‘Taking Your Country Back’ (Again), The Great Moving Right Show

Much has been made of the ever-shifting rightwards Labour party under Sir Keir Starmer, see the latest here (Blue Labour v Reform: The Pro-Worker, Anti-Woke Plan To Beat Farage). As if mesmerised, and bored, we ignore the Conservative party’s race to keep up with Reform UK.

As Adam Bienkov notes: “Anyone wishing to know what is happening to the Conservative party under Kemi Badenoch, only needs to take a look at their official YouTube account. At the very top of the page is what appears to be a new slogan for the party. Let’s take a look at it.”

The Conservative Party is Changing

 

 

Bienkov writes: “We are going to give you your country back” is a phrase with a very definite set of associations.

Put simply, it is a phrase which suggests that the country is currently being possessed by a group of alien incomers, who must be forcibly extradited from the nation, so that it can be returned to its rightful owners. It is, in other words, the language of the far right.”

The Conservatives have long fed off dog-whistle politics and covert racism, but Farage’s success, and the virulent racism of MAGA has emboldened them further.

Talking of Kemi Badenoch’s ‘Moral Immunity‘ Arianne Shahvisi writes:

“The Tories are now lurching right – treading a course set for them between Starmer’s centre-right pedestrianism and Farage’s unbridled racism – under a Black leader whose moral cover will allow them to unlock new levels of hostility. She’ll be a breath of fresh air, but just the sort we always get: a cruel, icy gale from the right while all remains placid on the left of the house, as though order alone could be enough.”

As I argued here we have witnessed the Death of Liberal England where the choice is between two far-right wing parties, a right-wing Labour party re-encating Conservative economic policy, and a handful of (electorally) meaningless progressive parties. It would be wrong to pretend that Scottish society isn’t as vulnerable or prone to racism and bigotry as our southern cousins, but we don’t occupy the same polity and we don’t share identical political cultures.

Watch the News Agents (!) try and fathom the changes taking place in this analysis of Suella Barverman’s latest at the Heritage Foundation…

Islamophobia is wild and rampant and normalised at the very heart of British politics.

The News Agents ask: “14 months ago Suella Braverman was Home Secretary. Now, she’s positing the idea that Britain could fall into the hands of “Muslim fundamentalism” and warning that the UK could become a theocratic state akin to Iran. What has caused such a shift to the right? And how comfortable are the Tory party with that kind of rhetoric?”

The answer is: very comfortable. Jon Sopel and Lewis Goodall seem unable to grasp what’s going on here. Like much of the legacy media they are stuck in the timewarp of Britain as Remembered.

Meanwhile, in Briain as actually is, here we are;

Democracy for Sale

Labour’s capitulation to the emerging far-right was widely predicted.

Back in 2023 (‘Waiting for a Left Wing Government‘) we focused on how Labour had abandoned plans to strengthen worker’s rights. The FT reported:

“Labour has watered down plans to strengthen workers’ rights as Sir Keir Starmer tries to woo corporate leaders and discredit Tory claims that his party is “anti-business” ahead of the next general election.”

It came in the same week as Labour abandoning their commitment to devolving employment law as previously declared (Labour would not devolve employment law to Scottish Parliament, says Angela Rayner).

Yesterday we were told that (Labour dropped plan to ban foreign donors after Lord Alli intervened): “Sir Keir Starmer abandoned plans to ban foreign political donations after the intervention of a peer and friend who led Labour’s election fundraising efforts, according to a new book.”

Lord Alli, a personal friend of Starmer, is said to have intervened to stop Labour from announcing an outright ban on foreign donations when it was in opposition.

“Get In, a new book charting Starmer’s rise to power, discloses that Angela Rayner — the deputy prime minister — was due to announce plans for an outright ban on foreign donations with the aim of stopping “dodgy money” from entering British politics. She was due to make the announcement alongside Gordon Brown, the former Labour prime minister.”

As the writer and activist Owen Jones put it: “Businessman buying political power is literally an assault on democracy itself. And by Labour allowing a tycoon to dictate policy, they have helped pave the way for Elon Musk to throw vast sums at Reform – and help send British democracy into a death spiral.”

The overall picture is of a country careering out of control, shifting ever rightwards into unknown territories where the familiar bromide of ‘British political culture’ is abandoned. This is a distant picture from the prospectus we were sold in 2014, when Britain was portrayed as the progressive alternative to the parochial nationalism of the independence movement. Not only do the legacy media have to get up to speed with reality, but so too do Scots who were convinced that staying within Britain would offer a progressive safe haven from a mad world.

 

Comments (9)

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  1. Statan says:

    The article fails to even acknowledge never mind address the societal changes, pressures on public services, and decrease in general living standards for the less well-off that come which mass immigration.

    1. You assume a worldview and a set of analysis you have to be shared by everyone. It is not.

      Keep up.

    2. John says:

      The pressures on public services are primarily down to austerity measures and an ageing population. Immigrants have to a large extent helped alleviate these pressures by working in these public services. They also pay taxes to help pay for public services.
      The additional demand from this immigration on housing and services is predictable and successive governments have both failed to plan for this additional demand and blamed immigrants for it.
      Unemployment is at a low level which means the argument that immigration depresses salaries is patently untrue for most sectors of economy. Indeed in many sectors eg hospitality there is a lack of available staff due to removal of free movement.
      I would say that immigration has been used by many organisations as a saving on training of young people and immigration does remove important workers from often poorer countries.

    3. Drew Anderson says:

      What’s your alternative?

      John has already covered most of the salient points, but I’ll add that we’re looking at a ~50% increase in people, of pension age, by 2050. Those people will retire at a faster rate than school leavers will enter the workforce, due to a long-term trend of falling birthrates.

      That means fewer people working to provide for the needs of a growing, mostly economically inactive demographic. The demographic bulge of the Boomer generation has been known about for nearly 6 decades, the falling birthrate for almost as long. Due to lack of long-term planning, successive governments have relied on immigration to make up the the numbers in the workforce, whilst often delivering rhetoric that demonises immigrants.

      Without ongoing immigration, the only alternative is to pile the entire burden onto the younger people in this country. That means expecting them to work longer hours, or for a greater length of time, or both.

      You can explain to the nation’s youth, that that’s what you expect of them. You can leave me out of it though, because (at 61) I’m on their side.

  2. Mike Parr says:

    Interesting that the 1st comment was about “immigrants” (Statan) – yeah – the underpaid ones that wash your mums bum in the nusring home, or the nurses from XYZ that have been lured here cos the Uk body politic is to bloody .weak minded to train it own etc etc.
    Fact of the matter is that the UK has a weak middle manager/glove puppet (Sooty or Sweep) as PM, controlled by a cable led by a Tory Irishman McSweeney playing the role of Harry Corbett.
    The Tories are led by a deeply unpleasant Nigerian from a well off middle-class Nigerian family with the hilarious name Bad-Enoch (doubtless the old loony is rotating at speed in his grave). She has zero connection with the UK & zero understanding of how most UK serfs live their lives (given her background – why would she)
    UK politics has no politicians – let alone ones that have an ounce of political sense. & sitting in the wings are the fascists of the DeForm party waiting for UK serfs to give their vote to Deform (& thus vanish the last remaining freedoms). Utterly pathetic.

  3. John says:

    This shift to the right is a combination of AngloBritish xenophobia allied to a complete loss of trust in politicians. The loss of trust in politicians has always been present but has increased due to factors such as the Iraq War, 2008 financial crash, MP’s expenses, austerity etc. Xenophobia has been building originally around EU migrants and Muslims and also resentment towards Scotland with referendum (EVEL etc)).
    This toxic brew led to the narrow Brexit UK vote and this has rocket fuelled the whole process as the Tories lurched to AngloBritish nationalism under Johnson economy struggled and non EU immigration boomed again due to Brexit.
    Labour were recipients of the disillusionment with Tories in 2024 GE but their timidity and political incompetence appears to be opening the door to Reform or some right wing Tory alliance driven by Islamophobia and hostility to immigrants, EU, devolved governments etc.
    The poster boys for this AngloBritish movement are Johnson & Farage – two individuals regarded by most Scots as two posh boy tossers out of the Monty Python Upper Class Twit of the Year sketch – who do however seem to connect with something deep in the psyche of many south of the border.

    1. Duncan MacInnes says:

      Very well said! It is interesting that Farage (who can ‘do politics’) is shape shifting his message to appear ‘softer’ so that he can progress further, and Badenoch (who certainly cannot ‘do politics’) and the Tories is going ever rightwards – case in point today Priti Patel commenting on the Chagos Islands as Labour doing a deal out of ‘lefty shame’.
      Utterly appalling and utterly repellent.

  4. Wul says:

    We managed to “Take Back Control” from those nasty EU technocrats. But that wasn’t enough. Someone else must’ve slipped in and taken control. The Muslims? The Paedo Gangs?

    So, once we get rid of:

    Muslim Immigrants
    The Wokes
    Courts (Enemies of The People)
    Rule of Law (Bloody two-tier policing innit?)
    Human Rights
    Communists ( always a threat in the UK, we’ve come soooo close to having communist governemnts so many times. Phew!)
    The Lefty Media (Although I never see their newspapers on the stand at the shops, or their TV shows)
    Red Tape (insisting on fire-proof cladding on buildings and all that crap)
    Unions (allowing workers to go to the toilet, have paid holidays, know what days they work, all that pish)

    THEN will we have Taken Back Control?

    What benefits can I look forward to in my 60+yrs, with ailing health, white, anglo-saxon old age?

  5. Macleod says:

    Absolutely need Scotland to get out of this mess

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