Giorgia Meloni – My Opinion

Mark Pattie, one of the great commenters here, has asked me what my opinion if of Giorgia Meloni, the president or prime minister of Italy and the leader of the far right Fratelli d’Italia party. I have to say my opinion of her is very mixed. First of all, I think that she’s extremely intelligent, like her French counterpart, Marine le Pen, of the National Rally party. Both of them strike me as being far brighter and better communicators than their mainstream rivals. They are, or claim to be, offering real alternatives that will benefit their nations. All their rivals have to offer is pretty much the same neoliberalism and support for the European Union that many Italians and Frenchmen and women seem to be tired of. I think Macron a few weeks ago was again touting the idea of a common European army. That, if I recall correctly, was one of the ideas dreamed by the French president Jacques Delors over a decade ago. It was part of his European federalist project, which no-one, apart from Delors himself and his cohorts, seemed to have much enthusiasm for. It was vehemently denounced over here by the Brexiteers as an occupation force, which it wouldn’t have been. But I don’t think any nation would willingly surrender its control of its defence forces to any kind of superstate. If Macron was pushing this idea, then it seems to show that he’s run out of ideas and is groping around for anything that might inspire or enthuse the public.

I certainly am not happy about the two parties – Meloni’s Fratelli and Le Pen’s National Rally’s roots in Fascism. That said, Le Pen is a very canny operator. She dropped the Nazi stuff and turned it more centre-right, like the other ‘post-fascist’ party, the Allianza Nazionale that emerged from the Blackshirts of the MSI. And to give the Fratelli due credit, Italy is still a pluralist democracy. She hasn’t outlawed the other parties and there aren’t, it seems, uniformed black shirted storm troopers on the streets beating up Communists, liberals, democrats and foreigners.

Immigration and Improving Conditions in Africa

And I can well appreciate the forces that have pushed her into power. Italy, Spain, France and Greece are very much on the front line regarding the immigrant boats from Africa, and I think the question of how many more migrants Europe can take is a reasonable one. A friend of mine used to be a member of UKIP, and he once told me it wasn’t immigration itself that he had an issue with, it was just that they migrants kept coming. Mass immigration was an issue in Italy before Meloni. The Five Star Party, set up by an Italian comedian, was very anti-immigration. There were also reports that a Black African woman in one of the Italian governments had made a speech calling for the legalisation of polygamy. I’m strongly opposed to this, as I imagine most westerners would be. And she’s very clever at defending her anti-immigration stance. I had a video of her pop up on my YouTube feed a few days speaking in the Italian parliament about four years ago. She was rebutting accusations that she and her party were racists for demanding that Italy withdraw from the UN Migrant Charter by pointing out the number of nations that had already done so, including America and Austria, rhetorically asking if these countries were also racist. She criticised the French by pointing out that they were in no position to call anyone racist, as they sent any migrants heading over the border from Italy back over it to Ventimiglia.

But she’s also well aware that stemming migration means improving conditions in Africa. She called for support to be given to the Tunisian banks. These had crashed, and she afraid that this would result in a fresh wave of migration from north Africa. She also criticised the French for exploiting African nations. Thirty per cent of the uranium for the French nuclear power stations, she claimed, came from Niger, where children were labouring in the mines and 90 per cent of the population had no electricity. She has said that Africa needs to be freed from European exploitation. This is something I’ve only heard people on the left saying over here. I’ve heard no similar sentiments from Johnson, Truss or Sumak, let alone Rees-Mogg.

European Union, the Single Currency and the Dictatorship of the Troika

Regarding her antipathy to the European Union, some of that might come from Italy’s experience joining the single currency and then the effective government of the country by the EU troika on behalf of the banks. One of the speakers I heard at various seminars at Bristol Uni when I was study for my Ph.D. was an Italian theology student. Talking to her one evening at one of the meetings of a medieval studies group, she told us how the single currency had affected her homeland. It had been disastrous. Prices had risen massively to the point where people were extremely angry. So angry that she didn’t feel safe there. And then when the country had been hit with a financial crisis along with Ireland, Spain and Greece, they had had a government imposed on them by France, Germany and one of the other major players and policies dictated to them to pay back the loans. In practice, this means that the money was simply transferred from one German bank to another. Which I think may partly explain her hostility to the EU and international finance. Cut the anti-Semitism, and the great international financiers have caused immense damage to the global economy and working people are still having to pay the price.

Defence of the Family and Gay Rights

I also, as a general issue, don’t have any problem at all with her stance behind the general NatCon values of family, faith, flag. Although this slogan is close to Mussolini’s ‘Family, Faith, Fatherland’. As a general principle, I think the nuclear family needs to be strengthened and properly valued because of the immense damage that is being done to children from fatherless families. But I am well aware that there are single mothers who have done excellent jobs of raising their children, who are a credit to them.

Similarly, if I am honest, I cannot say that I find gay couples with children the ideal family situation. But, I am also well aware that there have been single-sex parents who have also been great at raising their children. And these kids respected them for the great job they’d done caring for them. There have been scandals over in the states where trans couples have been arrested for committing terrible abuse of the children they’d adopted, but there have also been sickening cases over here of straight couples, who have abused and murdered their children. In my view, gay parents are no more prone to abusing children than straights and so, when it comes to providing a home for a child, their sexuality shouldn’t be an object, only their general character.

The surrogacy issue is rather more involved, and to a certain extent here she has a point. She does not want foreign gay couples paying Italian women to carry their child. She has explained this by pointing to Ukraine, where women have been paid by foreigners to be surrogate mothers. The gay couples, who have fathered the child have not picked it up, and so these kids end up in orphanages. She also points to the moral prohibition against the commodification of the human body. People and their body parts are not items to be bought and sold like any other product. When this comes to human life and reproduction, this is especially important. Back in the 1980s Pope John Paul II wrote an entire encyclical about the issue. It was naturally attacked because I think it included the standard Catholic prohibitions on contraception and abortion, both of which I believe should be legal. But the objection to the commodification of the human body has, I believe, the general support of theologians and moral philosophers outside Roman Catholicism, but I think surrogate motherhood has been an exception to this up to now.

It may seem surprising, but Meloni’s stance on banning artificial reproduction for the benefit of gays was actually mainstream forty years ago. Back in the 1980s there were initiatives in Britain to set up sperm banks. The woman running one was interviewed by the left-wing Sunday newspaper, the Observer. She was asked about the issue of gay men providing sperm so that their lesbian friends could conceive. The woman replied no, that was happening with her bank. All her young men had girlfriends. This was, as I said, in the Observer, a liberal newspaper which is also pro-feminist and anti-racist. Meloni’s trying to drag Italy back to this era in respect to gay surrogacy. It’s reactionary, but I wouldn’t like to say that it is more than that. Where I have an issue with her on this is that it should also apply to heterosexual couples. Meloni’s prohibition doesn’t, and so is clearly discriminatory and homophobic.

Supporting Christianity

I’m also religious, and would like to see a revival of Christianity in this country, as well as in other parts of what used to be Christendom. But I want it to be a reasonable, tolerant Christianity, rather than the militant sectarianism I’ve seen from some extremely right-wing Christian evangelists. I think Christianity in America has been harmed by the right-wing televangelists that appeared under Reagan. Some simply preached ‘Prosperity Gospel’, the doctrine that if you accept Christ, you’ll become rich, and quite a few seemed to be interested in enriching themselves. The Rev. Jim Bakker got caught with his hand in the parish poor box, so to speak. He may also have been having an extramarital affair, as were others. He got sent to the slammer. He’s now out, and a few years ago he wrote a very good book attacking Prosperity Gospel as a heresy, and calling for people to accept Christ. It’s tarnished Christianity’s image amongst a section of young people. There are some brilliant Christian preachers, philosophers and theologians out there, who are well worth listening to, both Roman Catholic and Protestant. But you don’t hear so much about them.

Pride in Country Natural

As for pride in one’s country, I don’t believe that there’s anything wrong with that. Britain, America and the west have done terrible things, but they have also done immense good. America was a racist, apartheid state. But it dismantled those laws under pressure from civil rights leaders like MLK and Martin X. I similarly take issue with the glib anti-racism claiming that Britain is institutionally racist because of the British empire, and that we should therefore feel guilt and shame about being White. One of the other books I really want to review is Nigel Biggar’ Colonialism: A Moral Reckoning. Biggar’s a moral theologian at Oxford, and the book’s a rebuttal of this facile view. It’s been intensely controversial, and his publishing contract was broken at one point. But he does show that in very many cases, British imperialists genuinely acted for what they considered to be the best interests of the subaltern peoples. The first British governor of Egypt, for example, told the colonial secretary that if the best interests of the Egyptian people conflicted with orders from Britain, he would ignore those orders. And when he said ‘Egyptian people’, he meant all the Egyptian people, not just Arabs, but also Copts, Greeks, Armenians and Africans from further south. Even Cecil bloody Rhodes was better than he’s often painted. Yes, he’s a blackguard, but he stood up for the right of the minuscule Black electorate in South Africa to vote when the government was trying to deprive them of it. As for the Benin Bronzes, which many racial activists would like repatriated, they were seized during a military expedition part of whose objectives were to stop the Benin people enslaving and slaughtering the people’s around them in mass human sacrifices. Bacon, the expedition’s intelligence officer, wrote an account of it, including graphic descriptions of the victims they found, in his book City of Blood.

Anti-Semitic Undertones to Rhetoric about International Finance

What gives me profound misgivings about Meloni, however, is when she starts spouting the Nazi nonsense about nationality, faith and the family being under attack by international finance and George Soros. It has nasty anti-Semitic overtones, although so far, she hasn’t said anything outright against the Jews. Anti-Semitism aside, I do believe the development of capitalism has worked to undermine the nation state and people’s natural loyalty to their homeland and the family. There hasn’t been an evil genius behind this. It’s just that international financial speculators, like Jacob Rees-Mogg, have had no moral issues investing in Britain’s rivals and moving their money across continents in order to maximise profits. Mogg is, of course, a Roman Catholic, which I hope helps to explode any myth that the Jews are somehow behind it. Western nations like America and Britain are being harmed by outsourcing and the movement of their industries abroad. That’s one of the reasons many Americans voted for Trump, even though he promptly broke that policy once elected. And I believe that extreme individualism that has led to the decline of the family and attachment to wider British society partly comes from the way late 20^th century capitalism tried to turn people from citizens into atomised consumers. Meloni has said this, and I agree with her.

Concern about Welfare and Economic Policies

I am, however, deeply concerned about her welfare and economic policies. She’s fiscally conservative, demanding low taxation, which in my experience means starving the state budget so that state supported industries and services decline to the point of collapse. And I have found a video of her speaking to the far right Spanish Vox party in a rally in Spain. This makes me feel profoundly uneasy given what a monster Franco was. He was more brutal and ruthless in the massacres he carried out than the Italian Fascists who fought for him in the Spanish Civil War. And when they’re worse than Musso’s storm troopers, it’s clear you’re dealing with a monster. Spain is still suffering the scars from his dictatorship. I realise that Vox and the Centre Right party have won a landslide election, but the thought that there are some people in the coalition that might be nostalgic for the old brute is deeply disturbing. This is my assessment of her so far. She’s anti-immigrant, but so far not racist; homophobic, but has a point regarding issues like surrogacy; broadly right about the importance of the traditional family, religion and country, though I am worried about the direction these common sense values could be taken. I don’t want them to be given the kind of totalitarian, intolerant support Mussolini and the fascists gave them. Nor do I want single mothers and gay parents to be demonised. And I have deep disquiet about her economic policies and attitude towards welfare provision. If she’s anything like the rest of the right, she’ll try and cut it to the point where working class poverty increases.

Policy Exchange Claims White Flight from Inner Cities Has Halted and May Even Be Reversing

Policy Exchange is one of those wretched right-wing think tanks that has been poisoning British politics for decades. I think apart from the Tories they were also a force influencing New Labour policies. But this is interesting, nonetheless. I found an article from them on their website, ‘White Departure from Inner City Britain Halting’, which cites their research showing that Britain is slowly becoming less segregated. Some of this is from Blacks and other ethnic minorities moving out of the inner cities to the suburbs. But it also shows that the ‘White Flight’ from the inner cities has stopped has stopped and may actually be reversing. This is an important issue. One of the factors behind the Oldham race riots a few years ago was that the very strong separation between White and ethnic minority communities. They lived in separate areas and had little contact with each other, which allowed for the extreme right to spread their noxious ideas. Much of the article comes from interviews with senior politicians done by the widower of Jo Cox, the Labour MP assassinated by a White supremacist. Nevertheless, it also notes that just under two-fifths of Brits say they feel like foreigners in their own country. This has been a strong influence in Whites leaving multiracial and multicultural areas, in some cases along with hostility from the ethnic minority population. A little while ago the New Culture Forum as part of their ‘Heresies’ series posted an interview on YouTube with the author of the book The Demonization of the White Working Class. He stated that working class Whites were being squeezed out of large cities like London by ethnic minorities and the new global rich. The influx of Whites to Black and Asian areas is causing a different set of problems, however. The extract below states that it’s professional White moving into areas like Brixton. This gentrification has provoked Black and Asian resentment as those minorities become priced out of their home areas by these wealthy incomers. The extract I’ve posted here also discusses the implications these demographic changes have for both Tories and Labour. The article, which is part of a longer report against the politicisation of the courts, How and Why to Constrain Interveners and Depoliticise Our Courts, begins:

‘The decline of the White British population in inner city Britain appears to have halted and may even have reversed, according to a new report on ethnic integration and segregation.

The new demographic analysis for Policy Exchange by the Webber Phillips data analytics group confirms that neighbourhood segregation has been slowly declining for most ethnic minority groups as they spread out from inner city heartlands into the suburbs but it also finds that the level of mixing between ethnic minorities taken as a whole and the White British majority is barely moving at all. It is a similar story in schools, with over 40% of ethnic minority pupils attending a school that is less than 25% White British.

This confirms previous trends, but what is new is the stabilisation of the White British population in big cities like London, Birmingham and Manchester. And in some parts of inner city Britain there appears to have been an actual increase in the White British as white young professionals move in and poorer minority residents are driven out by higher rents, think Brixton in south London.

Brendan Cox, the widower of Jo Cox the MP murdered by a white identity extremist and now a campaigner for more cohesive communities, argues that “Britain is on the verge of a diversity boom” yet the issue of integration has been a political orphan with no consistent lobby for it and with neither of the main political parties having a strong incentive to pursue it.

Cox’s analysis is based on anonymised conversations with politicians of all parties including former prime ministers David Cameron and Tony Blair, five former Home Secretaries (Amber Rudd, Charles Clarke, David Blunkett, Jack Straw, Jacqui Smith) and other experts and leaders of ethnic minority organisations.  A full list of those interviewed can be found in the report.

One of the former PMs is quoted as saying, “Later in my term I started to feel this was one of the most important issues, that there was nothing more important… The tough questions are schools, housing, immigration, you start with wild enthusiasm then look at the policies that stem from it and say ‘oh christ do I really need to do that.’”

And a former Home Secretary is quoted as saying: “It feels like a poisoned chalice. Long timelines, multi departmental approach and lack of definition about what we mean and controversial policy areas, are all real brakes on strategic action. It’s seen as unclear, potentially messy and with indeterminate benefits.”

Integration only tends to surface in response to terrorism or immigration crises, says Cox, and both of the main Westminster parties have historic legacies or ideological baggage that directs them away from the issue. For the Conservatives, argues Cox, “when it comes to integration and minority communities it’s not simply about fears of being seen as a nasty party but a racist one .”

For Labour, according to MPs interviewed for this report, “the political challenge comes from a political reliance on minority voters in particular areas of the country.” Cox says in theory this might incentivise engagement in integration given high levels of support from minority voters but many community leaders, especially in Muslim areas, are either ambivalent about integration or see it purely through a discrimination and anti-racism lens.

In other words parts of the left still view integration mainly as a problem of inequality, while the right avoids it out of fear of being branded racist. Cox, however, argues that there are some grounds for optimism. This is partly because the issue of integration and segregation has ceased to be an “us and them” issue and has evolved into an “everyone” issue. A 2021 YouGov poll found that 38% of British people agreed with the proposition that: “Sometimes I feel like a stranger in my own country.” And more than a fifth of people in England say they are always or sometimes lonely.’

See: https://policyexchange.org.uk/news/white-departure-from-inner-city-britain-halted/#:~:text=The%20decline%20of%20the%20White%20British%20population%20in,a%20new%20report%20on%20ethnic%20integration%20and%20segregation.

Now The Tories Are Coming for Those on Sickness Benefits

Earlier this week the Spectator published a noxious piece by its noxious editor, Fraser Nelson. Nelson was complaining about the numbers receiving sickness benefit while businesses in Britain are struggling to recruit workers. This included, he said, army officers with a beginning salary of £35,000. From what I could gather, the thrust of his article was that the people on sick leave and benefits should be taken off them and then forced to go into one of these vacant jobs. This has been followed by various other right-wing politicians declaring that they intend to retrain the long-term sick to fill these vacancies. The implication here is the old Blairite assumption about people on disability benefits that a certain proportion of them, at least, must be malingerers. It’s why the work capability assessment was set up to find a certain percentage of claimants fit for work, whether they were or not, and the consequent scandals of genuinely critical disabled and terminally ill people being thrown off benefits and told to get a job. It’s the attitude behind the New Labour and the Tories’ wretched benefit reforms, which not only demands claimants look for work and have their searches checked by the staff, but also has them thrown off benefits and sanctioned on the slightest pretext. If they’re starting on the long term sick, it probably indicates that they’ve gone as far as they can demonising and humiliating the unemployed and have been forced to start demonising and humiliating the sick. It’s also based on the unsympathetic attitude that working is good for you and will get you back on your feet. This was the attitude a few years ago when Dave Cameron’s coalition government came to power, and disability campaigners tore into that, showing that this simply wasn’t the case. There seems to be no awareness that some people are sick because of their jobs and working conditions. As for the mental health crisis hitting Britain, it isn’t due to Gary Lineker spreading fears about climate change, as Richard Tice has declared. It’s far more to do with the cost of living crisis caused by rising inflation, stagnant wages kept below the rate of inflation, as well as job insecurity caused by zero hours contracts and the gig economy and the detrimental effects of Brexit. But Reform and the Conservatives can’t admit that, as they believe that this has all been a splendid success and will make us all wealthier and business more secure and prosperous in the long run.

Behind this, I suspect, is the need to get British workers to take the jobs that were originally filled by immigrants and migrant workers now that immigration has become such a hot topic and the Tories are announcing their intention to cut it. It’s basically a return to the calls for Brits to work a fruit pickers instead of migrant workers a few years. That was met by complaints from people who had tried, but were turned down as the farmers preferred to employ migrants.

As for retraining the unemployed to fill certain jobs, there are obvious problems with this. Not everyone has the strength or temperament, let alone the academic qualifications for certain jobs. Army officers are an example of this. Membership of the armed forces demands physical and mental toughness as well as the ability to kill while observing the laws of war. In the case of the officer corps, it also demands intelligence, the jokes about military intelligence being a contradiction in terms aside. Those are very exacting standards and not everyone is able to fill them. There are other problems matching people to jobs. I was given grief when I tried signing on after gaining my archaeology Ph.D. nearly ten years ago by the clerks at the Job Centre. They were annoyed that I spent my time looking for jobs as an archaeologist, particularly in academia. I was told at my last meeting with them, where the supervising girl basically told me not to bother signing on any more, that I should really have been looking for menial jobs like cleaning before trying to find the work I was qualified to do. It shows the way the Job Centre staff aren’t interesting in making sure the right people find the right jobs but simply getting people off their books. But the problem with this is that employers of such jobs probably aren’t interested in taking on graduates, who are obviously overqualified. And some of the jobs that need to be filled require years of training and experience. Our favourite internet non-historian the other day put up a piece asking why this country needed to import architects and archaeologists from overseas. With archaeologists I think he may have a point, as I think there may be surplus of qualified archaeologists compared to the number of jobs. The profession was expanding a decade ago, but that seems to have passed and the number of archaeology firms set up in the boom time may have shrunk. I don’t know about architects. Assuming that there is a shortage of British architects – and I’m not sure there is – the problem here is that it takes years of study and training to qualify as one. It’s not a profession where someone can be retrained and fit to work in a few weeks.

The demands for people on sickness benefit to be retrained to fill these job vacancies then is just more right-wing Tory ideology about benefit scroungers and malingerers, which ignores the real reasons behind their sickness and the problem the unemployed face finding jobs they can actually do. But as the government and business faces increased difficulty recruiting foreign workers because of Brexit and the controversy over immigration, we can expect these demands to get worse.

Open Britain: Sunak Unable to Sack Cruella Because She’s Part of the ERG

I got this message earlier this afternoon from the pro-democracy organisation, Open Britain, commenting on Sunak’s inability to sack Braverman despite her breach of the codes governing ministerial conduct. In their view, and I think it’s the correct one, this is because Braverman’s part of the hard line, anti-European ERG, who now appear to be the major force pulling the strings in the Tories. This is another indication of the parlous state of our democracy, as no-one should be above the law.

I found one detail particularly interesting, because I hadn’t heard about it anywhere else. Perhaps it has been reported, but I simply missed it. It’s that Braverman founded a charity with members of the Rwandan government who were part of Rwandan immigration scheme. This is, in my view, utterly corrupt, and demonstrates more clearly than the speeding fine fiasco why she shouldn’t be in government. Here’s Open Britain’s message

‘Dear David,

No matter the circumstances, it seems that Rishi Sunak is completely unable to hold his ministers to even the most basic standard of conduct. It speaks not only to the ERG’s stranglehold on the Conservative party, but Britain’s ever-lowering bar for standards in public life under this government. 

Remember, Braverman’s tenure didn’t start on a high note. Sunak reappointed her just six days after her resignation as Home Secretary under Liz Truss, which she tendered for committing a serious national security breach in violation of the Ministerial Code. Despite the public outcry at the time and Sunak’s laughable commitment to “integrity, professionalism and accountability”, the PM ultimately succumbed to the power of the Brexit lobby. 

Today, we’ve learned of two new Ministerial Code violations by the Home Secretary. Firstly, three days ago, Braverman was alleged to have used her position to change the punishment for a speeding violation. And now a further accusation has emerged that Braverman failed to disclose her co-founding a charity linked to members of the Rwandan government, including several key officials involved in her Rwanda immigration scheme. So far, Number 10 has refused to announce an investigation into either matter.

How exactly did Suella Braverman become politically untouchable? For her, standards that would apply to any other job in the world seem to be completely absent. Even as a communications officer at Open Britain (an important role, but not one quite as consequential as Home Secretary), I wouldn’t be allowed to perform to such an abysmally low standard. I’d have personally resigned in disgrace long ago. 

There is one disturbingly simple answer. Braverman is part of the ERG clique, a secretive and “militant” wing of the Tory party which has exerted immense power over government policy and operations. Sunak, in a futile attempt to unite various splinter groups within his party, has no choice but to put up with her or face the full wrath of this “party within a party”. Sunak, like the rest of us, is hostage to the insanity of these swivel-eyed loons.

But there is a deeper explanation. As our democratic institutions crumble, our rights fade away, and our political debates descend into the realm of petty grievance, the standards we once expected of those in public life simply slip away. Nothing illustrates our steady slide towards authoritarianism than the way government has become more about pledging fealty to Brexit fundamentalism than to honouring a commitment to deliver proper democracy or effective governance. Braverman stays because she is loyal to the cause, not because she serves the people or institutions of Britain. It’s the mark of a nation in steep decline.

It’s time to re-assess. Who are we as a country? What are our values? What do we, as a nation, actually believe in? Right now, the great ship of state is just chugging along to nowhere in particular, with the worst among us steering us closer and closer to the abyss. 

Proper democracy means taking back the reins. It means giving real people a real say in what Britain is and what Britain will be in the future. It means having politicians who are happy to be held to account by the public, not focussed on covering the backs of those who climbed the same greasy pole they did. In a proper democracy, no one is untouchable. 

I’m proud to be fighting for a system like that. Sometimes it seems like an insurmountable task, but we’re not resting until it’s done.

All the best, 

Matt Gallagher
Comms Officer, Open Britain’

Spectator Article Claims Immigration Has Increased Since Brexit

Looking through Google earlier I found an article on the Speccie’s website claiming with that more or less as its title, authored by none other than its editor, Fraser Nelson. Unfortunately, I couldn’t read the article because you have to be a subscriber, and I’m not. But hold on! Weren’t all the right-wing, Tory anti-immigration types pushing Brexit as the solution too mass immigration and all those pesky people heading across the Channel to us on rubber dinghies?

And was this a pack of lies? Yes, yes, they did and it was. The anti-immigration Brexiteers – there were others on the Labour left who support Brexit, and who were definitely not racist or anti-immigration – told anybody who would listen that the migrants heading over here after passing through Europe had been able to do so because of the European constitution. That isn’t the case. The European constitution does call for freedom of movement across the Union for EU citizens, but from what I understand asylum seekers are required to settle in the first country they travel to. The Schengen Agreement allows immigrants from outside the EU to travel freely from one country to another, but that’s a separate treaty which only binds the specific countries that signed it. Quite simply, the Brexiteer right lied to people about this issue, just as they lied to people about oven-ready deals with the EU, using the money spent on our contribution to the EU on the NHS, the rest of the world flocking to us desperate for trade deals after we left, no traffic queues at Dover or extra bureaucracy and so on, and on, ad nauseam. And now it has dawned on them that, rather than stopping mass immigration, the number of immigrants entering the country has actually increased.

I’m not actually surprised. I was talking to a friend of mine about immigration a while ago, who’d been doing some reading on the issue. He told me that immigration also increased massively after Britain first passed legislation cutting down on it. Before then, it had been largely chain-immigration. Immigrants would arrive from south Asia or wherever and take up residence in a certain area, but would generally only live there for a short period of time before returning to India or Pakistan. They would then be replaced by another set of immigrants, who would also live there for a relatively short space of time before returning and being replaced by a newer set of migrants in their turn. But in the run-up to the date when the new anti-immigration legislation came into law there was a surge in the number of people immigrating to the country, presumably hoping to get in before the door shut. I wonder if something like that is happening now with the people coming here from Africa and the Middle East. Some of the rise in immigration that’s occurred over the past year has been caused Ukrainians seeking refuge in this country as a result of Putin’s invasion of their homeland. I’d say that this was something of an anomaly, as it’s the result of warfare in Europe itself while the pattern of migration that bothers the anti-immigration lobby is that of non-Whites from outside Europe. The exceptional circumstances of the war in Ukraine may mean that in subsequent years the level of immigration may well be lower.

The anti-immigration crew have been aware for some time that Brexit hasn’t been the solution to the issue they believed, or they told people. I’ve seen disturbing articles on various right-wing blogs and YouTube channels talking about this, and suggesting that what we need to do is get out of the 1950s United Nations treaty on refugees. The Nat Cons are taking their inspiration and ideology from the American ultra-Conservative right, and there has been a strain in extreme right-wing American thought that’s been critical of the UN for a very long time. There are very conspiracy theories about the United Nations, which see it very much as the beginning of the Satanic One World Communist dictatorship. Other, less bonkers views attack it for supposedly being anti-American and anti-Israel. My guess is that it may not be too long before we see similar attacks on the United Nations appearing on the right in Britain with the purpose of discrediting the Refugee Treaty. Not that this will be such a radical change for some of the papers. When the UN criticises us for the poverty and suffering Tory policies have inflicted on our citizens, papers like the Heil respond with shrill attacks on it for being anti-British. I think we can expect this hostility to increase and become louder and more vitriolic as the Tories and other right-wing parties like Reform try to stir up anti-immigrant feeling.

Simon Webb and Calvin Robinson Attack the Tory Party

A day or so this blog’s favourite internet non-historian put up a video explaining why he would prefer to ‘die in a ditch’ rather than support or join the Conservatives. As you would expect, it was about immigration. The video’s title called Rishi Sunak ‘an enemy of Britain. This was because, in Webb’s view, Sunak was using the controversy over the channel migrants to cover up the far greater numbers immigrating to Britain legally. The numbers in the small boats were trivial compared to the 200,000 refugees from Ukraine, the number of students entering Britain with their spouses and families, and other migrants which pushed the real immigration figures up to nearly a million. Actually, I think the number of students, who came here but didn’t leave is about 500,000, so the figure could be something like 700,000 using the numbers he quoted.

Calvin Robinson, the cos-play priest, also turned up in a video for GB News or one of the other very right-wing outlets declaring that the Tories need to be destroyed. Why? It seems he doesn’t regard them as Conservative any more. He was defending himself from the other members of the panel by saying that Conservative principles would survive. My guess is that he’s talking to the same kind of people that call the Tories the Consocialists and complain about them being too woke. Robinson is an opponent of LGBTQ+ rights. The last video I came across was of him making a speech at the Oxford Union or somewhere presenting the case against the Anglican Church marrying gays. He’s right about the letter of scripture condemning homosexuality, just like it also condemns heterosexual fornication and adultery. But the letters from liberal clergy I’ve read about the issue argued that the nature of the family changed radically in Scripture, so that they could not formulate a clear theology of the family. You can see that in the texts of the Hebrew Bible and New Testament. In the Old Testament, polygyny was the norm, with the patriarchs and kings having multiple wives. When you get to the New Testament, this has changed so that the Jewish family of the period seems to have been largely monogamous with men generally having only one wife. They also argued that gay marriage in church was not without precedent, as it had been known in medieval eastern Europe and the Byzantine empire. I also remember that when the US legalised gay marriage, there were a number of videos posted by ordinary, God-fearing Americans stating that he didn’t radically change anything. Gay people hadn’t suddenly fallen out of the sky to do ‘homosexual thing’, according to one man, who went round his farm showing that they hadn’t suddenly appeared and were hiding in his haystack. A woman simply said that it didn’t change her conditions: she was still in a Christ-centred straight marriage with her husband.

It looks to me like the hard right may start abandoning the Tories for Reform or Reclaim. At the same time, left-wingers purged from Labour, or ordinary Labour supporters with traditional Labour views who are made to feel unwelcome and alienated by Starmer and turn to Conservatism may well go to the Greens or alternative left-wing parties like the Socialist and Trades Unin Alliance. And I really couldn’t blame anyone if they gave their vote to the Socialist Party. Kernow Damo, a left-wing Cornish YouTuber, has put up a video praising the Greens because of their retention of left-wing policies.

It’ll be interesting to see tomorrow’s election results, as this could be one where small, fringe parties start picking up votes.

New Culture Forum Interview with GB News Director on the Truth about the Pakistani Grooming Gangs

This is going to be controversial, but I think this video is important as it exposes the biases and distortions in the official reportage of the Pakistani grooming gangs and the fear of being accused of racism that allowed them to get away with their crimes for decades. I’m very much aware that the New Culture Forum is part of the free market fanatics, the IEA and that GB News is a Conservative media outlet pushing the culture war issues because the Tories don’t really have anything else to use to boost their image. But this is a very, very real issue, and the ingrained refusal to investigate and prosecute these men because of their religion and ethnicity has led to the horrific abuse of 1,500 + extremely vulnerable girls in Rotherham alone. And it also demonstrates how this scandal has its deeper roots in the refusal to tolerate anything that contradicted the multicultural dogma that states that ethnic minorities and immigrants somehow automatically adopt British culture and values when they immigrate to this country. These men didn’t, and the interviewees state that this was partly due to the nature of chain migration itself and the backward culture of the region from which most of the groomers came – the Mirpur region of Pakistan.

The video is part of a new series, ‘Deprogrammed’, being launched by the NCF, Presumably the title means that its against the supposed falsehoods with which we’ve been programmed like robots by the lamestream media. The video features Harrison Pitt, a writer for the European Conservative, interviewing Evan Rigg, a Canadian freelance journalist, and Charlie Peter, a presenter on GB News who produced a documentary on the Pakistani grooming gangs. It begins with Sajid Javid’s 2018 investigation of the gangs. Despite expectations, this turned into a whitewash as the Tories were sensitive about race in the wake of the Windrush scandal. It therefore concluded that the majority of abusers and gang members were White men. The report was originally withheld from publication and it took an internet petition with 180,000 signatures to get it released. In fact, the report on which Javid’s report was based contradicted its findings. It stated that the collection of statistics for ethnicity had been so poor, it was impossible to say which race the majority of offenders was composed of. What evidence there is stated that White men constituted 30 per cent of offenders, and Asians 28 per cent. This was despite Whites constituting 85 per cent of the British population and Asians 8 per cent. By these statistics, Asians are massively overrepresented as groomers and abusers.

Peter’s stated that one effect of his documentary was that it had helped changed the law. The news about the gangs in Rotherham had first been broken a decade ago by Andrew Norfolk, after which more reports from other towns flowed in. However, these reports were mealy-mouthed and heavily censored. More documentation on the ethnic composition of the gangs is needed, along with the imprisonment of their members. Many of those convicted served only light sentences and returned to the same areas in which their victims were living afterwards because of a reluctance to send offenders to Britain’s overstretched and crowded prisons. He supported the launch of Cruella’s National Crime Agency taskforce because local authorities and police forces and had been too mired in political corruption. The problem was that these organisations prioritised community cohesion and multiculturalism over the safety of women and girls. The girls were further regarded by politicians and the media as belonging to the underclass, wild girls whose unsafe lifestyle brought their abuse on themselves. There was the further problem in that it had gone on for decades, but the people who initially talked about it were far right. In fact, they were often ordinary, decent people who were branded far right because they talked about this taboo topic. When patriotic, decent, socially conservative members of the left spoke about it, they were bullied and harassed. Anne Crier was ignored when she spoke out in 2003. Jack Straw was pilloried for complaining about it, and Sarah Champion was similarly removed from Labour’s front bench for the same reason. Peters therefore considered Braverman very brave for taking on the rape gangs. He was struck by her comments that the truth wasn’t racist as something that needed to be said to defend a government policy.

The abused girls were targeted because they were White. This was a result of mass migration, which had produced a very insular and clannish community. The immigrants involved came from the very backward Mirpur and Kashmir regions of Pakistan. It was chain migration operating through first cousin marriage. This prevented these communities from establishing links with the wider community and entrenched the traditional gender power structures that gave men immense power and control over women. It also meant that these abusers were extremely difficult to catch because family members did not want to inform on each other. This occurred at the same time the social solidarity of the wider community was declining due to the economic devastation of local industries and a process of social atomisation. Sexual behaviour became more licentious during the ’90s and Noughties, when it became acceptable to go out of an evening for casual sex. But this was also contrasted with the moral conservatism and judgmental attitudes of the tabloid papers.

The emergence of the Pakistani rape gangs flew in the face of the classical liberal doctrine that held that relentless waves of unwanted migrants would not lead to the destruction of social bonds, and especially the left-wing mantra that ‘diversity is strength’. Peters here contrasts the state of three of the countries with the highest rates of diversity – Liberia, Congo and Papua New Guinea, with very homogenous societies like Denmark, Japan and South Korea. Nevertheless, the assumption is that the more Britain becomes diverse, it can still function like Denmark and the other two nations. It’s assumed new immigrants will assimilate, but assimilation only goes so far. The Canadian journalist remarked that although he comes from a very similar nation, he will never be British. How will people from very different cultures like Liberia do so? Will it be their children or grandchildren who become British? Some migration is needed for countries to remain dynamic. The problem in Rotherham was that it was too much, too quickly and unwanted. And as the new immigrants could join the electorate after a few years, this resulted in the creation of a new electorate without the consent of the old one.

He then discusses the noxious activities and careers of some of those involved in the gangs and the suppression of action against them. One of these ratbags was Maruf Hussein, Rotherham’s Community Cohesion Officer, who refused to accept the reports that 1,500 + girls were being molested. The gangs were also assisted by White female converts to Islam, such as Shifra Ali. Ali set up a bogus taxi hotline which was supposed to supply taxis to take the girls to school. She died in 2009, unfortunately, before she could face justice. After Hussein resigned, he rebranded himself as an anti-racism activist. It has also been alleged that Hussein also launched a failed accusation of racism against a Labour colleague on the council for expressing concerns about the grooming gangs. He was then found working for NHS England as a diversity and inclusion officer. on £49,000 p.a. It is a disgrace that the doctrine of diversity hasn’t been harmed and even been strengthened by it, because it showed how such monstrous crimes could be ignored through censorship and lies. Once again the 2020 report is mentioned for its conclusion that the majority of abusers were White men. It showed that the ‘blob’, the right-wing name for the obstructive civil service and the diversity industry could spin the gangs as a White problem. This is despite the fact that there were 19 trials in which the gangs were composed only of Pakistani men. And while the police may not collect statistics on ethnicity, the names are included in the trial records. Further studies have also shown that Pakistani men dominate this issue. But the blob, Sayeeda Warsi, the Guardian and parts of the government will accuse you of racism if you talk about this.

The conversation then goes back to 2015 and comparison with the way the continental countries such as Germany were able to combat the Syrian rapists in Cologne and other cities. The interviewees make the point that Syria isn’t the same as Mirpur and Kashmir. England also has a particular nervousness when it comes to migration and accusations of racism. Peters then goes back to 1870 and Gladstone’s violent denunciation of the Turks’ atrocities in eastern Europe. His comments, if made now, would result in his being thrown out of every political party except, perhaps, Reform and the SDP. And there is the problem of the ethnic composition of constituencies affecting what their politicians are prepared to say about particular issues. Would Gladstone have made his comments, if his constituency had included a large Turkish population? He mentions the comments Tracey Brabin, the mayor of West Yorkshire, made three weeks ago on the Daily Politics. Brabin dismissed Cruella’s comments about the grooming gangs as ‘dog whistles. This is two years after a teacher in Batley was forced into hiding for showing cartoons of Mohammed in class as part of a lesson on free speech. It’s also just a few weeks after the controversy when an autistic boy scuffed a Quran, and his mother was dragged before the local mosque to beg its congregants’ forgiveness in what is described as a ‘Maoist struggle session’. Present at this kangaroo court was a police inspector urging restraint. Peters saw parallels here with the grooming gangs, especially as Maruf Hussain had also spoken to the police. If Brabin cannot tell the truth about these problems, what else will she cover up?

The video ends with a discussion of what ordinary people can do. They state that there are good resources out there about what people can do if they feel their children are being abused. The NSPCC is one, although they have reservations about them because of the charity’s statement that different communities should not be singled out. They are particularly impressed with Maggie Oliver and her campaign and organisation against the gangs.

Peters is questioned about the response by the working class to the documentary. Did they regard him as a hero? Peters replied by stating that he was only a documentary film-maker and not a hero. The real heroes were the survivors of the abuse, who put their lives at risk to talk to him. He was immensely grateful to them. It was easier talking to them and editing their accounts than talking to politicians as there was no waffle. As for Braverman’s proposed actions, the proof would be in the pudding. He would be very impressed if the offenders were imprisoned and deported. The survivors were cautiously optimistic, and Peters said he would be there to hold the government to account if it failed them.

Open Britain on the Fight Against Tory Corruption and Authoritarianism

Dear David,

The report into Richard Sharp’s appointment as Chair of the BBC is just as damning as expected. It confirms that Sharp failed to disclose relevant information relating to the role he played in arranging an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson.

The fact that the BBC, one of the most trusted news sources in the world, has been tainted by Westminster’s ‘old chum’ network suggests none of the institutions on which our democracy depends is safe from these people.

Don’t forget that as well as helping arrange an £800,000 loan for Boris Johnson and being a Tory Party mega-donor AND a former Tufton St spin-doctor, Sharp used to be Rishi Sunak’s boss at Goldman Sachs. The fact that someone with that history was ever appointed to a role that is supposed to be politically impartial is a national disgrace.

But I wonder whether the days when government ministers feel able to break any rule they like with impunity might be coming to an end. Something seems to be stirring in the country. Britain seems to be waking up to the scale of the problem.

Campaigners, academics, students, “lefty” lawyers, and the public at large are beginning to recognise that our political system is plumbing new depths and understanding that the period between the next two elections must be used to drive fundamental change. They’re organising and mobilising as we speak. 

Look around and you’ll see the signs. For the first time ever, a small group of volunteers has created a tactical voting website (called ‘StopTheTories.Vote‘) for May’s local elections. Tactical voting sites have become almost routine during general elections but never before for local elections. This site allows users to see which candidates are best placed to beat Conservative candidates on 4th May. We’ll be watching with interest.

Elsewhere, the petition calling for a national public inquiry into the impacts of Brexit is nearing 200,000 signatures. The debate it prompted in Parliament last week sparked a helpful conversation about the inability of both major parties to acknowledge the harsh economic reality Brexit has forced onto people and businesses across the country. While few Conservative MPs showed up (unsurprisingly), opposition parties made a solid case for a fact-finding process, with even some individual Labour MPs accepting the case.

Alongside all that, we can see the PR movement growing in size and volume. It now includes dozens of civil society organisations and increasing numbers of ordinary people. Sort the System is designed to directly engage with MPs and show them definitively that FPTP is not good for anyone except the Tory elites and their donors. Pair that with the pressure from Labour’s stakeholders, and it’s clear that the force behind the PR movement in Britain has never been more powerful. 

And the list doesn’t stop there:

• Campaigners, including Open Britain, are working hard to push back on the government’s unfair voter ID scheme ahead of the next general election.
  
• Our friends at Fair Vote UK, alongside many international partners, are working to fight disinformation and reign in big tech’s control of our information environment.
  
• Independent journalists like Byline Times are setting a new example for British journalism free of advertising, oligarch money, or government subsidies. 
  
• Activist groups like Liberty are campaigning for more humane treatment of migrants and a robust human rights framework.
  
• Unions and campaigners are working together to fight for economic democracy and against the government’s anti-strike legislation.
  
• Environmental law agencies like Client Earth are challenging fossil-fuel drilling projects in the courts. 
  
• The Good Law Project and other legal activism groups are finding ways to use the law to push back against inhumane government legislation. 

You may think there’s not much hope coming out of the government these days – and we’d be inclined to agree – but look elsewhere, and you’ll almost certainly find some. People around the country are increasingly doing their bit to push back against the lies, incompetence and corruption that has infested our political system. It may not be reflected in Number 10 or even in Parliament (yet), but there is tangible power behind all of these movements…and it is growing.

If all this effort can be harnessed, by 2029, after this crucial window of opportunity has passed, we could all be living in a fundamentally better Britain. A place where our votes matter and our voices aren’t drowned out by the whims of mega-donors; a place where human rights are respected and upheld; a place where the public is able to make collective decisions about its future without being stymied by disinformation and a divisive media. It will never be perfect, but it will be a much more accurate reflection of who we are and what kind of world we want to live in.

Don’t lose hope – people are working all around us to build the kind of country we want to live in. All you have to do is join in. 

All the best, and have a great weekend.

Matt Gallagher
Open Britain’

Liberal Apartheid: Robin DiAngelo Calls for Separate Spaces for Blacks

This is going to be another controversial video because of where it comes from: Paul Joseph Watson. Yeah, I know, he’s another far right mouthpiece. He was Alex Jones’ British buddy over on Infowars, which pushed just about every bizarre conspiracy known to humanity. He was one of the celebrity rightists who broke UKIP, along with Mark ‘Count Dankula’ Meacham and Carl ‘Sargon of Akkad’ Benjamin. When those three joined the party, all the genuine anti-racists left. Party collapse followed, as well as refounding as the Brexit party, now Reform or whatever.

But here Watson makes a perfectly valid point. It’s in response to Scott Adams, the creator of the Dilbert cartoon strip, torpedoing his career by telling Whites to stay away from Blacks. He said this in response to a poll which found that just under 50 per cent of Blacks thought it wasn’t okay to be right, or didn’t know if it was or wasn’t. He took this as showing that this proportion of the Black American population hated Whites. He therefore told Whites to stay away from Blacks, even though just over 50 per cent of Blacks had no problems with Whites and ‘don’t know’ doesn’t necessarily translate to ‘hate Whites’.

What Watson objects to in this video is that Critical Race Theorist and anti-racist activist, Robin DiAngelo, says much the same thing from the Black perspective but doesn’t suffer the same consequences as Adams. He presents a clip of her saying that Blacks need their own separate spaces away from Whites. Now this attitude ain’t new. I encountered it years ago in the editorial/ ‘things you should know about’ column in the newsletter of the Black and Asian Studies Association newsletter, no. 31 or perhaps 32, c. 2002, when I was working at the Empire and Commonwealth Museum in Bristol. I wasn’t impressed. One of the columnists for the Financial Times had reviewed a book on the Empire and post-war immigration, and, if I recall correctly, had criticised it for saying nothing about what it called ‘reverse colonisation’ and ‘liberal apartheid’. Liberal apartheid is the system of goods and services set up exclusively to benefit Blacks and ethnic minorities. The call for separate Black spaces, however well meant, is effectively a call for a return to segregation. When coupled with an opposition to restrictions on non-White immigration, as was also expressed in the same column, it becomes effectively a form of colonialism in which Whites are to be excluded from certain spaces for the benefit of non-White immigrants. I don’t doubt, though, that those making these demands wouldn’t see it like that and would be terribly offended by the very idea. Nevertheless, it’s there, and it’s causing further racial division and conflict. But it’s seen as acceptable because the people advocating it come from the left and do so on the part of an underprivileged ethnic minority.

Watch Out! Tories Ignore European Court of Human Rights on Migrants – This Is Just Their First Step

I’ve come across a number of video from right-wingers and right-wing outlets like GB News reporting that the government has passed legislation, or wants to pass legislation, that will allow it to ignore the European Court of Human Rights. This was one of the issues Anne Widdecombe was ranting about at the Reform Party rally at the weekend. How dare these foreigners interfere with our business and stop us from banning asylum seekers! But as I understand it, the European Court of Human Rights and its legislation was partly modelled on British law. Patrick Stuart made that very clear in an anti-Brexit advert he made a few years ago, where he played a very Eurosceptic PM who felt physically sick at the mere mention of the EU. But I remember what Tony Benn said of such legislation by the Tories: they always come for the immigrants first, and then they attack the rest of the population. This is going to lead to further attacks on the welfare state and workers rights, all in the name of Brexit and making Britain competitive in the global market or some such rubbish. As Mike said in his blog long ago, they’ll strip people of everything, and leave them only with their hatred.