Peters ideas make me think of a scenario where an aeroplane flying into the ground on auto pilot has a pilot discuss alternatives - on condition the auto pilot isn’t switched off.
Parliament has transferred its authority elsewhere. The first action must be to take control.
Of course parties must have plans, merely releasing the auto pilot is not enough.
Good analogy George. Pete’s solution sounds like hand-wringing at how difficult it’ll be to do something so do nothing becomes the default option - even though we know the plane will crash. I’m prepared to listen to David Starkey and Matt Goodwin who know far more about this than most of us. And as for Pete saying Reform just want power - well that’s not a bad starting place as Blair needed that to create this mess.
Bang on the money. Blairs nefarious reforms have put so much power at the hands of the likes of Sir Humphrey through Quangos, NGO's etc that the only way to begin to sort it all out is if that power gets returned to our elected representatives in Parliament. Then we need to work on making them even more accountable. which will hopefully weed out the weak and useless and replace them with MP's that have some integrity.
Am I one of the few who sees Blair as way more influential than Thatcher?
His weaving of the ECHR into British law via the HRA, his entrenching of the Gender Recognition Act and Equalities Act presaged the diversity and trans ideology mantras of modern civic institutions, the Supreme Court was never an upgrade over the Law Lords, and the mass legalese that he brought in means that today, Starmer and Hermer effectively propose that Parliament and all policy making is subservient to the rule of law/the international rules based order.
Throw in the absolute reversion to hollowing out of free speech detailed by Dr. Kath Stock in The Telegraph last week, and I see zero prospect for even a heaving Reform supermajority (35%+ of a 75% turnout in 2029) either achieving good outcomes, knowing how to get a good outcome, more like re-enacting Truss/Kwarteng 2.0 and an emergency GE late 2029/2030.
Blair absolutely changed this country in way deeper and irreversible ways than Thatcher ever did.
I despair at Reform's idiocy. It seems that the average member reduces their IQ by about 30 points and chants endlessly "Reform surge!" and "14 years! 14 years!" Not only are they dumb, they're also abusive to anyone doubting them. That won't go down well on the doorstep but Reform claim they don't care about the doorstep and they don't care about meeting and dealing with people in person.
Pre-Blair points to Thatcher Britain, which wasn't great for many Britain's. Pre-Thatcher was the 70's economic basket case, before that was 60's union dominated Britain which yealded the start of our manufacturing collapse. I could go on.
There isn't actually a point in history that we can restore to for most of the working class which would be acceptable. I guess this is how genuine Fascism and Communism grabs hold.
So I'm thinking we need a tangible target, is there any country we should emulate?
At one time it may have been one of the Scandinavian countries, but mass immigration has destroyed their vision. Though Denmark does seem to be fighting back.
America can never be seen as a success when the poorest of their society is treated so badly.
Asian culture is so different, I don't see how we could ever become a Singapore or a Japan, generally we are too individualistic.
Covid highlighted countries who were most captured and our former colonies NZ, Oz and Canada seem equally as problematic, considering the population to resource capacity they should have.
So that really leaves on of the former Soviet block countries.
Poland is the stand out in terms of how much they have progressed and also our historic and current close connections, many people are only 1 or 2 connections away from a fluent Polish speaker in this country.
Maybe that's a way forward, a critique of different countries and identifying who has got it right.
Only at that point can we can even consider what to do to reach that goal!
Yes it’s a mess and sorting it out will be difficult and complex and will require greater minds than mine or yours. But. The alternative is “do nothing” and that won’t lead to the low grade civil war you frequently talk about. It’ll escalate quickly into something very serious that we may have to ask the Americans to rescue us as our armed forces and police won’t be able to cope. As Connor Tomlinson has said today this could start within months.
Having helped keep The Harrogate Agenda alive since 2013, when it was conceived, I'm strongly of the opinion that after the pending 'civil war', whatever form and level of violence that may take, a mass peaceful people's movement based on Gene Sharp's methods to reform our constitution and governance, giving the people real power, is the route to our salvation.
I recommend 'Let the People Rule' by John G. Matsusaka if you want a flavour of the value of Direct Democracy.
If Orban can do it, so can the UK. You could even adopt his immigration and HR policy temporarily until you write the Bill of Rights. It’s not difficult, it’s just complex and if Civ War, economic collapse and social meltdown is on the horizon it’s better to ruffle feathers and go hardline.
UK democracy in it’s current liberalised state doesn’t work anyway, you can’t give the vote to every foreign, degenerate, traumatised, sloth and expect a strong parliament of proficient representatives, it’s childish and ridiculous like liberal progressivism. Fairyland is a childs mental state, fairyland in adulthood is a hellish physical state. Voila!
I've come to dread the fact that you are right and confirm my doubts too... Not for the fact they are not correct either, but because I grow tired of watching it unfold in real time as well...
You are correct, of course, and rightly point out the "alternative right" all but wanting back to the pre Blair era, back to good old days, back back back...
The one thing I can't foresee, is if there are any young(er) prospective people coming into their own with Lowe's and Habibs movements - as at least, the very least, they cooperate well, seemingly...unlike the rest of what is called right wing...
Younger people who look forward, because we are never going back.
Though I would still pay some money to see a scenario where hard right like Tenconi makes the parliament squirm... Good TV that....
"Javier Milei’s reforms in Argentina. I gave a considered reply to the question..."
Milei's reforms have been astonishingly successful and have shown up all those big-staters and it's-all-too-difficult jabberers who said he would fail - and were gagging for him to fail.
Nor can Argentina just be written off as a basket-case. Milei's example is highly relevant to the potentially terminal problems facing Western economies.
We don't know just how bad it will be, but we must expect something similar to Oct 7 in Israel, and something similar to the Troubles in Ulster.
It seems likely to me that most of the armed forces and police will stop responding to orders from a government which is clearly anti-British. Some form of alternative government will emerge, probably led by an army officer. This alternative government will have no interest in and no respect for such concepts as international law, human rights, judicial review, etc.
The whole thing is mind-bogglingly complicated. I was just scouring maps to see if the illegal immigration aspect of this issue (possibly the main one for societal collapse due to the opposite ideologies) should be focused more on the Med than the English Channel.
No idea yet if there are problems in Southern Spain and Sardinia from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I guess most of the problem is Libya to Malta, Italy and Greece. Even if we blocked all of them off, the route would probably become 'all roads leading to Turkey.'
And with Turkey not shy about trying to wring money or EU membership out of Western Europe to hold back waves of illegal immigrants, there's a problem. If we play our cards badly, it could push Turkey towards allying with Russia - opening a pincer of illegal immigration, both into Southern Europe at Greece (again) and Bulgaria; and via Georgia, Russia and Belarus into Poland. (Which the Russians and Belarussians have already been trying as a destabilization tactic. It would just be massively amplified if Turkey starts supplying and endless caravan of people.)
My mini-epiphany while looking at this was the Mercator Projection in our mapping. I always thought it quite amusing how big the UK looks on common maps.
Almost a trivial thought, really, but do any, many or all of the illegal immigrants look at these maps to decide which country they're going to, before setting off? (I know they look at how much free money they can get.) Maybe (or not) they'd pick somewhere else if they realised just how tiny the UK is - we look about 3-4 times bigger than reality on the Mercator maps. It's wild.
On the whole, I think aversion of collapse and civic disorder (or civil war) will be down to ideology/theology mixed with some of your work you created earlier for/with Homeland; that is, the voluntary repatriation and possibly 'incentives to go' methods.
We have tried two legs of the national three-legged stool - politics and constitutionalism - and they are both broken. Enough time has been spent on Why are they broken, how did we get here, how do we repair them.
Forget them.
The third leg is industry. A politically neutral Home East India Company is what we need. Run by Poles, if we can't find anyone within our ranks who isn't timid or lazy. A buccanneer. That's what people thought Boris Johnston was. But he was lazy. Farage is also lazy. Kemi is lazy. Starmer is industrious but not brave or visionary. Rupert has some of the necessary traits.
The HEIC's job is to make things, money, fortunes, exports and real jobs. It's not to be DOGE. It's not to be a regulation industrial compex or a welfare state.
I've thought for a while that some sort of car crash is the best chance we'll have of starting again, but then I always thought the trigger for that would be economic misery and not a consitutional issue. I can see several economies going the same way and there literally not being the money around to bail them out.
When people are getting gradually better off they'll turn a blind eye to A LOT. It's when they're getting poorer (or destitute in this scenario) that they 'look outside' for explanations.
I'm pretty sure we'll have a hard-right/nationalist government in our lifetime, it's on the cards.
The Restorationist scheme looks good to me. I don't see what is so unrealistic about much of it, unless the point is simply that no-one in British politics, e.g. Reform, would have the attention span or backbone to do anything like it, which I agree with. The plans themselves are a good start. It's not a question of winding the clock back to 1997; it's just about making incremental reforms that would address unsatisfactory elements of the present system. At minimum, that would involve firing the entire civil service and rehiring better people on new contracts, packing, Parliament-Acting and ultimately abolishing the House of Lords, abolishing judicial review, repealing most of the 21st century constitutional legislation, and redefining British citizenship and its entitlements to exclude new and recent immigrants. All that is the bare minimum that would begin to heal this country, and it's vital that people recognise that.
The bond markets are the perhaps-insuperable problem to any radical or restorationist scheme. The Restorationist programme falls down there, if anywhere; the pre-stabilisation plan proffered would be unlikely to cut it.
Peters ideas make me think of a scenario where an aeroplane flying into the ground on auto pilot has a pilot discuss alternatives - on condition the auto pilot isn’t switched off.
Parliament has transferred its authority elsewhere. The first action must be to take control.
Of course parties must have plans, merely releasing the auto pilot is not enough.
But unless you take control, you crash.
Good analogy George. Pete’s solution sounds like hand-wringing at how difficult it’ll be to do something so do nothing becomes the default option - even though we know the plane will crash. I’m prepared to listen to David Starkey and Matt Goodwin who know far more about this than most of us. And as for Pete saying Reform just want power - well that’s not a bad starting place as Blair needed that to create this mess.
Bang on the money. Blairs nefarious reforms have put so much power at the hands of the likes of Sir Humphrey through Quangos, NGO's etc that the only way to begin to sort it all out is if that power gets returned to our elected representatives in Parliament. Then we need to work on making them even more accountable. which will hopefully weed out the weak and useless and replace them with MP's that have some integrity.
Am I one of the few who sees Blair as way more influential than Thatcher?
His weaving of the ECHR into British law via the HRA, his entrenching of the Gender Recognition Act and Equalities Act presaged the diversity and trans ideology mantras of modern civic institutions, the Supreme Court was never an upgrade over the Law Lords, and the mass legalese that he brought in means that today, Starmer and Hermer effectively propose that Parliament and all policy making is subservient to the rule of law/the international rules based order.
Throw in the absolute reversion to hollowing out of free speech detailed by Dr. Kath Stock in The Telegraph last week, and I see zero prospect for even a heaving Reform supermajority (35%+ of a 75% turnout in 2029) either achieving good outcomes, knowing how to get a good outcome, more like re-enacting Truss/Kwarteng 2.0 and an emergency GE late 2029/2030.
Blair absolutely changed this country in way deeper and irreversible ways than Thatcher ever did.
I despair at Reform's idiocy. It seems that the average member reduces their IQ by about 30 points and chants endlessly "Reform surge!" and "14 years! 14 years!" Not only are they dumb, they're also abusive to anyone doubting them. That won't go down well on the doorstep but Reform claim they don't care about the doorstep and they don't care about meeting and dealing with people in person.
Pre-Blair points to Thatcher Britain, which wasn't great for many Britain's. Pre-Thatcher was the 70's economic basket case, before that was 60's union dominated Britain which yealded the start of our manufacturing collapse. I could go on.
There isn't actually a point in history that we can restore to for most of the working class which would be acceptable. I guess this is how genuine Fascism and Communism grabs hold.
So I'm thinking we need a tangible target, is there any country we should emulate?
At one time it may have been one of the Scandinavian countries, but mass immigration has destroyed their vision. Though Denmark does seem to be fighting back.
America can never be seen as a success when the poorest of their society is treated so badly.
Asian culture is so different, I don't see how we could ever become a Singapore or a Japan, generally we are too individualistic.
Covid highlighted countries who were most captured and our former colonies NZ, Oz and Canada seem equally as problematic, considering the population to resource capacity they should have.
So that really leaves on of the former Soviet block countries.
Poland is the stand out in terms of how much they have progressed and also our historic and current close connections, many people are only 1 or 2 connections away from a fluent Polish speaker in this country.
Maybe that's a way forward, a critique of different countries and identifying who has got it right.
Only at that point can we can even consider what to do to reach that goal!
Yes Thatcher was marmite.
A hero for Blair and Brown - desperate to have their photos taken with her (that’s when I knew Labour were corrupt).
No one mentions that her first years in office almost led to the country suffering a crippling of the UK economy.
It was only when she abandoned Sir Keith Joseph’s advice that the lady (not for turning) turned.
Yes it’s a mess and sorting it out will be difficult and complex and will require greater minds than mine or yours. But. The alternative is “do nothing” and that won’t lead to the low grade civil war you frequently talk about. It’ll escalate quickly into something very serious that we may have to ask the Americans to rescue us as our armed forces and police won’t be able to cope. As Connor Tomlinson has said today this could start within months.
Having helped keep The Harrogate Agenda alive since 2013, when it was conceived, I'm strongly of the opinion that after the pending 'civil war', whatever form and level of violence that may take, a mass peaceful people's movement based on Gene Sharp's methods to reform our constitution and governance, giving the people real power, is the route to our salvation.
I recommend 'Let the People Rule' by John G. Matsusaka if you want a flavour of the value of Direct Democracy.
Para 6: "... essentially abolishing the supreme court."
Yes, essential if we wish to restore some semblance of democracy.
If Orban can do it, so can the UK. You could even adopt his immigration and HR policy temporarily until you write the Bill of Rights. It’s not difficult, it’s just complex and if Civ War, economic collapse and social meltdown is on the horizon it’s better to ruffle feathers and go hardline.
UK democracy in it’s current liberalised state doesn’t work anyway, you can’t give the vote to every foreign, degenerate, traumatised, sloth and expect a strong parliament of proficient representatives, it’s childish and ridiculous like liberal progressivism. Fairyland is a childs mental state, fairyland in adulthood is a hellish physical state. Voila!
I've come to dread the fact that you are right and confirm my doubts too... Not for the fact they are not correct either, but because I grow tired of watching it unfold in real time as well...
You are correct, of course, and rightly point out the "alternative right" all but wanting back to the pre Blair era, back to good old days, back back back...
The one thing I can't foresee, is if there are any young(er) prospective people coming into their own with Lowe's and Habibs movements - as at least, the very least, they cooperate well, seemingly...unlike the rest of what is called right wing...
Younger people who look forward, because we are never going back.
Though I would still pay some money to see a scenario where hard right like Tenconi makes the parliament squirm... Good TV that....
Thanks Pete
"Javier Milei’s reforms in Argentina. I gave a considered reply to the question..."
Milei's reforms have been astonishingly successful and have shown up all those big-staters and it's-all-too-difficult jabberers who said he would fail - and were gagging for him to fail.
Nor can Argentina just be written off as a basket-case. Milei's example is highly relevant to the potentially terminal problems facing Western economies.
Your "considered reply" was ill-considered.
We are heading for civil war (almost certainly).
We don't know just how bad it will be, but we must expect something similar to Oct 7 in Israel, and something similar to the Troubles in Ulster.
It seems likely to me that most of the armed forces and police will stop responding to orders from a government which is clearly anti-British. Some form of alternative government will emerge, probably led by an army officer. This alternative government will have no interest in and no respect for such concepts as international law, human rights, judicial review, etc.
The whole thing is mind-bogglingly complicated. I was just scouring maps to see if the illegal immigration aspect of this issue (possibly the main one for societal collapse due to the opposite ideologies) should be focused more on the Med than the English Channel.
No idea yet if there are problems in Southern Spain and Sardinia from Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. I guess most of the problem is Libya to Malta, Italy and Greece. Even if we blocked all of them off, the route would probably become 'all roads leading to Turkey.'
And with Turkey not shy about trying to wring money or EU membership out of Western Europe to hold back waves of illegal immigrants, there's a problem. If we play our cards badly, it could push Turkey towards allying with Russia - opening a pincer of illegal immigration, both into Southern Europe at Greece (again) and Bulgaria; and via Georgia, Russia and Belarus into Poland. (Which the Russians and Belarussians have already been trying as a destabilization tactic. It would just be massively amplified if Turkey starts supplying and endless caravan of people.)
My mini-epiphany while looking at this was the Mercator Projection in our mapping. I always thought it quite amusing how big the UK looks on common maps.
Almost a trivial thought, really, but do any, many or all of the illegal immigrants look at these maps to decide which country they're going to, before setting off? (I know they look at how much free money they can get.) Maybe (or not) they'd pick somewhere else if they realised just how tiny the UK is - we look about 3-4 times bigger than reality on the Mercator maps. It's wild.
On the whole, I think aversion of collapse and civic disorder (or civil war) will be down to ideology/theology mixed with some of your work you created earlier for/with Homeland; that is, the voluntary repatriation and possibly 'incentives to go' methods.
We have tried two legs of the national three-legged stool - politics and constitutionalism - and they are both broken. Enough time has been spent on Why are they broken, how did we get here, how do we repair them.
Forget them.
The third leg is industry. A politically neutral Home East India Company is what we need. Run by Poles, if we can't find anyone within our ranks who isn't timid or lazy. A buccanneer. That's what people thought Boris Johnston was. But he was lazy. Farage is also lazy. Kemi is lazy. Starmer is industrious but not brave or visionary. Rupert has some of the necessary traits.
The HEIC's job is to make things, money, fortunes, exports and real jobs. It's not to be DOGE. It's not to be a regulation industrial compex or a welfare state.
I've thought for a while that some sort of car crash is the best chance we'll have of starting again, but then I always thought the trigger for that would be economic misery and not a consitutional issue. I can see several economies going the same way and there literally not being the money around to bail them out.
When people are getting gradually better off they'll turn a blind eye to A LOT. It's when they're getting poorer (or destitute in this scenario) that they 'look outside' for explanations.
I'm pretty sure we'll have a hard-right/nationalist government in our lifetime, it's on the cards.
The Restorationist scheme looks good to me. I don't see what is so unrealistic about much of it, unless the point is simply that no-one in British politics, e.g. Reform, would have the attention span or backbone to do anything like it, which I agree with. The plans themselves are a good start. It's not a question of winding the clock back to 1997; it's just about making incremental reforms that would address unsatisfactory elements of the present system. At minimum, that would involve firing the entire civil service and rehiring better people on new contracts, packing, Parliament-Acting and ultimately abolishing the House of Lords, abolishing judicial review, repealing most of the 21st century constitutional legislation, and redefining British citizenship and its entitlements to exclude new and recent immigrants. All that is the bare minimum that would begin to heal this country, and it's vital that people recognise that.
The bond markets are the perhaps-insuperable problem to any radical or restorationist scheme. The Restorationist programme falls down there, if anywhere; the pre-stabilisation plan proffered would be unlikely to cut it.
Firing the Civil Service isn’t as radical as people think.
It’s only the upper levels that need to go.
The civil service will function adequately without the parasitic pretenders to governance.