| Populism - the result of failure by progressives to acknowledge reality | ||
| We have seen many significant changes of position by this Labour government. And strangely, it has meant substantial movement towards views held by Reform. When you look at things carefully, however, that Labour should now look more like Reform is not so surprising. Labour have for a long time been struggling to overcome the perception that it does not see the world as it actually is. The Democrats in America had the same problem. In other words, they have needed to move away from the extremism of the left. In going through this process, however, they have had to re-orientate their view of the world. I would argue that this means abandoning many of the unrealistic beliefs for which they have been mocked by both the Conservatives and Reform. The most glaring recent example of their failure to distinguish the real from the imaginary was in the trans debate. That a trans woman was a woman for all purposes had become an article of faith for the left, including most in the Labour Party. Self-identification had become the rallying cry. Reform, of course, but also many in the Conservative party, were appalled by the idea and spoke out loudly against it. Questions such as ‘Can I self-identify as a Hippopotamus?” became commonplace. So then, what did the Equality legislation say? Were trans-women to be treated as women and so able to go into spaces reserved exclusively for women? The answer from the Supremes was a resounding ‘no’. And suddenly the air went out of the debate. No-one, least of all Sir Keir, could contradict the interpretation of the existing legislation by the Supreme Court. No-one could realistically say that it was the Court usurping the role of politicians. No-one has even attempted to suggest that the legislation should be amended to reflect the original woke view. Instead there seems to have been an acceptance (both here and elsewhere) that the original concept arose out of a collective madness. There are those in the UK who very stupidly try to find wiggle room because the Court did not feel the need actually to define ‘biological sex’. Reform, however, can point to this controversy as a mark of the failure of the left to live in the real world, the world where Reform believes its supporters are. In the lead up to the American election, Farage was widely ridiculed for being a friend of Trump. When Trump gained a second term, the laughter started to die down. There was a dawning realisation that Farage had some influence with the most powerful man on the planet. And when Trump re-entered the White House, the leaders of the rest of the West decided that they should pay obeisance to the new king across the waters. None more so than Sir Keir who has embarrassed us all by his sucking up to the big orange one. And of course we have a foreign secretary who, just last year, was saying how awful Mr Trump was. Which means that, again, there is a win for Farage: he was the one who had told us that Trump was going to win and that we had better welcome it. His rhetoric is of course very Trumpian - keep out the immigrants and ‘don’t throw money away’ in international development aid. A true ‘Little Englander’. The government has already used the finding of the financial ‘black hole’ to justify all manner of welfare cuts, including the non-restitution of the target of 7% of GDP in international aid. And now Labour is flailing around to try to find ways of blocking the small boats. It’s also trying to balance the need for legal immigrants to work and study here with the need to reduce the staggering number of people who have recently arrived. Which leaves Farage with the very easy task of criticising based solely on numbers rather than any deeper enquiry as to what those immigrants are here for and what benefits they actually bring. And of course Farage swerves any request to say exactly how he would stop the small boats. And then there is the report by Baroness Casey regarding the grooming gangs. As the Times put it - “Eyes blazing, a clearly furious Baroness Casey, sitting on the Newsnight sofa beside two grooming gang victims, reflected on what she’d learnt in the decade since her Rotherham report and the failure by government to implement it. “If good people don’t grip difficult issues,” she said, “in my experience bad people do.” She told of reading a file on a child who had been raped to find in the perpetrator’s description someone had Tippexed out the word “Pakistani”. What, she wondered, as she picked this off with a paper-clip, had driven this person to ‘whitewash’ the facts. Fear for their organisation’s reputation or their own? Worry for “community tensions”? Meanwhile the English Defence League arrived in force, intimidating every Muslim in town. The present government, having opposed a second inquiry into grooming gangs, has now U-turned under pressure from the likes of Elon Musk, JD Vance, Tommy Robinson and others from the far-right. The motivation of these extremists though is not concern for thousands of abused, betrayed girls, but cynical opportunism. They want to use the gangs as a weapon against all Muslims for racist ends. As Casey says, the opportunity is there because those who identify as the “good” people refused to engage with the truth. Even after she reviewed the data and found British Pakistani men very over-represented in grooming cases and even after numerous convictions, many “good” people still dispute this distinct abuse model even exists. You still hear, “It’s a racist fantasy…” or “most abusers are white men…” Of course they are, because they are the vast majority of men in this country. The right wing does not like human rights, particularly European rights. That is to say, they don’t like other people having human rights and particularly not the ‘foreigners’ in our country. Article 8 of the Convention is the most unpopular. It provides for ‘respect for private or family life’. A concept very much extended since the convention was written. So then when the state wants to deport or extradite immigrants this article is virtually always pleaded. And many strange decisions by the lower tribunals have been made. They have said that a father should not be deported because his son would not be able to get used to Jamaican cuisine, having only been used to turkey twizzlers and the like. Others, convicted of serious crimes, have claimed to be homosexual and so at risk if deported to their African home countries. Another appellant deliberately joined a group online considered to be a terrorist group in her home country. This meant that she could claim to be at risk if deported. So we can see why it is easy to pooh pooh the convention: it is regarded by very many as giving rights to undeserving people instead of giving protection for our own country from seriously undesirable people. Having praised the convention until recently, denying any problems with it, the government is now again playing catch-up. It is suddenly supporting an approach to the Council of Europe by 9 other signatories to the Convention. They are asking for an alteration to the balance between the rights granted to individuals and the right, in the public interest, for a state to deport someone who has committed serious crime during his period of residence. The difficulty we have in opposing populism is that populist ideas are simply what people think who don’t think very much about politics. These people are easily encouraged in their views by the likes of Farage. Farage & Co propose what are in fact wholly impractical solutions to problems and provide false narratives to justify their ideas. But Is it any wonder that populism is so very ‘popular’ when the alternatives are the sorts of absurdities put forward to support a fantasy world which the progressive left wants us, or at least wanted us, to believe exists? These same people look down on the man or woman in the street because they do not share their ‘enlightened’ views. Now, of course the dam has burst and those in charge at least, although without explicit acknowledgement, seem to have accepted that left-wing fantasies are no way to run a government. 25 June 2025 Paul Buckingham |
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