May
2024
Heroes: No Sex Please, We’re British
DIY Investor
17 May 2024
‘You’ve got your mother in a whirl
She’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl’
Let’s play a game, you’re the PM, a general election is on the horizon, the polls shows the opposition leading by C.20-points which has been confirmed by result in recent local elections.
The scene outside is grim; the economy is shot, there is an ongoing cost-of-living crisis, inflation is falling but too slowly, around 20% of the population are living in poverty, failing public services are further stretched to funding tax bribes. The NHS is close to breaking point, and your key policy, Brexit, has been shown to be a disaster. What do you do?
Perhaps it might be better to ask, what don’t you do? I would suggest that closing your eyes to all of the above is on the don’t do list.
However, for our PM, the chosen one who has never known failure, he can only deal with it by ignoring it. Therefore, all the above problems are discarded as he turns his attention to foreign policy, and a return to an old faithful, the culture wars.
The latest outrage in the culture wars is sex education
During May 2023, I wrote a piece entitled ‘Doing it For England’. Many bad jokes aside the article covered the National Conservatism conference, where one of the speakers was the Tory MP, Miriam Cates, who said western countries faced an existential threat from falling reproduction.
Cates claimed the UK’s low birthrate is caused in part by ‘cultural Marxism’ stripping young people of any hope. In addition, she blamed a lack of family-friendly tax policy in the UK played a significant role, as well as a shortage of housing, and too many young people attending university, the devaluing of motherhood, and what she described as the mass indoctrination of young minds.
‘It’s getting hotter, it’s a burning love
And I just can’t seem to get enough of!
Cates’s argument for a higher birthrate echoes those made by European populist leaders such as Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, although they are explicit about contrasting this with what they see as a parallel threat from immigration.
Contra to popular belief, Suella Braverman is becoming a closet socialist, her interest in dropping the two-child benefits limit is more closely allied to her desire to be the next leader and appeal to right-wing pro-natalist Tory MPs who see falling birthrates as an existential threat to the west’s survival, and want the welfare state reengineered to support bigger families rather than discouraging them.
Remember she thought rough-sleepers made the place look untidy, she doesn’t that this policy, which prevents families claiming tax credits or universal credit for a third or subsequent child born after 2017 – is plunging ever more families into desperate circumstances while failing to achieve what its author George Osborne said it would, which is incentivise work.
Moving on, today new guidance on sex education was announced by Gillian Keegan, the education secretary. Now children will be allowed to learn about trans people who have undergone gender reassignment surgery but not ‘gender ideology‘. Errrr, please explain?
‘children will be allowed to learn about trans people who have undergone gender reassignment surgery but not ‘gender ideology”
Clearly, as education secretary, Keegan is more intelligent than me; she said ‘Gender identity and ideology is something different, and this is part of probably similar campaign groups that have been building this set of materials and this ideology’. Sorry, still none the wiser…
The highlight came when she dealt with trans-women. Previously she had said, ‘trans women are women‘ , but now her understanding of the issue had ‘evolved‘. ‘I’ve always known that trans women aren’t women,’ she said. ‘Somebody who has changed their gender, who has changed from a man to a woman, who has gone through the full reassignment, was who I had in my head at the time.
‘Somebody who was a man, that has transitioned, that has fully transitioned, is known as a woman‘.
From foreign bodies we move to foreign policy as, this week, the PM told us that ‘the world is a scary place‘, and only his Tory party can keep you safe.
Yet more desperate politics from the world’s worst politician.
No one has sought to invade us since Hitler in 1941. In post-war Europe, whilst there was a threat from Russia, it was always their immediate neighbours in the firing line. If anything, the collective European unity against a supposedly aggressive Russia allowed western Europe to prosper, and Britain to gain from that prosperity, which was largely driven by US foreign policy which saw Europe as a bulwark against communism, and led to huge infusions of cash under the Marshall Plan.
For some reason, our imperial past means that every global conflict to becomes Britain’s concern, usually justified because of ‘values’. In some instances there may have been a humanitarian side to this, E.G., Kosovo, but most have been grasps at post-imperial glory, from Cyprus to Iraq and Libya. The only consistency has been cost; money and lives, and most ended in defeat.
‘For some reason, our imperial past means that every global conflict to becomes Britain’s concern, usually justified because of ‘values”
Sunak now declares that the UK must face up ‘to an axis of authoritarian states‘ – China, Russia, North Korea and Iran – if it is to ‘succeed in the years to come‘. He demands that these countries should not be allowed ‘to undermine our shared values and identities‘. But they are not seeking to do that. Even if they did, we don’t have the power to stop them. In reality, Sunak’s intention has been simply to taunt Labour for not promising at once to raise defence spending to an arbitrary 2.5% of national income – which he too has failed to do.
All our posturing and pretence of ‘punching above our weight on the world stage’ has achieved is wasting billions over the years on vanity projects such as ships, tanks and planes. Despite this, we cannot even afford an Iron Dome defence system to protect against drone attack, as used in Israel and Ukraine.
Much of what he went onto say was obvious. Vladimir Putin has burned all bridges of trust between Russia and its neighbours. Israel and Iran, already antagonists by proxy, are a hair-trigger away from open war.
China will continue to rival the US for global influence, which will likely lead to inflamed disputes over tariffs and technology transfers. The US will tilt further towards protectionism. The EU will react by accelerating its pursuit of what Brussels policymakers call ‘strategic autonomy‘. Other rising powers, India principal among them, will game the unsettled balance of global power for tactical advantage and commercial gain.
‘Israel and Iran, already antagonists by proxy, are a hair-trigger away from open war’
As for Britain, well, we are alone now. ‘Brexit was a huge bet against the idea that geography mattered to economic and security policy in the 21st century. Geography won‘.
Sunak’s argument that we are safer with the Tories is based on two premises; Labour still harbours the Nato-sceptic, pacifist impulses that shaped Jeremy Corbyn’s worldview, and they won’t mimic Conservative pledges on defence spending.
The reality, as ever, is somewhat different. Starmer has purged the Corbynite left from Labour with a ruthlessness that Sunak would do well to repeat, if he wasn’t so scared of the hard-right, E.G., Suella Braverman and Liz Truss.
Turning to defence spending, its easy for Sunak to make promises as he won’t be in power and having to find the funds to deliver them. Which is just as well, given that Sunak’s imagined extra billions in future defence budgets will come from already underfunded public services, just as his tax cuts have. Both are just another trick to try and trap Labour in fiscal fictions or exposing it to charges of nefarious intent with public money.
‘its easy for Sunak to make promises as he won’t be in power and having to find the funds to deliver them’
Defence spending will be a priority for Labour in government because Nato needs the money and European democracies need Nato as their insurance policy against Kremlin aggression more than at any time since the cold war.
This will, no doubt, inflame resentment on the left which could result in a steady drift of disillusioned Labour supporters to the LibDems (as happened under Tony Blair) and, following the pattern of recent local election results, to the Greens.
What becomes apparent is the difficulty of disentangling foreign and security policy from domestic politics. The two have always been linked, not least by the way financial markets, moved by world affairs, can throw economic policy into chaos. For example, the cost-of-living crisis triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
In addition, conflict anywhere on Europe’s periphery triggers a refugee crisis that creates anxiety about migration. The knock-on to this is that the operation of international law becomes a front in the culture war between liberal defenders of human rights and nationalists demanding border control at any price. And that is before the climate crisis, as a driver of migration and a bill that national governments dread imposing on their taxpayers, is fed into the equation.
Whilst it is safe to say is that the election will not be decided on the question of which party leader has the more credible strategic concept of Britain’s place in the world, it might decide whether the next PM succeeds or fails.
Oh, and of course, knowing when a woman isn’t a woman!
‘Holly came from Miami, F.L.A.
Hitch-hiked her way across the U.S.A.
Plucked her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she’
‘Foreign bodies and foreign affairs are to the fore this week.
It’s hard to know who is the bigger threat: Gillian Keegan with her bewildering ideas on gender and sex, or Rishi waving his gun around. Maybe they are the same thing. Who knows? Or, perhaps more accurately, who cares?
Still both have come as a welcome distraction as the Sunak / Tory circus continues its farewell tour, blithely ignoring the chaos left in their wake.
Of course, there is always Nigel Farage, who seems to have turned into a preposterous right-wing version of Billy Bragg; always present when a new cause raises its head.
This week Nigel is taking on the World Health Organization (“WHO”), who have accused him of spreading misinformation after he launched the campaign group Action on World Health (“AWH”), which was registered on Companies House last week.
AWH are campaigning to block an international treaty designed to improve global pandemic preparedness. Within this WHO member states are negotiating a deal to shore up cooperation against new pathogens. If adopted, the legally binding treaty would commit countries to helping each other in the event of a pandemic, increase research and sharing of data, and promote fair access to vaccines.
But populist figures including Farage and a number of Tory MPs are lobbying the UK government to block the deal, claiming that it will give the WHO power to enforce lockdowns on countries, dictate policy on mask wearing and control vaccine stocks.
AWH’s supporters include the Tory MPs Henry Smith, Philip Davies and David Jones, as well as peers and others.
Keen to find another populist cause, Tory backbenchers such as Philip Hollobone described the WHO as being under the influence of “the global elite” and urging against the UK backing the treaty.
True to form much of AWH claim is incorrect. The UK health minister, Andrew Stephenson, confirmed that lockdown mandates are not part of the deal and a claim by Farage that the treaty would require countries to give away 20% of their vaccines was “simply not true”.
His comments were echoed by the WHO directly. Responding to AWH’s claims, a spokesperson said a draft of the treaty reaffirmed “the principle of sovereignty” of member states.
Still Nigel has never been one to let the truth get in the way of some rabble rousing.
Lyrically, I have deliberately picked 2-songs that deal with transexuals and the like. They were released in 1974 and 1972 respectively, which only shows that this is nothing new. In fact characters referred to in “Walk on the Wild Side” such as Candy Darling go back to the 1960’s, and featured in the Velvet Underground song “Candy Say’s”.
And so, we enter with Bowie’s “Rebel, Rebel” a personal favourite, after the foreplay we move on to Depeche Mode electro-dance classic “Just Can’t Get Enough”, and for the big finish, it’s Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side”.
“Walk on the Wild Side’s lyrics, describing a series of individuals and their journeys to New York City, and refer to several of the regular “superstars” at Andy Warhol’s New York studio, the Factory. Those mentioned include Holly Woodlawn, Candy Darling, Joe Dallesandro, Jackie Curtis and Joe Campbell (referred to in the song by the nickname “Sugar Plum Fairy”).
Enjoy, but not too much!’
@coldwarsteve
Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.
Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s
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