‘rumours swirl around Westminster …’

 

According to our glorious MSM, there’s only one news story worthy of their front pages with photos and headlines: “Newspaper headlines: ‘Lionesses make history’ and ‘heist at the museum’” (link). Good old staff was hard-pressed to come up with that headline, inserting the ‘museum heist’ rather than the far more appropriate report in the FT, about coffee beans being threatened by ‘climate change’. 

Regarding yon ‘heist’: it wasn’t a thrilling break-in, alarms and police and all that jazz. According to The Times it was a ‘workman’ taking small items from storage where they were kept for academic research (link, paywalled) while the DM informs us that it took “at least four years in discovering the thefts” (link). Ah well, poor old staff at the British Museum was working overtime to ‘de-colonise’ their exhibits and inform visitors about slavery and all that. How should they find out what all went missing from some storage some years ago …

And so to today’s main subject: a ‘new party’. This seems to be an idea swirling around in the not-so public discourse in the last few weeks. I found it very interesting indeed that today the DT’s Allister Heath has come up with an essay headlined: 

“Fury of the silent majority is driving a global Right-wing counter-revolution – Across the Western world, anger at a woke ruling elite is benefiting the Right – apart from in Britain” (paywalled link)

I am increasingly puzzled by the pieces coming from Allister Heath. His analyses of current political problems, correct as they are, seem to lead him into convoluted explanations and warnings better aimed at guardian readers. This piece is no exception. It is full of warnings about ‘populists’ which are of the devil and are always ‘of the right’. It’s certainly odd that apparently there are no lefty ‘populist’ parties around. I wonder how they are getting elected …

Still, I mention his piece because it seems Mr Heath has picked up on the discontent and perhaps even on some of the discussions the MSM aren’t reporting. Perhaps he’s read the long essay by Dominic Cummings which I recommended you look at last Saturday. It’s not paywalled, here’s the link again. Of course, Mr Heath doesn’t refer to this essay although I am certain he’s read it. Not having done so would be dereliction of duty.

Yesterday evening Matt Goodwin published a reply to Cummings on his paywalled Substack site. I’m a paid-up subscriber – it’s far more worth it than shelling out 100 quid for Cummings’ diatribes – and so I’ll quote at length from this essay. Goodwin acknowledges that some of Cummings’ observations and proposals are in line with his own. His summary however shows why he thinks Cummings is on the wrong path:

“Much of it sounds like the end goal is to build a sort-of super-efficient technocracy run in the interests of scientists, big-tech types, entrepreneurs, and intellectual mavericks rather than delivering on several core demands the British people have right now and want to see delivered … right now.” (link, paywalled)

That is indeed ‘Cummings in a nutshell’. In the following, Goodwin lists the five points which he thinks a new political party must address in order to reach all those who’ve been ‘members of the NOTA Party’, i.e. who have wanted ‘none of the above’ for a considerable time now. I’ll quote these points in abbreviated form. Let me know what you think and if you think it would be worthwhile to have an article dedicated exclusively to full quotes of one or two of his points. Meanwhile, here are the first sentences of Goodwin’s Five Points (emphases are mine):

First. Crime. Get serious about tackling it and adopt a much tougher approach which a large majority of voters want to see. […] Second. Immigration. Get serious about lowering it and do WHATEVER IS NECESSARY to regain control over Britain’s borders. […] 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).  […] Fourth. Identity. Pledge to preserve and promote Britain’s distinctive identity, culture, and history which many voters —white or otherwise— now worry are being swept away by a relentless tide of bland, hyper-global, liberal universalism. […] Fifth. Economic populism (read: not redistribution). Masses of voters, put simply, are sick and tired of big global corporates, the 1%, and High Net Worths taking the p*ss when it comes to tax avoidance, evasion, dominating and corrupting the property market, and viewing Britain as a private playground rather than a national community to which they have a sense of responsibility and obligation.” (link, paywalled)

There is of course much more to these points. Meanwhile, keep in mind that Goodwin is a professor of politics and is extremely well versed in the black art of polling which he does himself, not relying on our friends at YouGov. His wiki entry is revealing because wiki ‘editors’, alert to his ‘dangerous’ writings, are now starting to smear him:

“Goodwin’s early work was well received but his most recent book, Values, Voice and Virtue, has attracted criticism that he has transformed from being an analyst of populism into a right-wing populist himself.” (link)

Clearly the Westminster denizens are sniffing danger. Thus Matt Goodwin must be peremptorily rejected “because: right-wing populist!”. And so we have an explanation for Mr Heath’s strange essay. He has to sing his paymaster’s song: anything like a New Party has to be stamped down as ‘right wing populism’ which is the darkest political crime known to … Westminster.

That’s all I have for today. Let me know if you’d like extra articles just providing the full quotes of those five points. After all, you would want something to read for the weekend, no? Have a good day.