The writer is in Australia
A CLEVER and insightful Australian citizen podcaster, Damian Coory (The Other Side), recently demonstrated the perversity that is the modern Australian Liberal Party.
His thesis is that the Liberal Party is now two parties masquerading as one. One party consists of wets, aka ‘moderates’, who believe in globalism, climate catastrophism, net zero, covid mania, wokedom, never-Trumpism and the censorship of free speech.
The other party, now in the minority when it comes to MPs and power-brokers, consists of remnant conservatives who question much, if not all, of the above. With varying degrees of commitment and vigour, it should be said.
To demonstrate how the two do not mix, Coory took a glass of kombucha, a fermented tea drink favoured by the wets, and mixed it with chocolate milk (preferred by the conservatives). He took a sip on air. It was evidently ghastly. Kombucha and chocolate milk should not be in the one glass.
His point was clear. In politics, two into one no longer mixes when views on the big issues are so entrenched and cannot be readily accommodated by the other faction.
Maybe the same experiment could apply to nations and demography. And about the story of ‘somewheres’ and ‘anywheres’.
All this came to mind when news emerged from Britain that in 2024, two-thirds of babies born in London in 2024 had at least one parent born overseas. Nationally, the figure was 40 per cent. Still very high but much less than London.
Britain, of course, is in the throes of an existential, mass-migration-driven crisis. Or, at least, many Brits see it this way. And, from the safe distance of the antipodes, it sure seems to quack like an existential crisis. And you know what they say about quacking like a duck.
None of the emerging numbers should surprise anyone. Given the coverage given to Pakistani rape gangs, boat people, hotels and rental accommodation full of legal and illegal economic migrants, and punishment for hate thought crimes dished out to law-abiding citizens who dare to question the direction of ideological travel, we are in the territory of our old friend, Blind Freddie.
Along with all the troublemaking migrants, Britain has also imported a global(ist) idea. It is that all the mass migration is a good thing. Call it, say, multiculturalism, despite the fact that the nation is dividing into enclaves and what might better be termed ‘multi-monoculturalism’. The ruling elites have not only inflicted a mass-migrant society on Britain’s ‘traditional owners’ against their wishes in one of history’s great acts of reverse-colonialism, but they have imposed on its people a philosophy to match and, worse, made it the law to offer worship to the idea, on pain of prison for non-compliance. All based upon the comforting lie of assimilation, of seamless integration.
There isn’t much integration in Bradford, for example, as Richard North has observed in TCW.
Be very careful what you wish for, Blairites.
You get a whiff of modern British reality when you look at the cricket test team. They are captained and coached by New Zealanders. Their star (returning) fast bowler is Jofra Archer, born in Barbados. Spin bowler Shoaib Bashir has a Pakistan-born father. The only real surprise is the number of Englishmen in the team. Or glance at politics. Rishi Sunak, Kemi Badenoch, anyone? Sir Sadiq Khan?
There is another side to the story. It concerns geography. London has more in common with other global cities than with its own hinterland. Global cities are full of what David Goodhart has cleverly called ‘anywheres’.
Or full of what the American political scientist Samuel P Huntington called ‘Davos men’.
Rural people are now often the recipients of sneering. They would have voted for Brexit, of course. They are Little Britons. Racists, all. Resenting and resisting what others simplistically refer to as ‘change’. Cultural Luddites caught in time warps. In the US, Barack Obama referred to small town folks ‘clinging to religion and guns’. Clinton the Second called these people ‘deplorables’. Who inhabit flyover country.
Many of the somewheres are without adequate representation, as Matt Goodwin has pointed out regularly. Yes, they get a vote. Just no representation. Or very little. The American colonists thought sufficiently of the principle of ‘no taxation without representation’ to enact a revolution to achieve it – against the very Brits of whom we now speak.
It raises a question or two, n’est-ce pas? Gives way to revolutionary thoughts, no less.
Infamously, one of Britain’s most publicised migrant cohorts, the Muslims of various geographic origins, want – and get – their own (Sharia) laws. So now we have a nation with two legal systems. Kombucha and chocolate milk. No, having two legal systems and two cultures that are clearly antithetical to one another doesn’t mix, either.
Here is an idea.
Why not recognise the divide and stop pretending that ‘we are one’ and ‘diversity is our strength’? Let’s have two legal systems, if that is what they want. We have a precedent. The anywheres of Londonistan can have hate speech laws. They love tolerance. Make such laws optional for everyone else. Who don’t want them.
Settle illegals only in places that want them. There is already segregation, after all. And an irreparably divided nation. Why not at least make it all democratic? And make formal what already exists in practice.
How about two taxation systems? Why not geographically hypothecated taxes? Better still, ideologically hypothecated taxes? Make people who favour mass migration (Londoners, say) pay higher taxes to fund all the illegals arriving daily that they so admire. After all, Londoners already pay a premium for accessing the city in their cars. They are used to user-pays, congestion charges and even the dreaded Ulez. It is nothing new to reward or punish groups or regions. Think of the precedents such as China’s special economic zones. Or freedom zones, as some think of them. They are designed to attract people and investment. Create freedom zones in the UK.
Put all this to a Brexit-style referendum. Radical solutions, no doubt. None of it will ever happen, of course.
But we are long past the point where anyone could argue that the social contract between the governors and the governed that has traditionally underpinned political obligation still holds. The future of democracy is at stake. The place is at boiling point. Unless some form of accommodation between the resentful unrepresented and overtaxed majority who hate most of what is done with their taxes and the anywheres-ruling class is reached, well, the rivers of blood beckon.
By the way, how does Australia fare in the born overseas stakes? Well, we are just as multi-monoculturalist as the Brits. In the 2021 census, 64 per cent of Sydney’s population had one or both parents born overseas. In a couple of years Indians will have overtaken Britons as our most populous migrant cohort.
Oh, and our opening batsman is called Usman Khawaja! Of the Muslim persuasion. He has been reprimanded by the cricket authorities for having pro-Palestine messages on his cricket gear.
You get the picture.
