‘The European Union said there was nothing else available… so this is the deal that is right for the UK,’ in the filed Brexit withdrawal negotiations.
Does this sound like the leader of a proud and productive nation, the fifth-biggest economy in the world, and the very founder of modern democracy?
Peddling the withdrawal agreement on a flight to the G20 meeting, prime minister Theresa May displayed the supplicant status that her government has taken throughout the protracted Brexit negotiations.
Where is the bulldog spirit?
Where is the ‘Great’ in Great Britain?
Sadly, May’s stance is typical of political establishments across the Western world. Since the Second World War, most liberal politicians have been hoodwinking and herding their citizens towards post-nation globalism.
The patriotism of common people is derided, if not excoriated.
We see this all the time in attacks on President Trump by the media, by Never Trumpers, by globalists and by academics.
Mass immigration has dramatically changed the demography of the UK and other European countries, as well as the US, shifting the electoral balance in major cities. But the culprits of the demise of national identity in society are not the incomers but a middle class so ashamed of their country that any expression of national sentiment is now perceived as ‘far right,’ xenophobic or racist.
This pejorative use of the label ‘right’ is a convenient means of vilifying opposition to the prevailing set of liberal opinions, now literally policed as ‘hate crime’.
Students are more likely to see themselves on the left of the political spectrum, but scratch below the surface and you will find that the fault-line is not really socialism versus capitalism. They won’t get their smart phones or skinny lattes from nationalised industry. Unlike the radical campus activists of the late 1960s, today’s students are in fact very pro-establishment.
The social divide, which in the USA is openly discussed as a ‘culture war’, was perhaps best conceptualised by David Goodhart in his book The Road to Somewhere.
On one side are Anywheres, the graduate class who populate the upper echelons of our political and cultural institutions, and who dominate professions such as teaching. Upwardly mobile, they have little sense of belonging to their hometown or country. These rootless ‘citizens of the world’ contrast starkly with Somewheres, who value their families, community bonds and nationhood, and who see the impact of globalisation as a threat to their culture.
You are more likely to find Somewheres in the pub, and Anywheres in an expensive, trendy ethnic urban restaurant.
The Somewheres are more numerous – they are the ordinary people.
Are they left or right? Ask them about public services and unscrupulous business practices and they will espouse state provision and regulation. But ask them about Queen and country, or the extremes of identity politics (such as transgenderism) and they will appear more conservative than progressive. Indeed, Somewheres are a mixture of working class Labour voters and ‘Middle England’ Tories.
Brexit has exposed the redundancy of the old left versus right dichotomy.
The same transcending of the spectrum is happening across Europe, as illustrated by Marine le Pen’s National Rally in France, and by the marriage of the Five Star and Liga parties in Italy (previously positioned as left and right respectively). Steve Bannon’s ‘The Movement’ is building links between such parties, following the success of Donald Trump in luring blue-collar workers from their habitual attachment to the Democrat Party.
The established social democrat and centre-right parties are in serious decline throughout all of Europe.
Belatedly, the people have realised that their representatives take votes for granted, while pursuing policies that are gradually destroying Western civilisation: using identity politics to divide and rule; practising moral relativism to subvert the Enlightenment triad of democracy, freedom of speech and equality before the law; creating by stealth an Orwellian surveillance system; unholy alliances with global corporations; sending hard-earned taxpayers’ money to dastardly regimes.
The terms “left” and “right” originally appeared at the French Revolution of 1789 when members of the National Assembly divided into supporters of the king to the president’s right and supporters of the revolution to his left.
That is all very out-dated.
As the gilets jaunes riots in France indicate, the New World Order is stoking the ire of the masses. ‘Extremists’ are setting fire to cars and pelting the police with road furniture. The Guardian suggests they are right wing; the Telegraph suspects leftists. The protestors don’t care how they are labelled. They have lost faith in politicians and their media lackeys.
Each country will have its own flavour of anti-establishment agitation, but the phenomenon is basically the same. A people’s revolt is brewing…. and right against left is not the frame.
Patriots versus globalists is a more apt descriptor of our new ideological divide, which will shape the politics, economics and culture of the next decades.
Ted Malloch, is an American leadership expert. Niall McCrae and Robert Oulds are the authors of the new book, Moralitis, on the epidemic of delusional ideology.
