Allister Heath has these thoughts about the US election results (as of the time of writing the result has not been fully declared, and as we know, this situation may not change for days because of legal challenges in state counts such as Michigan).
So what are the lessons for Boris Johnson? The first is to realise that the politics of the West are now all about class and education. The Tories can only win again if they maintain or increase their grip of working-class voters. That means, among other things, a Covid policy that doesn’t condemn them to permanent impoverishment. The second lockdown is a mistake. Johnson must put his new core voters first, not the professional classes and their Zoom meetings. That also means doubling down on the anti-crime agenda, on Brexit, on human rights reform, on abolishing the BBC licence fee. The Tory working class base doesn’t want to pay more for green energy, and they hate the Government’s awful, anti-car roads policies.
Second, Johnson needs a pro-growth, pro-entrepreneurial agenda: Trump was better at this, even if his reforms would be undone by Biden. The Tories seem too keen on taxes and regulations. Yet an entrepreneurial, pro-private sector jobs, self-help message would chime with aspirational ethnic-minority voters. The Tories must appeal to their economic and social values, rather than genuflecting to nonsensical woke ideologies that ethnic minorities don’t approve of.
Third, Johnson must halt the Left-wards drift of the upper-middle classes, something that Trump miserably failed to do. How? By ceasing to subsidise the creation of a woke generation, by preventing culture warriors from taking over schools, museums and corporations, and, crucially, by reforming universities. Education is vital, and we need more of it, but it doesn’t need to take place in universities. At least a quarter of students would be better off gaining high-quality technical or practical training, rather than wasting time studying useless social-science degrees at second-rate institutions.
Johnson will do none of those things.
Hopefully he will be toppled by his own lunacy. Both he and Starmer working together is good news for the Reform Party
MEANWHILE DEFY HIS LOCKDOWN TYRANNY IN EVERY WAY YOU CAN.
Mr Allister Heath is a fine gentleman – but he has totally missed the point about the American elections.
As someone who has worked (unpaid) in British elections since 1979 (yes I am that old) the point is obvious…..
DO NOT ALLOW VAST NUMBERS OF FAKE POSTAL BALLOTS.
There are limited numbers of postal ballots in British elections – a voter has to specifically ask for one, and they carefully checked. And ye there are still terrible problems with postal ballots even in the United Kingdom. The MILLIONS of “mail-in” ballots the Democrats insisted on for the American election have made the whole thing a farce. It is impossible to know who really won – because it is impossible to know how many of these “mail-in” ballots are real and how many are VOTER FRAUD.
Mr Allister Heath does not even mention ELECTION FRAUD – so his article is a bit pointless.
As for the policy of Mr Heath to Mr Alexander “Boris” Johnson …… if Mr Allister Heath does not yet understand that MR JOHNSON IS THE PROBLEM……
Dear Mr Heath – please look again at the “lockdown”, as Mr Ecks has suggested, and also look at the vast budget deficit that is bankrupting this country. None of this was caused by a virus – Covid 19 did NOT do this. The societal crises was caused by Mr Alexander Johnson – and the defence that “he was only acting under the orders of Klaus Schwab of the World Economic Forum” whilst it may be true, does not help Mr Johnson. After all Mr Alexander Johnson could have said “NO” – it was established almost 75 years ago that “I was only obeying orders” is not a legitimate defence in relation to serious crimes – crimes against Natural Law, which as Aristotle, Cicero, Chief Justice Sir Edward Coke, Chief Justice Sir John Holt and-so-on have made clear trump (no pun intended) any “positive law” such as an Act of Parliament.
The defence of “it was all legal, because an Act of Parliament said so” is absurd – it is the “Blackstone Heresy” named after Sir William Blackstone. A man who essentially brought in Sir Francis Bacon and his servant Thomas Hobbes, the great ENEMIES of the Common Law, and made them guides to the law. Thomas Hobbes was the author of the work (among others) a dialogue between a philosopher and a student of the Common Law of England – and he (Hobbes) was NOT the student of the Common Law of England, he was the “philosopher” who insisted that the ruler or rulers could do anything they felt like doing – i.e. that the Common Law either did not exist, or was not important.
All Sir William Blackstone did was drop “the King can do anything he likes – murder, rape, steal…..” (the position of Thomas Hobbes), and substitute the position of “Parliament can do anything it likes – murder, rape, steal…..”
Is Mr Alexander Johnson really going to hide behind the defence of Sir Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes and Sir William Blackstone – the defence of “everything I did was legal – because the law is whatever an Act of Parliament says it is”?
What about an Act of Parliament that said that everyone with blue eyes should be burned alive? Would that be “the law” as well?
It used to be said, back in the days when the fundamental principles of the Common Law (natural justice – natural law) mattered, that the most important role of the jury was to judge “the law” not just the “facts of the case” – and that is true.
Juries must refuse to convict people for “crimes” that are NOT crimes at all. Such as the “crime” of having blue eyes, or the “crime” of meeting someone “from another household”.
And punishments (such as fines) for NON CRIMES (pretended “crimes”) that are imposed without the right of jury trial – are null and void.
Klaus Schwab and his “Build Back Better”, “Sustainable Development” (“Green” totalitarianism), “Stakeholder Capitalism” (i.e. FASCISM – the coming together of Big Business and Big Goverment to exterminate both free competition, especially from small business, and exterminate the general freedom of choice of ordinary people), must NOT rule this land.
I repeat a defence, made by Mr Alexander Johnson or anyone else, that “I was only obeying the orders of Klaus Schwab and the rest of the international establishment experts” is NOT a legitimate defence.
The use of such World Economic Forum (and United Nations) slogans as “Build Back Better” is NOT a defence – it is a confession of guilt. And not just in this country – as Mr Joseph “Joe” Biden uses the same “Build Back Better” international establishment slogan. People who use such slogans were not forced to do so – they could have said NO. Therefore a defence (by Mr Johnson or Mr Biden – or anyone else) that “I was only obeying orders” does not work.
Short version.
Dear Mr Heath.
Your advice to Mr Alexander Johnson misses the point that he is the problem, not the solution.
Once Biden has been confirmed with legal certainty I predict that Covid, having achieved its purposes (civil dissatisfaction, trashing an excellent economy and justifying tens of millions of unrequested mail-in ballots) will be downgraded to its true status of a worse than average winter flu.
The politically driven lockdowns on both US coasts will be lifted and the rest of the world will dutifully follow like lemmings.
A certain amount of education is vital. We don’t need more of it but less,far less, especially at university level.
Persuading 50% of the population that they are part of an elite is a sure recipe for conflict. The more so as most of the university educated retain little subject knowledge, and mostly learn to go along with professors, in order to retain their vision of themselves as part of an elite.
To be fair most of the subject knowledge is best forgotten.
And for this people give up three years earnings and promotion, and pay £27000, most of it borrowed at interest. Meanwhile the public does without three years of their production and often lands up covering their accumulated debt.
Perhaps John – but then “the environment” will be the excuse for tyranny.
Remember this is NOT really about Mr Biden – even his slogan of “Build Back Better” is not really his slogan, it is the slogan of the international establishment elite (Mr Johnson uses the same slogan – he did NOT choose it, it was given to him).
This is about Agenda 21, Agenda 2030, “Sustainable Development” (“Green” totalitarianism), “Stakeholder Capitalism” – i.e. FASCISM, the coming together of Big Business and Big Government to exterminate free competition, especially from small business, and to exterminate the general freedom of choice of ordinary people.
It is people such as Klaus Schwab (World Economic Forum) who are important – people such as Mr Biden and Mr Johnson are not really important.
John,
Might as well add to that that “black lives matter” will revert to not mattering very much.
Paul, Heath was writing about social and economic trends and how conservatives should interpret them, not about the logistics of postal voting, which is a separate issue. It really helps if people actually comment on the OP.
“The Tories can only win again if they maintain or increase their grip of working-class voters. That means, among other things, a Covid policy that doesn’t condemn them to permanent impoverishment.”
The problem with this is that the working classes are much more sentimental than the middle classes. The elite is far more ready to countenance the deaths of half a million elderly in pursuit of such abstracts as ‘the economy’ and ‘political freedom’. The working classes don’t care about that stuff. They care about people. And they care a lot more about you piling up the dead bodies of their family members in mass graves than they do about money.
The working classes are concerned about their income and their jobs, but they’re not desperate because they are still confident it’s temporary and not permanent. They’re used to the idea of times of temporary tribulation and struggle, they face that all the time. Forests burn down, but they always regrow from the ashes. So long as there is hope. And on the other hand, they will look at all the right-wing concern for their permanent impoverishment, and be inclined to ask where was all this concern prior to the virus? The working classes have *always* been poor, always been impoverished, and it was the Tories who most commonly showed no sympathy and said it was their own fault for not working harder or not finding a better job.
For the middle-class Right to suddenly acquire a burning sympathy for the workers, just at the moment they have an internal split over policy and want to overthrow their own right-wing pro-Brexit free-market-loving government over their imposition of virus quarantine measures, will likely strike many of the working class as fake. Like the Left, it’s not genuine sympathy, it’s a way to exploit the sympathy of others to build support for their revolution. And when the revolution is over, the right-wing middle classes will go back to not caring about the impoverished poor.
The working class are not on your side. They might not agree entirely with the way it’s been done, and many will be very willing to question the government’s competence, but they are firmly supportive of the aims of the the government’s Covid policy. They care more about people than they do money.
Roue
Agreed. They never did matter unless the individuals involved were exercising their right not to be arrested.
Paul
I’m not so sure. Amidst all the attention paid to the Presidential election and the likely chicanery in MI and WI (to date, more may follow if required) don’t lose sight of the fact that there were numerous Senate and Congress seats bring contested. From what I can gather the Democrats have made a small net loss in their congressional numbers which certainly doesn’t suggest overwhelming support for New Green Deals or any other extreme policies. I have said many times that although I despise Pelosi’s morals I respect her acumen and effectiveness. I can’t see her being coerced by “The Squad” into highly unpopular and expensive policies when there are such huge sums needed to bail out the profligate coastal states and blue cities. For the same reason I believe that reparations are something Democrats only talk seriously about when in opposition. The election has shown yet again that in blue states Dems can do F-all for blacks and still get their votes.
Mate, I’ve never read such bollocks in all my bloody life, take your “I know wot the working class think” blitz spirit wankery & shove it. I’m overweight, smoke & drive vans for a living & I just want my bloody life back and so does everyone I know.
NIV’s rather condescending portrait of the working class is indeed nonsense. Too much time watching Eastenders, probably.
I agree with Paul Marks that if Boris wants to be re-elected, then even before changing his stupid policies, he does need to make it harder for the commies to steal elections. No point – re-election wise – in having brilliant successful policies, and an election systen run by the Labour party.
It’s pretty obvious that the US election is being stolen in plain sight and that the key ingredients are :
1. a left wing party that is quite willing to cheat
2. election administrators in the big cities who are also eager to cheat
3. election workers / counters who are also willing to assist with the cheating, and not squeal
4. a press which is happy to go along with it too
5. a postal voting system that is vulnerable to fraud
It seems to me that the UK has got 1,4 and 5 ; but is better placed under 2 and 3. In particular the UK seems better placed than the US for election count observers and pollwatchers – in the US the big city election administrators seem to be able to exclude Republican observers at will.
It’s amazing how quickly the new Governor of Florida has sorted out Broward county, which was the fraud capital of the 2018 election and nearly succeeded in stealing the Governor’s race and the Senate race. All the new Governor did was to sack the corrupt old election supervisor and install a non corrupt one. Broward was no problem in 2020.
All the 2020 problems have in the US have been in
(a) Dem run cities, where there is also a Dem Governor (Detroit, Philly, Milwaukee)
(b) Dem run states where the Governor has changed the rules at the last minute to help fraud (North Carolina, Michigan, Pennsylvania)
(c) Dem run cities in R run States, where the Dem run cities have been left to their own devices (Harris County ie Houston, Maricopa ie Phoenix, Atlanta)
At the very least, Texas, Arizona and Georgia which have Republican Governors and legislatures, could simply follow the Governor of Florida’s example and excise the worms from the local election administration.
You could also fairly say that Trump lost his re-election in 2018, when the Dems won the Governorships in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, so installing his enemies in charge of the election administration for 2020 in the three key states he needed to win.
So Boris, if you want to protect yourself against election fraud (and leaving aside your daft policies) :
1. keep a very wary eye on election administrators (ie the actual people overseeing the counts) and don’t let the commies install their apparatchiks everywhere
2. nuke the Electoral Commission – it’s just a Labour front organisation
3. patch up the holes in the postal ballot system, including making it much harder to get one
4. and in the spirit of Cato, any policy recommendstion to a Tory government cannot end otherwise than :
BBC DELENDA EST
Second, Johnson needs a pro-growth, pro-entrepreneurial agenda: Trump was better at this, even if his reforms would be undone by Biden. The Tories seem too keen on taxes and regulations. Yet an entrepreneurial, pro-private sector jobs, self-help message would chime with aspirational ethnic-minority voters. The Tories must appeal to their economic and social values, rather than genuflecting to nonsensical woke ideologies that ethnic minorities don’t approve of.
Close, I would add that the Trump voter rejects the Prog world view; China appeasing globalism, the perverse SJWs, and the malevolent cancel culture. Regular Americans don’t want to give up their heritage and rights, they don’t want a top down government and economy run by unaccountable bureaucrats, they don’t want to be the world’s piggy bank, they don’t want to make the world safe for multinationals, in short, they they don’t want America to be anyone’s bitch, especially China.
The other half, predominately women, of the American electorate rejected the ideas listed above, or at the very least prioritized childish superficial personal dislike of Trump’s persona and style. Bear in mind that many millions were willing to commit economic suicide, as well as put the two dimmest bulbs evah into the presidency. This is the other half of the lesson.
Pat – with respect (and I mean that) you have missed the point. Before my internet connection failed this morning I tried to explain it – and I will now try again.
“Education” is now INDOCTRINATION – indoctrination in LIES.
For example, Senator Feinstein (a DEMOCRAT and a Californian one) had a meeting last year with some CHILDREN – not university students, CHILDREN.
The children lectured the Senator (not the other way round) on her occasional lapses from leftist doctrine – they were patronising and full of contempt for the Senator, because (just a few times) the Senator had failed to be sufficiently Collectivist.
The children were TEN YEARS OLD – TEN YEARS OLD Pat.
Now do you understand what “education” has become.
Nullius – if you think this government is “right wing” then you must have thought the same about Harold Wilson and Edward Heath. Even before Covid 19 it was obvious that this was a left wing government – both economically (its wild spending and regulations) and socially – its “Wokeness” (the “Diversity and Inclusion” Frankfurt School Agenda). This is what makes Mr A. Heath’s advice so pointless – pearls before swine.
As for deaths – I note you are continuing your lies about lockdowns “saving lives”.
“I’m overweight, smoke & drive vans for a living & I just want my bloody life back and so does everyone I know.”
But do you know everyone?
They’ve done surveys, and about 85% of the population either support the Covid restrictions or think the government ought to have gone further. About 15% think they’re too restrictive. You (and everyone you know) may well be in that 15%, but it’s not the whole country.
We *all* want our lives back. But at what cost?
Would you still do it if it resulted in half a million dead? Seriously?
Because I know there are people who would. The history of every revolution tells us there are people who will stack the bodies however high they need to be as a price worth paying for their vision of political utopia. But are you such people?
I know you all insist on avoiding the question by asserting (without evidence) that that many people won’t die, but would it matter to you if they did? Is this a dispute about the facts (how many people would actually die) or about the morals (whether your freedom is worth half a million deaths)?
Take the question hypothetically if you like: if you knew it *was* going to kill half a million, would it make a difference to you?
You seem to as you know what ‘the working class’ all think.
Well that must be true then, just like all the surveys proving Brexit would never happen 😆
And if I believed that was likely, I’d agree with you. But it is utter & complete bullshit, so I don’t. The policies you support will end up killing far more people than the policies I want.
“And if I believed that was likely, I’d agree with you.”
Thank you. That was what I wanted to know.
Well they could start by not using the term “social science”, go back to calling them humanities.
WRT to the upper middle class, should be easier in the UK to stop the drift, in the USA it seems there is a much larger upper middle class, and their income is derived from global trade(Silicon valley, Hollywood, Wall Street) and/or government contracts to the managerial class(DoD, Fannie Mae/Freddy Mac/ and other pseudo government companies), which makes the USA upper middle class immune to working class concerns or priorities and unequivocally in favour of large government programs/welfare/regulation.
Somehow I don’t see that happening in the UK though.
Yes, in addition, they are not as vulnerable to the consequences of the covid lockdown or the consequences of their half assed, myopic or fantastical social and economic policies.
I would do a very great deal to avoid the deaths of half-a-million children. I would not do as much to change the deaths of half-a-million people from the virus to the deaths of each and every one of those same people one day later from their co-morbitities, My own health regimen exceeds that of DamJoeWVM (November 5, 2020 at 12:45 pm) who is overweight and smokes (& drives vans for a living? – I suppose he means increased risk of crashes), and who just wants to get back to the life he had. Clearly he does not sacrifice his time and money to extend his life by yet one more day – or, perhaps, by the yet one more week, yet one more month or even yet one more year that prior increments of the same amount of time and money on fitness might gain him. And neither do I by those final stages. Managing your health is an example of the law of diminishing returns: great benefit from from the first stage of not being a couch potato; seriously small further gain from deciding to increase what you devote to it from already a lot of your free time and money to yet more still. The old joke about not living longer, it just seems so, starts to apply.
There is also the quality as well as statistically remaining quantity to consider (e.g. the “I’d rather die of covid than loneliness” oldies).
And of course, some mostly old people get to live a little longer with other younger people get to pay off the debt incurred for that. But those younger people inherit a civilisation with freedoms well as the debt – and are maybe not doing such a great job preserving it as the older cohort did. One could argue the thing various ways.
I’m not criticising the asking of Nullius hypothetical question. I’m merely, pedantically, noting how the answer is complicated by the expectation value (literal and qualitative) of life saved. We don’t need a pandemic to know that both rising GDP and rising expenditures of it on health can increase the average lifespan. Just as there is no safe car speed above zero, so there is no limit to the increments you could spend for the chance to gain another day of life, then yet another hour, another minute still, just one more second, … – for yourself or for the UK average.
When you’re lying old in bed and suddenly you have to bite the air to get it into your lungs and you know it is NOW, many people will wish they had done that endless extra, but, past a certain point, the more sensible of us will not.
(And BTW Niall prolix Kilmartin has to admit of his text above that it is not only Nullius who can write comments whose value for their length is debatable. 🙂 )
500,000 deaths*10 years*£30,000/QALY = £150 billion in QALY to be saved
COVID cost to government up to August = £210 billion in future taxes to be paid
Even though, under an economic QALY calculation, the government has already spent too much does anyone really want to have that argument with the general public?
If the surveys are correct, and the lockdowns are widely supported, maybe the general public are not far off their estimates of what is and is not appropriate.
I frankly couldn’t give a twatting-cunt if a whole load of codgers and biddies shuffled off this mortal coil. I do care about the economy. The Boomers have had the Rolling Stones and The Beatles in B&W so they can now just fuck off for all I care.
In their spacka-fucking-chariots.
Hey, c’mon, us Boomers never forced y’all to venerate rockers who look older than my 86-year-old dad. That’s all on you!
(If my generation was still buying my dad’s Chubby Checkers and Kingston Trio records, I sure wouldn’t blame him for it. I’d wonder what happened to my own generation’s productive capacity.)
😆
As I have just said on another thread – the cheating of President Trump should not make us forget that other people were cheated also.
For example, John James won the United States Senate race in Michigan – but he will not be going to the United States Senate because the “public servants” then locked out Republican poll watchers (literally – with a chain and padlock) till they had “found” enough FAKE ballots for the Democrats to win.
Perhaps Mr Alister Heath would like to explain what policy lessons there are to be learned from the cheating (blatant cheating) of John James – the first black person to be elected to the United States Senate from Michigan, but who will NOT be going to the United States Senate because of Democrat ELECTION FRAUD.
Meanwhile the “mainstream media” and the Social Media companies COVER UP the election fraud and laugh.
The same is true of the international media Johnathan Pearce – name one media source outside the United States who has covered the blatant (obvious) election fraud directed not only against President Trump, but also against people such as John James.
If the media, American and international, do not care that a black man, John James, was CHEATED of his seat in the United States Senate – that millions of voters were CHEATED, then what is the point of anything Johnathan Pearce?
I have to agree with Paul Marks – state education has to go. My niece is studying to be a primary school teacher.
Every new UK primary school teacher [ yes, it starts that early] receives their Uni training today constructed around the mumbo jumbo core text of a Soviet Marxist psychologist [ oh, the irony ] the veracity of whose own work is disputed even among his ‘language-is-a-social-construct’ supporters.
Lev Vygotsky was a fringe character back in the 1980’s – now he is THE man. The children Paul Marks references above were ‘superior’ Marxists to the senator not because of the content of their thought but because they had a better understanding of the alleged method of thought.
I have witnessed this type of moralising from children first-hand myself – Greta is just one example.
But the Tories don’t mind because unlike the Left they don’t care about ideas – all they lust for is political power so £52.2 billion per annum promoting Marx-inspired agitprop to small children is no problem.
This is what we are up against.
I’m still curious to know how NIV thinks he’s figured out what the masses think on such topics. His dismissive response to DamJoeDVM is supercilious. A poll about lockdowns should be treated with as much care as recent US polls.
The kids are being indocrinated. It is so obvious by just talking to them. Started with my kids and now the grandkids. My hobby though is explaining to them alternatives and using facts to show them alternative views. It gets them in trouble at school and I’ve had two teachers approach me about their views when I’ve picked them up but its all fun.
When my kids first come back with green bullshit I countered it by making them responsible for it because I was just too stoopid to understand it out. I then linked it to their pocket money. For some reason within a fortnight the nagging stopped.
The mere fact that this farce is going on and they don’t even care that we watch the vans drive in with new ballots and that all of them are for one side without a single one being for the other shows the contempt they hold for us. The left will lap it up and support anything that they want. The right will shrug and say well we did what we could.
The last 4 years has made me realise that the West as we have had it since the 1980s is doomed and that we are well past the peak and rapidly going dowwnhill. Trump was a speedbump on that path but even if he makes it this time then what will happen in 4 years. There is nobody to replace him, all republicsns are like Boris the Buffoon, conservatives in name only.
Our kids are going to be the ones that pay for our inaction now.