2025-11-02
Well, we live here, so do we not know our fate?
Equally, if that fate has still to be decided, how could we already know it?
And in so far as our political settlement has perhaps never been in such trouble since the English Civil War, it may well have to be decided, and perhaps more shortly than we have been lazily inclined to believe ...
"The Office for National Statistics may not yet publish a Sedition Index, but the figures are suggestive enough"
"Even a small fraction of that disaffected cohort ... would rival the active membership of every radical movement in modern British history – and with far better broadband"
David Betz and Michael Rainsborough writing in the Daily Sceptic hit multiple nails right on the head in this considerable piece on the state of the Nation today. This is a huge topic so don't expect all your favourite grievances to feature centre stage, but as a broad sweep of recent history it is magnificent in its determination to put events within appropriate context.
" ... the quarrel runs deeper. It is ... existential – a struggle over who constitutes the nation ... "
Aye, and there's the rub - we are not a homogeneous mix but siloed enclaves each of different cultures side by side in adjacent neighbourhoods - ideal for those who would provoke conflict, although it is but the natural result of like seeking to live with like.
Another natural and entirely foreseeable result is that those native to these isles are unsurprisingly beginning to address just who does constitute the nation.
Add in "no matter how one votes, the same managerial caste remains in charge, rearranging the paperwork while the country declines" and after all the evidence of disregarded electoral promises and habitual blame-shuffling inaction, plenty believe that that decline has to be deliberate policy.
If the electoral process cannot be used to effect change, what are people to do?
"Legitimacy does not fail in theory; it fails in arithmetic. And the numbers tell the story"
"It is, in fact, a familiar historical pattern".
It seems to me that the only way to resolve the "culture wars" scenario peacefully is to stop trying to resolve cultural differences until we have established the common ground upon which we can all empirically agree, which is in my view likely to be considerable, but it must be formally stated in order to demonstrate that we are already more united than we are divided.
The majority will then be able to regroup around the basic principles that matter (family, community, law and order, sustainability in its original sense rather than "sustainability" in the Agenda 2030 sense), and use that agreement as a base from which to address the remaining differences (religious political and other dogma, cultural preference and acceptability, public holidays and festivals etc) in due course.
Given that national government is effectively both unresponsive and untrusted, local government and/or local initiatives might usefully make a start on establishing this common ground for their own communities right now.
The few die-hard fanatics remaining outside that majority grouping will have to be accommodated as best they may, as necessary to secure the baseline agreement.
Just a thought.
