The Road to Progress

Liberalism's good intentions have left us more divided

Towering columns

On his Substack, Matt Goodwin examined how migration-led population growth will fundamentally change Britain’s cultural fabric.

A country which is already, visibly struggling with multiculturalism will continue to witness a rapid proliferation of cultural and tribal identities, religions, practices, values, and ways of life —all of which will heap more pressure on a fraying social contract, in which police, schools, councils and other institutions are already struggling to manage and make sense of the tribal and religious practices and conflicts which are now being imported into Britain.

There’s also a very good chance this forecast by the Office for National Statistics is actually underplaying the scale of change that’s about to unfold. The net migration figures which underpin the forecast are less than half of what net migration has been in recent years. So, if the elite class continue to cling to even higher rates of net migration, which we know they want to do, then this looming population explosion will be even bigger and more profound. Indeed, almost every forecast about immigration and population change in the past has later been revised upwards, usually by hapless civil servants who simply got it wrong the first time.

We can already see the signs of this unfolding immigration revolution and how it is going to completely transform the country. Britain has already overtaken America when it comes to the share of people who were born overseas, which stands at 17%. Under both Labour and the Tories, our annual rate of net migration has surged seven-fold, from 100,000 in 1997 to 700,000. Since the mid-2000s, the share of schools where white British pupils are a minority has almost doubled, to 23%. And, since the 1990s, the share of primary school pupils whose first language is not English has increased almost three-fold, to 22%. This is only the beginning; all this will now accelerate, dramatically, in the years ahead.

At The Spectator, Dean Godson explains how the new Northern Ireland deal has strengthened the integrity of the Union.

In practice, EU alignment was always overstated – it never came close to making EU law dominant in Northern Ireland. Alignment with EU regulations largely affects the production sector (manufacturing and agriculture in the main), representing about 18 per cent of Northern Ireland’s economy, and this sector continues to be governed by UK commercial, fiscal, environmental and employment laws, as well as by UK macro-economic policy and Northern Ireland’s own policies and legislation on skills, education and planning. The claim that the Protocol would lead to an all-island economy was vastly exaggerated, but effective. 

The command paper ‘Safeguarding the Union’, published yesterday, is a substantial set of pro-Union measures. With the creation of a new UK East-West Council, Northern Ireland’s institutional engagement with the rest of the UK is strengthened significantly – going beyond what David Trimble achieved in his negotiations that led to the Good Friday Agreement. 

Further significant reductions in barriers to the movement of goods have been achieved and the position of Northern Ireland in the UK’s internal market strengthened – including the further integration of Northern Ireland’s world-class defence industries into the UK defence industrial framework. It includes a constitutional guarantee for Northern Ireland – much needed, given the challenge to the Union represented by the application of EU law in Northern Ireland. The rejection of the concept of the all-island economy, exposed as a misnomer by Dr Graham Gudgin’s Policy Exchange paper of June 2022, is the most explicit of any official document produced by the British state, thus finally expunging one of the most egregious misrepresentations of the Good Friday Agreement by Dublin. 

For The Times, Juliet Samuel highlights the Conservative success in renewing Teesside through state intervention to grow the economy.

What was a post-industrial wasteland is now a construction site for hundreds of workers building both Britain’s first offshore wind-farm factory, which will use British steel and skills to manufacture 120-metre mega-turbines, and a huge quay from which to deploy it. The whole development is predicted to bring in £1.4 billion in business rates revenue, which explains why the notoriously stingy Treasury agreed to authorise £250 million in borrowing and another £250 million in public grants for it. The bean counters expect the public sector to make more than nine times its money from the project.

Now, I am sure that somewhere in this enormous development there are some imperfect processes that should be improved. And given that we are dealing with a brownfield site full of toxic junk the government was previously paying to maintain, it’s entirely possible that it might be hard to calculate its liabilities and value accurately.

But should it not occur to us, or anyone who cares about growth in deprived zones, that the speed of progress in Teesside is directly related to the lack of processology, local government meddling and just-in-case bureaucracy weighing it all down? Perhaps the fact that the government has finally empowered “a small group of individuals” to make quick decisions, revise agreements and strike deals using public money has something to do with the fact that thousands of jobs are being created and the nation’s industrial capacity is for once being expanded, rather than dismantled. Maybe, just maybe, Britain is getting something right here.

In the New Statesman, John Gray says moving beyond current manifestations of late liberalism will be essential to defend our fundamental freedoms.

New thinking is found in small but increasingly influential groups such as the New Conservatives. Led by Danny Kruger and Miriam Cates, they comprise a group of MPs, many from Red Wall constituencies, who reject the dominant Tory brand of free markets, mass immigration and hyper-liberalism in social policy. Rightly, these Tories believe there is an inherent contradiction between the anarchic dynamism of market forces and social cohesion. State spending increased under Tony Blair; Boris Johnson was fond of big-spending projects. The economic model remained market liberalism, the endpoint of which has proved to be pervasive anomie and the loss of a common way of life. But post-liberal conservatism has contradictions of its own. Voters look to government as a shield against insecurity. That does not mean there is a popular yearning for a lost world of seamless community.

There is a solid British majority that demands lower levels of immigration, rejects a society composed of self-enclosed ethnic and sectarian groups, and opposes incursions on the liberty and equality of women and gay people that have been imposed in the name of transgender rights. It does so because it values liberal freedoms. The family is a vital part of a stable society, discouraged by a tax system that scarcely recognises the institution. But, outside of some religious communities, there is no constituency in the wider country for curtailing divorce, abortion, same-sex marriage or the option of changing one’s gender.

The majority that resists living in a country of ethno-cultural enclaves is not motivated by racist fantasies of integral nationhood. It wants to preserve the freedom that goes with not being defined by an exclusive identity. Post-liberals who lament the disappearance of a common way of life forget that the one that has been lost was liberal.

At The Spectator, Stephen Daisley responds to Mike Freer’s decision to retire from Parliament and the corrosive impact of Islamism on British culture and politics.

Nothing will change after Mike Freer’s announcement. This is just how things are in Britain now. If a religious education teacher shows pupils a cartoon of Mohammed during a lesson on blasphemy, he must go into hiding. If a schoolboy scuffs a copy of the Quran, his mother must plead for him down at the local mosque, with her hair covered of course. If Muslims from one branch of Islam demand the censorship of a film produced by Muslims from another branch of Islam, cinemas will acquiesce for ‘the safety of our staff and customers’.

There are four million Muslims in the UK. Many contribute public service, enterprise, creativity and innovations in scientific and technological fields. Many are impelled by the teachings of the Quran and the hadith to live good lives, behave modestly, raise their children with a strong moral compass and give generously of their time and coin to charitable and community causes. These people should know – and I suspect most do know – that they and the faith they practise are not at issue here.

What is at issue is Islamism, a totalitarian politics that aims to destroy and supersede Britain’s liberal democratic order. In intimidating a government minister into not seeking re-election, it has scored a significant victory. Reversing that victory will require a governing class that grasps the nature and scale of the threat and is prepared to change its response accordingly. Islamism is the enemy within. It does not tolerate Britain’s traditions and so Britain must become an intolerably hostile place for this ideology and its adherents.

For The Critic, Miriam Cates argues that the state needs to help parents overcome the power of Big Tech by banning social media for under-16s.

Those on the left would benefit from reading some history. But those on the right, whose criticisms are that I’m advocating for a nanny state and that it should be up to parents to decide whether their children use social media, must engage in a much-needed debate about the role of Government in protecting children from harm.

Let me be clear: I am absolutely opposed to any attempt by the State to supplant the rightful responsibilities of parents. For this reason I recently criticised the Labour party’s daft proposal for universal supervised child tooth-brushing by infant school teachers. Robbing parents of their duties is counterproductive (absolving people of responsibility tends to make them less responsible) and, however imperfect mums and dads may be, the State is always a terrible alternative. But while socialists are wrong to believe that the state should supplant parents, libertarians are equally wrong to think the state has no role at all in child protection, or — according to Nigel Farage — that children should have the same freedoms as adults.

Conservatives like me, on the other hand, believe that only good government — as opposed to no government or big government  — can properly create the conditions that make us happy, safe and free. The reason that most parents are successful in keeping their children safe from offline dangers – whether those dangers are routine like crossing roads or extreme like abduction by paedophiles — is because society has pooled the responsibility for regulation, policing and security in the vehicle of the state.

Wonky thinking

At ConservativeHome, Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove made the case that 14 years of Conservative government has made Britain better. Despite inheriting much more adverse economic circumstances than New Labour did, Conservative-led governments have made significant strides in reforming education and welfare, introducing same-sex marriage, delivering Brexit, protecting the environment, advancing devolution and promoting global trade.

So, before even attempting to consider what the genuine achievements of the last 13 years have been it is necessary to recognise in 2010 Conservatives came to power with an economy weaker than their predecessors, indeed weakened by their predecessors, and with a record in public services that flattered to deceive. 

It is also necessary to acknowledge that Conservatives in Government since 2010 have faced, like all Western governments; the long outworking of the 2008 financial crisis, the further polarisation of the public square – amplified by social media, the most serious global pandemic since 1920, the worst war on the European continent since 1945, and the return of inflation as globalisation retreats. Set against that backdrop, the achievements of the last 14 years are all the more impressive. 

A Tory minister seeking to emulate Brown, at least rhetorically, could tell their party conference that Conservative ministers had delivered: 

“Better state schools than ever before, more students from state schools at our best universities, more students securing top grades in maths, physics and chemistry, our universities the best in Europe and growing, record numbers in employment, welfare simpler, fairer and better targeted, many more hours of free childcare, a national living wage, same-sex marriage, stronger defence with two new aircraft carriers, new nuclear submarines on the way and a stronger NATO, the fastest decarbonisation of any major economy, world leaders in offshore wind, farm subsidies reformed to increase production and enhance the environment, world leadership in protecting our oceans, Brexit delivered and membership of the world’s fastest growing trade bloc secured, more than £350 million extra a week for the NHS, leadership extended in life sciences, quantum computing and AI and gene technology, crime falling, over 2.5 million new homes delivered and the number of non-decent homes down by over 2 million, the Union strengthened, devolution delivered across much of England, nationalism in retreat in Scotland, the fastest vaccine rollout in the world, democracy’s strongest supporter in Ukraine” and that a Labour Government would risk sending all that back to square one.

Education is one area in which unambiguously positive change has been delivered by Conservative ministers – as even Sir Keir Starmer has acknowledged. England has risen up every international league table – for science, for maths, for reading – demonstrating against objective measurements real improvement in the skills that matter most. 

That hasn’t happened by accident. It happened in the teeth of opposition. Conservative ministers developed, and delivered, a comprehensive programme of reform. Schools were given greater freedom but also held more accountable for their actions…

…These policies were all driven by a desire to achieve greater social justice – to liberate children from poorer backgrounds, to democratise access to knowledge, to make opportunity more equal – and they are all profoundly conservative – they embody the insights that competition drives up standards, that facts can’t be fudged, that for accountability to work it has to be sharp as well as subtle, that if you want to change behaviour you need to change not rhetoric but incentives, that adult authority needs to be enhanced but an education system is measured on how children learn not how adults feel, that our culture is worth knowing, celebrating and transmitting, that the hard sciences bring more benefits to mankind than the social sciences and true kindness means high expectations not just higher spending. 

And that is a common factor that links the Conservative achievements of the last 14 years – a willingness to make hard decisions, to recognise the facts of life are conservative, to achieve genuine progress by telling the truth and to make lives better by embracing the best of competition, innovation and tradition. 

The Institute for Fiscal Studies published its report, Constraints and trade-offs for the next government, by Carl Emmerson, Christine Farquharson, Paul Johnson, and Ben Zaranko. They argue that the UK will continue to face significant economic and fiscal limitations beyond the consequences of the pandemic and other crises. This includes sluggish growth, high taxes, and underperforming public services.

Life is about trade-offs. Governing is no different. Governments always need to weigh priorities against one another, consider the benefits and costs of different proposals (and those of sticking with the status quo), choose who to make better and worse off, and choose how much weight to put on different competing objectives. But in a heavily constrained fiscal environment, with limited funds available to soften some of the harsher edges of government reforms, these trade-offs can become all the more acute. 

This is the situation in which the next government is likely to find itself. Taxes are at a record level for the UK (though are still low-to-middling by European standards), having risen by more during this parliament than during any other in the post-war period (Emmerson, Johnson and Zaranko, 2023). Yet following the austerity of the 2010s and the disruption of a pandemic, many public services feel broken. The Institute for Government’s ‘Performance Tracker’ examined nine separate public services in 2023 and concluded that all, with the exception of schools, were judged to be performing worse than they were in 2010 (Davies et al., 2023). This is an unfortunate combination, and a difficult starting point for any government. 

The two main UK-wide political parties have a commitment to have the debt-to-GDP ratio (i.e. national debt as a share of national income) on a falling path. The challenge is that with higher levels of spending on debt interest and forecasts suggesting that economic growth will continue to be weak, getting debt falling will be much more difficult than in the recent past – and arguably more difficult than at any point in the post-war period. As a result, there will be limited scope to cut taxes or increase spending by a meaningful amount while staying within that constraint. 

This will prove to be a difficult fiscal inheritance for whoever is Chancellor after the general election. Fiscal constraints will make all manner of policy problems more difficult to tackle and will make all manner of trade-offs more acute. But these trade-offs cannot be simply wished away. As tempting as it may be to engage in ‘cakeism’ – to seek to have the government’s fiscal cake and eat it – any party serious about governing after the election should resist the urge. To have any hope of improving our lot, the next government will need a strong mandate and laser-eyed focus. Levelling with British households and businesses about the state of the world, confronting the challenges we face and providing a sense of policy direction would be a step in the right direction. To shy away from the challenge now only adds to the risk that we fail to confront these challenges in the next parliament. 

Book of the week

We recommend Orthodoxy by G.K. Chesterton. This classic work of Christian apologetics presents Chesterton’s personal view of faith, defending religious belief and practice against aggressive secularism. Chesterton puts forward a number of insights into both the strengths and weaknesses of conservatism and its relationship with modernity and progress.

We need not debate about the mere words evolution or progress: personally I prefer to call it reform. For reform implies form. It implies that we are trying to shape the world in a particular image; to make it something that we see already in our minds. Evolution is a metaphor from mere automatic unrolling. Progress is a metaphor from merely walking along a road—very likely the wrong road. But reform is a metaphor for reasonable and determined men: it means that we see a certain thing out of shape and we mean to put it into shape. And we know what shape.

Now here comes in the whole collapse and huge blunder of our age. We have mixed up two different things, two opposite things. Progress should mean that we are always changing the world to suit the vision. Progress does mean (just now) that we are always changing the vision. It should mean that we are slow but sure in bringing justice and mercy among men: it does mean that we are very swift in doubting the desirability of justice and mercy: a wild page from any Prussian sophist makes men doubt it. Progress should mean that we are always walking towards the New Jerusalem. It does mean that the New Jerusalem is always walking away from us. We are not altering the real to suit the ideal. We are altering the ideal: it is easier.

Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a man wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if he worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favourite colour every day, he would get on slowly. But if he altered his favourite colour every day, he would not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh philosopher, he started to paint everything red or yellow, his work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of his early bad manner. This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the fact of recent history. The great and grave changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth century, not to the later. They belonged to the black and white epoch when men believed fixedly in Toryism, in Protestantism, in Calvinism, in Reform, and not unfrequently in Revolution. And whatever each man believed in he hammered at steadily, without scepticism: and there was a time when the Established Church might have fallen, and the House of Lords nearly fell. It was because Radicals were wise enough to be constant and consistent; it was because Radicals were wise enough to be Conservative. But in the existing atmosphere there is not enough time and tradition in Radicalism to pull anything down. There is a great deal of truth in Lord Hugh Cecil's suggestion (made in a fine speech) that the era of change is over, and that ours is an era of conservation and repose. But probably it would pain Lord Hugh Cecil if he realised (what is certainly the case) that ours is only an age of conservation because it is an age of complete unbelief. Let beliefs fade fast and frequently, if you wish institutions to remain the same. The more the life of the mind is unhinged, the more the machinery of matter will be left to itself. The net result of all our political suggestions, Collectivism, Tolstoyanism, Neo-Feudalism, Communism, Anarchy, Scientific Bureaucracy—the plain fruit of all of them is that the Monarchy and the House of Lords will remain. The net result of all the new religions will be that the Church of England will not (for heaven knows how long) be disestablished. It was Karl Marx, Nietzsche, Tolstoy, Cunninghame Grahame, Bernard Shaw and Auberon Herbert, who between them, with bowed gigantic backs, bore up the throne of the Archbishop of Canterbury…

…We have remarked that one reason offered for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow better. But the only real reason for being a progressive is that things naturally tend to grow worse. The corruption in things is not only the best argument for being progressive; it is also the only argument against being conservative. The conservative theory would really be quite sweeping and unanswerable if it were not for this one fact. But all conservatism is based upon the idea that if you leave things alone you leave them as they are. But you do not. If you leave a thing alone you leave it to a torrent of change. If you leave a white post alone it will soon be a black post. If you particularly want it to be white you must be always painting it again; that is, you must be always having a revolution. Briefly, if you want the old white post you must have a new white post. But this which is true even of inanimate things is in a quite special and terrible sense true of all human things. An almost unnatural vigilance is really required of the citizen because of the horrible rapidity with which human institutions grow old. It is the custom in passing romance and journalism to talk of men suffering under old tyrannies. But, as a fact, men have almost always suffered under new tyrannies; under tyrannies that had been public liberties hardly twenty years before. Thus England went mad with joy over the patriotic monarchy of Elizabeth; and then (almost immediately afterwards) went mad with rage in the trap of the tyranny of Charles the First. So, again, in France the monarchy became intolerable, not just after it had been tolerated, but just after it had been adored. The son of Louis the well-beloved was Louis the guillotined. So in the same way in England in the nineteenth century the Radical manufacturer was entirely trusted as a mere tribune of the people, until suddenly we heard the cry of the Socialist that he was a tyrant eating the people like bread. So again, we have almost up to the last instant trusted the newspapers as organs of public opinion. Just recently some of us have seen (not slowly, but with a start) that they are obviously nothing of the kind. They are, by the nature of the case, the hobbies of a few rich men. We have not any need to rebel against antiquity; we have to rebel against novelty. It is the new rulers, the capitalist or the editor, who really hold up the modern world.

Quick links

The Office for National Statistics forecast the UK’s population to grow by 6.6 million by 2036.

The International Monetary Fund warned the Chancellor against further tax cuts.

Foreign Secretary Lord Cameron suggested that the UK could recognise Palestinian statehood…

…and polling from May 2023 showed that 40% of the British public agreed with recognising Palestine with only 8% against.

Four years after EU exit, 57% of people believe Brexit has been a failure with Conservative voters split.

All age groups agree that it would be better for a generation to grow up without smartphones, including 52% of 18-24 year olds.

Florida moved forward with legislation banning social media for under-16s.

More voters are dissatisfied with the Prime Minister’s performance than any other Prime Minister since Thatcher at this stage in an election year.

Labour’s poll lead was at 22 points with 49% and the Conservatives on 27%…

…while the Conservatives enjoy more support than Labour among over-70 year old voters but not any other age cohort.

In the fourth quarter of 2022, 6.2 million people employed in the UK were born overseas, which makes up just under a fifth of the workforce.

The UK paused funding for UNRWA, the largest UN agency in Gaza, following revelations that members of its staff were involved in the October 7 attack.

47% of people believe Russia is the biggest threat to world peace but 10% identified the United States and 8% chose Iran, according to a new poll.

Private sector consultants have been hired to train civil servants to identify microaggressions, such as eye-rolling, at a cost of over £160,000 since 2021.

Fighting with machetes and bottles broke out between Afghan and Romanian gangs on Bournemouth college campus, leaving five people injured.

Sir Kier Starmer will introduce legislation to ban all forms of conversion therapy if elected Prime Minister.

Royal Navy personnel are being encouraged to become diversity and inclusion officers in order to understand the “lived experience” of others.

BBC staff are told not to hire candidates who do not explicitly endorse or show interest in promoting diversity and inclusion.

Four England rugby clubs could be targeted by Saudi Arabian investors.

Animal charities could start euthanising XL bully dogs as the Government ban comes into force this month.