Why (some) things are about to get worse

A primer on British politics and the Labour government

Jul 27, 2024

The UK has a new government. In the recent general election the Labour Party swept to power, unseating the Conservatives.

Labour, as one writer astutely put it, is ‘the primary political vehicle for metropolitan groupthink. It is the parliamentary wing of the new elite’1. As such, we can expect months of mind-numbing, off-base commentary from the chatterati, who are gushing over the return of so-called ‘adults in the room’ (a phrase used by imbeciles to describe other imbeciles they agree with — see my handy explanatory note on it here). This regime, they cry as one, is comprised of statesmanlike individuals who will restore propriety and common sense after a few dark years during which the public was supposedly duped into supporting vile and indecent politics (aka, the electorate rejected liberal dogma).

In fact, almost the precise opposite is true. This government will exacerbate many of the profound and unaddressed social issues that are fuelling a populist, and at times hard right, pushback across the West (I’ve written about these here). At the same time, they are likely to further clamp down on our ability to frankly discuss these problems, using both the law and their platform in parliament.

It’s almost impossible to satisfactorily capture quite how obnoxious, intolerant, and generally low-calibre this lot are in one article. But I’ll give it a shot.

Let’s start with their attitude towards open discourse on contentious topics, some of which pose complex questions about contemporary Britain and its future. One central one is the rapid and unprecedented spread of Islam that has accompanied the influx of vast numbers of refugees and immigrants in recent decades. This has resulted in dramatic societal changes, and has thrown up an array of new challenges. Labour are simply not equipped to deal with them. Rather, their instincts are to bury their heads in the sand, obfuscate, deflect, then label anyone who does not an islamophobe. This will not end well.

Islamic sectarianism is now a major force in British politics. Islamic extremism poses by far the most significant terror threat to British and European citizens, and has claimed thousands of innocent lives in recent years. Hundreds and hundreds of people were so inspired by the sight of ISIS raping, torturing, and murdering its way across the Middle East that they chose to leave the UK and join them.

For months on end, both in this country and across the West, Islamists and Muslim antisemites have held huge marches at which they’ve ‘beaten up, attacked and tried to stab people for criticising Hamas, and donned the group’s paraphernalia. They’ve praised Hitler, called for ‘death to all the Jews’, called for Jews to be gassed, and paraded around with Hadith verses commanding Muslims to kill Jews. They’ve drawn swastikas on tube carriages, vandalised Jewish schools, destroyed menorahs, and assaulted, beaten up and killed members of the Jewish community. They’ve torn down thousands of posters depicting the faces of kidnapped Jewish men, women and children, and hurled abuse at anyone (myself included - see the video here) trying to stop them. And all of this was in direct response to the genocidal mass slaughter of around 1200 people by Hamas (and other Gazans).’2

What is Labour’s response to all of this? To look the other way, plough ahead with the same policies as ever, and boast of their intention to criminalise scrutiny of the religious worldview underpinning these developments. As has been widely commented upon, this will be achieved ‘in part through a proposed "blasphemy law" banning criticism of Islam by incorporating the APPG's chilling definition of Islamophobia into legislation’.3

You can’t make it up. Of course actual anti-Muslim racism should be pushed back against (and there is some of that out there for sure). But this blatant gaslighting, and the broad-brush dismissal of legitimate concerns around the spread of radicalism, is not only deeply cynical but more likely to inflame tensions than soothe them.

None of this should be a surprise. After all, we’re talking about a party whose last leader, the world-class gimp Jeremy Corbyn, literally called Hamas and Hezbollah ‘friends…dedicated to bringing about…peace and social justice’, hugged members of a movement that reportedly portrays Osama Bin Laden a ‘martyr’, laid wreaths next to the graves of Black September terrorists, and generally embodied the very essence of Islamo-gauchisme and identitarian leftism to a tee (see my note on him here). Starmer said he was ‘one hundred percent behind’ Corbyn at the time, and many of the new cabinet made similar statements.

A party that, following repeated and deadly jihadist attacks on Brits and Europeans, removed any reference to Islamic extremism at all from its manifesto while referring to the threat posed by the far right explicitly by name more than once.

A party whose high-ranking members reacted to a man shrieking ‘Allahu Akhbar!’ then detonating a suicide bomb in a crowded stadium full of kids by asserting that the perpetrator was ‘not a Muslim’….I could go on and on here. That they now hold the reins of power is pretty terrifying. On a personal level, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the stuff I write on this blog could fall foul of their new crackdown. But don’t worry, Alastair Campbell and the Guardian assure me the only real extremists are the people who object to this craven madness. Phew!

More broadly, identity politics and cry-bullying are about to go into overdrive and be codified into law. To quote the head of the Free Speech Institute: ‘Labour’s proposed Race Equality Act will further institutionalise critical race theory and attempt to foist diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives on to the workplace. As we’ve seen…if you challenge the ideology underpinning DEI initiatives – by pointing out that the UK is one of the least racist countries in the world, for instance – you can find yourself out of a job. We anticipate being involved in lots of employment-tribunal cases involving people who’ve been fired for challenging diversity training.’4

The Prime Minister signalling his unshakeable belief in whatever The Current Thing is.

One of their very first moves in office has been to repeal the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act, implemented in response to an epidemic of woke censoriousness on campuses across the land in order to ‘protect and strengthen freedom of speech and academic freedom in higher education institutions in England’. Take THAT, fascists! Nothing says ‘we’re open-minded’ quite like removing statutory protections for free expression put in place to protect people against the authoritarian inclinations of your own supporters.

Progressive outrage culture is now embedded at the heart of parliament. Labour MP after Labour MP have spent their careers cosplaying as victims, stoking phoney grievances, and distorting reality in order to bolster their preferred, quasi-religious narrative. Some of this is admittedly hilarious (our new South Park-style Foreign Secretary David Lammy bringing up the fact that he’s a descendent of slaves roughly 20 times a day, especially when faced with probing questions on absolutely unrelated topics), some of it is terrifying (MP Jess Phillips suggesting North African and Arab migrants sexually assaulting 1000+ German women in just one town in a single night is no worse than ‘heckling’ that happens in Birmingham every weekend; prominent Labour figures giving repeated speeches in front of giant posters of Stalin, and so on).

As people were being censored, demonised and booted out of their jobs for making factually and statistically accurate criticisms of the ideologically-driven moral panic around racism (see my essay on that here), Labour politicians fanned its flames. They lacked both the intellectual capacity and moral fortitude to push back against any of the inaccuracies, falsehoods and race-baiting mantras that were being (and continue to be) imposed upon the rest of us in the workplace, in every second TV show, by the media, by virtue-signalling celebrity morons, throughout academia…etc.

This guy’s now our Foreign Secretary. The good news is I’ve been reliably informed by NPC droids in the media that his appointment represent an ‘end to the culture war’.

As a general rule, when it comes to Labour if you want to understand what’s actually going on just invert what most of the commentariat, and they themselves, are saying. They’ll tell you the ‘culture war has ended.’ What that means is that they’re amping it up to the max while removing safeguards put in place to prevent those who criticise progressive orthodoxies from being fired. They’ll tell you the ‘adults have returned to the room’. What that means is that a woman who doesn’t know how to put on her own shoes, can’t do basic maths, implied Jews killed in the holocaust didn’t experience racism, and has praised chairman Mao, is a being given standing ovations in parliament. And if you laugh at her you’ll be called racist.

They’ll tell you they’re waging a noble war against anti-democratic forces. What that means is that a man who point-blank refused to accept the result of the Brexit referendum - one of the largest democratic exercises in British history - is now governing the country, alongside a cabinet full of people who similarly refused to do so. They’ll tell you they’re restoring ‘diplomacy’ and ‘our standing on the world stage’. What that means is that people who compare moderate conservatives to Nazis and the former (and likely next) president of the USA to Hitler now occupy the great offices of state. They’ll tell you they reject ‘hatred and division’. What that means is that zealots who stoke-up the narrow-minded excesses of progressive cultism have just been promoted to the most powerful positions in the country.

I can see the comedy in all of this, but it doesn’t bode well.

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PS. I put out articles like this as often as I can, but I also regularly write ‘notes’ that show up on the Substack app. Check them out if you’re interested by clicking on the ‘notes’ tab on my page. At the moment I’m writing around 3-5 of these per week. Anyone can read them. If you’re a paid subscriber, you can also comment on them.

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