At Home and Abroad
Britain faces profound threats from China and global terrorism alongside a domestic malaise
Towering columns
In The Telegraph, David Frost warns of the dangers of widespread political disillusionment.
The ONS says that, if you ask voters whether a policy with a majority of voters against it would in fact be changed, only 30 per cent agree (and 51 per cent disagree). Not surprisingly, the public affairs company Edelman reports that 73 per cent of the country believes that “dealing with the country’s problems requires new thinking, new ideas and new approaches” and that two thirds of the country think we need a “completely new type of political party”. The pollster James Frayne wrote in these pages last week that “I cannot remember a more disillusioned and angrier electorate”.
In this environment, all the effort that goes into clever Westminster strategising is entirely wasted. Voters pay no attention and it just reinforces the disconnect. That’s why those politicians, the majority, who want to go back to a conventional pre-2016 style of politics are missing the point. Brexit and the 2019 election were clearly votes for something different. (So too, in a very different way, was Corbynmania.) In truth, the electorate is fed up to the back teeth with Westminster gameplaying and politicking and is beginning to despair about the capacity of normal politics to fix our problems.
This complete disconnect means that, for a lot of the time, there’s no real pressure on politicians. That’s why the Post Office scandal – and others – could linger for so long. But every so often, the anger spills over, as it did this week. Then, a real fury is visible at the failures of the political class.
Former civil servant Anna Stanley reflects on the indoctrination proffered during a counter-terrorism course she attended.
The danger of understanding terrorism with cultural relativism is that it breeds moral apathy; the kind that says ‘Who are we, mere democratic, liberal Westerners to impose our morality onto others? Who are we to say our culture is superior to others?’ These are luxury attitudes. It is easy to be sat in Kings College London and feel that all cultures are equal, when you haven’t been anally raped at a peace festival by someone shouting ‘Allahu Akbar’ and held hostage. In the introduction to the course, labelling an organisation as terrorist was described as a problem because it ‘implies a moral judgment’. Nothing was said about why a moral judgment might be appropriate.
All the civil servant participants were given a topic to research and present. One attendee said her brother had been radicalised and fought in Syria for Islamic State (ISIS). ’Phew’, I thought. At least one person here will understand the problems of extremism (!) Her presentation was about the UK’s Counter Terrorism Strategy, Prevent. She argued Prevent is inherently racist because it focuses on Islamist extremism. The mere mention of Islamist extremism makes Muslims ‘feel uncomfortable’, she argued. Her brother would most certainly have agreed. I raised the point that nearly 70 per cent of terrorist attacks in the UK are Islamist. Similarly, 70 per cent of lung cancer cases are caused by smoking. It would be absurd to avoid mentioning this in the study of cancer so smokers don’t feel uncomfortable. Unsurprisingly, this comparison was not well received.
…There was an irony to being surrounded by civil servants who hate the concept of the State. As young professionals, they represented a microcosm of the views emanating from British universities: When it comes to extremism and counter terrorism, the State is not to be trusted. The head of Security Studies at Kings College read concernedly, ‘Problems of Definitions: Labelling a group terrorist can increase the state’s power.’ The civil servants nodded in agreement.
In The Times, Ryan Bourne argues that the Financial Conduct Authority should not impose mandatory diversity and inclusion targets on firms.
The FCA argues that demographic diversity will reduce company groupthink, for example, so improving governance and risk management. If that is true, it’s unclear why profit-making companies couldn’t work this out for themselves. In any case, Edmans’ submission shows that the FCA misrepresents the academic evidence. While just and equitable treatment of employees correlates with better company financial performance, the impact of demographic diversity is mixed, if not negative. Which is unsurprising, given that it’s cognitive, not demographic, diversity that surely matters for better decision-making.
This negates the case for any sort of quota regulation, but the FCA also claims that more diverse boardrooms, senior leadership teams and workforces will help firms to reach more diverse customer bases. Again, no empirical evidence is provided. As Edmans suggests, given that the FCA’s responsibility is to customers, surely a better use of its time would be understanding why certain demographic groups have lesser access to financial services in the first place.
Most ludicrous of all is the idea that setting diversity targets will bolster UK finance’s international competitiveness. Contrarily, diversity mandates can foster division within businesses by breeding doubts about the competence of minority employees in senior roles, stoking resentment among those overlooked for “diversity hires” and encouraging gaming to hit arbitrary targets. The idea that regulatory requirements to gather and disclose information somehow improves the business environment is fanciful. Devoting resources to hit targets, rather than improving inclusion in ways that generate value, is the real “non-financial risk”.
On ConservativeHome, Matt Goodwin says the Tories should not abandon becoming a more blue-collar, more working-class party.
Over the last fourteen years a succession of Conservative prime ministers and MPs, all of whom lean further to the cultural left than their own voters, have alienated these voters. After watching the Tories push the pedal down on even higher levels of net migration while consistently failing to stop the boats, many of these pro-Brexit, immigration sceptics have been running for the hills.
Since 2019, the share of Brexit voters backing the Tories has been slashed from a little over three-quarters to just 40 per cent. The share of blue-collar voters backing the Tories has fallen from over half to just 25 per cent, and the share of pensioners has likewise collapsed from more than two-thirds to 43 per cent. If the Tories do suffer a heavy and historic defeat then it is inevitable, in my view, that the Conservative MPs who are left in parliament (who we know will be much more southern and much more likely to have gone to Oxbridge) will cling to a particular interpretation of this defeat.
It will be blamed on the alleged obsession with Brexit, with immigration, with the Rwanda policy, with the culture wars more broadly, and the robust language used by the likes of Anderson and Suella Braverman. But this would be a major miscalculation. Whilst the Tories are currently losing support at about the same rate among pro-Remain, socially liberal voters as they are among pro-Brexit, culturally conservative voters, the latter still represent a much bigger part of today’s Tory electorate.
Also on ConservativeHome, Luke de Pulford laments the miscarriages of justice against Jimmy Lai and Andy Li in Hong Kong, arguing Britain must take a must tougher stance on China.
We must issue revised business risk advice to UK companies operating in Hong Kong. Jimmy’s trial shows that the legal system in Hong Kong cannot be relied upon to deliver justice. There is no firewall between commercial and criminal cases. Jimmy Lai had a previous commercial case which found against him, predictably. C-suite figures believing themselves to be exempt from Beijing’s weaponising of commercial law should have a word with Jack Ma. For the purposes of UK trade, Hong Kong ought to be considered just another city in China, and any preferential tariffs or status afforded the Special Administrative Region should be revoked.
We must work with allies to ensure that existing extradition and mutual legal assistance treaties with Hong Kong and China are suspended across the free, democratic world. Beijing regularly abuses Interpol to pursue political opponents, recently imposing arrest warrants and 1m HKD bounties on young Hong Kongers who have fled the city. I have some personal experience of this. Over a year ago, the Foreign Office warned those of us named in Andy Li’s case that I was at risk of extradition to China or Hong Kong from third countries. There is no such thing as a fair trial in China, and I’d rather avoid it, thanks very much.
More broadly our diplomatic posture towards China desperately needs reform. Beijing is more repressive at home, and more assertive abroad. Its diplomats beat people up on the streets of Manchester and its government perpetrates genocide against Uyghurs. These two things alone are sufficient to demonstrate that whatever we are doing isn’t working. Worse, that our failure to achieve redress for abuses have trained Beijing well in the art of international impunity.
On his Substack, Christopher R. Rufo says conservatives must move beyond “limited government” and commit to governing using the apparatus of the state - as their opponents will.
In the end, the work of politics is the work of practical statesmanship. Those who ignore this reality by appealing to abstract principles always limit their effectiveness. When Thomas Paine wrote The American Crisis, he felt the breath of British soldiers at his neck. He understood that the Revolution had to defeat enemies on the battlefield and he looked to General Washington as the only man who could do it.
In our time, some conservatives believe it is enough to lay claim to “individual rights” and “limited government” as a substitute for managing the state. I, too, support individual rights and limited government, but the decisive political question concerns securing those rights. Who will do so? And, even if it is limited, what is the proper role of government? These are the issues which are ultimately at stake.
We can agree with Locke that humans enter into society and institute government to secure their natural rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But the twentieth century disrupted this arrangement: the state became engaged in a project to reshape society in its own image. For a hundred years, conservatives have tried and failed to reduce the size of government: as a percentage of GDP, the American state today is larger than the Chinese Communist state, with no sign of reversing course. Nineteenth-century liberalism is dead and cannot be restored.
The activist must begin with status quo reality: the institutions which today shape public and private life will exist for the foreseeable future. The only question is who will lead them and by which set of values. The New Right must summon the self-confidence to say, “We will, and by our values.” Conservatives can no longer be content to serve as the caretakers of their enemies’ institutions, or as gadflies who adopt the posture of the “heterodox” while signalling to their left-wing counterparts that they have no desire to disrupt the established hegemony. Rather, the New Right needs to move from the politics of pamphlets to the governance of the institutions.
Wonky thinking
In Political Quarterly, Professor Andrew Gamble reviews The Case for Conservatism by Gavin Rice and Nick Timothy, viewing it as a long-needed call for reform of the centre-right.
The main problems [in the UK economy] are underinvestment, loose monetary policy, barriers to social mobility, and deficiencies in education and skills. They worry that as globalisation becomes global fragmentation, the UK is unprepared for the new competitive international climate. The neoliberal viewpoint, powerfully expressed by Nigel Lawson in the 1980s, was that governments should be agnostic about the sectoral composition of their economies. Rice and Timothy believe that this leaves the UK defenceless against the sale of many of its most valuable companies to China and the United States. The main losers from globalisation, the authors argue, citing Branko Milanovic, are poorer workers in rich countries. They have been hit by de-industrialisation, zero-hours contracts, flexible working patterns and mass immigration. Reversing these by regulating work contracts and controlling immigration is an essential part of social justice. Immigration is too high, say 63 per cent of British voters. The authors want to see the numbers brought down to very low levels and new measures to improve integration. Multiculturalism, the authors insist, is the problem, not multiracialism. They also think that although culture wars are still a low priority for most voters, the wishes of the majority on such issues as gender recognition and patriotism must be respected.
Cultural conservatism is given its due, but in this report, it takes second place to economic interventionism…Rice and Timothy give priority to the national community, based on family, nation and place, and they put pursuit of the common good above individual freedom. But their notion of the common good is primarily economic rather than cultural. They strongly attack liberal ideas of moral neutrality and the minimalist nightwatchman state. The private sector, they observe, can limit freedom too, and they advocate a Conservative programme based on regulation to make markets better, changes to employment law to protect workers, strong support for the minimum wage, public procurement and industrial strategy. They are careful to say they are not in favour of ‘picking winners’. What they are in favour of is Asian industrial policy and ‘civic capitalism’.
The authors present very good reasons why their approach offers the best chance for Conservatives to rebuild a winning electoral coalition and reconnect with neglected elements of the Conservative past. But there seems limited appetite in the Conservative Party as it is presently constituted to go down that path. Their report offers a much deeper analysis of what is wrong with the party and the country than anything produced by the free market camp, but that does not guarantee them a hearing. What is of wider interest is that they are grappling in a serious way with one of the central political problems of our time. How can consent be rebuilt in Western democracies and how can polarisation and political alienation be checked? The growth of populist nationalism, particularly around the issue of rising immigration, is affecting every country in Europe, as recent developments in Italy, Germany and the Netherlands testify. This report can be read as an attempt from within the Conservative tradition to examine what might be done to reverse the adverse effects of four decades of globalisation and neoliberalism, and recreate a unified national community by taking levelling up seriously. There are some surprising omissions—little on Brexit or the Union or the constitution, for example. But while there is much to agree and disagree with in their analysis, there is no doubting the seriousness of the issues they raise and the urgency of finding ways to deal with them.
American Compass has published new polling showing US voters care about the decline of manufacturing industry and the offshoring of production.
The rejection of globalization has been among the most significant shifts in American politics in the past decade. While many economists continue to insist that globalization—and trade with China especially—has benefited the United States, the American people do not agree.
Experts have condemned opposition to globalization as “grievance-onomics” or an ill-informed reaction to populist demagoguery. At the extreme, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, has argued that “what’s really going on” with concern for American manufacturing is “the general fetish for keeping white males of low education outside the cities in the powerful positions they’re in.” Former Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross wrote recently of Japan’s Nippon Steel acquiring U.S. Steel, “there is no real cause for concern other than xenophobia.” For all the cynical commentary, few efforts have been made to explore what Americans actually believe and why.
In November 2023, American Compass partnered with YouGov to survey 1,000 Americans about their views on globalization. We found:
• Americans have broadly negative views of globalization and trade with China, but not because they feel personally aggrieved. To the contrary:
• By a 41% to 28% margin, Americans said that they have personally benefited rather than suffered from America’s embrace of globalization and China.
• Yet at the same time, by a 47% to 33% margin, they said that the nation has suffered rather than benefited.
• While Americans across regions and classes are more likely to say they personally benefited rather than suffered, all except those in the upper class and living in coastal cities believe the nation has suffered. January 2024 Executive Summary Economists do not understand what people value and why 2 The American Rejection of Globalization January 2024
• Americans are more skeptical of globalization broadly than of China in particular. The survey sample was split, with half of respondents asked about the effect of America’s embrace of “globalization” and half asked about the embrace of “China.”
• Asked about their personal situation, Americans across classes and regions were more likely to say they had suffered from the embrace of globalization than the embrace of China.
• Asked about the national situation, Americans had similar views regarding globalization or China—with the exception of those in the upper class and coastal cities, whose views were much more negative when asked specifically about China.
• The general view that globalization has harmed the nation is consistent with strong beliefs that both manufacturing and place matter—two judgments at odds with the pro-globalization consensus among economists.
• Asked whether policymakers should focus more on “helping struggling areas recover” from job loss or “helping people move to opportunity” where new jobs are created, Americans choose helping struggling areas by more than two-to-one.
• Similar results hold across region, class, gender, race, party, and generation.
• By even larger majorities, Americans agree that the nation needs a stronger manufacturing sector, somewhat for individual jobs and national security, but more so for economic growth and dynamism.
• Alongside 42% of Americans who say, “manufacturing is important to a healthy, growing, innovative economy,” 25% say, “manufacturing jobs are good jobs that support communities,” and 16% say, “manufacturing is important for our national security.”
• Only 3% say “the goal should be producing things where it can be done at the lowest cost,” 3% say “manufacturing is fine, but our policies aren’t going to bring it back,” and 2% say “manufacturing was the old economy, we need new-economy jobs.”
• Similar results hold across region, class, gender, race, party, and generation.
• Perhaps the best way to understand American attitudes toward globalization is by analogy to climate change, an issue on which many economists are eager to impose substantial costs for what they believe to be the greater social good. By nearly two-to-one, Americans say they would rather pay higher prices to strengthen American manufacturing than pay higher prices to combat climate change.
• 86% of Republicans and 66% of Independents prefer strengthening manufacturing, as do 65% of lower-class Democrats; other Democrats prefer combating climate change
Book of the week
We recommend The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity and Islam by Douglas Murray. Murray traces the origins of the 2015 European migrant crisis and the wider tensions between the West and its Muslim diasporas.
There is no single cause of the present sickness. The culture produced by the tributaries of Judaeo-Christian culture, the Ancient Greeks and Romans, and the discoveries of the Enlightenment has not been levelled for nothing. But the final act has come about because of two simultaneous concatenations from which it is now all but impossible to recover.
The first is the mass movement of peoples into Europe. In all Western European countries this process began after the Second World War due to labour shortages. Soon Europe got hooked on the migration and could not stop the flow even if it had wanted to. The result was that what had been Europe - the home of the European peoples - gradually became a home for the entire world. The places that had been European gradually became somewhere else. So places dominated by Pakistani immigrants resembled Pakistan in everything but their location, with the recent arrivals and their children eating the food of their place of origin, speaking the language of their place of origin and worshipping the religion of their place of origin. Streets in the cold and rainy northern towns of Europe filled with people dressed for the foothills of Pakistan or the sandstorms of Arabia. ‘The Empire strikes back’ noted some observers with a barely concealed smirk. Yet whereas the empires of Europe had been thrown off, these new colonies were obviously intended to be for good.
All the time Europeans found ways to pretend this could work. By insisting, for instance, that such immigration was normal. Or that if integration did not happen with the first generation then it might happen with their children, grandchildren or another generation yet to come. Or that it didn’t matter whether people integrated or not. All the time we waved away the greater likelihood that it just wouldn’t work. This is a conclusion that the migration crisis of recent years has simply accelerated.
Which brings me to the second concatenation. For even the mass movement of millions of people into Europe would not sound such a final note for the continent were it not for the fact that (coincidentally or otherwise) at the same time Europe lost faith in its beliefs, traditions and legitimacy. Countless factors have contributed to this development, but one is the way in which Western Europeans have lost what the Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno famously called the ‘tragic sense of life’. They have forgotten what Zweig and his generation so painfully learnt: that everything you love, even the greatest and most cultured civilisations in history, can be swept away by people who are unworthy of them. Other than simply ignoring this, one of the few ways to avoid this tragic sense of life is to push it away through a belief in the tide of human progress. That tactic remains for the time being the most popular approach.
Yet all the time we skate over, and sometimes fall into, terrible doubts of our own creation. More than any other continent or culture in the world today, Europe is now deeply weighed down with guilt for its past. Alongside this outgoing version of self-distrust tuns a more introverted version of the same guilt. For there is also the problem in Europe of an existential tiredness and a faeeling that perhaps for Europe the story has run out and a new story must be allowed to begin. Mass immigration - the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people - is one way in which this new story has been imagined: a change, we seemed to think, was as good as a rest. Such existential civilisational tiredness is not a uniquely modern European phenomenon, but the fact that a society should feel like it has run out of steam at precisely the moment when a new society has begun to move in cannot help but lead to vast, epochal changes.
Quick links
Real GDP fell by 0.2% in the three months to November 2023.
Britons believe things are worse now than in 2010.
The Government is not contemplating any new “safe and legal routes” for those seeking to claim asylum in the UK.
Voters prioritise funding public services over tax cuts, a new poll found.
UK-EU trade is now a higher proportion of global trade than before the Brexit referendum.
The Reform Party is now attracting 1 in 10 British voters, 1 in 5 2019 Tories and 1 in 5 Leave voters.
The former chair of Australia’s parliamentary Intelligence Committee said David Cameron’s claim that the advice on the security risks posed by Huawei radically changed after he left Number 10 was “inconceivable”.
The Government is looking to approve a third nuclear power station in addition the ongoing Sizewell C project.
The Government will make a loss on student loan repayments due to the rising cost of Government borrowing.
More than 40,000 working-age adults are starting on disability benefits each month.
The Conservative Party is now seen as more right-wing than UKIP in 2014-15, polls show.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission has approved the first spot bitcoin exchange traded funds.
American XL Bullies are to be banned in Scotland.
Stonewall has removed biological sex from its monitoring guidance for corporations.