A Free Left Blog

  An Open Letter to Tom W Green, a composer and musician based in Glasgow. Dear Tom, Thank you for alerting me to your blogpost entitled ‘The Farts Ascending: Classical Music and the Culture War’, albeit with a rather unfriendly tweet saying that it was “partly in response” to my “ nonsense article that tried to concoct a culture war from RVW's The Lark Ascending”. I read it with interest. In responding here, I would like to address a number of factual errors and omissions you make which should be corrected. You call me “a right wing author”. This is untrue. I am actually of the left. I was a Labour Party member from 2010 to 2016 and still count myself of the left. My blog on which this letter is published is called A Free Left Blog . At no point have I said that I am no longer of the left. This assertion is at the core of your argument and should be corrected. Understandably, you use the original title of my piece , ‘Why The Elites Hate Vaughan Williams’. However perhaps yo...

Speech at the London School of Economics Forum for Philosophy debate , 27th April 2016. I was proposing the motion alongside Dr Gerard Lyons  (economic adviser to the Mayor of London), with journalist Hugo Dixon and Professor of Political Theory Katrin Flikschuh on the other side arguing against. Each panellist had seven minutes to speak, followed by questions from the other side and then questions from the audience. Dr Gerard Lyons making his case for leaving the EU. [This is an amalgam of what I had planned to say in my speech and what I did say – so I missed out some of this in actual delivery while adding some ‘umms’ and ‘errs’ and various other stuff] The whole debate is now available to listen via a podcast here . Hello everyone. I want to start off by emphasising that I’m actually a pro-European. I always have been. I even like an idea of the EU (as  an idea, albeit not the idea). But on the balance I think we should leave the EU. I’m proba...

The language of human ‘identity’ often misleads us into thinking about it as something out there which matches something in here – a literal ‘it’ which is identical in both, rather like in a mathematical equation. In this way you would have an English identity for example if you somehow matched up to a list of English identifiers which we can measure you against. There is an ‘it’ of Englishness out there in this sort of account, and whoever has access to it can decree how English you are by comparing their checklist to you and your likes, dislikes, activities etc. My point here is that someone else other than you can carry out this operation of identity without involving you at all. It is an authoritarian relation, attained by someone with authority matching their knowledge of what an identity is against you and coming up with a result on their terms of what these ‘its’ - of identity and you - are. The same goes when we measure up any sort of identity – to English...

St George’s Day is meant to be England’s national day, but if you were not looking out for it you would likely miss it. That shouldn’t reflect badly on you or on anyone else. England’s national day has been long neglected in England for various reasons, not least the priority put on other identities in national – British – life. Liberal universalists – who largely dominate our public sphere - insist that borders are redundant and should ultimately be abolished. They seek to include everyone, but they just divide in other ways. Their forms of division are international, but they are still divisions – not by territory but by identity and ideology; in their way of thinking you may not belong where you live on account of having the wrong thoughts. This point of view needs to be resisted strongly by all of us who believe in the connection between people and the earth they stand on. As a part of this politics, England needs to find itself again.   The first ...

"They came on in the same old way, and we defeated them in the same old way". ~ The Duke of Wellington, after defeating the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. The French must be saying something similar about the English now after their women’s football/soccer team comprehensively outplayed their English counterparts in a 3-0 victory at the Women’s Euro 2013 tournament, sending England out with a solitary point from three games. The failings of the women’s team against France and in their other two games against Spain (2-3) and Russia (1-1) were depressingly familiar from watching England men’s teams at international tournaments. The players struggled to pass the ball accurately, their basic ball control and anticipation was severely lacking and they often just lumped it up the field in the vague direction of a big Number 9, thereby invariably losing possession. They were tactically rigid and predictable, and wilted in confidence as the French quickl...