The Sleepwalk of the West

What do you get from a political party? A cocktail of top-notch beliefs that you can go right ahead and believe. The main pleasure to be had from your prêt-a-croyer values is to clap your hands repeatedly each time someone at a podium repeats one. I know this, having recently attended A New Hope – a conference on the future of the Labour party.

It’s fashionable to claim there is “no such thing” as democracy. The view ranges from the moderate complaint of paltry electoral choice to radical claims that we are utterly in the grip of dark and unaccounted powers. Cue everything from apathy to Chomsky-esque polemics about the “manufacture of consent”, capitalism’s “false consciousness”, etcetera.

It has been suggested to me that my writings express a certain lack of tolerance. This is, of course, entirely true. Why rail against something, unless you find it intolerable? Despite agreeing with such critics, I suspect we nonetheless have a different idea of what “tolerance” means, or how it comes about. Because a motive [...]

When national will (especially a Swiss “legitimacy-rich” democratic one) clashes with trans-national will (especially a European “legitimacy-poor” undemocratic one), who should win? The answer seems transparently obvious; but the European project has never been too interested in transparency. (Witness the recent magical apparition of a new EU constitution and President. Or maybe I just mislaid [...]

The impact on the political discourse of the Nick-Griffin-on-Question-Time debacle was manifest even before the programme was over. Late in – and leaving the BNP leader entirely out of it – the ministers of the main parties launched into an impromptu cat-fight over which party had the “best grip” on immigration. Instead of “celebrating diversity” [...]

I respect Anjem Choudary. You basically know where you are with him. He’s not a Politician – i.e. someone who knows that they don’t mean what they say. Nor is he a Moderate – someone who doesn’t know that they don’t really mean what they say. Choudary, I think, means exactly what he says. And [...]