A Free Left Blog

This article was posted yesterday, 10th June 2020, on the SDPtalk website. Black Lives Matter (BLM) is a masterpiece of political marketing. It’s a slogan with a campaign attached, linked to some pretty heavy racial ideology and propaganda.  None of it can be criticised without appearing to oppose the idea that black lives do indeed matter. BLM is a classic and effective piece of rhetorical blackmail. Either get on board or you’re a racist: that is the logic of it - a logic driven by fear. It’s the perfect slogan, as befitting the powerful alignment between progressive liberal-left politics and the PR, media and advertising industries across the Anglophone world. There’s an immediate and powerful social block on even questioning this movement just from its name. One of the great successes of the campaign is how it has got many institutions in our society applying this block themselves, promoting the organisation and even punishing insiders who publicly question and criticise any a...

If the Labour Party elects Jeremy Corbyn as leader as now seems likely, it will deserve everything that follows. I don’t mean that in relation to his support for policies like raising taxes and nationalising the railways and energy companies, though the latter would be fiendishly difficult and very expensive to do (before the government even starts trying to manage them). No, a Corbyn-led Labour Party competing on these and other old Left policies would struggle to win elections, but it wouldn’t bring shame on itself. These are solid left-wing positions with some good rationale and decency behind them, even if they may be unwise. Jeremy Corbyn MP, Labour leadership elecion front-runner Most anti-Corbyn campaigners around Labour have been fighting on this ground, seeking to appeal to Labour members and supporters on the basis that Corbyn is ‘unelectable’, as if that is argument enough. But it isn’t. I don’t blame anyone for being idealistic and seeking to break beyond t...

‘Immigrationism’ is a bit of a clunky, unwieldy word, but it accurately describes an ideology that manages to bring together our big business elite and free market fundamentalists with the far left and the Blairite centre-left: an unusual and powerful political alliance. Even though around 80 per cent of the population stands against it, this motley crew of political factions has enough serious clout to win most political battles in Britain, and indeed it has been conclusively won the political battle over immigration up until now. Sheer weight of public opinion seems to be shifting that situation, though as yet our main political parties seem powerless or resistant when it comes to doing anything to seriously reduce immigration. Currently net migration (immigrants minus emigrants) is adding around 200,000 more people to Britain’s population every year – quite a lot for a crowded island with already stretched infrastructure (transport, housing, schools and hospitals for exam...