John Gray’s essay on post-liberalism in the New Statesman plums new depths of meaninglessness. It reaches the apogee of terminal thought, caught in the multicultural, post-political milieu that defines politics and culture as an array of choices circumscribed by a variety of faceless authorities. Extending beyond the state into an institutional oligarchy of overlapping bureaucracies and NGOs. Product standards, non-tariff trade barriers, certifications, licensure, etc. All conditioned and defined by multinational authorities that sit between compulsory and voluntary (quasi-compulsory to fit the governing modality of quasi-governmentality).

Liberation day is upon us as we see the stock market crash with overinflated stock and asset values beginning a much needed correction. A zombie economy with minimal productivity, real wage stagnation but a “healthy” stock market is hardly the sign of a strong economy. A middle class increasingly stripped of wealth[1] but at least those GDP numbers go up. Economy as farce, globalisation as pantomime.

The performative condemnations of Brian Thompson’s assassination shows the underlying premise of journalism is still alive – never go beyond the surface issues. The brutality of Thompson’s assassination is comparable to the brutality of a private healthcare system that condemns tens of thousands of American people to live in chronic pain, miss cancer diagnoses and avoid treatments. An insurance system that regularly denies claims, with UnitedHealth being one of the worst providers for claim denials[1]. News coverage is nothing if not ephemeral, focusing on the manhunt for the killer and airing condemnations of the act. It should be remembered that this is in a country where people celebrated the assassination of Osama Bin Laden on the streets.

The great trick of modern politics has been the ability of its actors and institutions to cloak themselves in a veil of de-politicisation. Instead of self-interested networks of power, they become fundamental institutions that are the bedrock of a constitutional state. Things that are relatively young in governmental history and ideology, like the concept of human rights or the Office of Budget Responsibility, are quickly woven into a grand arc of political history which suggests they are continuations of time old traditions, stretching back to Magna Carta or the Star Chamber.

The debate over immigration represents the cleavage of an ideological moment. A new orthodoxy of open vs. closed is emerging, a central division “moving from the legal-cultural and into the political and governmental. Openness is an identifying marker, associated with urbanism, globalisation and fluidity”[1]. Immigration is a major aspect of this dichotomy, clarifying what openness and closedness actively entail – the dissolution of sovereignty and national culture for the emergence of a new global community, where the divisions of borders and race are liquified. Fundamentally, immigration is a belief system, tethered to ideological commitments.

The response to the Southport riots and their overspill across the country demonstrate a key facet of Britain’s governing class – it’s hatred of the native people, particularly the white working class and the peri-urban middle class. A seemingly natural response to children being murdered by a psychopathic child of Rwandan immigrants would be to ask why did the police, mental health services and other aspects of this country’s bloated, sclerotic bureaucracies not intervene or flag this. Inevitably, this case will become another in the long line of “he was on our radar” statements, passing the buck to another faceless agency in the administrative state.

The Conservative Party will lose on July 4^th. 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.

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.

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.

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].