How closely linked are lockdown and Brexit? - Spectator Coffee House, October 10, 2020

How closely linked are lockdown and Brexit?

By Patrick West

Once upon a time, a long time ago, this country was consumed by the matter of Brexit. Everywhere you turned, in every medium, even among friends and colleagues, you couldn't get away from the subject: everyone was talking about Brexit. We were obsessed by it. From 2016 to 2019 there was no escape.

All of this changed this year. With the pandemic, the rancorous matter of Brexit vanished, or at least stopped becoming the emotive, divisive matter of primary concern. It has been relegated to a pedestrian news story about trading rights. In the year of the coronavirus and all its horrors, paranoia and despair, Brexit has become a sideshow. Right?

Wrong. While the clamorous conflict between Leavers and Remainers has ostensibly ceased, in our collective subconscious the same cleavage in our society remains – only the subject matter has changed. As you may have concluded from newspapers and your social media feed, Remainer and Leave camps have merely metamorphosed into pro-lockdown and anti-lockdown tribes.

For instance, back in 2016 it was Allison Pearson in the Daily Telegraph and Frederick Forsyth in the Daily Express who were the most vociferous in their invectives against the EU. This year, these two characters – among many other columnists and voices in general – have been just as ferocious in their denunciations of lockdowns, masks and curfews. When it comes to anti-lockdown/Leave and lockdown/Remain, the two camps, respectively, are often the same lot.

The parallel is at its most obvious when it comes to rhetoric about elites and 'experts'. During the Brexit referendum, Remainers often deferred to experts in academia or the City who warned about the dire economic consequences of Brexit. Leavers cited everyday wisdom and lived experience in their argument why we should leave the EU. Back then, the debate centred on academic knowledge and deference to experts, versus empirical evidence and common sense. It's the same today.

This argument from lived experience is repeatedly employed by the anti-lockdown-minded because the loudest voices to oppose further government restrictions come from small businesses. It's the anti-EU, lower-middle class types who own small shops and run small businesses who have been hit hardest by coronavirus measures. They are consequently the least inclined to support draconian anti-pandemic measures. There is no 'working from home' option for many small businesses or your manual, working class type from the north-east or midlands.

If Brexit was a class issue, then so is Covid. Working-class people who voted against the EU did so as much in revolt against the London metropolitan elite as they did against Brussels. There was a twin resentment then and there is twin resentment now. It's the Somewhere people versus the Anywhere people conflict all over again.

As with Brexit, we have a divide between the working class who can't work at home, and largely an upper-middle class in the Home Counties who are happy to do so – because they can. On average they have larger houses and more gardens, which make domestic life for them and their family palatable. For them, lockdown measures are merely a nuisance. For those in flats or terraced houses, and for those who cannot work remotely, lockdown is a nightmare.

Ultimately, it comes down to a choice between freedom and security, between libertarianism and utilitarianism. That was the fundamental question posed in 2016. Do we vote to leave the EU, and in doing so face an exciting and prosperous, or perhaps an uncertain and perilous future? Or do we vote to stay, knowing that things will be tolerable in an undemocratic and sclerotic union that at least affords us free trade?

We are faced with a different problem today, but it's still one that divides statist and libertarians. Either we are to be subjected to endless and repeated lockdowns, returning indoors every few months, with the hope that deliverance will come in months soon with a vaccine. Or our masters might miraculously take the libertarian leap in the dark, deciding to set free our youth and healthy working age populace, returning them back to the public sphere and back to normality.

Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of 'Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times' (Societas, 2017)

Why it’s fashionable to hate your own country - Spiked, October 2, 2020

 

Why it’s fashionable to hate your own country

This is more about parading virtue than reckoning with history.

Patrick West


If one had to explain today’s culture wars in the barest, most simple terms, the best method would be to refer to David Goodhart’s division of peoples into the Somewheres and the Anywheres. In Britain, America and elsewhere we see a conflict between those attached to their homeland, its history and its traditions, and a more affluent, mobile elite, who profess to be more internationalist in outlook – because they can afford to be – and who are less likely to revere the tradition and culture of the lands, cities and towns of their birth.

This is to put it mildly. Going back to the 1930s, as George Orwell famously observed, the Anywhere class is not so much casually indifferent to the culture of their place of birth as positively hostile to it. The ostensible internationalists of Orwell’s time venerated anything that emerged from Moscow or Paris, in contradistinction to that which stemmed from petty, boring, philistine, church-going, beer-drinking England.

The culture wars of the 21st century illustrate that this division very much remains, albeit in mutated form. This was illustrated recently by the decision of a debating society at Trinity College, Dublin to rescind an invitation to Richard Dawkins to speak at a function, on account of his critical viewpoints on Islam. Dawkins, perhaps the most famous atheist of our times, has described the faith as ‘the greatest force for evil in the world today’, and referred to the ‘pernicious influence’ of Islamic faith schools.

Atheism is the default position of most students, and anyone in their twenties who likes to style themselves as a radical freethinker will call themselves an atheist, so you might think Dawkins would find favour in their numbers. And indeed he does – but only when he is attacking Christianity. When it comes to denouncing Islam he is implicitly making the grievous transgression of racism, of attacking the Other, of something sacred and international to the Anywhere class.

To attack Christianity, something that pertains to the Self, to the Somewhere people, is conversely positively fashionable and will find you friends and allies among like-minded, ostensible and ostentatiously international types.

It is a pattern repeated elsewhere. In America we have white, liberal, coastal types mocking Donald Trump and his blue-collar supporters for being small-minded, borderline or actual racists, and for never leaving their opioid-infested, ghastly Middle American towns. In Britain we have been all too accustomed to the Remainer depiction of anti-EU Brexiteers as low-information morons from the provinces who didn’t even know what they voted for.

The white-on-white narrative between the enlightened, educated Brahmin class and the brainless Morlocks is repeated on both sides of the Atlantic, whether it be Momentum or BBC executives versus brainwashed chavs stuck in the past yearning for Empire, or white Black Lives Matter and Antifa virtue-enforcers seeking conflict with redneck MAGA types. On both sides of the Atlantic we see Anywhere liberals denounce the history of their own country as one of genocide and racism.

The abiding and inherent tendency of the people of the Anywhere class is thus to denigrate their own country. The motivation for this should be obvious, if we view this conspicuous self-hatred in terms of virtue-signalling. It is to draw attention to oneself, to display what an enlightened and decent person you are, prepared to right the wrongs of the past and confront the wrong-minded folk of the present. It’s a modern form of self-flagellation, an egocentric, narcissistic, often insincere form of romantic primitivism that goes back to Rousseau, in which the childlike, innocent Other is always sanctified as superior.

The showy politics of the Anywhere liberal-left is often politics to make you feel good. It’s posturing to make others know that you are good.


The new dogmas

Back in the late 20th century it was often observed that Western society had lost faith in its old certitudes, in its faith in reason, progress, grand narratives and objectivity itself. According to a certain coterie of mostly French intellectuals, professors among the humanities departments in universities and journalists in elevated echelons of the press, there was a consensus that we lived in a postmodern society, hopelessly mired in relativism, doubt and multiple irreconcilable interpretations. No one could really say what was true or not as there was no ultimate arbiter of truth.

How things are different today. Our society now seems in precisely an opposite impasse. We now live in a culture suffused with ferocious certitudes, in which everyone believes they possess the truth. This is why verbal conflicts on social media have become so vituperative and unpleasant. This is why political violence and conflict between factions has returned to our streets for the first time since the 1930s. This is why people hold such tenacious views on transgenderism, race, the European Union or the future of America. This is the reason for our conformist and censorious cancel culture of No Platforming. Everyone knows what’s right and seeks to silence those who are wrong. Heretics are punished, fired or brought to bear. Doubt has disappeared.

As Matthew Syed of The Sunday Times suggested at the weekend, we are living in a Counter-Enlightenment. Whereas the thinkers of the Enlightenment, from Immanuel Kant to David Hume, were guided by doubt and the desire to question dogmas held by others or themselves, in order to further human knowledge and progress mankind, dogma today rules.

This is why Friedrich Nietzsche, widely misunderstood as the godfather of postmodernism, was hostile to final, absolute truth. He believed it could ultimately lead to blind ideology. As he wrote in one of his notebooks (a passage that posthumously appeared in The Will To Power): ‘The claim that the truth has been found, and that there is an end to ignorance and error, is one of the greatest temptations there is. If it is believed, it paralyses the determination to examine, to investigate, to be curious and to experiment.’


Postmodern advertising

This is not to say the spirit of postmodernity has vanished. Its embers still waft around us. Consider two television adverts for coffee now showing. One is a series of adverts for Starbucks, in which people explain how and why they transitioned. One portrays a young girl changing her identity from Jemma to James. These tell us nothing about the beverages for sale. It’s all about selling a brand as a woke value. It’s thoroughly postmodern, in that the real and represented have become utterly divorced.

Another advert, that for McDonald’s coffee, is thoroughly rooted in modernity. Its message? Its coffee is tasty and cheap. I know which brand I would prefer to buy.

An independent Kent isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds - Spectator Coffee House, September 24, 2020

 

An independent Kent isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds
Patrick West


The news that a Brexit border will be introduced for lorry drivers entering Kent has aroused hilarity and derision among some Remainers. These critics see in Kent the personification of all that is parochial and plebeian. Horrible old Kent, with its proles who epitomise Little England at its most execrable and risible. The truth is that we people of Kent won't be too flustered by this new development. Many of us will actually welcome the Sussex/Kent divide.

For too long our county, the oldest in England, has been the playboy playground of rich Londoners and Sussex/Surrey county types who have descended on our wonderful chaff fields and cliffs, wading their cash around, buying up houses that they rarely occupy, or maybe live in for two or three weekends every summer.

Sure, I may be one the many ex-Londoners who has settled here, but at least I have done so properly and permanently for years now. Nowhere are second-home owners more conspicuous than in east Kent.

And there is the other case of people breaching Kent's borders, via the English Channel. Those who come from France and settle here place a burden on schools and hospitals. No-one here in Folkestone or Margate has a grievance with foreigners. It's just not being able to understand your neighbours that really grates. There is literally something alienating about not understanding what people around you are saying.

I'm being facetious, of course. Kent folk are the most generous and English people around, like Yorkshire types; more English than English. But those smug, remote people who think it's amusing to guffaw at the prospect of Kent independence inadvertently expose their own metropolitan ignorance. People outside London do care about their country and have an inherent patriotism, and they do care about where they live. This is because we are the somewhere people from somewhere, not the anybody people from anywhere.

Yes, we in Kent may want to erect walls. But don't all householders want to erect walls and lock doors? Proper caring neighbourhoods always want to put up walls. It's because they care about all that they hold dear. Show me someone who doesn't lock their door at night or someone who bewails the walls of their house and I'll show you a hypocrite.

We have always welcomed incomers who want to immigrate here, from Lithuanians to Poles, and we have seen the sons and daughters of these immigrants learn English and teach their children English and integrate with those who live here. That's because many of us came from London areas where we lived among eastern Europeans, and where eastern Europeans learned to live with others from ethnic minorities. If you want to see an exemplar of an English-Polish multicultural society, come to Dover.

Many of us Kent folk tolerate the derision from the metropole for the same reason that we don't like them: there is a manifest feeling that for years they have looked down upon us. This is why we vote Ukip. This is why we voted Brexit. This is why so many Labour heartlands voted Tory. We were fed up of being condescended. And this is why a lot of naturally Labour heartlands in Kent will continue to vote against the metropolitan elite: we hate being laughed at, for being mocked as silly Kent people. We are at the beginning and end of England.

And we care about Brexit; we care about the effect a no-deal Brexit will have. We care about it because we have felt the brunt of immigration for decades now, in a way that those in London and beyond have not. From Herne Bay to Folkestone, from Margate to Dover, we have seen our societies changing. We are at the front line.

This is why Kent independence isn't such a ridiculous idea as it sounds. It's only as absurd as what's been going on in the past decades with the British working-class, lower-middle class and even the middle class. We've had enough of you. And if our answers seem silly, it's because your questions have been silly. So Viva Kent Independencia if you must. It's not merely a joke. On anyone's behalf.

The BBC’s bid to axe left-wing comedy will fail - Spectator Coffee House, September 3, 2020

 

The BBC’s bid to axe left-wing comedy will fail
Patrick West

People of a conservative or Eurosceptic disposition should be thankful that the BBC's new director general, Tim Davie, is to address the widely-held perception that its comedy output is disproportionately left-wing. For years, listeners and viewers of the likes of The News Quiz, The Now Show, Mock The Week and Have I Got News For You have been subjected to – and bored by – an endless stream of quips and invectives at the expense of the Conservative party, Donald Trump and Brexiteers. According to a Daily Telegraph report, the BBC is to tackle this imbalance. Some of these shows might even be axed altogether.

Yet this could be a difficult task. Although the liberal-left or woke nature of much BBC satire and political comedy can be grating, it is, alas, intrinsic to its nature. These shows are mostly aimed at herd-minded twenty-somethings, for whom parroting one's anti-Brexit, anti-Trump, Tory-bashing opinions is not only a matter of pride, but serves as generational, tribal glue.

Most stand-up comedians duly cater for these viewpoints, and in doing so, also satisfy their own needs. As the Dave channel series Comedy Against Living Miserably has illustrated, many comedians today conform to the stereotype of the sad clown, the figure who on stage makes us laugh but in private suffers from profound unhappiness. An episode on Sunday that featured Seann Walsh, Suzi Ruffell and Nish Kumar – the latter an obsessive anti-Brexiteer – revealed how deeply insecure they were and how a bad gig would plunge them into a week-long bout of depression.

To judge from Comedy Against Living Miserably, most popular TV stand-up comedians are insecure souls who seek plaudits from strangers to boost their fragile ego and feel better about themselves. And you don't win plaudits from young people by articulating sensible or unfashionable or conservative opinions. Hence the bias we see today. It's the result of a symbiotic relationship between crowd and performers, each seeking confirmation from the other.

This is why conservative stand-up comedians are so rare on TV and radio. Simon Evans and Geoff Norcott are exceptions, with the latter's awkward appearance on Mock The Week only highlighting that show's ingrained liberal-left tendency.

Right-wing comedy is anyway less suited to the vocal, audience-based format in our woke culture, in which causing offence has become one of the most grievous transgressions. Right-wing and conservative humour is less chummy, luvvie and ingratiating, and can often be cruel, outrageous and brutally honest. Think Ricky Gervais or Frankie Boyle. While both offensive stand-ups wouldn't classify themselves as classically right-wing, both inveigh against political correctness and both are inherently obsessed with man's fallen nature.

Conservative – and thus necessarily pessimistic – satire is better digested in print, alone in the private sphere, where we can laugh inwardly at things we know we can't find funny in public. It's where we can recognise that which we know to be true, when saying what is true might land us in trouble with the law or with our bosses. The best satire is read, not heard, whether it be the misanthrope Jonathan Swift having Gulliver urinating on a queen's home to put out a fire, or Viz having my generation wetting ourselves at the angry feminist Millie Tant and the absurdly right-on Modern Parents.

The foremost written-word conservative satirist today is Andrew Doyle, creator of the preposterous woke caricature, Titania McGrath. And Doyle's monster enjoys a noble pedigree; she could easily have been dreamt up by the late Michael Wharton, who for the second half of the twentieth century and early part of this one, wrote the Daily Telegraph's semi-fantastical 'Peter Simple' column.

Wharton populated his fictional world, 'Stretchford', with liberal-left grotesques: Hampstead intellectuals, barmy social workers, supinely liberal Tories, trendy vicars. The pinnacle of his creation was the psychoanalyst Dr Heinz Kiosk, who invariably concluded his monologues with the bellicose refrain: 'We are all guilty!' This might as well be the actual motto of today's liberal-left.

That the BBC is funded by you and me, whereas print satire is not, is an important matter. So the political imbalance of its comedy panel shows should at least be investigated. But I'm not sure it's going to be a success story, certainly not without alienating the audience that currently does like to be reassured of its anti-Brexit and anti-Trump righteousness.

From Punch in the 19th century to P.J. O'Rourke to Auberon Waugh to Craig Brown to Titania McGrath, if it's grown-up, nuanced political humour and satire you want, refer to books, newspapers, magazines or the internet. Let the lefties have the airwaves. They and their pliant audiences are quite good at it, to be fair. Yet they'll never match the refined and elevated humour of conservatives, who always find comedy in the more cerebral and less conformist medium of the written word.

The rise of Britain’s new class system - Spectator Coffee House, July 1, 2020

The rise of Britain’s new class system

Patrick West

Television chef Prue Leith believes that snobbery is still rife in Britain, and that it's keeping working-class people in their place. Speaking to the Radio Times this week, Leith described Britain as 'the most unbelievably class-ridden country'.

She is right, but not for old-fashioned reasons we associate with that Frost Report sketch with John Cleese and the Two Ronnies. Snobbery no longer emanates from the landed gentry or the social-climbing bourgeoise. The most overt snobbery today can be found coming from some on the liberal-left and that minority of Remainers who like to deride 'gammons'. These are the people who for over three years – in the Guardian, on Radio 4's Any Questions, BBC comedies and on Twitter – have castigated and mocked the stupid and ignorant working-class in northern England and the midlands for voting Brexit.

It's acceptable to be openly prejudiced against the working-class in the way it isn't along racial or gender lines because our society is no longer class-aware. While from an early age we are relentlessly told that our country is rife with racism and sexism, we are seldom taught about snobbery and class-prejudice.

Class-ignorance and outspoken class-prejudice among the affluent has hastened the demise of working-class support for the Labour party in recent years. As Labour and the left in general has become obsessed with race and gender and other woke issues, the economically left-leaning but morally conservative working-class sees the Conservative party as a better – or less worse – prospect. The perceived anti-patriotism of Jeremy Corbyn was another key factor. During his tenure left-wing commentators ceaselessly belittled and mocked Brexiteers as brainwashed 'low information' voters who didn't understand what they had voted for.

By far the most insulting phrase employed today is 'white privilege'. Many have become so consumed by racial and gender politics, they think that genitals and skin pigmentation are the only determinants of social status. This is not only contrary to the spirit of progressive politics, but astonishingly ignorant. A duchess living in a country estate probably does enjoy 'white privilege'. An unemployed white man in Margate or Doncaster certainly does not. They are separated by vast degrees of class.

That so many on the left, which exhorted class consciousness for over a hundred years, can't even perceive it now is one of the perverse transformations of recent decades. Even when they talk of gender inequality, it's usually framed in terms of how much women in the boardroom earn. It's never about women in factories. This is the ultimate legacy of the culture of identity politics that is socially aware but economically illiterate. And it has some lamentable and even devastating consequences.

In March last year, former news presenter Michael Buerk remarked that the BBC had become so preoccupied with gender balance and racial diversity that it had become less representative of the country it serves. The corporation, now dominated by the metropolitan middle-class, had become ignorant to matters that concern the working-class, because there are so few of its numbers left in its ranks. In anticipation of John Humphrys's departure from the Today programme, Buerk remarked:

“When John goes, all four of the Today programme’s regular presenters will have been privately educated, like a quite remarkable proportion of other people working for the BBC… These are more uniformly middle-class, well-educated, young, urban and bright, with little experience of – and sometimes little sympathy for – business, industry, the countryside, localness, traditions and politicians."

It's no coincidence that the BBC has been manifestly – or as they say, 'systemically' – anti-Brexit in the past four years. It's also why Mock The Week, the Now Show and other BBC comedies have spent four years contrasting industrious Polish plumbers with lazy, native Brits lounging at home watching daytime television.

Class ignorance is also why working-class boys are behind almost every other group at GCSE lvel, and why white working-class pupils in the 2010s performed worse than their BAME working-class counterparts.

Class is a problem in Britain – but our problem is that we don't speak about it enough, or understand that it's just as important as gender and race.

Let Britain not be the last to leave - Spiked, January 31, 2020

Let Britain not be the last to leave

The battle for Brexit has shown the EU is incapable of change.

Patrick West

So the day of liberation has finally arrived. Or the day of isolation. It depends on your political persuasion. Today marks the date the UK finally leaves the European Union. What a glorious time to be alive. Or what terrible times we live in.

In truth, many Brexiteers will today have some pangs of regret. As joyous it will be to sever our association with this wretched, bullying, anti-democratic behemoth, there will still be that nagging feeling that we are parting ways with our continental European cousins (some of whom suffer from the delusion that the EU is the embodiment of Europe). There will also be the remorseful reflection that it didn’t have to come to this.

If only the EU had been a little more conciliatory and less dictatorial in the past three-and-a-half years. If only it had listened more and hectored less, then many liberal Brexiteers would have been prepared to listen. Maybe if the EU had given David Cameron some return of powers in 2013, as he asked for, many Britons would have felt placated, satisfied that they had ‘taken back control’. Maybe if Tony Blair hadn’t let in two million migrants, who he hoped would be cheap labour for big business and potential Labour voters, but whose presence also alienated a lot of people in northern towns.

Maybe if those who had voted for Brexit hadn’t spent the past three-and-a-half years being told that they were thick, low-information, racist, soon-to-be-dead rogue and peasant slaves. Even then we might – just might – have been persuaded of the virtues of a second referendum. But that haughty misnomer, ‘The People’s Vote’, gave it away. A small, noisy, arrogant coterie of intransigent Remainers thought they knew what was best for ‘the People’, an abstract noun so beloved of dictators who believe they know what’s good for folk.

Their recent spiteful and bilious behaviour as they have realised the end is nigh – the petulant ‘Bollocks to Brexit’ sloganeering, the tears and collective mental breakdown witnessed in the European Parliament on Wednesday, Terry Christian wanting elderly Brexiteers to die of the flu and for the rest of us to lose our jobs – are symptoms of babyish fanatics who weren’t to be reasoned with in the first place.

To be fair, Christian and the like represented a hardcore minority. And maybe a compromise could have been reached. But in truth, compromise was never going to happen between the UK and the EU. The European Union dogmatically adheres to its ‘four freedoms’: the free movement of goods, labour, services and capital over borders. These have been enshrined in a number of treaties, including the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. They are inviolable, being the logical consequence of the desire to create a united Europe, which was the real endgame of the so-called Common Market in the first place.

Today, the first of the EU’s members has declared self-determination and a return to democracy. Let it not be the last.


The EU is not Europe

It is perhaps ironic that this year marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of Ludwig van Beethoven, whose last movement from his 9th Symphony – ‘Ode To Joy’ – has been appropriated by the EU as its anthem. This is characteristic of the organisation, which likes to portray itself as an inherently benign force, the guarantor of peace on the continent and the custodian of European civilisation (even though it can’t agree to have any real symbols of European civilisation on its banknotes for fear of causing denominational competition – a symptom of the EU’s inherent instability).

Beethoven, who brought classical music from the classic era to the romantic, and who invented the ‘shock and awe’ symphony as we know it today, is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers, if not the greatest composer. But he’s more than that. He is the quintessence of both German and European civilisation. He is of the Pantheon that includes Plato, Da Vinci, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Mozart, Picasso and the rest: creative geniuses who gave us our civilisation’s finest art, music, literature, philosophy and architecture.

They represent Europe at its apex of genius and creativity. They have nothing to do with the EU, which has given us tariffs, directives, treaties, legalese, harmonisation laws, centralising technocracy, external borders, economic misery in Greece, and endless speeches from bureaucrat-kings. It is worth repeating this, because people continue, willingly or not, to make the confusion: the EU is not Europe. We are leaving the former. We remain at the heart of the latter.

When competitive eaters die

Many people find competitive eating and food-eating competitions distasteful, if not repulsive. Gluttony is an age-old vice in Western culture, a sin that seems all the more appalling in an age in which we have become accustomed to seeing people literally starving to death on news bulletins. This is why the appearance of Man vs Food on the Dave channel in the early part of the past decade was met with a mixture of fascination and horror. Is this man really trying to eat a 42-inch pizza in less than five minutes… in the name of entertainment?



So when a competitive eater comes a cropper there is the unspoken understanding that he or she has only got what they deserved. This was the case in Tuesday’s Times, with the story headlined ‘Woman, 60, dies during cake-eating contest’. It related to a competitive eater who croaked during an Australia Day cake-eating competition ‘while attempting to consume numerous pieces of coconut and chocolate sponge’. Another competitor attested that the woman went into cardiac arrest after she ‘shovelled that lamington [cake] into her mouth’.

The report noted other gluttony-related deaths. In 2009, Boris Isaev from the Russian city of Chernyakhovsk ‘won a contest to consume the most pancakes but died choking while accepting his prize’. In 2012, an American in Florida died ‘minutes after winning a cockroach-eating contest’. In 2013, Bruce Holland died in a pie-eating contest in Queensland. ‘Mr Holland’s last words were “Jeez, this chilli pie is hot”.’



All very amusing, to be sure. Greedy pigs die hilariously. And yes, there is something unedifying about eating competitions. But there is one thing worse than gluttony, and that is wasting food, something most of us are guilty of. So who are we to chortle from on high at those who actually eat everything on their plates? I mean, think of all the starving children in Ethiopia?

Spiked, November 29, 2019

Franglais is here to stay

France's word police need to accept that languages are never 'pure'

Catholic Herald, July 18, 2019

It wasn't Colonel Blimp who gave us Brexit

Spectator Coffee House, May 22, 2019

 

It is now fashionable to describe Nigel Farage as an ‘extremist’, ‘far right’ or ‘fascist’ politician. Last month, Dame Margaret Beckett denounced his ‘brand of extreme right-wing politics’; this week, Armando Iannucci tweeted:

‘Any vote for Farage on Thursday won’t be seen by him as a protest but as support for his brand of far-right UK politics.’

And on Monday, the author and journalist Ben Goldacre described the Brexit Party leader as a ‘far right ideologue who wants to abolish the NHS.’

 

So what prompts otherwise intelligent people like Iannucci and Goldacre to describe Farage as ‘far right’? And is that description really fair?

A quick glance at Farage’s politics suggests it isn’t. Farage has spoken out against interventionist wars abroad. He has also voiced his support for decriminalising recreational drugs. And he is supportive of Muslims integrating into British society. Such positions are hardly typical of a supposedly far-right politician.

Another charge against Farage made by his critics is that he wants to privatise the NHS. This may be his intention or not. But if it is, a true far-right fascist would surely seek to do the opposite: centralise the health service in order to monitor what kind of person is – and is not receiving – care, ensuring that foreigners don’t get access.

 

The Brexit Party also has representatives from across the political spectrum. One of its leading lights is Claire Fox, who for twenty years was an activist for the Revolutionary Communist Party.

 

What’s more, if recent polls are anything to go on, the party is backed by a third of the British population. Surely they can’t all be fascists. So clearly there is something awry at this ‘far-right’ name-calling.

It’s true that Farage has said some justly nasty things about Islamists. He has also made comments that are arguably open to misinterpretation about the Jewish financier George Soros. And Farage has spoken of the need for tougher borders.

But a fascist he is not. And if we call Nigel Farage ‘far right’ how do we describe the actual far right? You know, actual fascists and racists who would rather there were no Muslims in Britain at all. And would rather have no immigration at all than controlled immigration. Should they be known as the ultra-right? Right-wing extra? I Can’t Believe It’s Not Right Wing?

Applying the epithet ‘far-right’ to Farage – a man who now openly speaks out against his former party Ukip for being of that very ilk – is clearly absurd. It is also bound to backfire for those who chuck such an insult around.

Part of the blame for this name-calling lies with social media, a narcissistic and needy arena where people employ ever-more dramatic and fantastical language in order to draw attention to themselves in order to get likes and retweets. On Twitter, ‘far right’ is far more eye-catching than the more accurate ‘populist’.

 

A second factor is that hardcore Remain supporters have grown ever more panicky and furious at the prospect of a Brexit Party victory tomorrow. These people didn’t get their way in 2016 – and they will not get their way this week, making some incandescent that the masses are still refusing to change their minds about leaving the EU. For too many ardent Europhiles, this fury has resulted in them resembling Rick from The Young Ones, a character who also disparaged everyone vaguely objectionable as ‘fascist’.

 

When intelligent discourse is replaced by gestures like throwing milkshakes – apparently a commendable action in the eyes of some – it is a sign that one side is losing the argument.

 

‘Far right’ and ‘fascist’ have become part of the armoury used by Farage’s opponents to alarm and cajole the Brexit Party’s supporters – and the undecided. I suspect that most people will see through this desperate distortion of the English language.

 

Patrick West is a columnist for Spiked and author of Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times (Societas, 2017)

Spiked, March 29, 2019

The BBC is institutionally Remainist
Working-class, pro-Leave voices are becoming ever-more rare.

Spiked, March 8, 2019

Michael Jackson - why do we believe his accusers?
There has been a cultural shift towards a presumption of guilt - and that should worry us all

Spiked, February 15, 2019

Yes, Brexit will be difficult...
But that's why we must pursue it

Spiked, December 21, 2018

Leavers are the true cosmopolitans
Elite Remainers see immigrants as little more than economic units.

spiked, November 30, 2018

The rise of Generation Needy
The desperation of today’s young people to be ‘liked’ is deeply unhealthy.

Spiked, July 13, 2018

We’re all Foucauldian now
How the Frenchman’s power theories gave rise to ‘snowflakes’.

Spiked, February 9, 2018

What Marty Crane can teach us
John Mahoney’s character pre-empted today’s culture clash.

Spiked, January 19, 2018

Blue Monday: why unhappiness is good for you
Nietzsche knew the score: joy is impossible without pain.

Spiked, January 5, 2018

Meet the new pearl-clutchers
Today it’s the liberal-left who punish moral transgressors.

Spiked, November 30, 2017

Self-censorship: the modern scourge
Grow some balls, people, and express that unpopular opinion.

In Spiked, November 24, 2017

Freed from Britain, Trapped by the EU
Ireland fought for independence yet now wants to give it up to Brussels.