Zero Seats Is a Start

The Conservative Party will lose on July 4th. Polls are predicting a vote share[1] low enough to see them hold less than 100 seats. A Starmer coronation seems inevitable and is the least the Tories deserve. Zero seats should be the aim, nothing less than the destruction of a party that believes nothing, does nothing and will never achieve anything. A vast morass of glorified lobbyists, sex pests and dullards who seem happy to trundle along into oblivion. Let’s just hope the chasm is wide enough to accommodate such collective density.

Continue reading

We’re All Schmittian Now

The late 20th century was the ushering in of a new era of politics beyond politics. The post-political and post-historical consensus that great ideological conflicts were at an end and governments could settle into the administration of people and things. The shift to governmentality as described by Foucault, “an art of managing things and persons, concerned with tactics, not laws”[1] in which sovereignty, as the distinction of a state to mark an exception, is sublimated. A technocratic, global architecture of international law and institutionalisation sits atop this post-political landscape. As the state is decentred as the locus of power, international institutions step in to set the limits and decide the rules of the game.

Continue reading

Stability to Stagnation: On the British Gerontocracy

The Conservative election pledge of national service and a quadruple lock on pensions has only enhanced the centrality of gerontocracy in the UK. There is no expectation of a Conservative victory, instead shoring up the core voter base as an electoral strategy[1] in the face of a Labour landslide. But no one should be surprised by this. Britain has been a gerontocracy for decades.

Continue reading

Escaping the Longhouse

In the paranoiac fantasies of modern progressivism, the most widespread and deeply-seated is that of the egalitarian conceit, the blank slate notion of equivalence between sexes, races and cultures. There being no basis to differentiate, there can be no basis to discriminate or compartmentalise. However, as natural differences diverge from each other, specialities and deviations emerge that don’t fit this paradigm. The conceit becomes an enforceable norm, and from it come discursive and coercive instruments of multiculturalism, anti-racism and feminism.

Continue reading

Individualism and Post-Liberalism

Individualism as the sine qua non of liberalism is one the great shibboleths of the modern era. The unmoored individual, a mythical creation in its own right, is both protagonist and antagonist in the various ills of society. From “society does not exist” and greed is good to deaths of despair and anomie, individualism serves a dual purpose in relation to liberalism as a governing ideology.

Continue reading

The Re-emergence of Lebensraum

Time-space compression is the apex of globalisation. Yet it sits over a paradox – the vast resources required to maintain and expand this compression require a greater expanse of space to conquer. The aim of a boundless globe requires the existence of a vast frontier from which water to cool server farms and nuclear reactors and rare earth minerals to feed electronic arrays is extracted. This paradox is tearing globalisation apart. The post-globalised world slowly growing through Chinese and Russian revanchism and US consolidation is becoming acutely aware of the need for space and the resources it provides.

Continue reading

One Way Criticism

The fallout from the Committee of Privileges’ report on Boris Johnson’s conduct has descended into farce. The image of Conservative politicians, many of whom having been in or currently are part of government, sniping at the sidelines calling the committee a kangaroo court while never having mentioned or actioned during their time in government any attempt at parliamentary reform or changes to the Ministerial Code is only trumped by the pathetic response of the committee to these politicians’ claims.

Continue reading

Opportunity Lost: Johnson’s Legacy

The end of Boris Johnson’s membership of Parliament, much like the end of his premiership, should not be mourned. A vast opportunity for radical reform of the British state and economy could have been built on the back of an 80-seat majority and achieving nearly 45% of the popular vote. It wasn’t[1]. Instead opportunity was wasted as Johnson’s government vacillated between technocratic authoritarianism and governing incompetence. Getting Brexit done meant leaving Britain’s sovereignty over Northern Ireland in limbo. It meant maintaining net zero delusions and asset-stripping the British state of manufacturing[2] and energy storage capacity[3]. Overall, it was a continuation of British sclerosis[4] that has been a recurring theme[5] for decades[6].

Continue reading

Autonomous Agencies and the Spectre of Disinformation

The neutral veil of governance is the prevailing myth of modern politics. An array of agencies, organisations and bodies are legitimated as governing entities because of their neutrality on a number of subjects. Post-politics is the centring of expertise that goes beyond dichotomy. By having entities that govern in an abstract interest (for the public but not for a people), an area of governance is foreclosed from scrutiny. Whether it is called the blob or the deep state, it “comprises ‘a hybrid association of elements of government and parts of top-level finance and industry that is effectively able to govern the United States without reference to the consent of the governed as expressed through the formal political process’”[1].

Continue reading