I'm not an academic and certainly not well versed in academic prose but I so welcome these articles which offer me a framework to shape my understanding of this political insanity that is unfolding in Britain. The comments are also equally enlightening - Thank you 😊
"Its sole raison d’être appears to be to keep a lid on social tension by buying off particular interest groups so as to hold them together for ramshackle support". But, it is not solely by buying off of various interest groups. Suppression of free speech appears to be increasingly used as a way of trying to control dissent - Communciations Acts and the Online Harms Act togther with Non Crime Hate Incidents - are now on the statute book.
T E Utley said (in 1974) that a goverment that failed to maintain the cultural and moral unity of a nation can only govern by tyranny. It would seem that political hedonism against a background of mass immigration at historically unparalled rates is leading to greater tryanny as well as economic suicide. The goverment's secretive working group on Islamophobia, its proposed legislation on 'pub banter', i.e. getting employers to monitor unapproved speech, along with less than accurate facial recognition and proposal for digital identity (and controllable digital currency) are all leading to a very un-English, very unwelcome state. Yes, we all feel the pressure rising and fear the lid of the cooker that is our nation blowing off sometime during this Parliament. Meanwhile, our institutions continue to promulgate narratives that they hope will preclude revolt - black people built Britain, white privilege is a disease, etc. which far from inducing postive passivity is building up resentment.
Kipling suggested
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
By God the arrears are getting very long indeed. The disconnect between goverment and governed is growing. A Kipling level of hate may not yet be in place and may not perhaps be enough in its own to foment the breakdown of civil order that the establishment has feared ever since the French Revoltuion, but a bankrupt state will tip things over.
Tony Benn remarked that there are two ways goverments control populations: fear and demoralisation. The pandemic showed just how useful to goverments generating fear is - the Russians are coming and far-right bandwagons are the latest not very convincing attempts - but demoralisation is well underway. We retreat into our personal hinterlands but only so long as the economy allows us to. When the welfare spending debt crisis which we and other Western nations appear to be inexorably heading finally bankrupts us - gradually then suddenly in Hemingway's pithy turn of phrase has it - then control and demoralisation will fail as will fear. Then, as Kipling also suggested, "you'll have the whole brood around your ears".
This worries me. I'm paid in sterling and live with the euro. Overnight, Reeves's tears have whittled down the the retirement fund I mostly rely on. I'm already been converting GBP to Euro at 5 cents below where the exchange rate was 2 months ago. I'm pretty damned financially precarious and there's nothing I can do. If I move my GBP into France the state here will hammer me at almost 50% tax. There is no escape. I just cancelled a bunch of Substack subscriptions (not this one) to mitigate the immediate losses.
But, I have good news. According to my LinkedIn feed this morning we should be more concerned with all the misogyny of commenting on Rachel's tears. I was so pissed off I almost risked posting something about it.
The ‘misogyny’ thing is bizarre. What, women can’t be expected to act professionally when in the second most important political role in the country? That sounds kind of sexist to me….
Starmer is a Fabian and seems determined to introduce Socialism by gradual steps. We are now living in the City of Destruction. The gradualisms of Obstinate and Pliable nudge us closer and closer to the Slough of Despond. You can even argue that the Pilgrim's burden of sin is being replicated by assertions of racism, sexism, trans whatever. It is not by happy chance that I snatch ideas from The Pilgrim's Progress.
The State (currently led by Mr Worldly Wiseman) has become desperate to tempt us away from making personal progress. At least the last two or thee generations now expect the State to provide health care, education, housing (and in extremis military protection). The current Government seems to be making it more and more difficult to choose different providers. And yet the micro patronages they dispense are a con - we are being bribed with our own money.
So, what to do? Firstly elect different politicians from outside the cosy club of welfare dispensers.
Secondly peel back the tentacles of the state. This will have to be done gradually to avoid riots by those furious at having 'their' patronages taken away. I'd suggest 'comparatively easy' steps first such as defunding the BBC and closing the Arts Councils. Although the luvvies will squeal I suspect the general population won't be much bothered. Then restore VAT exemption to private schools and remove Inheritance Tax *entirely*.
Once people get the idea that their money is their own and not being drained by a parasite State then you can start working on the big issues like the NHS, too many QUANGOs and too much regulation.
The Pilgrim woke to find his Progress was all a dream. We should be so lucky.
Yet MPs seem to be falling over themselves these days to describe debates as "Parliament at its best." I believe they said that about the assisted dying debate. This, despite the fact that few of them seem to have much interesting to say beyond the usual platitudes or the ability to say it well.
It is, as you say, an awful situation and its hard to see how we'll get out of it safely. Speaking selfishly, as a Jew, it's around this time in a failing regime's existence that the old antisemitic stereotypes and blame games start and, lo, they already have.
Another exceptional post. What might be the 'trigger' for next stage, ie, the big event unraveling or the tyrannical rule stage. One looks like an energy explosion (the big event unraveling) the other a slow constriction of that energy to reach the tyranny. My money is also on the former, but that maybe because it appears to offer a faster off ramp from where we are now, and the real chaos of such a scenario may lead to awful unintended consequences. However I'm willing to take the chance. One thing surely must be now certain, we will see increasingly hard line measures by the state to constrain quickly, and thus the energy becomes more concentrated and in the end analysis it is one of energy vs. its containment vessel.
What we saw in 2020-21 is that the British people will swallow any amount of shit and endure any level of humiliation and degradation so long as there is booze in the off license, Netflix and social media and football and porn to consume, the BBC to tell us what to think, and a government that's able to pump just enough money into our bank accounts to keep us fed and housed. Yes, if that basic level of social cohesion collapses then all bets are off, but the government will always be able to manufacture a spurious crisis in order to justify whatever levels of control it needs to keep the show on the road. Wear a mask, keep six feet apart, stay in my own home, close the schools, inject whatever you tell me to? Yes sir! Thank you sir!
Many of us did not bow to the government dictats over jabs and the 6 feet apart rule. We met friends, we went out, we didn't clap 'our NHS', we objected to school closures. Not all sheep, by any means.
And the Covid débâcle has led to the majority of the population saying 'Never again' because of the spurious claptrap we were fed. We now feel a visceral hatred towards politicians and their constant lies. We don't believe them and they can't get away from that.
Influence will be hard to wield when there's next a Parliamentary attempt to bamboozle the public.
I hope you are right. It's hard to really say how many people now feel this way. Something has perhaps shifted in the collective psyche - a mistrust, a disengagement, a turning away, a switching off. I don't see the angry reaction that you describe in any obvious, widespread way, but maybe I'm just projecting my own sense of impotent despair. And well done for resisting the psyop. It wasn't easy. Everyone who stood up against it gave me heart during the strangest and bleakest time I have ever known.
I believe the tide has turned and the current government is only deepening the sense of the rot at the heart of politics. We cannot afford to despair, just be clear-eyed about the state's need to control and that we have to resist in all the ways that will make a difference.
The scientific coverage since Covid shows how right it was to be sceptical of government overreach. If we can only highlight the real science as opposed to the quackery and end the despicable tradition of pharma bribery ...
I think the spark will be something obvious in hindsight but impossible to predict. A chain of events, or a 'psychic earthquake' - 3 or 4 bad things in quick succession.
You clearly haven't been to Tunbridge Wells recently if you think it is still stuffed with the comfortably wealthy living insulated lives! The wealthy upper middle class are all over the place and have yet to be really caught (see Glastonbury or Climate/Palestine protests) but the normal people of Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks, even Tonbridge (former "warm beer and white bread" enclave between the two posho towns) are all feeling the wind changing around them. The cost of living in these areas has become almost unbearable for normal people, housing estates for Hong Kongers have appeared, job security has vanished, high streets are full of empty shops and parking requires a small mortgage. The wealthy simply have more cushions supporting them but they also have much further to fall. I lived in Tonbridge for 30 years and recently moved - couldn't afford to stay in west Kent so now live in rural mid Kent. When the revolution starts, I'm banking on the white van man of the Medway Towns to finally realise he's been taken for a fool by the ruling class. These are people who still just about know who they are, what they stand for and what is worth fighting for. Bring it on!
It's a rather depressing fact that the retired colonels have all gone now and even Tunbridge Wells is struggling - voted LibDem last time I think which is as near to socialism as they get down there! (and I realised you were joking but I, rather pathetically, always have to protect my county from absolutely any negative comments - it amuses my husband no end as he's not Kentish so doesn't appreciate it's the Superior County!)
I posted this on X under the title The Terrifying Facts of Political Life. Unbelievable in this day and age but for a few years now I believe we need a benevolent dictator that understands this message if we are to survive the future.
My dear older brother, not a man interested at all in politics, rugby being his passion, following Lions tours and World Cups in their entirety, has long held that a benevolent dictator is our best bet.
He may be right. Got to be better than a sociopath.
This article really clicked for me — like a lightbulb moment. It connects a few things I’ve sensed for years: the way weakness is promoted and how any kind of pain is treated as unacceptable, even a kind of moral failure.
But pain and struggle are often what drive real change.
Sure, some people change on their own, but usually it’s because they’ve learned from consequences — kind of like operant conditioning, where behaviour is shaped by what happens after.
Take that away, and there's no friction, no wake-up call, no rock bottom to hit. Nothing to force someone to turn their life around.
Add to that modernity’s obsession with judging people by their intentions rather than their outcomes, and what a toxic brew happens: no consequences, no accountability, and no pressure to grow — just a constant focus on how someone meant well, no matter what actually happened.
Oh, and I totally agree with you about the ‘Yookay’ leading the charge in all this nonsense. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because we industrialised first — and now we’ll be the first to come out the other side, into something entirely new because of it.
Yes, this is the essence of the problem, but the reassuring (?) thing is it can't go on forever. Reality doesn't disappear and it can only be avoided for so long. We're coming to the point at which avoidance is no longer possible...
This is very helpful as always, thank you. Just one thing that troubles me. It’s true that eye watering sums are spent on personal independence payments and as you say, the cost is constantly rising. Of course there are those that abuse the system but if that is used as a reason to stem the tide, thousands of deserving people will suffer as I witnessed many years ago following a reform of the system. Could it be that the numbers of deserving people are indeed rising but nobody wants to acknowledge why so many people are unable to live without support? Jane Wills is a recently retired academic who writes the Autism Tribune in an attempt to raise awareness of the rapidly rising numbers of children and young people with autism and other neurological and physical problems. It seems that nobody in government is prepared to explore the root cause of the problem which she so clearly highlights.
Oh, there is no question something is going on - a lot of people live profoundly miserable lives, and a lot of people need state handouts because they do not have extended families willing or able to look after them. This is a great societal problem but not one the state can really solve (it actually works to the state’s advantage in the short term because it cultivates dependence).
I'm not an academic and certainly not well versed in academic prose but I so welcome these articles which offer me a framework to shape my understanding of this political insanity that is unfolding in Britain. The comments are also equally enlightening - Thank you 😊
Thanks! I’m glad people find my rants somewhat helpful.
"Its sole raison d’être appears to be to keep a lid on social tension by buying off particular interest groups so as to hold them together for ramshackle support". But, it is not solely by buying off of various interest groups. Suppression of free speech appears to be increasingly used as a way of trying to control dissent - Communciations Acts and the Online Harms Act togther with Non Crime Hate Incidents - are now on the statute book.
T E Utley said (in 1974) that a goverment that failed to maintain the cultural and moral unity of a nation can only govern by tyranny. It would seem that political hedonism against a background of mass immigration at historically unparalled rates is leading to greater tryanny as well as economic suicide. The goverment's secretive working group on Islamophobia, its proposed legislation on 'pub banter', i.e. getting employers to monitor unapproved speech, along with less than accurate facial recognition and proposal for digital identity (and controllable digital currency) are all leading to a very un-English, very unwelcome state. Yes, we all feel the pressure rising and fear the lid of the cooker that is our nation blowing off sometime during this Parliament. Meanwhile, our institutions continue to promulgate narratives that they hope will preclude revolt - black people built Britain, white privilege is a disease, etc. which far from inducing postive passivity is building up resentment.
Kipling suggested
It was not part of their blood,
It came to them very late
With long arrears to make good,
When the English began to hate.
By God the arrears are getting very long indeed. The disconnect between goverment and governed is growing. A Kipling level of hate may not yet be in place and may not perhaps be enough in its own to foment the breakdown of civil order that the establishment has feared ever since the French Revoltuion, but a bankrupt state will tip things over.
Tony Benn remarked that there are two ways goverments control populations: fear and demoralisation. The pandemic showed just how useful to goverments generating fear is - the Russians are coming and far-right bandwagons are the latest not very convincing attempts - but demoralisation is well underway. We retreat into our personal hinterlands but only so long as the economy allows us to. When the welfare spending debt crisis which we and other Western nations appear to be inexorably heading finally bankrupts us - gradually then suddenly in Hemingway's pithy turn of phrase has it - then control and demoralisation will fail as will fear. Then, as Kipling also suggested, "you'll have the whole brood around your ears".
I’m sad to say I find it quite hard to disagree with your prediction.
Kipling. Our finest Far Right poet.
This worries me. I'm paid in sterling and live with the euro. Overnight, Reeves's tears have whittled down the the retirement fund I mostly rely on. I'm already been converting GBP to Euro at 5 cents below where the exchange rate was 2 months ago. I'm pretty damned financially precarious and there's nothing I can do. If I move my GBP into France the state here will hammer me at almost 50% tax. There is no escape. I just cancelled a bunch of Substack subscriptions (not this one) to mitigate the immediate losses.
But, I have good news. According to my LinkedIn feed this morning we should be more concerned with all the misogyny of commenting on Rachel's tears. I was so pissed off I almost risked posting something about it.
Argentina??
The ‘misogyny’ thing is bizarre. What, women can’t be expected to act professionally when in the second most important political role in the country? That sounds kind of sexist to me….
Grim reading, but almost certainly true.
Starmer is a Fabian and seems determined to introduce Socialism by gradual steps. We are now living in the City of Destruction. The gradualisms of Obstinate and Pliable nudge us closer and closer to the Slough of Despond. You can even argue that the Pilgrim's burden of sin is being replicated by assertions of racism, sexism, trans whatever. It is not by happy chance that I snatch ideas from The Pilgrim's Progress.
The State (currently led by Mr Worldly Wiseman) has become desperate to tempt us away from making personal progress. At least the last two or thee generations now expect the State to provide health care, education, housing (and in extremis military protection). The current Government seems to be making it more and more difficult to choose different providers. And yet the micro patronages they dispense are a con - we are being bribed with our own money.
So, what to do? Firstly elect different politicians from outside the cosy club of welfare dispensers.
Secondly peel back the tentacles of the state. This will have to be done gradually to avoid riots by those furious at having 'their' patronages taken away. I'd suggest 'comparatively easy' steps first such as defunding the BBC and closing the Arts Councils. Although the luvvies will squeal I suspect the general population won't be much bothered. Then restore VAT exemption to private schools and remove Inheritance Tax *entirely*.
Once people get the idea that their money is their own and not being drained by a parasite State then you can start working on the big issues like the NHS, too many QUANGOs and too much regulation.
The Pilgrim woke to find his Progress was all a dream. We should be so lucky.
Quangos...
And NGOs, or as someone here re-acronymised them to GNGOs, i.e.
Governmental
None
Governmental
Organisations
Such as the various almost completely taxpayer funded "charities" whose sole purpose is to lobby government.
Yet MPs seem to be falling over themselves these days to describe debates as "Parliament at its best." I believe they said that about the assisted dying debate. This, despite the fact that few of them seem to have much interesting to say beyond the usual platitudes or the ability to say it well.
It is, as you say, an awful situation and its hard to see how we'll get out of it safely. Speaking selfishly, as a Jew, it's around this time in a failing regime's existence that the old antisemitic stereotypes and blame games start and, lo, they already have.
Yes, the familiar scapegoat has been identified. Girard is essential reading on this.
Very symbolic of a completely broken country/society
What to do?! Pray?
Another exceptional post. What might be the 'trigger' for next stage, ie, the big event unraveling or the tyrannical rule stage. One looks like an energy explosion (the big event unraveling) the other a slow constriction of that energy to reach the tyranny. My money is also on the former, but that maybe because it appears to offer a faster off ramp from where we are now, and the real chaos of such a scenario may lead to awful unintended consequences. However I'm willing to take the chance. One thing surely must be now certain, we will see increasingly hard line measures by the state to constrain quickly, and thus the energy becomes more concentrated and in the end analysis it is one of energy vs. its containment vessel.
What we saw in 2020-21 is that the British people will swallow any amount of shit and endure any level of humiliation and degradation so long as there is booze in the off license, Netflix and social media and football and porn to consume, the BBC to tell us what to think, and a government that's able to pump just enough money into our bank accounts to keep us fed and housed. Yes, if that basic level of social cohesion collapses then all bets are off, but the government will always be able to manufacture a spurious crisis in order to justify whatever levels of control it needs to keep the show on the road. Wear a mask, keep six feet apart, stay in my own home, close the schools, inject whatever you tell me to? Yes sir! Thank you sir!
Unfair.
Many of us did not bow to the government dictats over jabs and the 6 feet apart rule. We met friends, we went out, we didn't clap 'our NHS', we objected to school closures. Not all sheep, by any means.
And the Covid débâcle has led to the majority of the population saying 'Never again' because of the spurious claptrap we were fed. We now feel a visceral hatred towards politicians and their constant lies. We don't believe them and they can't get away from that.
Influence will be hard to wield when there's next a Parliamentary attempt to bamboozle the public.
I hope you are right. It's hard to really say how many people now feel this way. Something has perhaps shifted in the collective psyche - a mistrust, a disengagement, a turning away, a switching off. I don't see the angry reaction that you describe in any obvious, widespread way, but maybe I'm just projecting my own sense of impotent despair. And well done for resisting the psyop. It wasn't easy. Everyone who stood up against it gave me heart during the strangest and bleakest time I have ever known.
I believe the tide has turned and the current government is only deepening the sense of the rot at the heart of politics. We cannot afford to despair, just be clear-eyed about the state's need to control and that we have to resist in all the ways that will make a difference.
The scientific coverage since Covid shows how right it was to be sceptical of government overreach. If we can only highlight the real science as opposed to the quackery and end the despicable tradition of pharma bribery ...
I think the spark will be something obvious in hindsight but impossible to predict. A chain of events, or a 'psychic earthquake' - 3 or 4 bad things in quick succession.
You clearly haven't been to Tunbridge Wells recently if you think it is still stuffed with the comfortably wealthy living insulated lives! The wealthy upper middle class are all over the place and have yet to be really caught (see Glastonbury or Climate/Palestine protests) but the normal people of Tunbridge Wells, Sevenoaks, even Tonbridge (former "warm beer and white bread" enclave between the two posho towns) are all feeling the wind changing around them. The cost of living in these areas has become almost unbearable for normal people, housing estates for Hong Kongers have appeared, job security has vanished, high streets are full of empty shops and parking requires a small mortgage. The wealthy simply have more cushions supporting them but they also have much further to fall. I lived in Tonbridge for 30 years and recently moved - couldn't afford to stay in west Kent so now live in rural mid Kent. When the revolution starts, I'm banking on the white van man of the Medway Towns to finally realise he's been taken for a fool by the ruling class. These are people who still just about know who they are, what they stand for and what is worth fighting for. Bring it on!
I was teasing about Tunbridge Wells - I take the point. Having gone to Kent for university I have a lot of affection for the county.
It's a rather depressing fact that the retired colonels have all gone now and even Tunbridge Wells is struggling - voted LibDem last time I think which is as near to socialism as they get down there! (and I realised you were joking but I, rather pathetically, always have to protect my county from absolutely any negative comments - it amuses my husband no end as he's not Kentish so doesn't appreciate it's the Superior County!)
I’m seriously with David Betz.
People are angry extremely angry.
Brilliant!!
I posted this on X under the title The Terrifying Facts of Political Life. Unbelievable in this day and age but for a few years now I believe we need a benevolent dictator that understands this message if we are to survive the future.
My dear older brother, not a man interested at all in politics, rugby being his passion, following Lions tours and World Cups in their entirety, has long held that a benevolent dictator is our best bet.
He may be right. Got to be better than a sociopath.
Brilliant David .................. bit harsh on Tunbridge Wells
This article really clicked for me — like a lightbulb moment. It connects a few things I’ve sensed for years: the way weakness is promoted and how any kind of pain is treated as unacceptable, even a kind of moral failure.
But pain and struggle are often what drive real change.
Sure, some people change on their own, but usually it’s because they’ve learned from consequences — kind of like operant conditioning, where behaviour is shaped by what happens after.
Take that away, and there's no friction, no wake-up call, no rock bottom to hit. Nothing to force someone to turn their life around.
Add to that modernity’s obsession with judging people by their intentions rather than their outcomes, and what a toxic brew happens: no consequences, no accountability, and no pressure to grow — just a constant focus on how someone meant well, no matter what actually happened.
Oh, and I totally agree with you about the ‘Yookay’ leading the charge in all this nonsense. I can’t help but wonder if it’s because we industrialised first — and now we’ll be the first to come out the other side, into something entirely new because of it.
Yes, this is the essence of the problem, but the reassuring (?) thing is it can't go on forever. Reality doesn't disappear and it can only be avoided for so long. We're coming to the point at which avoidance is no longer possible...
This is very helpful as always, thank you. Just one thing that troubles me. It’s true that eye watering sums are spent on personal independence payments and as you say, the cost is constantly rising. Of course there are those that abuse the system but if that is used as a reason to stem the tide, thousands of deserving people will suffer as I witnessed many years ago following a reform of the system. Could it be that the numbers of deserving people are indeed rising but nobody wants to acknowledge why so many people are unable to live without support? Jane Wills is a recently retired academic who writes the Autism Tribune in an attempt to raise awareness of the rapidly rising numbers of children and young people with autism and other neurological and physical problems. It seems that nobody in government is prepared to explore the root cause of the problem which she so clearly highlights.
https://open.substack.com/pub/theautismtribune
Oh, there is no question something is going on - a lot of people live profoundly miserable lives, and a lot of people need state handouts because they do not have extended families willing or able to look after them. This is a great societal problem but not one the state can really solve (it actually works to the state’s advantage in the short term because it cultivates dependence).
David, will you be speaking at any conferences / festivals in the future?
Academic ones mostly but there is one in September which I’ll advertise here shortly!
Illuminating and underpinned by relevant research.