown that as we innovate with the techniques used, we can do the easier (not easy, but skills we have – obviously – at scale) things (create new products, services, make profits, motivate people to buy, to desire to consume; enhance communications and transport; and create dreams an illusions through the moving image, and present it across the globe); we also create in people from places that do not have the material opulence or of the ‘West’ (or the freedoms the West possesses, and ostentatiously claim – or over-claim given our own deprivation and relative poverty), among before who before globalisation knew little of the West, or how to access it. Big Tech and modern communications have changed all that.
The movement of people, in a dangerous world where most people have little, and are exploited is all part of the consequences of globalisation we never gave much thought to fixing. It isn’t just people who move more easily in a global world. The viruses are also more freely moving here. It was not our design, but it is our legacy.
Thus, it is our fate endlessly to repeat Adam Ferguson’s great Enlightenment insight: “Every step and every movement of the multitude, even in what are termed enlightened ages, are made with equal blindness to the future; and nations stumble upon establishments, which are indeed the result of human action, but not the execution of any human design.” (Essay on Civil Society, 1767).
“among whom, before globalisation knew little of the West”.
And even now, without the typos, I confess it is a very clumsy construction, but it will have to do. I am not re-writing the whole thing now.
We aren’t just a bunch of nitpickers.
John S Warren says:
“As for not offering the substance of an answer to everything. I was writing a brief comment on the barren nature of left and right, and making a general plea for a humane, empirically informed philosophical pragamtism; not writing a thesis, or a manifesto.”
I said: “But he doesn’t say what it might be. Others have tried.”
That’s just a statement of fact, not an implied condemnation. I endorse his plea for commitment to “a humane, empirically informed philosophical pragmatism”.
The belief that “there is no better way” should always be an empirically tested hypothesis, but rarely is, being usually trumped by “the politics of conviction”.
Another fact is that the generations following us must face the consequences of our failures.
Philip Larkin pithily summed it up: “They fuck you up your mum and dad. They may not mean to but they do”.
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48419/this-be-the-verse
But we can’t stop trying, can we?
We never should
The following is a rich mine of science research and source of more testable hypotheses than you can shake a stick at, for those inclined to do so.
https://www.joboneforhumanity.org/ In their own words, “Job One for Humanity is a nonprofit climate change think tank that is 100% publicly funded. We provide independent and uncensored climate change analysis. We also provide an effective plan for preparing for, adapting to, and recovering from the climate change emergency. Our plan is based on the most current climate change science and provides practical, prioritized, and effective steps to start today.”
One of its hypotheses is that Nature will find a way of preventing complete extinction.
Worth waiting for? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=southern+royal+albatross&t=ffab&atb=v182-1&iar=videos&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DAGHrapGRBZM
As you probably know, Richard, that first flight typically lasts for over a year, during which the bird glides barely above the waves.
From a purely local view on the need of any semblance of a left of centre political party one could say your comment that “The Scottish police enquiry into Nicola Sturgeon’s activities appears to be unusually protracted. I cannot be alone in wondering why.” is an understatement about current Scotland politics anti-independence influences up here. Your post and all the comments are a refreshing insight on it all.
Thanks
The Police Scotland investigation is indeed protracted and still under way and hangs in limbo with no charges being brought. Because it is still a live case albeit without charges, no case-specific comments can be made. However my hunch is that it may eventually peter out with no case to answer, but some very useful adverse publicity was generated (cf the incident-scene blue tent in the garden as though it was a murder scene), massive amounts of anti-independence headlines and stories got priority publicity across all the UK mass media and the career of a tricky opponent was derailed, as was the party she led. How convenient!
A convenient coincidence that is a very obvious one to say least