Today is about quoting Matt Goodwin’s proposals for key policies a New Party needs to get their feet into the HoC’s doors. Firstly though, a bit of housekeeping: the MSM front pages for today: “Newspaper headlines: ‘Goodbye to the best’ and ‘our greatest’.” (link). If you abstained yesterday from consuming any of the MSM you wouldn’t have a clue what BBC ‘staff’ is talking about. They seem to be squeamishly avoiding to use the word ‘died’: too upsetting for the snowflake interns? Anyway, would they even know who Michael Parkinson was? Yes, it was he who died yesterday.

Here’s more housekeeping: today I’ll also quote paragraphs from Goodwin’s essay explaining why yon five points are important. Tomorrow I’ll add Goodwin’s sketchy description of why this might work. I’ve left in the links Goodwin provides. Some go to his earlier essays which are for paid subscribers, others, e.g. where he writes: ‘most people’, go to polls. You can disregard them, they are there to show Goodwin’s sources. Having said all this, here we go:

“The question for any New Party is this: ‘What’s your version of the 1997 New Labour pledge card?’ What are the five policies you are going to take into battle which convey your core message in a clear and compelling way, which are capable of galvanising voters and remove all the endless fluff that voters don’t care about?

As regular readers know, I’ve long pointed to a cluster of issues which many voters both (a) care a great deal about and (b) feel they are no longer represented on. […] These are the issues which, in 2024-2028, should form the basis of a new party. Clearly, it’s not either/or.” (paywalled link)

And so to ‘the points’. They are not based on some ideas of ‘what can we give the masses so they elect us’, they are the product of Goodwin’s extensive research, conducted over years:

“First. Crime. Get serious about tackling it and adopt a much tougher approach which a large majority of voters want to see. Most people think crime is out of control, most people no longer have confidence in the police (who they often think have turned into a hyper-political woke joke). This is a very dangerous place for any society to be and directly violates the core British trait of “fair play”. Whoever clamps down on it sharply will be rewarded. Massively. It is one issue on which voters consistently lean much further to the right than all of the SW1 class and which they feel they are no longer represented on.” (paywalled link)

In this first point Goodwin already shows that this is an issue which most voters, regardless of their Uniparty ‘loyalty’, are concerned about. This is why it should be one of the ‘pledges’. Next – the parts in Capital Letters are Goddwin’s own emphases:

“Second. Immigration. Get serious about lowering it and do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to regain control over Britain’s borders. Cummings is right to say The New Party should call to leave the European Convention on Human Rights and repeal the Human Rights Act. But it should go much further. Voters aren’t just bothered about illegal migration and Stopping the Boats. They also REALLY care about legal immigration, too, something the Tories still don’t understand (as I discovered while having dinner with two cabinet ministers recently —they genuinely think legal immigration is fine!) Call for a national referendum on returning net migration to pre-1997, pre-New Labour levels. Draw a line in the sand and if the usual business/academe/SW1 lobby kick off about it stand up to them. This is not divisive. Don’t listen to newspapers or academics who are themselves invested in promoting mass immigration, either because they want it or because they live their lives subscribing to social norms while being too scared to challenge taboos. This is a ‘valence issue’, meaning if you call for a sharp reduction of immigration 70%+ of voters OUT THERE IN THE COUNTRY will back you. 100%. Just demand it. Link it to housing. Link it to the broken economy. Link it to crime and lawlessness. Whatever. Just do it and use it as a route into making the case for a very different political economy, one which prioritises British workers.” (paywalled link)

Note the arguments Goodwin provides regarding unlimited, seemingly unstoppable illegal immigration: they are not racist, not by bigoted ‘Little Englanders’ but are the views by most people outside the charmed circle of Westminster, even of many those inside the M25. Next and last for today:

“Third. Woke Political Correctness. Oppose it. It’s divisive. It’s unBritish. It’s stifling. It’s leaving much the country with palpable sense they cannot say what they want to say (60% feel this way). Just don’t call it Woke. Call it Woke Political Correctness. Why? Only half of Brits know what Woke means (definition? The sacralization of racial, sexual, and ethnic minorities at the expense of the wider majority). But 90% of Brits know what Political Correctness is. And they hate it. And when people tell you “nobody cares about this” point to Scotland or America. Turning up the volume on the sexualisation, racialisation, and politicisation of our children will easily mobilise the 80% against the radical woke 20%. The moment voters tune into this madness -ARE FORCED TO TUNE IN- they say “no thanks”. Ditto with wasting billions on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion activities and putting radical ideologues into the schools and the public institutions. Strip it all out and link it to arguments about the need to drive productivity and growth. As I said on Twitter this week, the so-called culture war is never 50-50. It is more like 70-30, or 80-20, against liberal progressives who dominate the institutions. Build a party that is serious about, and willing to, tap into that divide. Ignore idiots who say this is “culture wars”. Defending women. Defending children. Defending our history. Defending our culture. Defending our way of life. These are not culture wars. They are the bedrock of any civilisation. The fact they are now called culture wars reflects how terrible a job the Tories have done. Removing a lot of this guff from the pubic institutions and political economy will in itself make a difference and again becomes a route into the more esoteric arguments about reforming the state Cummings and others want to make (which I basically think are right).” (paywalled link)

These three-of-five points ought to ignite today’s debate. Get your teeth into them, and ponder if any of the current crop of politicians, be they MPs from the Uniparty who have shown they’d subscribe to these points, be they the current ‘leaders’ of the alt-con parties who’ve given us displays of stunning political egoism, being unable and unwilling to even form temporary electoral alliances.

That’s all I have for today. I think they are a good start to talk about with friends, family, neighbours – just as we did in 2016.  Points Four and Five will be published tomorrow. Have a good day.

 

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