My plan for the future

What I said at our first annual Substack party

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It was great to meet so many of our Founding and Paid Subscribers at our First Annual Subscriber Party in the heart of London. We successfully managed to get through all the funds I put behind the bar —despite the event coinciding with Happy Hour! And I also hope you found the opportunity to meet other members of our community enjoyable. In the future, we’ll hold these events in different parts of the UK so that everybody can attend (and at quieter venues). Here’s an expanded version of my speech and some pictures from the night (courtesy of Inc Monocle):

“When we started this Substack eighteen months ago we had 5,000 people from an existing list of followers. Today, we have 34,000 subscribers across the website and the Substack App. They come from 151 countries around the world, 50 of the United States of America, and are being joined by thousands more each month.

I think they’re with us —I think you’re with us— because we’re all completely fed-up with the state of Western societies and the direction of travel.

I think we all feel that the present is already worse than the past and the future will be even worse. And I think we all worry about the threats that now confront us on multiple sides.

And what are those, exactly?

Mass, uncontrolled immigration. Our inability to even defend our own borders. Spiralling crime and the visible breakdown of social order. A radicalising cultural/woke left that hates who we are, that wants to deconstruct our collective sense of history, identity, and memory. The spread of an aggressive Islamism, especially among younger Muslims, which is fuelling antisemitism and a new sectarianism in our politics. Public institutions that are now openly being politicised, including ones that are exposing our children and young people to ideological dogma which —as the Cass Review just underlined— has no serious basis in science. A new ruling class that routinely downplays or ignores these threats while showing little if any respect for the values of the wider majority. And a national economy that is no longer working for ordinary families, which is hard-wired to benefit global corporations over national citizens.

My assumption, today, is that these threats will only grow and get worse, for two reasons. First, the likely election of a strong Labour government this year, which on both immigration and cultural policy has made clear its plans to double down on this broken status-quo and accelerate these changes. Despite there being no mass public enthusiasm for the incoming Labour government, which will likely become very unpopular, very quickly, it will nonetheless remain wedded to the broken consensus in Westminster. Big state. High tax. Mass immigration. Putting anything and everything above the interests of the British people.

Second, after a very heavy and most likely historic defeat, the Conservative Party —or what remains of it—will be even more dependent on southern, socially liberal, if not radically progressive Oxbridge-types who view these threats as ‘low-status’ and have no serious interest in dealing with them. Red Wallers, northerners, and cultural conservatives will only be noteworthy for their absence.

While there will be a brief Tory civil war—between Establishment Conservatives and National Conservatives— it will not last long. Instead, there will be a sustained and most likely successful push to marginalise any potential leaders who seek to challenge or oppose the continuation of this broken post-Brexit consensus among the elite class.

The hapless Tories will push themselves back toward the ‘centre’ (read: that part of the political landscape that best reflects the beliefs, tastes, priorities, and values of committed social liberals who represent, at best, no more than 20% of Britain). A loose alliance of London-based journalists, think-tankers, and others will spend the aftermath of the election projecting their own values onto the debate, blaming everything from Brexit and Suella Braverman to the Rwanda Plan and ‘hard right’ politics for the Tory party’s historic losses. That today’s Conservative Party is the most pro-immigration Conservative Party in history, that most people support the Rwanda Plan, and that all those who have deserted the Tories for the Reform party or apathy have done so because of how the Tories betrayed them on both illegal and legal immigration will be ignored.

Nonetheless, Operation “Smell the Coffee 2.0”, pushed on by one Tory grandee after another, most of whom have never actually won general elections or referendums, shall commence. And it will be relentless.

Both these developments —the election of a Labour government and the narrowing of the Tory party— will clearly leave an enormous and unavoidable vacuum at the very heart of British politics, a place where millions of people, what we might call the ‘Real Centre’, will gather. So what will, or should, fill this void?

Here are my thoughts.