10/22/2022
[Adapted from the latest Radio Derb, now available exclusively on VDARE.com]
It’s a common observation — I’ve made it myself — that Britain and America travel on parallel tracks politically. In 1979 the Brits got Margaret Thatcher, an economic liberal (in the classical sense) but a social conservative. The following year we Americans got Ronald Reagan, ditto ditto.
Thatcher and Reagan were both followed briefly by pale imitations going through the motions. Then, in the 1990s, both countries elected amoral centrist opportunists — Bill Clinton and Tony Blair — who were mainly interested in enlarging their own net worth.
These whatever-ists ruthlessly offshored their citizens’ jobs, relaxed immigration controls — in Blair’s case, basically eliminated them — and whizzed around the world attending globalist conferences, striking deals with despots, and smiling for the paparazzi (preferably with winsome-looking black children also in the picture).
Then the first years of the 21st century were, in both Britain and America, given over to futile Missionary Wars abroad and Cultural Revolution at home.
It is tempting to see the wars as a smokescreen — a literal smokescreen — behind which the Cultural Revolution was pushed forward. Britain and America both got legalized homosexual marriage and decarceration of criminals and lunatics. The odious system of Protected Classes was expanded to include the entire Third World, so that immigrants — legal or not — from trashcan countries were elevated to social privilege, along with native minorities.
The political leadership of those years was characterized by deep mediocrity in both of our countries. Did Gordon Brown, David Cameron, and Theresa May really occupy the same office as Margaret Thatcher, Winston Churchill, and David Lloyd George? Or George W. Bush and Barack Obama the same office as Ronald Reagan, Dwight Eisenhower, and Franklin Roosevelt? Hard to believe.
There was, in both countries, a slow-rising public discontent with the cultural overturning and the mass influx of foreigners. The discontent had no significant voice, though. The administrative state was in firm control, the national media its loyal mouthpiece, the education system its Seminary, major business corporations its happy auxiliaries, the War on Terror its fallback excuse. [PETER HITCHENS: Why I refuse to celebrate 100 years of the saggy, self-satisfied, wholly biased media monster that is the BBC, Daily Mail, October 19, 2022]. Public expression of that discontent was under strong social disapproval. But the Ruling Class seemed to be aware of it at some level. British Prime Ministers David Cameron and Theresa May — that is, from 2010 to 2019 — made repeated pledges at election time to cut back on immigration numbers, i.e., Tories would limit immigration to ’tens of thousands’ a year, says Cameron, Guardian, January 11, 2010, and Theresa May pledges to cut immigration to ‘tens of thousands’ | Pledge was first made in Conservative Party’s 2010 election manifesto, Politico, April 20, 2017. Neither made the slightest effort to do so once in office.
Then, in 2016, the discontent found its voice in both countries. The British Establishment allowed a referendum on Brexit — leaving the European Union. Nobody in the Establishment thought Brexit would pass. Nobody they knew wanted to leave Europe. If any of them had thought the referendum might pass, there would have been no referendum. Brexit passed, though, by 52 to 48 percent.
A few months later that same year, outsider Donald Trump won America’s presidential election. The popular vote here was even less decisive than it was for Brexit: Trump actually lost it, 46 percent to 48. He won the Electoral College vote, though, so the constitutional requirement was satisfied, and he became President.
The Establishments in both countries were traumatized. The consequences here in the USA are of course familiar to my readers. For the next four years — indeed, in some regards down to the present — our Ruling Class went through something strongly resembling collective insanity. However, they recovered sufficiently to right the situation in 2020, and are now firmly back in control.
Here the British situation has been different. Unlike the 2016 American rebellion, Brexit had major impacts on both sovereignty and economics.
The sovereignty issue concerns Northern Ireland, a sovereign part of the United Kingdom. It has of course a land border with the Irish Republic, which is an independent nation and member of the EU. How to square the circle of combining EU trade rules with a now-independent British trade policy?
My own solution, were I Prime Minister of Britain, would be to do to Northern Ireland what Charles de Gaulle did to Algeria: bye-bye, sorry!
This does not seem to have been considered by Britain’s rulers.
And then, economics. British independence of the EU has called for a major restructuring of trade relations, most obviously with the EU itself, but also with the rest of the world, where Britain could formerly fall back on EU rules.
So, big economic disruptions — much bigger and more disruptive than anything we Americans can blame on Donald Trump.
Yet the British Establishment, like ours, has regrouped to meet the challenge, although it naturally took them longer to do so. And I really should say “is regrouping,” not “has regrouped,” as the process is not yet complete. The chaos of recent weeks has all been part of the regrouping.
Britain’s rulers are most of the way there, though. They have recovered their strong sense of collective identity and a determination not to blunder into any more populist shocks, as David Cameron did with the Brexit referendum.
The immigration issue illustrates their gathering confidence. Liz Truss, the Prime Minister who just resigned after only six weeks on the job, had announced in her first major speech last month that she would greatly expand immigration to stimulate economic growth [Liz Truss plans more immigration in effort to fill vacancies and drive growth, Guardian, September 25, 2022].
See what the most racially diverse Cabinet ever can do will be the spin. Gammons will be confused. Wait till they find out the immigrants are coming from India and such so their existing working rights will be leveled down not up in a competitive market. https://t.co/hAzNw87QSb
— Marion Main — Extremist according to Rishi Sunak (@marionmain3) September 25, 2022
That put her at odds with her cabinet colleague Suella Braverman, an outspoken immigration skeptic [How an almighty migration row led Suella Braverman to turn against Liz Truss, Telegraph, October 19, 2022].
Yes, Liz Truss will soon be gone, but… Suella Braverman is already gone, forced to resign on Tuesday this week over a trifling breach of security.
The real reason for Mrs. Braverman’s defenestration is of course her heterodoxy on immigration. Britain’s Ruling Class wants to restore the David Cameron / Theresa May / Boris Johnson policy of solemn promises around election time followed, once safely elected, by no action whatsoever.
British commentator Toby Young was wondering on Wednesday at The Daily Sceptic whether the phrase “a globalist coup” is appropriate for what’s been happening over there [Are We Witnessing a Globalist Coup?, October 22, 2022]. He left the question mark in place.
To lose one genuinely conservative Cabinet minister may be regarded as a misfortune … The political events of the last week are beginning to look like a globalist coup. Or is it just one monumental cock-up after another? https://t.co/8kfoYVIZSE
— Toby Young (@toadmeister) October 19, 2022
Like Toby, I’m not sure that “globalist coup” fits the bill precisely, but it’s pretty darn close.
Like our own Establishment, British elites loathe and fear their own citizens and dream of replacing them. The 2016 shock disturbed that dream; but now they have recovered their confidence. They are sure that, if they can just get the right bottoms in the right chairs, they can get back to something like what Orwell called “the dear old game of scratch-my-neighbor.”
The ruling Establishments on both sides of the Atlantic have deteriorated badly across my lifetime, to the point where they are now reptilian scum. Witness the astounding sentence Friday of Steve Bannon [Steve Bannon given four months in prison for contempt of Congress, Guardian, October 21, 2022] — latest example of their criminalization of policy differences.
Still, although their mean IQ has plummeted, they maintain a sort of criminal low cunning.
Whatever emerges from the current scuffling in Westminster or the November midterms over here, I doubt (but of course I would) that it will make much difference to the long-term historical trend.
John Derbyshire writes an incredible amount on all sorts of subjects for all kinds of outlets. (This no longer includes National Review, whose editors had some kind of tantrum and fired him.) He is the author of We Are Doomed: Reclaiming Conservative Pessimism and several other books. He has had two books published by VDARE.com com: FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT (also available in Kindle) and FROM THE DISSIDENT RIGHT II: ESSAYS 2013.
For years he’s been podcasting at Radio Derb, now available at VDARE.com for no charge. His writings are archived at JohnDerbyshire.com.
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