THE AGE of (Re)ALIGNMENT

THE AGE OF

(re)ALIGNMENT

JUNE 2021

a PARLIAMENT STREET paper authored by Patrick Sullivan

PATRICK SULLIVAN

THE AGE OF (re)ALIGNMENT

A PARLIAMENT STREET PAPER

PUBLISHED BY

PARLIAMENT STREET

JUNE 2021

CONTENTS

PAGE 4: FOREWORD

PAGE 5: INTRODUCTION

PAGE 8: CHAPTER ONE – BORIS VS. ALEXANDER

PAGE 13: CHAPTER TWO – AMBLING INTO AUTHORITARIANISM

PAGE 17: CHAPTER THREE – THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT

PAGE 20: CHAPTER FOUR – THE GREAT REBOOT

PAGE 23: CHAPTER FIVE – HAVING A LAUGH

PAGE 29: CHAPTER SIX – REVOLUTIONARY ROADS

PAGE 38: CHAPTER SEVEN – THE NATURAL ORDER

PAGE 44: CONCLUSION – NEW PROGRESSIVES

FOREWORD By the time this pandemic is “over” we will have all collectively had, hopefully no more than, a year and a half of our lives taken from us. Most people are going to come out of this crucible very different from who they were when this great tragedy we have been living through began. We will not know ‘til many years hence what lasting changes, societal and political, this deadly virus hath wrought. We do know that there will be many and that they will be very significant changes indeed. Whilst we have been living in the fog of the pandemic, we have taken to looking at our politics through the prism of a pre-pandemic world. When we are finally out of this crisis, after we have caught our breaths, we will have to start the painful process of surveying the wreckage caused by this virus and the measures we had to take to stop it spreading, in so far as we were able. Sometimes in life one does not feel the bruises of a battle until the fight is over. Then the body reminds one of their pain so that they take the time to heal. All of us are due time to heal when this current crisis is in the rear-view mirror. Unfortunately, there are those such as the Davos-based World Economic Forum, our present prime minister, Alexander “Boris” Johnson, and our future king, Prince Charles, who would have the nation on a perpetual state of high alert. They would have us believe that climate change represents a similar real and present danger to that posed by Covid-19 in mid-March 2020, when the initial nationwide lockdown began. That is utterly preposterous on its face and the public is not going to be having any of it. The climate change hysterics are almost certain to hurt their cause as the absurd mania they bring to the challenge will cause many of those not so heavily invested in that agenda to increasingly consider that agenda absurd. Climate change should be tackled but should not be done so on the backs of the hardest working Britons, or the hardest working people of any nation. The Prime Minister should not prioritise the COP26 summit in November ahead of working with the great British people on bringing Britain back, but he almost definitely will. He would be better advised to focus on the real and present social and economic problems post-pandemic Britain will inevitably be facing before rushing off like Don Quixote to tilt at windmills. To everything there is a season. The season ahead should be one of healing, and, if we can shut up the “cancel culture” mob for long enough, one of laughter and smiling too. I implore our political leaders to consider the spiritual wellbeing of the nation in the coming weeks and months. This verse from The Ballad of Andrew Barton could not more perfectly reflect the national mood as the end of crisis seems in sight: “I am sore wounded but not slain; I will lay me down and bleed awhile, And then rise up to fight again.” From the Desk of Patrick Sullivan London, 2nd June 2021

INTRODUCTION

“The immortal gods are wont to allow those persons whom they wish to punish for their guilt sometimes a greater prosperity and longer impunity, in order that they may suffer the more severely from a reverse in circumstances.”

- Gaius Julius Caesar, The Gallic Wars: Book One (58-49 B.C./C.E.)

“The history of failure in war can almost be summed up in two words: 'Too late.' Too late in comprehending the deadly purpose of a potential enemy; too late in realizing the mortal danger; too late in preparedness; too late in uniting all possible forces for resistance, too late in standing with one's friends. Victory in war results from no mysterious alchemy or wizardry but depends entirely upon the concentration of superior force at the critical points of combat.”

- General Douglas MacArthur, as quoted by James B. Reston in Prelude to Victory (1942)

“The seeds of leaders’ success and downfalls are often the same and are sown very early on. Most vividly in the cases of Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair, their dark fates were sealed as they rose to the top.”

- Steve Richards, The Prime Ministers (2019)

The past 15 months are almost certain to have been difficult for everybody reading this paper. The failure of this government to act swiftly at the onset of this crisis has had an undeniably negative impact on the lives of all Britons, including this author. The Conservative Party has traditionally won elections because it has been seen as the party of competent management. This reputation is now in great jeopardy. At time of writing, the Prime Minister is riding high and the government has been experiencing an upswing in the polls. This is likely to be due to the vaccinations going well and the end of the crisis being in sight. But opinion polls are only a snapshot of public opinion at one moment in time and as we have learnt over the course of this pandemic, things can change very rapidly indeed.

Many of the Prime Minister defenders claim that any criticism of his initial response to the pandemic is unfair because it is being done with the benefit of hindsight. This author is no Captain

Hindsight. I tried futilely to inform the public of the potential scale of Covid threat in an article for The Commentator published on Saturday 29th February 2020 and a briefing paper for Parliament Street published on Monday 16th March 2020. Neither the article nor the paper had any significant impact on the course of events, but sadly they were all too prophetic about the calamity to come and the Prime Minister’s lack of suitability to manage the crisis.

On 29th February 2020, I wrote in The Commentator:

“It was also announced that Mr. Johnson would be chairing an emergency COBRA (Cabinet Office Briefing Room A) meeting on Monday. COBRA is an emergency council most often convened as part of the Civil Contingencies Committee. Those in attendance at a CORBA meeting depend on the nature of the emergency. Some have criticised the British Prime Minister for not acting with the appropriate urgency. It is a fair point that infectious diseases don’t take weekends off. If the coronavirus becomes unmanageable, Mr. Johnson’s lack of haste in convening the COBRA meeting is sure to be used against him. There are echoes here of Mr. Johnson’s response to the London riots in August 2011 when he initially refused to cut short his summer holiday in Canada to deal with the crisis in his city. The public outcry was so great that he did eventually relent and come home early. When back in London, he continued to show no sense of urgency and even turned up late to the emergency COBRA meetings convened to deal with the riots. It is an unforced error on Mr. Johnson’s part to wait to hold an emergency COBRA meeting. Britons want to see their Prime Minister on top of a crisis and quick on the ball responding to changing facts on the ground. A failure to manage a crisis can severely alter the trajectory of a Prime Minister’s political fortunes. John Major won a general election, against all odds, on 9th April 1992 but five months later on Wednesday 16th September, which became known as ‘Black Wednesday’, he provided indecisive and in over his head as his Government tried and failed to keep the pound sterling in the Exchange Rate Mechanism as the value of the pound was collapsing. From that moment onwards, he became a Prime Minister with a very visible sell-by date. His government continued until the last possible date for a new general election, 1st May 1997, which saw the Conservative Party lose 171 seats, to be left with a presence of only 165 seats. Mr. Johnson would be wise to remember that ‘arrogance breeds contempt’ and if he fails to meet the moment with his response to this virus, the political paradigm could once again shift with the election of a credible leader of the ppposition, who could portray himself as a ‘serious man, for serious times’ in contrast to an ‘out for lunch’ Prime Minister.”

One reason for Mr. Johnson seemingly having gotten away with the sophistry that no one could've prepared for this pandemic better has been the abject failure of the Leader of the Opposition. At Prime Minister's Questions every week, Sir. Keir Starmer behaves like a prosecutor and not a Prime-Minister- in-waiting. With an out-to-lunch Boris Johnson, Starmer could have presented himself as a serious man for serious times. Instead, he has failed to treat the office of Leader of the Opposition with the seriousness it deserves. He has proved too keen to prosecute the case against Boris Johnson and not keen enough to show empathy for a nation in pain. As nature abhors a vacuum whilst not being the

leader of the Labour Party, Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham has emerged as the voice of Labour Britain.

The issue facing Mayor Burnham is whether Labour Britain still believes it is Labour anymore. Brexit has been rightly receded from being the issue of greatest consequence to the public and the news media due to the pandemic. As we hopefully approach the final weeks of the pandemic, we must not forget that the issue of Brexit had the country deeply divided between Remainers and Brexiteers only 15 months ago.

The behaviour of the European Union in relation to the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine appalled even the most strident Remainers and I believe extinguished any serious prospect of a campaign for Britain to rejoin the EU getting off the ground. Brexit is now settled but the cultural fault lines the 2016 referendum revealed will still be defining our national politics for years (potentially decades) to come. Sir. Keir’s failure to launch appears to have opened a window for the most unlikely of 90s revivals - a Tony Blair comeback - just switching the New Labour brand for a new New Progressives brand.

CHAPTER ONE BORIS VS. ALEXANDER

“If each, I told myself, could but be housed in separate identities, life would be relieved of all that was unbearable; the unjust delivered from the aspirations might go his way, and remorse of his more upright twin; and the just could walk steadfastly and securely on his upward path, doing the good things in which he found his pleasure, and no longer exposed to dis- grace and penitence by the hands of this extraneous evil.”

- Robert Louis Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886)

“The Lion thought it might be as well to frighten the Wizard, so he gave a large, loud roar, which was so fierce and dreadful that Toto jumped away from him in alarm and tipped over the screen that stood in a corner. As it fell with a crash they looked that way, and the next moment all of them were filled with wonder. For they saw, standing in just the spot the screen had hidden, a little old man, with a bald head and a wrinkled face, who seemed to be as much surprised as they were. The Tin Woodman, raising his axe, rushed toward the little man and cried out, ‘Who are you?’

‘I am Oz, the Great and Terrible,’ said the little man, in a trembling voice.”

- L. Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (1900)

“You put on a bishop’s robe and miter, he pondered, and walk around in that, and people bow and genuflect and like that, and try to kiss your ring, if not your ass, and pretty soon you’re a bishop. So to speak. What is identity? he asked himself. Where does the act end? Nobody knows.” - Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly (1977)

Tony Benn used to say that politics should focus on policy not personalities. A very noble sentiment on an intellectual level but when dealing with the realities of British politics you have to take things as they are. Personality without policy is the politics of the snake oil salesman. Policy without personality is going to struggle to find an audience.

On the stage of life, we all wear masks and are judged on how well we play our parts. Whilst acting out the roles to which we have been assigned our communal dialogue can often turn into Kabuki theatre. The participants behave as if they are unawares of certain facts, despite most being fully cognizant of 8

them. These certain self-evident truths are not acknowledged in our on-stage repartee because we fear that to do so would wreck the illusions that we are working fastidiously to maintain. “Boris” is the not the man who has the power of the British premiership in his hands. The man who does is Alexander Johnson. “Boris” is merely the persona Alexander inhabits in public life.

10 Downing Street often comes to reflect the personality of whomever is the Prime Minister. Under Theresa May, No.10 could be said to be structured but secretive. Alexander Johnson was a fantastic editor of The Spectator, but he did run something of a chaotic operation. From some of the headlines we have seen in recent weeks he has brought his own special brew of chaos to the office of Prime Minister. Alexander has been able to get away with this because the British public has a special tolerance for the eccentricities of “Boris” but what happens when the mask slips and “Boris’s” predominately conservative, populist base gets to see the “man behind the curtain”, the liberal, progressive Alexander Johnson. Unlike most politicians Alexander Johnson has a dual identity – to his friends and family he is known as Alexander but the public know his better by the mask, he wears which is “Boris”. Why this is not commented on more by the media is beyond me. No other political leader is afforded the right to have a dual identity – that is something straight out of a comic book. Who does Alexander Johnson think he is - the goddamn Batman?!?

Alexander has worn more than one “Boris” mask over the course of his political career. The current “Boris” mask was forged by Alexander when he saw a means to achieving political power by fashioning a “Boris” that although intellectually a last-minute convert to the Brexit cause was able to bring with him all the passion of a convert. Fair enough, there would be no Brexit without “Boris”. But “Brexit Boris” was just a part Alexander played to gain his ultimate prize.

Alexander is more likely to have felt a kinship with the liberal, progressive “Jolly Boris Johnson” who was Mayor of London. But he lost the support of liberal, progressives by backing Brexit. Dominic Cummings then masterminded a strategy where “Brexit Boris” won a Parliamentary majority of conservative, populist voters.

Alexander never liked President Trump but he played the “Britain Trump Boris” role to win the Tory Party leadership. It was a lie. He betrayed Donald J. Trump at the first opportunity. Despite “Boris” acting as if he never knew the 45th President, Alexander cannot rewrite history. Most U.S. Democrats were introduced to our Prime Minister when he was playing the “Britain Trump Boris” role and are now understandably wary. Viewing Johnson with suspicion might be one of the few positions Biden and Trump actually share. Should a Trump restoration happen in 2024 and short-sighted Alexander still be Prime Minister, he should expect to reap just what he sowed. It is obvious that Alexander hasn’t read Donald J. Trump’s 1997 bestseller, The Art of the Comeback where the future president wrote:

“As a result of these experiences, my thinking has changed. I’m sharper. I’m warier. I believe in an eye for an eye – like the Old Testament says. Some of the people who forgot to lift a finger when I needed

them, when I was down, they need my help now, and I’m screwing them against the wall. I’m doing a number . . . and I’m having so much fun. People say that’s not nice, but I really believe in getting even.”

The last thing of note in British politics before the pandemic hit was Brexit. Therefore, during this fog of crisis it is that image of Boris that people have taken with them. When they see “Boris” starting to pursue liberal, progressive policies post-pandemic the “Red Wall” will soon tire of him.

The Conservatives won the Hartlepool by-election a couple of weeks ago because Alexander has yet to be seen to make his COP26 pivot and the natural order of things vis-à-vis Britain’s political alignment is reasserting itself. On the same day, Labour’s Sadiq Khan won re-election in London with the support of many who had voted “Jolly Boris Johnson” to be mayor twice then we will be seeing the conservatives, populists in the Red Wall aligning with the Conservative Party and the liberal, progressives in metropolitan London aligning with Labour.

The Hartlepool result further highlights that the continuing success of the Conservative Party in future electoral cycles is going to be reliant upon the conservative, populists in the middle of this country. Alexander Johnson has made a number of unforced errors of late that should have cost him the support of these voters. “Boris” has been given a “hall pass” because “Boris” delivered what his Brexiteer base voted him into office to do which was namely Brexit. His embrace of the most radical aspects of the Green agenda is going to substantively undo a lot of the good Johnson has done and also cause those Red Wall voters to revoke “Boris’s” “hall pass”. When they do, they will do remembering Alexander’s recent slights and be less forgiving in retrospect to Alexander than they were to “Boris” in the moment.

I am increasingly confident that after freeing us from the shackles of the European Union he is now going to tie the country to all sorts of new international obligations in order to fight the “climate crisis”. In effect, he is about to revert to type. The fact that the government has prioritised the COP26 summit to be held in Glasgow this November above post-Covid recovery is indicative of this.

The “Climate Crisis” is the greatest Trojan Horse for corporatism ever built. Climate Change is real but we should not buy into a series of solutions which make the world’s mega-billionaires even richer and give political authority to former leftists who painted their red flag green when the Berlin Wall fell.

As a generalisation the majority of those who place climate change at the top of their list of political priorities are fantastically well-off liberal elites living in Britain’s metropolises. They quite frankly have the luxury to consider climate the most pressing issue of the day because as the prime

beneficiaries of the unchecked globalisation that has hollowed out many of this country’s once great towns and villages, they can afford to. Alexander should be working to make them great again instead of throwing greater burdens upon their backs.

It is also fitting that the COP26 summit is being held in Scotland for Boris Johnson’s entire reasoning for not holding a second 21st century referendum on Scottish independence is that we should, as a United Kingdom, be focused on the post-Covid recovery. Alexander is going to greatly undermine that argument by having his government squander the summer focusing on COP 26 instead of the bread-and-butter issues which matter to most Brits.

Given “Boris” is just a mask Alexander Johnson wears to differentiate between the man he is and the role that he plays, the maxim “Let Boris, Be Boris” would ring hollow. Instead, I recommend that Alexander Johnson remember this old adage that Ronald Reagan used to love, “You gotta dance with the one that brung ya.”.

Throughout his career Alexander Johnson has offered “Boris” up to the electorate as something of a political Rorschach test in which different voters will interpret the same personality in entirely different ways. The image that voters in Hartlepool have of “Boris” is of the Prime Minister who delivered them the Brexit he promised. Ergo, the populist “Boris” Johnson hailed as “Britain Trump” by the former U.S. President won the Hartlepool by-election. The electorate of Hartlepool would be horrified if they were rewarded for voting for conservative, populist Boris by having to live under the government of liberal, progressive “Boris”.

It is often in moments of great triumph that political leaders set upon the path of their eventual destruction. In November 1972, Richard M. Nixon was re-elected President of the United States with 520 Electoral College votes to rival George McGovern’s 17 Electoral College. In August 1974, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency and Gerald R. Ford was sworn in as the 38th President of the United States. In June 1987, the Conservatives won a landslide General Election victory under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher. In November 1990, Margaret Thatcher was forced to resign as Prime Minister. In May 2015, David Cameron became the first Conservative Party leader since John Major in 1992 to deliver his party an outright majority in the House of Commons. Just over a year later, in June 2016, David Cameron resigned as Prime Minister after the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union.

If he embraces the politics and policies of the conservative, populist base then he could wind up spending a decade in Downing Street, making those flat refurbishment costs easier to swallow. If he pulls a bait and switch on the newly Tory “Red Wall” voter and starts pushing all sort of regressive

“green” measures onto them then he will find himself in such political bother that not even Houdini himself could escape.

Alexander Johnson should be mindful so as not to misread the mandate from the electorate. They voted for “Boris”, his creation which has begun to have a life of its own, and not the man behind the curtain. A student of the Classics, Alexander would do well to remember that hubris invites nemesis and that he has yet to meet his.

CHAPTER TWO AMBLING INTO AUTHORITARIANISM

“Plots, true or false, are necessary things, To raise up Common-wealths and ruin Kings.

- John Dryden, Absalom and Achitophel: The First Part (1681)

“Napoleon, in his early campaigns in Italy, soon freed himself from the control of the Directory in Paris. From the time he became First Consul to the end of his career, there could be no question of collision of opinion between ministers and generals; for the authority of both was concentrated in a single person. The same was true of Gustavus Adolphus and Frederick the Great. But when, as more often happens, the general in the field is subject to the orders of his Government at home the case is very different. Domestic politics, and the fluctuation of party fortunes at Westminster, were constantly hampering and embarrassing the greatest of English commanders, the Duke of Marlborough. The Tories were in favour of a merely defensive war in the Netherlands, and only assented in a half-hearted fashion to the thanks which were voted in the House of Commons to the victor of Blenheim.”

- H. H. Asquith, Memories and Reflections Vol. 2 (1928)

“He could have been a great dictator, Given half a chance But they treated him like a traitor So he went to live in France Baronet Oswald Ernald Mosley”

- Peter Brewis, Not the Nine O’Clock News (1980)

On Wednesday, Dominic Cummings said that our political party system has was not fit for purpose because at the last general election the best our two major political parties could offer the electorate was a choice between Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson. I concur and suspect much of the country does too. This does not mean I am simpatico with all of Mr Cummings’ opinions.

Mr Cummings chose his words poorly in claiming we needed something akin to a dictator to deal with the coronavirus crisis (You’d have had a kind of dictator in charge of this). Mr Cummings is quite right in pointing out that we needed better lines of accountability and responsibility. I wrote as much at

the time. In both in my Commentator article of February 29th 2020 and my Parliament Street paper of 16th March 2020 I called for the appointment of a coronavirus tsar to manage the crisis. Although tsar is a derivative of Caesar who was a dictator, that term does not carry the same emotional charge.

Mr Cummings was not for one moment saying Britain needed a dictator in the twentieth century sense of the word. He was speaking of a dictator in the classical sense. Mr Cummings spoke about a dictator to deal with the coronavirus, not to run the county’s affairs ad infinitum. In the Roman Republic dictators were given autocratic powers to deal with particular crises and would then hand that power back. The most famous example of this was Lucius Quintus Cinninnatus who was made dictator twice and on both relinquished power after the crisis was over and returned to his farm. It was the example of Cinninnatus that George Washington followed when he decided not to stand for a third Presidential term even though he could have been president-for-life if he so wished. Most people, however, when they hear anyone speak about dictators think fascism. This means it is not a word that should be used in a positive sense should one not wish to be misconstrued.

Whilst Mr Cummings may not be in favour of actual dictatorship, an increasing number of people are becoming that way inclined. We run a real risk as a nation of falling into some authoritarian form of government if do not fix our broken political system. At present unaccountable party bosses decided who can and who can’t stand for either major political party. Save for leadership elections, the membership of the parties are expected to toe the line and are given no meaningful power. The Conservative Party, of which I am more personally familiar than the Labour Party, was far more open and democratic in the late 19th century than it is today. Declining membership in political parties has worked to the benefit of those already in various positions within the parties. Smaller internal electorates assist existing cliques in maintaining control, as it proves easier to pack a room and stich things up if the membership is small and preferably the majority made up of personal friends or political allies. This starts to become numerically impossible when organisations become mass membership such as was the case when, for example, the Conservative Women’s Organisation used to be so big that it held its annual conference in the Royal Albert Hall. The Royal Albert Hall used to be used for all kinds of political functions. In 1934, Oswald Mosley held a meeting of the British Union of Fascists there and almost packed the venue.

Some will think that it is a melodramatic notion that Britain could take an authoritarian turn. Their logic will be that it can’t happen here. I would remind those people that at the turn of the 20th century popular opinion in England was that the world was so interconnected through trade that the country would never be in a war with a major power again. Only 14 years later, the First World War began. We can take nothing for granted. We were fortunate not to fall under fascist influence, like much of mainland Europe in the 1930s. However, it is not difficult to conjure up a counterfactual where Oswald Mosley becomes Prime Minister. Mosley, who served, at different times, on both the Conservative and Labour benches in the House of Commons was once considered a rising star by both

parties. If he had not stormed out of the Labour Party in a huff in 1930 there is a reasonable chance that he would have eventually become its leader. When Mosley set up the New Party in 1931, there were politicians on both sides of aisle who contemplated joining him.

In his 1975 book, The Past Masters, former Conservative Party Prime Minister Harold MacMillan wrote:

“Since I personally agreed with almost everything in the ‘Mosley Memorandum’ I naturally got in touch with him, although not now in Parliament. I had only a slight acquaintance with him, although his wife was an old friend of my wife and her family. I had then many conversations with him and was struck by his acute intelligence and energy. Indeed, I might have been tempted to join his New Party if I could have seen any practical hopes of its success. When I thought it over, I realised that traditional political parties are too strongly entrenched to be easily overthrown. It is better for a young man to work within them. The increasing disillusionment with the Labour Government would have given Mosley immense strength inside his own party had he remained.”

Thankfully, Mosley’s ego got the better of him and he self-destructed. MacMillan certainly thought that Mosley could have climbed to the top of the greasy pole if he had not been so vain. As he wrote in The Past Masters:

“Mosley’s story is really a sad one, something of a tragedy. Great talents and great strength of character were thrown away in vain. Had he waited, he might have been supreme. He struck too soon, and fell for ever. In politics, as in many other things, the essence of the game is ‘timing.’”

That Macmillan should have been so sympathetic to Mosley is unsurprising. Both had strong authoritarian streaks in them. One of Macmillan’s ministers, J. Enoch Powell, said of Cabinet meetings that “it’s like having a debate with Henry VIII – I was conscious that he had the axe down by his chair.”

Britain does not need a Henry VIII or a dictator. Britain does need leaders who are decisive and who can make fully informed decisions. In short, we need better politicians.

Mr Cummings was rightly critical of the choice put to the great British electorate in his testimony to the joint inquiry to the Health and Social Affairs Care Committee and the Science and Technology Committee in the House of Commons on Wednesday. Unfortunately, he was too forgiving of the government scientists who offered bad advice at the outset of the pandemic. Additionally, Mr Cummings seems to think that our leaders should be brainboxes. If we were to assess leaders on academic intelligence alone then Herbert Hoover would be regarded as the greatest American president and Harry Truman as one of its worst. No one individual can be a specialist in every field. What is needed in a leader is an ability to source out the best advice from a cross section of opinion and make a determination from that regarding the best course of action. Boris Johnson is unfit to be Prime Minister

because he lacks intellectual curiosity. They also have to have a certain swagger. The problem Mr Cummings had was that he was too in awe of the big brains he now found himself surrounded with to deliver the sort of push back he seemingly gave everyone else throughout his career.

SAGE was too hesitant to act at the beginning of the pandemic when we had a window to strangle the virus in this country to death when it was in its infancy and before it spread too widely such as we couldn’t get our collective hands around it. I realise this a terribly unpleasant metaphor but nothing about the past 15 months has been terribly pleasant, although there has been a lot that has been terrible.

That there was no plan as of what to do is in this incredible situation was also unsurprising but the first lockdown should not have been delayed until they came up with a plan. Every second the government was planning the virus was spreading. This also meant that the inevitable lockdown was also going have to last even longer. The government should have locked down the moment they knew it was inevitable and then worked out what to do. Dynamic leadership, not dithering, was what was needed.

It was unsurprising that the Prime Minister thought the virus had all but gone away by the midsummer. If he had been intellectually curious, he would have read up on the last worldwide pandemic, the Spanish Flu of 1918, and learnt that that virus seemed to be going away in the summer months, only to come back with a vengeance in the autumn and winter months of that year. This was when the majority of deaths were. If the Prime Minister had been worthy of the office he holds, then he would not have squandered the summer months and he would instead have delivered on the world- beating track and trace system he promised the public. If he had done so we would have been able to have been able to rapidly respond to any new outbreak and had targeted micro-lockdowns as opposed to cancelling Christmas.

Furthermore, having not taken the virus seriously enough at the outset, SAGE has now overcorrected and now is too hesitant to allow people their lives back. Overcorrecting is a natural human instinct and any leader worth their salt would know this and factor it into their decision making.

CHAPTER THREE THE ONCE AND FUTURE PRESIDENT

“Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesu into another place; and men say that he shall come again, and he shall win the holy cross. I will not say it shall be so, but rather I will say: here in this world he changed his life. But many men say that there is written upon his tomb this verse: Hic jacet Arthurus, Rex quondam, Rexque futurus.”

- Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur (1485)

“Though Merlin sware that I should come again To rule once more; but, let what will be, be”

- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Idylls of the King (1859)

“I learned a lot about myself during these hard times; I learned about handling pressure. I was able to home in, buckle down, get back to the basics, and make things work. I worked much harder. I focused, and got myself out of a box. Don’t get me wrong – there were moments of doubt, but I never thought in negative terms. I believe in positive thought and positive thinking.

I learned a lot about loyalty – who was and who wasn’t. There were people that I would have guaranteed would have stuck by me who didn’t, and, on the other hand people who I had made who when it came time to help me, didn’t lift a finger.”

- Donald J. Trump, The Art of the Comeback (1997)

In 1997, Donald J. Trump published his third book, The Art of The Comeback. Now, in 2021, President Trump is making plans for the greatest comeback in political history, as he seeks to join fellow New Yorker Grover Cleveland in the ranks of those holding the presidency of the United States for two non- consecutive terms. Prior to the pandemic it appeared that President Trump was bound to win a landslide re-election in November 2020 on the back of a booming economy. The pandemic changed everything. Joe Biden’s American Grandpa offered the electorate the empathy they were yearning for. President Trump could not provide this whilst at the same time as presenting the most positive face possible given the circumstances, so as to reassure the markets and to ensure that further uncertainty didn’t cause a financial collapse in the midst of a global pandemic.

Donald J. Trump also wanted to make Americans smile in what was a dark and difficult time for everyone and that meant presenting a sunny demeanor even when he literally had the weight of the world on his shoulders. I for one was immensely grateful that President Trump, who throughout his career has often played along with jokes at his own expense, made the comments which were interpreted as him asking whether there would be a way to inject something with the properties of bleach into the body to clean out the virus. Trump says the comments were delivered in jest and looking at the results they were extraordinary. By putting himself out there as the butt of the bleach joke, Donald Trump managed to break the tension caused by the pandemic and bring joy to so many people who had been having trouble finding reasons to smile. This was that rare moment in history where most of the world was engaged in a collective chuckle crossing language and cultural barriers. Laughter it is said is the best medicine and with little regard to the personal and political cost, President Trump administered the treatment. It would have been difficult to provide both optimism and empathy in the moment. Trump provided the optimism to get through the worst of the crisis and Biden was elected to give the American people the collective hug they needed after the worst was over.

With Trump out-of-office some might forget how he got there in the first place. In 2016 voters in Britain and America had had enough. The 21st century had begun - 9/11, the War on Terror, the war in Iraq, the Great Recession, austerity, the Syrian refuge crisis and the rise of ISIS - it had been non-stop since September 2001. Every time you turned on the news it was depressing. Then you had Trump who suddenly did what the War on Terror could not - deprived the terrorists of their most effective tool - the oxygen of publicity. Trump destroyed ISIS by depriving them of airtime - that was not his strategy but Trump provided a spectacle that drove cable news ratings higher than that of “terror porn” of the preceding decade and a half. When America voted for Trump, they voted to change the channel from what had preceded it and who offered better television than Donald J. Trump.

Donald J. Trump may not be a trained psychologist but he understands his audience. Unfortunately, the media did not give him the credit he deserved for keeping America calm during the crisis. They roundly criticised his long press conferences after the medical experts had said their part and imparted the information they needed to impart. Receiving this information although important caused heightened agitation and anxiety amongst the audience. President Trump instinctively knew that the audience, for the good of their mental health, needed to decompress after assimilating the necessary information. Using the power of the bully pulpit he split the White House coronavirus briefings into two. The first part of the briefing would be focused on imparting information where the American people would learn what they needed to, even though the receipt of this information caused agitation and anxiety within them. The second part of the briefing forced the American people to decompress by watching an episode of Celebrity President after the briefing part of the briefing. This meant that by the end of the White House briefing the American people had all the information they needed but their

anxiety and agitation had in large measure dissipated, meaning they were not taking their frustrations out on themselves or their loved ones after the briefing.

Having a pit stop between presidencies might behoove Donald J. Trump well. By most accounts he is looking rested and recharged having enjoyed the bright Florida Sun for the last four months. President Biden is going to have a tough time of it, as the post-Covid world looks increasingly perilous. This means that it is likely he will be running for re-election with the political headwinds against him, just as they were for him this year. This will be especially true if the economy goes south. These problems, which in fairness, for the most part, are not of Biden’s own making, would have been Trump’s problems had he been the one sworn in on 20th January. President Trump would have received the blame for all of it. It is much harder for his opponents to blame him when it is their man sitting behind the Resolute Desk.

As Donald J. Trump is the overwhelming prohibitive favourite for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, he would be well advised to do sit back and watch events unfold, whilst allowing the public a hiatus from The Trump Show. As anyone involved in the production of television would tell you, you don’t want to overexploit a popular programme. For the past five years, cable news in the United States has been Trump 24/7. In Britain, before the pandemic, when the headlines weren’t about Brexit, they were about Trump. On occasion you had perfect media synergy between the two biggest stories of the day and the headlines were not about Brexit or Trump but Brexit and Trump! The Trump Show, even his fiercest critics would admit, has been a ratings bonanza. Just as The Apprentice had hiatuses between seasons, so too must the electorate have a hiatus from President Trump if he is to mount a successful comeback in politics.

CHAPTER FOUR THE GREAT REBOOT

“So, in the end, above ground you must have the Haves, pursuing pleasure and comfort and beauty, and below ground the Have-nots, the Workers getting continually adapted to the conditions of their labour. Once they were there, they would no doubt have to pay rent, and not a little of it, for the ventilation of their caverns; and if they refused, they would starve or be suffocated for arrears. Such of them as were so constituted as to be miserable and rebellious would die; and, in the end, the balance being permanent, the survivors would become as well adapted to the conditions of underground life, and as happy in their way, as the Upper-world people were to theirs.”

- H. G. Wells, The Time Machine (1895)

“We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that perfect world in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality -- one vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock, all necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused.”

- Arthur Jensen (as played by Ned Beatty), Network (1976)

“Elites are no longer the ones we count upon to tell us right from wrong, or to apply their skills of expertise to move society forward. Instead, they are viewed increasingly as spinmeisters, telling tales that fit their narrowly defined worldviews. They have become even more distant from the broader population simply by rejecting what happened across two continents and reading books like Hillbilly Elegy, treating the other half as though they are zoo specimens. The implications of this disconnect remain profound, with no solution in sight.”

- Mark Penn, Microtrends Squared (2018)

When it comes to this pandemic, we are stuck between two narratives: one is that of the grand conspiracy and the other is that “there is nothing to see here”. As it is, both narratives are false.

This pandemic was not caused by the global elite or lizard people. There is a possibility that it might have been the result of research gone wrong, but if so, that would have been through gross 20

incompetence rather than malice. This pandemic certainly has done nothing for China’s reputation in the world. It is likely that we were always due a crisis such as the one we are in because history does follow patterns. We have been told repeatedly, over the last few months, that a pandemic such as the one we are facing now occurs every hundred years or so, the last being the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Therefore, if one was studying historical trends, one would have been able to predict something like the coronavirus was going to emerge. George W Bush when president of the United States certainly did and after reading The Great Influenza by John Barry on the 1918 pandemic set up procedures within the federal government to deal with such a crisis.

One did not have to create the virus in order to know that something like it was coming. One just had to be astute of history. Winston Churchill once said that “the further back you can see in history, the further forward you can see”. Ergo, the best way to super forecast is to pick up a history book.

Conspiracy theorists have pointed to the Johns Hopkins Centre for Health and Security in partnership with the World Economic Forum and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who hosted a pandemic exercise in October 2019 called event 201 in New York City. This was essentially a war game something the British government probably should have done more of. It does not mean that Bill Gates or the WEF caused this pandemic. It does mean they were prepared for it and as such, prepared to roll out their agenda for a “great reset”.

The problem with this is two-fold. The first is that the main economic beneficiaries of this pandemic have been big-tech billionaires, including Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg and Bill Gates. We saw with the Democratic Party presidential debates just prior to this pandemic that Michael Bloomberg was the only one really taking it seriously and that Bloomberg, because he was so fabulously wealthy, was completely unsuited to the cut and thrust nature of the political arena where people such as Elizabeth Warren were not going to be deferential to him just because of his wealth and would perfectly, happily attack Bloomberg’s character. Mayor Bloomberg was like a deer in headlights.

He also showed that while he knows his stuff about business and public health, his political knowledge was poor for a major candidate of the presidency. The former New York City mayor floated the idea of announcing a running mate prior to receiving the nomination, believing “nobody had done it in history”. NBC News reporter, Hallie Jackson, mentioned that Ted Cruz had announced that if he were to receive his party’s nomination, he would pick former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina as his running mate. Not only this, but in 1976, Ronald Reagan, then running against President Gerald Ford for the Republican nomination, announced that if he were to receive his party’s nomination, he would select the liberal senator Richard Schweiker of Pennsylvania as his running mate. 21

The Davos set exist in a world where everybody tells them they’re great. That is not the world of politics. In politics, for even the most popular leaders, as a general rule, they will have less than 50% of their country behind them. In this country, most MPs do not receive 50% plus of the votes in their constituencies, meaning that the majority of their constituents voted against them. Whilst in politics, there are people who are sycophants, there are enough people throwing verbal grenades that the successful politician will always have an eye on how things appear. Big tech billionaires who have been seen to profit as a result of this pandemic then preaching to the rest of the world how it should be is already getting the backs up of those blue-collar workers and small business owners who have borne the economic brunt of the lockdowns that have been pushed by the corporate media.

Furthermore, it has not escaped most people’s notice that those billionaires pushing the green agenda also seek to profit from those very policies. So even if their science is completely right, because they will profit, some people will just assume “well, they would say that wouldn’t they: they’re going to make money from it”. The truth is that there is climate change, but there are likely to be alternative ways of addressing the problem without completely upending society. A certain amount of humility from the self-proclaimed global thought leaders would go a long way. Rather than suggest they take a leaf out of Donald Trump’s book which they will dismiss out of hand, I would suggest that they look to the example of Hillary Clinton when she first ran for senator of New York and engaged in a “big conversation” with the voters of her adopted state.

The Davos set’s “great reset” which is currently getting a lot of play in certain parts of the media seems to have already arrived at its conclusions. It might not be a conspiracy. Indeed, it is likely not, but they do seem to be going out of their way to make it look like one. Equally, they talk about it being a discussion, but not a conversation and in doing so are ensuring that they will get minimal political support from the electorates of the world because people do like being consulted and dislike being preached to.

CHAPTER FIVE HAVING A LAUGH

“And lost be the day to us in which a measure hath not been danced. And false be every truth which hath not had laughter along with it!”

- Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra (1883)

“Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think Enjoy yourself, while you're still in the pink The years go by, as quickly as a wink Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.”

- Carl Sigman & Herb Magidson, Enjoy Yourself (It’s Later Than You Think), (1949)

“A remarkable young artist named Garry Trudeau creates a comic strip ‘Doonesbury’. This happens to be my children’s favourite strip, and when they introduced it to me, I saw why. I imagine young Mr Trudeau must have been a bit shocked when I, a monster in the ‘Watergate Alumni Club’, which was featured in his strip, sent word to him that I liked two of his strips about me which were hardly flattering. I said that I hoped he would give me the originals to frame. Trudeau said he didn’t usually do this, but in my case he would make an exception — and they’re framed on the wall of my den today”

- . H. R. Haldeman, The Ends of Power (1978)

By embracing so-called “cancel culture”, liberals are losing one of the strongest weapons in their arsenal – comedy. Comedy has often provided a medium through which society could engage in otherwise uncomfortable conversations about sensitive topics. Comedy serves a purpose in pointing out the absurdities amid the gravity of our existence and what could be more absurd than racism.

The supposedly “offensive content” in the Fawlty Towers episode The Germans was not racist because it was lampooning racism. In Weimar Germany, the opposition that most infuriated Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler came not from opposition politicians but from the Cabaret.

In the late 1960s, Norman Lear was in Los Angeles reading a copy of TV Guide when he came a description of British TV show called Till Death Us Do Part. Lear was immediately taken with the concept of the show – a bigoted father-in-law constantly arguing with his live-in liberal son-in-law. It reminded him of the rows he had with his reactionary father as a boy and suddenly Lear was brimming

with ideas. By September 1968, he had secured the rights to make an American version of the show. The American version would end up being called All In The Family.

The Alf Garnett father-in-law character was reborn as Queens’ taxi driver Archie Bunker. The politics of the protagonists of the respective programs not only ran parallel; so did the politics of the actors who played them.

Both Warren Mitchell, who played Alf Garnett and Carroll O’Connor, who played Archie Bunker were the polar opposites of the people they played on TV. Not that you would know when watching their performances, as both were distinguished thespians who had leant their trade on the theatre boardwalks.

Mitchell, who played a right-wing, West Ham United supporting, anti-Semite on television, was in his own life a socialist, Tottenham Hotspur fan of Russian-Jewish descent.

Carroll O’Connor played Archie Bunker, who thought that “we could use a man like Herbert Hoover again”, but in his own life he was a Ted Kennedy liberal, who attacked President Jimmy Carter for being Hoover. In the late 1980s and 1990s, in a dramatic departure from playing Archie Bunker, Carroll O’Connor was executive producer and lead actor in the TV police drama, In the Heat of the Night. In the Heat of the Night would be honoured at the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards for its addressing of racial issues.

O’Connor was a passionate advocate of racial justice. So that audiences did not take away the wrong messages from All In The Family, he recorded an anti-bigotry Public Service Announcement (PSA) for the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. O’Connor speaking direct to camera told the television audience:

“Listen friends, it is one thing to play a bigot on TV and it’s quite another thing to be a bigot in real life. You know there are still people around who are willing to hurt people by judging them primarily on their race or their religious beliefs. Now bigotry has not helped Archie Bunker’s life. You know that. It has spoiled it, in many ways, small and large.”

In an obituary of O’Connor in 2001, the South Florida Sun Sentinel proclaimed:

“Carroll O'Connor played the most important character in the history of television, and it's a sign of his artistry that Archie Bunker could appall, captivate and amuse America.”

It went on:

“Bigoted and lovable, funny and scary, Archie moved television into a new era and pushed Americans to think about racism, the Vietnam War, drug use, anti-Semitism, homosexuality and other issues that tame series refused to touch. Archie, under the inspired guidance of producer Norman Lear, rewrote the rules in television. With Archie, the medium grew up. He paved the way for more-complex and flawed characters, such as Frank Furillo, Andy Sipowicz and Tony Soprano.”

The obituary closed:

“O’Connor said last year that he hoped to play Archie once more.

‘His outlook on life was very, very foolish,’ he said. ‘A racist outlook is a very foolish thing.’

And thanks to O’Connor, America got the message. Rarely has television done such a service.”

This closing captures perfectly why it is vital that comedy be used to address racism even when that includes having characters use racist and offensive language. Many jokes are funny because of the grain of truth contained within them.

In his 2014 memoir, Even This I Get To Experience, Norman Lear, now in his nighties reflected on why Carroll O’Conner’s likable face was pivotal to his being cast as Archie Bunker:

“It was very important to me that Archie have a likable face, because the point of the character was to show that if bigotry and intolerance didn’t exist in the hearts and minds of the good people, the average people, it would not be the endemic problem it is in our society. As the ‘laziest, dumbest white kid’ my father ever met, I rarely saw a bigot I didn’t have some reason to like. They were all relatives and friends.”

The left today by seeking to dehumanize those that disagree with them actually force those people to double down because, why not, if you are damned in their eyes already. Lear used the character of Archie Bunker to start conversations. The modern left seems afraid of conversation and that is likely because they do not have the confidence in their ideas that they maintain they have.

Archie Bunker would have a pop-culture scion in the animated form of Eric Cartman on South Park. In a 2008 interview, South Park co-creator, Trey Parker told America’s National Public Radio (NPR):

“’I'd say within the first season, we kind of realized Cartman's like a little Archie Bunker,’ Parker said in an interview at South Park Studios in Los Angeles. ‘And we were big fans of All in the Family, and we were going back and seeing some of those reruns, and we kind of realized what we had there.

‘And especially because he was 8 years old, he was kind of free to say whatever he wanted. He could dress up like Hitler, and he could do this because he's 8. And he doesn't really know what he's doing; he doesn't care. He's just a product of his environment.’”

This serves to illustrate how once they release a creation out in the world, the creative loses their absolute control over their creation, as it develops a life of its own. When Johnny Speight first imaged Alf Garnett, in 1965, he would have never thought that Garnett would have a creative grandson-of- sorts, in Eric Cartman, still making a mockery of racist attitudes in 2020.

Norman Lear found himself on Richard Nixon’s enemies list so enraged was the 37th President at how Lear’s comedy was undermining his administration in the popular culture. In many ways Lear through his writing and O’Connor through his acting proved far better advocates for liberal points-of-view to Richard Nixon’s voters than the elected Democratic politicians of the time. Making Archie Bunker an essentially good, but misguided, person ensured that Lear did not alienate those in the audience who held views similar to those held by his late father. By keeping them engaged he was able to use All In The Family as a means of conversing with them. Through comedy he sought to introduce the audience to ways of looking at political or social problems that they might not have done previously.

All In The Family put everything on the table and there was not an issue the show would shy away from and the same was true of its spin-offs The Jeffersons and Maude.

Maude, played by Bea Arthur, was an unapologetic liberal feminist and was introduced in the second season of All In The Family as the cousin of Archie’s wife, Edith. The All In The Family episode Cousin Maude’s Visit was an adaption of the Till Death Us Do Part episode Aunt Maud, tailored to the American audience. Whereas Aunt Maud would only appear on the one episode of Till Death Us Do Part, cousin Maude would get her own spin-off after her second appearance of All In The Family.

Maude dealt with a number of issues especially pertinent to women in society, sometimes better than others. The character of Maude was regarded as a “ballbreaker” by television network executives and Lear was only able to sell the show into syndication by calling on Maude’s self-proclaimed “Number One Fan”, the by then former First Lady of the United States, Betty Ford.

This is how that surreal event came to pass, according to a 2015 interview that Lear gave to New York magazine:

New York Magazine: One of the coolest things on the DVD set is the syndication pitch reel, where you’re basically selling Maude to local TV stations. It’s amazing you had to convince anyone to buy such a classic TV show.

Norman Lear: You know that story?

Which story?

Selling the show to syndication, and the help I got from Betty Ford.

No! Please tell me.

Our guys couldn’t sell it to syndication. The guys who were buying for their station groups would say, ‘I don’t need that old ball-breaker on my network’ — and that was the way it was going. There was going to be a NATPE — a [syndication] executives’ conference — and I had a thought. Betty Ford, when she was in the White House, she [sometimes] needed to get the [videotape of certain episodes]. So she’d write me, and she signed every letter ‘Maude’s No. 1 Fan.’ So I called Maude’s No. 1 Fan and said, ‘Mrs. Ford, we’re having the most difficult time selling Maude, and if you’ll excuse the language, this is what I’m hearing.”

The station managers calling Bea a ball-breaker.

That infuriated her. And I said, ‘I can get a lot of these guys to come to a dinner party if you will co- host with me, because that will be really impressive.’ And she said, ‘Give me three dates and I’ll pick one.’ So the invitation went out that this was a Betty Ford and Norman Lear and Bea Arthur invitation. It was … a dinner party out on the lawn in front of my house, and my wife and my daughter were hosts, along with Betty Ford. The guys danced with her [until] close to 1:00 in the morning. That’s when I said to the Secret Service people, ‘Get her out of here! She served, she doesn’t have to do any more!’

But she was so happy to have been there. So the next morning, we had a meeting with the same guys who were there that night — and we sold the show.

Betty Ford was perhaps America’s most openly socially liberal First Lady breaking from the tradition, until that point, that a First Lady’s should appear to replicate the politics of the President. That politicians had wives with their own independent views should have come as no surprise. It was certainly nothing new. Violet Attlee, the wife of Labour Prime Minister, Clement Attlee was a “lifelong Tory”, according to historian Andrew Roberts. This was not widely known outside of political circles, however. Today, her grandson John sits on the Conservative benches in the House of Lords as the 3rd Earl Attlee.

As First Lady, Betty Ford brought a refreshing candor, and humor to the office. Take for example, when she was asked about her husband’s fidelity in an August 1975 interview with Morley Safer of the popular news program 60 Minutes:

Morley Safer: Did you ever have any doubts about your husband and some of the attractions in this city?

Betty Ford: I have perfect faith in my husband. But I’m always glad to see him enjoy a pretty girl. And when he stops looking then I’m going to begin to worry. But right now, he still enjoys a pretty girl. And he really doesn’t have time for outside entertainment. Because I keep him busy.

Rather than make a show of outrage at the obviously intrusive question, Betty Ford made a joke of it and showed her wicked sense of humour. Humour, after all, can be very disarming in politics and in life. As Elbert Hubbard (and Van Wilder) once said “Don’t take life too seriously, you’ll never get out alive.” Now, that is a mantra worth writing down.

CHAPTER SIX REVOLUTIONARY ROADS

Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; ’Tis grace hath brought me safe thus far, And grace will lead me home.”

- John Newton, Amazing Grace (1772)

“As early as the beginning of April, 1848, the revolutionary torrent had found itself stemmed all over the Continent of Europe by the league which those classes of society that had profited by the first victory immediately formed with the vanquished. In France, the petty trading class and the Republican faction of the bourgeoisie had combined with the Monarchist bourgeoisie against the proletarians; in Germany and Italy, the victorious bourgeoisie had eagerly courted the support of the feudal nobility, the official bureaucracy, and the army, against the mass of the people and the petty traders. Very soon the united Conservative and Counter-Revolutionary parties again regained the ascendant.”

- Fredrick Engels & Karl Marx, Revolution and Counter-Revolution or, Germany in 1848 (1852)

“Marxism is not the doctrine for the understanding of revolutions, but of counterrevolutions: everyone knows how to orient themselves at the moment of victory, but few are those who know what to do when defeat arrives, becomes complicated and persists.”

- Amadigo Bordiga, Lessons of the Counter revolutions (1953)

Most people accept that discrimination – on grounds of race, gender, sexual orientation is wrong– but they are not going to accept wholesale an ideology which seeks to apportion the blame for all of society’s ills onto them. Tarring people with the brush of villainy is a sure way to turn their support into opposition. People who initially were willing to accept that certain biases were wired into the culture and that we needed to do some soul-searching about our collective history are becoming increasingly less open to those concepts. This is because they feel that their willingness to engage in an open,

intelligent, empathetic conversation to address genuine grievances has been mocked by social justice warriors who have jumped the shark.

I postulate that the advent of social media has injected a communal hubris into a herd of latter- day Jacobins who have seized outsized societal influence by exploiting these new technological platforms. Those who make up this herd are popularly called social justice warriors and as such that is how they shall be referred to in this piece. Whilst cancel culture has many afraid to speak up in public about the excesses of the social justice warriors, for fear of being “cancelled”, these same people will show no hesitation in making their voices heard when they are in the privacy of the voting booth. Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the election of Donald Trump to the American presidency are illustrative of this.

If the social justice warriors were serious about achieving real social justice, then they would see the need for people to be able to have real conversations on these difficult issues. The cancel culture that has become dominant in our society is making this nigh on impossible because people are too afraid to say anything for fear that if they say the wrong thing, they will be “cancelled”. Real people trip up on words when addressing sensitive topics and trying to find their way around issues about which they are not familiar. They might accidentally cause offence but that is not their intention. However, instead of being shown patience and understanding with people trying to educate themselves on these issues when they stumble, the social justice warriors seek to exile them from polite society, as though they had misspoken out of malice.

The social justice warriors would do well to pause for a minute. Think of Saint Paul on the Road to Damascus and of where we would be as a society without the possibility of a redemptive story arc open to us. Saint Paul, otherwise known as Saul, wrote 13 of the 27 books in the New Testament. So taken was Johnny Cash with the redemptive story of Saul on the Road to Damascus that he wrote a book about him: Man in White: A Novel About the Apostle Paul (1986). Cash perfectly articulated the importance of the Damascene conversion to Christian theology:

“Jesus Christ told us how to live. The apostle Paul showed us how the plan works. Jesus Christ told us how to die, unafraid, with an eternity of peace following, and Paul showed us how to prepare for it. It was Saul of Tarsus, the persecutor of the followers of the Nazarene, who left Jerusalem bound for Damascus to find, arrest, bring to trial, and execute those who worshiped that ‘Name.’

And it was Paul, the apostle for Jesus Christ to the world, who entered Damascus a few days later. Jesus had died, been resurrected, and ascended to heaven, according to his disciples, and they expected his eventual second coming. They looked anxiously for the promised return. Every convert expected it. No one, especially Saul the Pharisee, authority and expert on Mosaic Law, expected him to appear in the middle of a clear day and to have a one-on-one conversation with him.

As best I can time it, not accounting for any pauses in the exchange of dialogue between Jesus and Paul and according to Paul’s writing in his Letters, the conversation lasted approximately one minute, maybe a few seconds less. Yet a world was changed because of that one-minute conversation. It was one great paramount minute in the history of humankind. That minute determined the destiny of countless millions of people yet to be born. No event short of the birth of Jesus Christ himself has affected the life of humankind on this earth as powerfully as the commands given and accepted in that one minute.”

What Saint Paul teaches us is that no one is irredeemable, and that people should always be offered the opportunity to convert to the cause of righteousness. What is also of special relevance to the moment in time we are currently living in is that before Saul of Tartus became the apostle Paul, he was engaged in the first century equivalent of “cancel culture”, except that the cancelling then was more permanent. However, one suspects that many doing the cancelling today would go to similar extremes if given the license to. I decry cancel culture, but I believe those engaged in this extremism can seek redemption.

I posit that if one is already deemed to have fallen, by the “woke” arbiters of virtue on social media, and that there is no way one could be deemed to have got up again, by those same arbiters of virtues, there is no logical reason not to revel in what they would consider to be vice. If in the eyes of the “woke” you are already eternal damned; then you would have nothing to lose by acting in overt, frequent, gleeful contravention of those rules the “woke” would have imposed upon us. If you have no hope after being cancelled, then you will be without fear when deciding what to do next. The cancel culture mob does not hold back its punches, so when they have done their worst – that is it.

Through cancellation they are inadvertently building a counter-revolutionary insurgency which as well as including ordinary people also consists of some of those who have an advanced understanding of our political and media machines that have nothing left to lose. For leftists, the social justice warriors don’t seem to know their Marx; if they did, they would be familiar with the Hegelian dialectic.

The Dictionary.com definition of the Hegelian dialectic is as follows:

“an interpretive method, originally used to relate specific entities or events to the absolute idea, in which some assertible proposition (thesis) is necessarily opposed by an equally assertible and apparently contradictory proposition (antithesis), the mutual contradiction being reconciled on a higher level of truth by a third proposition (synthesis)”

In 2016 the thesis was liberal. It was liberals themselves who created the atmosphere in which Brexit and Trump could happen by seeking to bully and browbeat others into cultural submission.

Additionally, it is highly probable that cancel culture itself was responsible for the Trump presidency. Politics is governed by the law of unintended consequences in much the same way that motion is governed by the laws of gravity.

When Donald Trump descended the golden escalator in Trump Tower to announce his candidacy for presidency of the United States, many thought it to be a publicity stunt. Some cynics believe that was indeed Trump’s intention. Donald Trump had been the star of NBC’s prime-time show, The Apprentice (later Celebrity Apprentice), since January 2004, but following his announcement for the presidency in which he made strong remarks regarding immigration coming from Mexico, NBC Universal moved swiftly to disassociate themselves from the new candidate. After a fortnight of refusing to walk back on his initial statement and double down, NBCUniversal issued a statement which read:

“due to the recent derogatory statements from Donald Trump regarding immigrants, NBC Universal is ending its business relationship with Mr Trump. To that end, the annual Miss USA and Miss Universe pageants which are part of the joint venture between NBC and Trump will no longer air on NBC. In addition, as Mr Trump has already indicated, he will not be participating in the Apprentice on NBC. Celebrity Apprentice is licensed on Mark Burnett’s United Artist’s media group and that relationship will continue.”

NBC had form in firing critics of illegal immigration. In 2012, MSNBC (NBC’s cable news channel) fired their longtime political analyst, former Nixon and Reagan presidential aide Pat Buchanan, for comments he made in his book, Suicide of a Super Power – Will America Survive to 2025? At the time, network president Phil Griffin said “the ideas he put forth aren’t really appropriate for national dialogue, much less the dialogue on MSNBC”.

The ideas that NBCUniversal considered not appropriate for the national conversation were the ideas voted for by the American people in 2016 and by 74.2 million Americans in 2020. Some cynics still believe that Trump’s candidacy was part of a negotiating ploy with NBC for a better deal regarding Celebrity Apprentice. Some thought that is why he floated the candidacy in 2012 (for 2012) before announcing he wasn’t running because he happened to be doing another season of Celebrity Apprentice. Now the avenue of further relations with NBC was closed and he had started running for president when all these crowds started showing up. There was no longer a face-saving way out, so Trump just continued and then got elected president. Whilst I believe that the Trump campaign was a genuine grassroots movement, those who doff their cap to the cancel culture are more likely to lend

credence to the idea that Trump blundered into the presidency. And if that is the case, they helped him do it and, indeed, made it possible.

NBC Universal, which is owned by Comcast (who also own Sky News UK and Euronews), in firing a man the American people later voted for as president, showed that their corporate values were in stark contrast to the values of millions of Americans, many of whom are their customers. Trump sold his 49% stake in the Miss Universe pageants to Ari Emanuel, the Hollywood mogul and brother of former Chicago mayor, Rahm Emanuel.

One might wonder why large corporations are abasing themselves to liberal left social causes. The answer likely lies in the response to the 2008 financial crisis. In his 2011 book, Confidence Men: Wall Street, Washington and the Education of a President, journalist Ron Suskind talks about a White House meeting between President Obama and thirteen of the world’s most powerful financial executives early on in his administration:

“‘His body language made it very clear that he was the president, he was in charge,’ said one of the participants, and that he wanted to hash things out—what he felt, what they saw. The discussion moved swiftly across topics, such as the general soundness of the overall system and how to jump-start lending, before it came around to what was on everyone’s mind: compensation.

The CEOs went into their traditional stance. ‘It’s almost impossible to set caps; it’s never worked, and you lose your best people,’ said one. ‘We’re competing for talent on an international market,’ said another. Obama cut them off.

‘Be careful how you make those statements, gentlemen. The public isn’t buying that,’ he said. ‘My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.’

It was an attention grabber, no doubt, especially that carefully chosen last word.

But then Obama’s flat tone turned to one of support, even sympathy. ‘You guys have an acute public relations problem that’s turning into a political problem,’ he said. ‘And I want to help. But you need to show that you get that this is a crisis and that everyone has to make some sacrifices.’

According to one of the participants, he then said, ‘I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you. But if I’m going to shield you from public and congressional anger, you have to give me something to work with on these issues of compensation.’

No suggestions were forthcoming from the bankers on what they might offer, and the president didn’t seem to be championing any specific proposals. He had none: neither Geithner nor Summers believed compensation controls had any merit.

After a moment, the tension in the room seemed to lift: the bankers realised he was talking about voluntary limits on compensation until the storm of public anger passed. It would be for show.

Nothing to worry about. Whereas Roosevelt had pushed for tough, viciously opposed reforms of Wall Street and famously said, ‘I welcome their hatred,’ Obama was saying, ‘How can I help?’”

Obama was not exaggerating when he was talking about himself being the only thing between his administration and pitchforks. Rather than change their business practices, many large corporations sought to win over the political left by abasing a number of their social causes as this would not affect their bottom line. They mistakenly took the support of the political right for granted, forgetting that America’s great trustbusting president Theodore Roosevelt was a Republican. Many on the right now believe that “woke capital” could use a bit of trustbusting today.

Large corporations should consider their respective positions. Those companies that make appropriate “woke” noises whilst engaging irresponsibly the society they wish to serve will only be able to get away with it for so long.

There are those who believe that the continued ascendancy of the “woke” agenda is a guarantee by citing trends and so-forth; I offer the retort that the future is not predetermined, especially in a political and social environment where microtrends seem to be pushing society in different directions simultaneously. As former Bill Clinton and Tony Blair pollster Mark Penn identified in his 2018 book, Microtrends Squared:

“Often, two diametrically opposed trends are occurring at the same time, which would be invisible in the averages but which leap out when understood as the result of a cauldron of microtrends.

Today in politics, for example, there is no overall ideological shift; instead, one group of moderates became more conservative and another group became more liberal, causing society to become both more liberal and more conservative at the same time, cancelling each other out. This increased polarisation then produces even more gridlock and confusion. We can see similar tugs and pulls throughout society: while one group seeks more technology, another wants to sit in the Amtrak Quiet Car. Some can’t sit through a six-second commercial; others spend hours and hours binge-watching TV. Some live in a world of globalisation, while others yearn for a return to greater nationalism. To explain all this, we have borrowed from Newtonian physics: for every trend there is a countertrend. It is human nature in the Information Age: every move or desire in one direction seems to inspire a countermovement by another group in the opposite direction. For every radical group, there is a new conservative group. For every new product in mobile technology, there are those sticking to the flip

phone. Only by understanding the complexity of these developments can we make sense of a world that seems senseless, confusing, and even jumbled.”

Political, economic and cultural elites across the world saw their respective electorates revolt at the ballot box over the past half decade. This should be considered a warning shot across the bow, for as Benjamin Disraeli said to the Wynyard Horticultural show in 1848, “The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.”

Whilst the current trend towards political violence on both the far-left and far-right is troubling and shows little sign of abating, it does not prove an existential threat to the established order. What does are further revolts at the ballot box and the prospect of a “pocketbook revolution” against those corporations that pander to the social justice warriors.

The savvy promoter that is Donald J. Trump has already worked this out and is using his newly free time to encourage his sizeable base of supporters to boycott companies which follow a social justice warrior agenda. He is helping to build a conservative counter-economy by using cancel culture in reverse. In doing this, he is weakening his political enemies from within corporate America whilst also building a new infrastructure from which he will eventually reap huge political dividends.

By embracing cancel culture and giving oxygen to the extremism of the social justice warriors, “woke capital” is likely to play with forces that they will soon find they cannot control. The law of unintended consequences is likely to come into play. They would be wise to remember that Kaiser Wilhelm arranged a train for Lenin to return to Saint Petersburg in April 1917. Wilhelm believed that Lenin would cause trouble for Russia. He was right, however the rise of Lenin also led to the rise of Stalin under whose leadership Russia would place East Germany behind the iron curtain of Soviet influence. The modern CEO will not want to look back and find that they have been responsible for unleashing a Stalinist tendency onto the liberal western democracies.

The stakes we face could hardly be higher. I believe it would be a grave folly, for which future generations would never forgive us if we risk it all - our lives, liberty and ability to pursue happiness – in order to win whatever our personal idea of a political utopia might be. We have no right to play fast and loose with the freedom inheritance of our descendants that our imperfect ancestors still paid for in sweat toil, tears and blood.

We must hold our rights as free people absolute and non-negotiable but in all else show a willingness to be pragmatic. Only by forming a consensus the majority can rally around will we be able to stave off attempts to divide and conquer. Furthermore, Triangulation essentially means that political leaders accept the world as it really is and govern accordingly. If we are to succeed in this, our

generation’s struggle against cultural Stalinism, then we have to upend their strategy, which is predicated on our following the rules of political engagement as professional wrestling. We must instead write new rules based upon common sense. Triangulation is Common Sense. Dick Morris, the political Svengali who introduced Triangulation into the popular lexicon described it as follows, in his book, 50 Shades of Politics (2018):

“Triangulation was used most commonly in maritime navigation to help sailors locate their geographic position by using stars.

But I developed a political use of the word to denote a third political position apart from and above the political parties and their agendas.

Triangulation is not just a way to split the difference between the parties and compromise, leaving each with half a loaf. It was designed to create a new third way, combining the best of the left and the right and leaving the bad parts behind.

Each party approached each issue with a full agenda. To fight crime—a goal they shared equally—the left wanted strict gun controls, but also demanded restrictions on police behaviour—no stop and frisk, no profiling. The right demanded tougher sentences for repeat offenders and the death penalty, but also interpreted the Second Amendment rigidly to ban any regulation of firearms.

Ordinary voters didn’t fully agree with either party. They accepted the need for mandatory sentences, but wanted them reduced for non-violent drug offenses. They agreed with the basic right of citizens to bear arms, but would make exceptions to stop felons and fugitives from getting them. They would take the best of each side and leave the rest behind. They would, in my words, triangulate.”

Politicians have for too long being chasing ideological consistency. This is wrongheaded because the overwhelming majority of people, myself included, are not ideologically consistent. Voters want leaders to have principles but they also don’t want them to go against their (the voter’s) self- interests. Voters are looking for coherence, not consistency. Furthermore, there should not be sections of the electorate who feel that in order to have representation they need to vote against their economic self-interest. Voters who have not shared in the proceeds of globalisation and have suffered the consequences of mass immigration are likely to be upset not because of any prejudice, but because of the decline in their standard of living and their prospects of improving their lot in life. It is understandable that people would feel outrage if they had been told all they had to do was work hard and play by the rules and they still kept losing. If their outrage is not acknowledged and channeled that doesn’t mean it will go away - it will just continue to grow and might be seized upon by someone legitimately scary, not just someone who offends liberal sensibilities.

In 2016’s Who Rules The World?, philosopher and leftist historian, Noam Chomsky made the following observation and whilst I strongly disagree with the shade he throws at President Trump, the essential thrust of his argument remainsi correct:

“For many years I have been writing and speaking about the danger that a charismatic ideologue could rise in the United States: someone who could exploit the fear and anger that have long been boiling in much of the society, directing them away from the actual malefactors and onto vulnerable targets. That could indeed lead to what sociologist Bertram Gross, in a perceptive study several decades ago, called ‘friendly fascism.’ But that requires an honest ideologue, a Hitler type, not someone whose only detectable ideology is narcissism. The danger, though, has been real for a long time.”

If cancel culture continues upon its current trend, it is going to a very intolerant and totalitarian place which we do not want. However, there is also a high probability of the Hegelian dialectic coming into play and a counter-revolution to the “cancel culture” taking place which is equally unpleasant and intolerant, but just empowers the other extreme. We must find our way to the skip this part and go straight to common-sense solutions, or in dialectic terms the “synthesis”, if we are to maintain the respect for liberty that has served the English-speaking world so well for so long.

CHAPTER SEVEN THE NATURAL ORDER

For want of a nail the shoe was lost. For want of a shoe the horse was lost. For want of a horse the rider was lost. For want of a rider the message was lost. For want of a message the battle was lost. For want of a battle the kingdom was lost. And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

- Late 15th century English proverb

“Somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—I took the one less traveled by, And that has made all the difference”

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken (1915)

“No one will imagine that the long list of questions that have been mentioned covers the whole field of reconstruction, still less that the answers suggested are complete. Some of the suggestions made may be fruitful, others not. Enough has been said to show how huge that task is, and how it will need for its accomplishment all the knowledge and wisdom, and all the energy available. It is, therefore, clear that every proposal which may be made must be examined on its merits, not as it affects any party or personal interests, and that those who are elected to decide or appointed to deal with any matter shall in each case be chosen because of their fitness for the work assigned, not because their influence or support may be useful to any party or coterie.”

- Sir Alfred Hopkinson, Rebuilding Britain: A Survey of Problems of Reconstruction After the World War (1918)

“History does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes.” So said Mark Twain. And he is right. Save for the twentieth century.

I postulate that an assassin’s bullet in Sarajevo in June 1914 set into motion a series of events that would cause a deviation from the natural order until April 2016, which was when the British people 38

voted to leave the European Union and in November 2016 the American people elected Donald J. Trump their President. This was the first in a two-step process of the natural order of things reasserting itself.

Many of the narratives I was taught as fact growing up have proved to be if not inaccurate, not fully accurate. For instance, I was taught that America’s entry into the Great War led to that war’s end. What you would not have been told/taught because it was not widely known at the time is that America’s entry into the First World War led to the first global pandemic. What became known as the Spanish flu is overwhelmingly likely to have originated in Haskell County, Kansas, in 1918. And it was America shipping asymptomatic soldiers to the Western Front which led to the virus having the global reach that it did.

The Spanish flu from Kansas was the first global pandemic because it is the first such virus that was had worldwide reach. Whilst there had been other pandemics which affected many nations, we never had a virus which touched all corners of the world until the Spanish flu from Kansas, and there hasn’t been one with a similar impact on day-today life since until Covid-19. The coronavirus is the second major global pandemic. The influenza pandemics of 1957 and 1968 were also global pandemics but neither had the same societal impact as either the Spanish Flu or Covid-19 have had.

The World Economic Forum has spoken of there being The Great Reset post-pandemic. I do believe that there will be a great reset, just not The Great Reset that the Davos elites are hoping to impose upon us. The ordeal that we have struggled with since March last year is near its end, we hope. It is as we re-enter the world post-pandemic that we will experience the second step in the two-step process of the natural order of things reasserting itself. So, as we prepare for that great reset, let us begin by analysing how the Great War altered the course of human events.

In June 1914, the two political parties that dominated the British political landscape were the Conservative Party and the then governing Liberal Party. With no First World War that would have likely remained the status quo. The political divide then was cultural as much as anything else. This political divide re-emerged as a result of the Brexit vote. Brexit didn’t cause it. It was dormant. It was always there. Brexiteer and Remainer represented conservative, populist Britain and liberal, progressive Britain respectively.

In Britain, the leader of the opposition and of the Conservative Party at the outset of the First World War was Andrew Bonar Law, a man who had been born and spent the first 12 years of his life in Canada. Bonar Law would join Liberal prime minister Herbert Asquith’s coalition government in 1915 as colonial secretary.

If not for the First World War, the American Century would likely have been another British century. At the outset of the conflict Britain was the world’s premier power. By 1922, mere days before becoming Prime Minister, Andrew Bonar Law declared that Britain could not “act as the policeman of

the world.” The hawks in Washington D.C. who today are up in arms over President Biden’s plan to end the “forever war” in Afghanistan, ostensibly over the harm it would do to women’s rights in that “country”, obviously believe that the United States inherited the mantle of being “the policeman of the world”.

Andrew Bonar Law was the MP for Glasgow Central, which is personally interesting because this will have dovetailed in with the time when my great-grandfather, after who I am named, served as a police sergeant in Glasgow making me wonder whether they ever crossed paths. It is interesting from a broader political/historical perspective because it serves to remind us that political realignment does happen and sometimes very strongly indeed because today you would get better odds on seeing a pig fly than having a Conservative MP win a Glasgow seat. In politics political parties can lose support in a region they were once strong in so long as they can make up that support in another region they were once weak in. A perfect example of this is with the Republicans and Democrats in the United States. For the first half of the twentieth century the American South was regarded as the “solid South” for Democrats. It was so solid that the southern states were thought of as one-party states. If you wanted to get elected in the South, it was the Democratic primary which mattered more than the general election. The Democrats were able to survive losing the South to the Republicans by taking much of their support in the north eastern states which had once been Republican strongholds – effectively the two major parties in America switched regional support bases. Something along these lines might be happening in British politics today.

Andrew Bonar-Law was not only a Canadian born Conservative MP representing Glasgow in Parliament; he was also the shortest serving prime minister of the 20th century serving only 7 months in office. He resigned due to ill health in May 1923 and died 5 months later. In 1931, with the passage of the Statute of Westminster, Canada gained de facto independence from Britain less than a decade after Britain had its first Canadian prime minister. It would take another five decades, until the UK Parliament passed the Canada Act in 1982, before Canada would formalise its independence from the United Kingdom.

One of the consequences of the First World War is that it had subjects in every corner of the Empire questioning why their young men should have been led to their deaths in what was essentially a European-led conflict. The costs of being part of the Empire suddenly and starkly appeared to outweigh the benefits. Were it not for the First World War it is likely that the Empire would have developed into an imperial federation, which was an idea being actively discussed at the turn of the 20th century.

In the recent years, it has been said that, we've seen the unravelling of the post-World War II global order. I concur with that assessment. Many feel an emotional attachment to it. For our current

crop of politicians, they grew up with it and feel a comfortable familiarity with it. That party is now over and there is no point sticking around as everything is packed up.

Those who decry the end of the post-1945 world order forget that it was forged in the aftermath of a terrible conflict which cost the world tens of millions of lives. The Germans thought they were being clever when they sent Lenin on a sealed train to St. Petersburg - what mischief he could cause the Tsar, they thought. What fools they were tinkering with forces they could not control. Without the First World War it is likely that communism and fascism would have remained fringe ideologies and not set the world ablaze as they did.

Despite the best efforts of the Davos elite who constitute the World Economic Forum we are about to enter into a multipolar world where balance of powers realpolitik will come to dominate international relations. Institutions like the United Nations will become even less relevant than they already are. With this change in circumstance, it would behove a future prime minister to remember the words of Lord Palmerston, “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.”

The First World War was fought to protect Belgian neutrality. A generation of young British men died for Belgian neutrality. Take a moment to process that statement. Popular sentiment was appalled at the “Belgian atrocities” but I doubt popular sentiment in Belgium would have been the same if the roles had been reversed. And by fighting to defend of all places – Belgium! – Britain entered into an unnecessary war which would set in motion a series of events which would lead to far worse atrocities than those suffered by relatively few Belgians in 1914.

We were still paying for the mistakes of the Great War 100 years later. The conflict in Iraq which so marred the first decade of the 21st century had its origins in the First World War given that the first major success we had in that conflict was when the British Indian Expeditionary Force took Baghdad from the Ottomans in March 1917. The borders of what would become Iraq were artificially established by the victorious powers and a British mandate over the country was recognised by the League of Nations. In 1921, the Kingdom of Iraq under British rule was created. Although Iraq would gain nominal independence in 1932, British troops would not leave the country until 1947. According to the Smithsonian Magazine:

“For nearly 400 years prior to World War I, the lands of Iraq existed as three distinct semi- autonomous provinces, or vilayets, within the Ottoman Empire. In each of these vilayets, one of the three religious or ethnic groups that predominated in the region – Shiite, Sunni and Kurd – held sway, with the veneer of Ottoman rule resting atop a complex network of local clan and tribal alliances. This delicate system was undone by the West”

In May 2006, Senator Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, the ranking member on the United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the Council on

Foreign Relations, wrote a joint opinion piece in the New York Times advocating federalism for Iraq “giving each ethno-religious group — Kurd, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab — room to run its own affairs, while leaving the central government in charge of common interests.”

With the Democratic sweep in the 2006 congressional midterm elections, Senator Biden was once more able to regain the chairman’s gavel of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, much to the chagrin of one of the committee’s more junior members, freshman Senator Barack Obama. Obama thought Biden both longwinded and condescending.

I personally liked Biden at the time and thought he should be the Democratic presidential nominee in 2008. Biden thought he should too and in February 2007 announced his bid for the presidency of the United States with a federal Iraq as part of his platform. His platform unfortunately was overshadowed by his calling fellow candidate Obama “the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice- looking guy.” This led the TV show, Boston Legal to draw parallels between Biden and one of their lead characters, the well-meaning but gaffe-prone aging lawyer, Denny Crane, as played by William Shatner.

Biden’s bid for the 2008 Democratic Party nomination would end with a whimper when he received only 1% of the vote in the party’s Iowa caucuses, held on 3rd January 2008. Biden at least did better than then-Senator Chris Dodd’s 0.1% of the vote. Biden had no hope of winning the nomination in 2008 but his presidential campaign, despite its inauspicious start, was strong enough to make him Barack Obama’s choice for running mate.

Biden performed poorly during the 2020 Democratic Presidential debates but back in 2008 many political pundits thought Biden won the early debates on substance. Biden also delivered a mortal blow to former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani’s bid for the Republican presidential nomination when during a Democratic presidential primary debate he said of the then likely Republican nominee, “I mean, think about it! Rudy Giuliani. There’s only three things he mentions in a sentence – a noun, a verb, and 9/11. There’s nothing else!” That line was played on a loop by left-wing cable news channels and sunk Rudy’s campaign causing bad blood between the two that runs deep to this very day.

As well as Biden performed in the primary debates, debates only matter so much in presidential campaigns. They matter much more in the vice-presidential campaign, as apart from their acceptance speech at their party’s convention, the vice-presidential debate is usually the only the time the electorate pay attention to the running mates. Of course, 2008 became be an exception to that rule when John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running mate. Obama, who picked his running mate first, had no idea that McCain would make such a bold move and went “safety first” by picking Biden.

Biden added much needed foreign policy experience to the Democratic ticket, at a time when the punditocracy thought foreign policy would be what the election would hinge on. Of course, with the benefit of hindsight, we know that the financial crisis of 2008 would dramatically switch the focus of the election onto the economy. When Obama picked Biden, in the summer of 2008, he was trying to rebut the McCain campaign’s narrative that he was the biggest celebrity in the world, similar to Paris Hilton and Britney Spears, but he was not ready to lead.

Biden had made his plan for a federal Iraq the cornerstone of his bid for his party’s 2008 presidential nomination and illustrated that this had bi-partisan support by hosting a joint campaign event in 2007 with one of the GOP presidential hopefuls – then-Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas. The two senators could not be more different. Brownback, an evangelical Christian, would go on to serve as the United States ambassador at large for international religious freedom during the Trump administration. However, on Friday 12th October 2007, Senators Biden and Brownback held a historic joint campaign event at the Wakonda Country Club in Des Moines, Iowa, to discuss their bipartisan plan on Iraq.

Biden’s vision for Iraq would never come to pass but in 2020, Joseph R. Biden was elected President of the United States. His 2020 campaign offered American voters “a return to normalcy” after a period of great political upheaval. In that respect it echoed the successful presidential campaign of Warren G. Harding in 1920. Harding campaigned from his front porch and won and Biden campaigned from his basement and won. Harding even saw off a young Franklin D. Roosevelt who was running for Vice-President on the Democratic Party ticket that year.

On 14th July 1918 the youngest son of Theodore Roosevelt, Quentin, was killed when shot down behind enemy lines. With the death of only son, the once mighty TR was felled. He died on 6th January 1919. The former president had been considered the likely Republican Party nominee for 1920. With the Rough Rider’s untimely demise his brand of populist conservativism would not come to dominate American politics until, 96 years later, another brash anti-establishment New Yorker threw his hat into the political arena. The election of Donald Trump was the natural order reasserting itself.

The Brexit result and much of what followed revealed the fault lines in British politics were now ones of culture, not class. This is just as it was before the Great War. The culture wars are here to stay, and for the coming decade, at least expect them to be the Sun around which British politics orbits, as the natural order reasserts itself.

CONCLUSION NEW PROGRESSIVES

“The language of party is eloquent and famous for being grand at illustration; but it is equally well known that much of it gives humble ideas of the speaker, probably because of the naughty temper party is prone to; which, whilst endowing it with vehemence, lessens the stout circumferential view that should be taken, at least historically. Indeed, though we admit party to be the soundest method for conducting us, party talk soon expends its attractiveness as would a summer’s afternoon given up to the contemplation of an encounter of rams’ heads” - George Meredith, Beauchamp’s Career (1875)

“‘It goes back to my old paradox’ – the Master again. ‘When you first arrive in power, you have maximum authority. You are the people’s choice. You have momentum. The wind at your back. But you don’t know how to do anything. By the time you’ve learned the lessons, worked out where the levers are and how to use them, sucked up all the tricks of survival, then ten to one your authority has gone. You’ve become discredited, disgraced, or merely boring. It’s all over. You can have either wisdom or power, but never both at the same time. So my question is this: under such an arrangement, how can a serious democracy ever be properly run?’” - Andrew Marr, Children of the Master (2015)

“I remember exactly where I was on the evening of the day Blair’s predecessor as Labour leader John Smith died. I was having an after-work pint outside the Two Chairmen pub in Westminster with Patrick Rock. The news had been shocking and tragic, but the political implications were clear. We looked at each other and said almost simultaneously, ‘That’s it. Tony Blair will become leader and we’re stuffed.’” - David Cameron, On the Record (2019)

From the outset, as Leader of the Opposition, Sir. Keir Starmer embraced his role as one of being an attack dog. Unfortunately, for the new opposition leader no one on his staff thought to remind him of Churchill’s old adage about liking a man who grins when he fights. Humour is an important tool in a politician’s utility belt and its use can keep them from appearing negative and nasty when on the offensive. Unfortunately, for the Labour Party, Starmer seems to lack both humour and charm. The Westminster Village consensus is that Starmer just is not likeable enough to win the

premiership from opposition. Britain has had “gray” prime ministers before, but they almost always inherited the crown whilst their party was in government. An example of Starmer’s lack of political finesse is that he kept on over the issue of the Downing Street flat refurbishment after Boris Johnson had announced that he was going to pay the costs. If he had been more savvy, he would have taken credit for making Johnson pay the bill and made a joke about literally making Boris Johnson pay (for his flat refurbishment) since becoming leader. It would have been a cheap but cheerful applause line for his party faithful and would have actually gotten under the Prime Minister’s skin. Instead, he sought to prosecute a case against the Prime Minister after the public had lost interest. Sir Keir should’ve learnt when to declare victory but, evidently, he has not. Starmer would have been better advised not to focus on the legalisms which cause busy people’s eyes to glaze over. ‘Electoral Commission investigation’ sounds like more Westminster Village jibber-jabber to be frank. Most Brits don’t give a monkey’s over whether some muppet with too much money was willing to pay for the flat refurb. Voters would care if they had been asked to pay for it but they weren’t – so essentially the general response to that part of that story has been, whatever, so long as it is not being done with their money.

If I were in Sir Keir’s shoes, I would keep the focus on the reason for the refurb being “Theresa May’s John Lewis nightmare” and ham it up a bit, because it has cut through in middle England; the idea that John Lewis furniture is not posh enough for Boris Johnson. For most people, John Lewis is posh. Talk about insulting your supporters!

Although it might have made him feel better about himself, Sir Keir’s attempts to make political capital out of the Prime Minister’s baggage have failed to yield him any positive results. Furthermore, he should be extremely concerned that he is yet to face any serious pushback from Mr Johnson at Prime Minister’s Questions because whilst “Boris” might have more baggage than the airlines, Sir Keir has a record as Director of the Crown Prosecution Service which at some point will surely prove a gold mine for any opposition researcher worth their salt. Throughout his career, Sir Keir has been in the position of being the hunter and whilst Director of the Crown Prosecution Service, he came to expect the deference that came with being placed on that pedestal. Those who come from professional backgrounds where they have unconditionally commanded respect often find themselves ill-suited to frontline politics. For even the most successful politicians the catchphrase of the late comedian Rodney Dangerfield encapsulates their career, “I tell ya, I don't get no respect.”. Observing the lay of the land today, Sir. Keir’s advisors ought to tell him to brace himself for an onslaught of negative headlines courtesy of anyone who has reason to feel a sense of grievance towards him. The roles will suddenly reverse and the prosecutor will find himself in the unusual role of being the prosecuted. The court in which Starmer will find himself has not traditionally been kind to Labour Party leaders. That is the court of public opinion. Smart phones would have once been considered the stuff of science fiction. In the 1980s, when people imagined the modern era, they thought we would have flying cars and hoverboards despite 45

neither being particularly practical. The advent of smart phones fundamentally changed how politicians communicate with the electorate. As we crossed that bridge to the 21st century, our Prime Ministers and Leaders of the Opposition stopped being living room candidates with whom voters would catch up with at the end of the day during a half hour television news broadcast. Suddenly, the public had politicians in their pockets, living rent-free in each voter’s smart phone of choice. Big name politicians became omnipresent in their lives – sometimes popping up in news blasts on their electronic devices, multiple times a day. Likability had been an important dimension of politics in the analogue era but in the broadband digital democracy we find ourselves in today, its importance has increased a thousand-fold. Sir Keir Starmer just isn’t likable enough. Sir Keir Starmer is not going anywhere. At least, not yet. If Labour loses the seat of Batley and Spen in the upcoming parliamentary by-election there will be loud voices in the media calling for him to go. However, it is incredibly difficult to push a Labour leader out of office. Normally it is required that they jump. Casting our minds back just a little while to Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party, we saw then how nigh on impossible it is for a successful coup d’etat to be launched against a sitting leader of the Labour Party. If someone wanted to challenge Starmer they would need the written support of at least 20% of sitting Labour MPs in order to force such a contest. Even then, if they were able to overcome that steep hurdle, they would have to face off against Starmer in that contest as he would automatically be on the ballot, which would be sent to all Labour Party members. Whilst all this would be going on Boris Johnson would effectively have little to no opposition and that is something Labour MPs do not want to see happen. Labour backbenchers were willing to move (unsuccessfully) against Corbyn in 2016 because they viewed him as an interloper which is not a charge that could be levelled against Sir Keir. When Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the Labour Party in September 2015, he was primarily treated as a come-from-nowhere candidate who had spent his career lingering on the backbenches. However, he was in actual fact a key player in stirring up internal Labour Party dissent regarding Tony Blair’s advocacy for taking military action against Saddam Hussain. Jeremy Corbyn was elected to the steering committee of the Stop The War coalition in October 2001, less than a month after the unspeakable tragedy that was the September attack of 2001. Contrary to popular opinion, the Stop The War coalition was formed not to oppose the Iraq war, but the war in Afghanistan, the country harbouring the terrorist Osama Bin Laden who had masterminded the evil attacks. Corbyn was elected chair of the Stop The War coalition in September 2011, a position he only relinquished when ascending to the Labour Party leadership only four years later. As a result of Ed Miliband’s change in the Labour leadership election rules, a large proportion of those involved in the Stop The War coalition joined to support their chairman. As such, the Labour Party was taken over by an organisation whose membership had swelled in 2003 in direct opposition to former Labour prime minister Tony Blair’s foreign policy. It is from this that came the anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism that has so poisoned the party of Her Majesty’s opposition under Corbyn’s leadership.

To view Corbyn as existing in some line of succession from previous Labour socialists such as Michael Foot and Tony Benn, would be doing them a great disservice. The tradition which Mr Corbyn represents is something altogether far more sinister. He managed a hostile takeover of the Labour Party that was so complete that had he not stepped down following the shellacking his party received at the ballot box, he would likely have survived another leadership challenge and still be leading the Labour Party today. The seeds for Jeremy Corbyn’s successful 2015 campaign for the Labour Party leadership were sown when Tony Blair decided stand shoulder-to-shoulder with George W. Bush by taking the country to war with Iraq. It seems poetic that the Corbyn leadership might well have created the conditions for Tony Blair to re-enter frontline British politics. Jeremy Corbyn, as leader, managed to cause fractures in Labour’s façade which would be nigh on impossible for Keir Starmer to repair. Jeremy Corbyn did better in the 2017 election than expected mostly as a result of Theresa May’s abysmal mismanagement of the expectations game. At the outset of that election, most voters were expecting the Tories to romp home with a majority, similar to New Labour’s 1997 majority. Because these voters did not think Corbyn had a hope in hell of becoming prime minister and because of Mrs May’s lack of charisma, the general election became not about the party leaders, but instead about who should represent each constituency in Parliament, effectively becoming a series of concurrent by- elections in every seat across the nation. Voters with a good constituency Labour MP felt inclined to support that MP because they thought it would have no impact on was to go on to govern the country. In addition to that, Corbyn did manage to mobilise a base of previously disaffected hard left-wingers in the country, adding to the existing Labour coalition. In 2019, because Mr Corbyn had become perilously close to becoming prime minister in the previous general election, voters were focussed on who they wanted as prime minister and constituency representation was much further down their list of priorities. This resulted in Labour getting the worst result since 1935. Corbyn also blundered in not taking control of the People’s Vote campaign in late 2018, with the Conservative Party in disarray over Brexit, he could have moved to solidify the pro- Brexit forces on the left and although not making up a majority of the country; no party gets over 50 per cent of the vote. If he had been able to unite the Remain forces behind his leadership, he would have had close to 48 percent and possibly been able to replicate the success of the SNP in Scotland, who lost a referendum, but won a country. Furthermore, he could have delivered a decisive blow to the Conservatives because there were enough Remainers in the Conservatives, that if the Labour party had swung behind a People’s Vote, there could have been a second referendum, which would likely have split the Tory Party in much the same way as the Corn Laws did in 1846. Jeremy Corbyn did not exploit Theresa May’s leadership because he himself was a weak leader. This created a vacuum into which entered Nigel Farage, who by the law of unintended consequences has shown to politicians such as Tony Blair that the barriers to entry for a new political party are much lower than they were in the early 1980s when the SDP was born. A leader with nationwide name recognition which Mr Farage had was able to

sweep the board in the 2019 European elections. The reason Change UK failed was in part because outside of Westminster, nobody knew who the hell they were. It was the success of the Brexit Party which forced the Tories to ditch May and bring in Johnson. Corbyn misplaying his hand was to the benefit of Boris Johnson who was smart enough to know that he wasn’t smart enough to deal with all these problems, so he brought in Dominic Cummings who played a blinder. Because Farage had managed to get Brexit supporting Labour voters to vote for them in the European elections, he had decoupled them from their lifetime support of the Labour Party and began the first step in the two-step process to voting Conservative. Just because something was right once does not mean it will always be thus. The once solid Labour heartland voted to leave the European Union, it then voted for the Brexit Party to reaffirm that vote, and then in December 2019 much of it voted Conservative to “get Brexit done”. It was the “Red Wall” seats that delivered Johnson his substantial majority and which provided a strong electoral rebuke of Corbyn’s Labour Party. The overwhelming majority of the formerly lifelong Labour voters who bolted the party in 2018-2019 did not do so because they wanted to reject the Labour Party but because they felt the Labour Party rejected them and their voices. Labour had taken its base in Scotland for granted and, at the 2015 General Election, the SNP proved that Labour’s support in Scotland had been a mile wide and an inch deep. At the 2019 General Election, Boris Johnson, following the strategy of Dominic Cummings, showed that Labour had taken their “Red Wall” for granted as the Conservatives swept a majority of those seats, many of which had stuck by the Labour Party even when it was led by Michael Foot whose 1983 General Election Manifesto fellow Labour MP Gerald Kaufman called “the longest suicide note in history.” Although, one could argue it was the one-time Labour stood for Brexit as it pledged that if elected, a Labour government would take Britain out of what was then called the European Economic Community. The 1983 General Election was also the election in which a young Tony Blair was first elected to the House of Commons. Following the result of the recent Hartlepool by- election, Tony Blair wrote an opinion editorial in the New Statesman: “Progressive politicians open to the scale of the challenge and the change are to be found in the ranks of the politically homeless. Without the diverting drama of speculation around new political parties we need a new progressive movement; a new progressive agenda; and the construction of a new governing coalition.” The almost constant use of the phrase “progressive” is of particular interest. In 1912 because former President Theodore Roosevelt was unhappy with his hand-picked successor William Howard Taft. Colonel Roosevelt (he preferred the prefix associated to his military rank be used after he left the presidency) decided to launch a third party bid against Taft. This split was an aberration and was only possible due to the one-of-a-kind 48

political personality that was Theodore Roosevelt; because the public was willing to view him as president because he had already been president, an advantage that no third party had had before. Today, former Labour prime minister Tony Blair was unhappy with his successor as Labour Party leader and was generally unhappy with the direction of his party. Because of the mess created by Corbyn and because of Brexit decoupling liberal progressive conservatives from the Conservative Party, there is a gap in the political market. Tony Blair uses the word progressive so many times in his New Statesman piece that this author cannot help but wonder if he has been reading about Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 bid and whether he planned on doing a TR and setting up a progressive party of his own. By saying he isn’t setting up a party, he hasn’t committed himself to doing so, so if he doesn’t take the plunge he won’t be regarded as a bottler like Gordon Brown was when he didn’t call a general election in his first year as leader of the Labour Party. I can well imagine that Mr Blair has learnt from the Farage pop up party example with the Brexit party and plans to pounce if Johnson’s support collapses, but Starmer’s does not pick up. Theodore Roosevelt came very close to winning the presidency in 1912 and doubtless would have won if social media had been around at the time. The incumbent Republican president, William Howard Taft, finished third with 23.2% of the popular vote and 8 Electoral College votes, the Progressive Party candidate, Colonel Theodore Roosevelt, came second with 27.4% of the popular vote and 88 Electoral College votes, and the Democratic Party candidate, Governor Woodrow Wilson, was elected as 28th President of the United States with 41.8% of the popular vote and 435 Electoral College votes. Whilst liberal progressives like Blair can find inspiration in Theodore Roosevelt’s 1912 third party run for the presidency, there is much that conservative populists can learn also. Although he was speaking about the two-party system in America in 1912 this section from T.R.’s speech The Right of the People to Rule given earlier that year is equally applicable to the British two-party system today:

“Then there is the direct primary-the real one, not the New York one-and that, too, the Progressives offer as a check on the special interests. Most clearly of all does it seem to me that this change is wholly good-for every State. The system of party government is not written in our Constitutions, but it is none the less a vital and essential part of our form of government. In that system the party leaders should serve and carry out the will of their own party. There is no need to show how far that theory is from the facts, or to rehearse the vulgar thieving partnerships of the corporations and the bosses, or to show how many times the real government lies in the hands of the boss, protected from the commands and the revenge of the voters by his puppets in office and the power of patronage. We need not be told how he is thus intrenched nor how hard he is to overthrow. The facts stand out in the history of nearly every State in the Union. They are blots on our political system. The direct primary will give the voters a method ever ready to use, by which the party leader shall be made to obey their command. The direct primary, if accompanied by a stringent corrupt-practices act, will help break up the corrupt partnership of corporations and politicians.”

The silent majority are not yet aware that the nations great political parties are not owned by them. They must be made aware. The gridlock over Brexit in the 2017-2019 Parliament showed them that rather whilst there were some outstanding MPs, most of them could not be fairly said to represent the best and the brightest in this country.

Dominic Cummings said last Wednesday that both the Conservative and Labour parties had failed the British public by offering them the choice of Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson at the last election. If Keir Starmer continues to fail his launch as Labour party leader, expect him to remain as Labour Party leader, but do not be surprised if the British public are not offered a third way in 2024 with Blair leading the new progressives (as opposed to New Labour).

The liberal progressives who hate Brexit are never going to vote for Boris Johnson, but if Boris Johnson tries to win over these voters that just don’t like him, as opposed to dancing with the voters that brought him to Number 10, then he can expect them to stay home in 2024 and find himself a casualty of the Age of (re)Alignment.