Nick Tyrone's Blog, page 7

Why the idea that Labour cannot win a majority at the next general election is the biggest fallacy in modern British politics

One of the trends from the last five years of politics is that a truism gets established amongst the cognoscenti, which then spreads to the next level of those interested enough in politics to pay attention to at least some of its subtleties – and then the truism gets demolished by reality. “Corbyn could never become Labour leader”. “Leave could never win the EU referendum”. “Trump could never win the presidency”. “Theresa May will end up with a massive majority after the 2017 general election”. I could go on, but you get the point. Each time one of these truisms gets torn down, another one that stands on equally loose ground takes its place.

The latest big lie is “Labour cannot win a general election on its own”. This theory rests on the idea that there are places in the country that Labour supposedly has no chance of winning, no matter what. Scotland is impossible to get back, apparently. The south of England, forget it. Need the Lib Dems there. Or something. The best Labour can hope for is some Lab-Lib-SNP+others monster rainbow government. The evidence for all this rests on very shaky ground and isn’t difficult to demolish.

Let’s start with Scotland. The SNP have been dominant in Scotland over three Westminster general elections. The first was in the immediate aftermath of the divisive independence referendum. The next two were fought with Labour having in place the worst leader of the opposition since the formation of the Union. I’m not saying Labour getting back Scotland would be easy. I’m simply saying that the “it’s impossible” thesis has really not been tested to death. It’s like if you were a medieval army and you’d tried to attack a walled city three times, once with a bloke at the helm who was scared of a bacon sandwich and the next two times with a leader who told half the army to fight in the wrong place and then got lost on the way to the target himself, it would be foolish not to consider whether you might take the city with a decent general.

Then there is the idea that Labour can’t win in the south of England. I’ve said this many times before, but here it goes again: Labour have won in the south of England previously, and fairly substantially at that. Not all that long ago, either. Add to this the Tories having been in power for over a decade, the Remainers revenge feeling that lingers still, the fact that the Lib Dems appear set to commit electoral suicide by running to the left of Labour, and most importantly, that Labour now have a good leader means that I think there are way more seats in play for them than most assume at the moment, provided they run a good campaign.

To be clear, I am not now predicting Labour will win the next general election. I just think this assumption that they definitely can’t is lazy. We have witnessed seismic shifts in voting patterns over the past decade; unpredictable results have become the new normal. Just because these have usually gone against Labour more times than not during this period does not mean that they will continue to do so in perpetuity. In sacking Long-Bailey the way he did yesterday, Starmer has shown how serious he is about making Labour properly electable again. I think the Tories are taking him too lightly at present, as are the Lib Dems and the SNP. Everyone has got so used to Labour being a bit crap they have forgot what a well-led Labour Party is more than capable of achieving.

I’ll close with this. I think it is imperative for the Labour Party to aim for a majority and create a narrative around its possibility. So long as this story about Labour needing to form a government with the SNP and seven other parties persists, the harder it will be for Labour to get anywhere close to Number 10. People need to feel like Labour will win outright for them to get enough seats to form any sort of government. If it seems like they would be happy to form a government with the SNP and the Lib Dems, everyone involved but the SNP suffers. Another modern truism is that the Tories need a majority to rule while Labour has other options. I think this is another truism that needs to fall.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post Why the idea that Labour cannot win a majority at the next general election is the biggest fallacy in modern British politics appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

There is one way and one way only that Layla Moran’s plans for the Lib Dems will work. It is unlikely

This weekend, Layla Moran has set out her stall in terms of what her leadership of the Lib Dems would look like. Unsurprisingly, Layla plans to move the party to the left. Possibly, far to the left. “I will be more radical than Labour and I will be unapologetic about that,” she said. She ruled out ever working with the Tories again while leaving the door open for a Lib-Lab something or other. She wants to “fundamentally change how people perceive the Liberal Democrats”.

There is almost no way this course of action won’t result in total electoral annihilation for the Lib Dems. I just don’t see where the new seats are under this strategy, while I think pretty much everyone of them currently held by the party would be under threat. I have to concede that there is one way I could see it working, however. I can’t see what I’m about to lay out actually ever happening, for reasons I will go onto explain, but it’s not totally impossible. It would be the only conceivable way the Lib Dems don’t get wiped out as a parliamentary force if they move even further to the left than they are now.

Basically, the hard left of the Labour party would have to join the Lib Dems en masse. For this to happen, I reckon it would take all the most visible members of this clan in media terms, Owen Jones, Ash Sarkar, Zarb-Cousins, Bastani, to defect to the Lib Dems on the same day and make a really big deal in the media about having done so. While doing this, they would have to intimate that they have taken over the Lib Dems and that it is now a radical socialist vehicle that has very little in common with the old Liberal Democrats. The idea would be to communicate that the far left has essentially eaten the Lib Dems. This is the one thing that would probably get the target voters Layla wants so badly to think again about the party. Should this happen, the old right of the Lib Dems would be off for good but you would have a lot of new, young members. Also, the new influx would get along well with most of the remaining Lib Dem membership. A lot of what has separated the Corbynistas and the Lib Dem left over the past few years is down to little more than tribal loyalty and semantics. One calls what they want socialism, the other radical liberalism, but it all boils down to nationalising utilities and introducing UBI in the end. You can call that whatever you like.

Again, it is very difficult to see this mass defection happening, however, for loads of reasons. The first is the most simple: those people that I mentioned, Jones, Sarkar, et al, are Labourites with varying yet strong degrees of loyalty to the party. They are not going to flounce off just because the short term politics might make sense. The second point is, from their perspective anyhow, the short term politics don’t even make sense anyhow. As they saw when the other side of the Labour family tried to leave Labour for the Lib Dems, they would be departing from one highly structured, highly organised party to join another that is, sorry to say, a bit shambolic and extremely hollowed out in every sense. Third point: hatred of the Lib Dem has been a constant part of their lives for years. This is sort of an addendum to the first point, I realise, but does need to be spelled out separately – when you’ve spoken of a party as the enemy for many years, joining them would be a massive step, even if the plan is to change that party entirely. The fourth and final point is that the hard left of Labour think they have a good shot at getting the Labour party back after the next election anyhow. Once Starmer fails, which they all figure he will, they can reassert themselves. Just bide their time and they can have the big prize back again.

Layla Moran and Lib Dems of her political persuasion just cannot grasp how much the left hates their party. The coalition years happened, whether they like it or not. And unless some very visible part of the left joins them en masse, I don’t see how they have any hope of getting those voters back again any time within the next couple of decades at least.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post There is one way and one way only that Layla Moran’s plans for the Lib Dems will work. It is unlikely appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Here’s what was wrong with the way Remainers campaigned post-June 2016

We are experiencing the eye of the storm in terms of the culture war in this country at the moment. At least I hope we are – please tell me it doesn’t get worse from here somehow. Remainers like to say that Brexit caused this; that it was the vote to Leave the European Union that caused this division to explode into the open and become so poisonous. They are technically correct, yet Remainers fail to see the part they played in making that happen – or why that ultimately worked against what they wanted, which was either to somehow remain in the EU or failing that, to stay as close to the EU as possible.

One of the ways that Leave won in 2016 was by exploiting culture war splits. Both Vote Leave and Leave.EU understood that a lot of the old Labour vote was socially conservative or at least, relatively socially conservative and could be pushed to vote Leave with the right messaging. Yet after the referendum result was in, Remainers failed to understand that continuing to put Brexit through the prism of the culture war would always favour Leave, just as it had in the final referendum result. Further, that ramping this up and calling everyone who voted Leave a racist or at the very least a xenophobe – as well as stupid and easily led – hardened everyone’s position. If you want to convince someone to change their mind on something, calling them a stupid racist is not the best way of going about this to say the least. Seems obvious when you put it like that. Yet that is what the basic Remain messaging sounded like to Leavers for three and a half years.

It reminds me of something from 2012. It was Lib Dem spring conference in Newcastle. There was a vote of the membership to approve or vote down the Health and Social Care Act, aka the Lansley reforms. The leadership of the party was nervous about the result. Everyone knew it was on a knife’s edge. If it was voted down, it would have created a serious problem for the Lib Dem leadership in government. Yet they had an unlikely ally in getting it through: Labour activists. There was a horde of them outside of the building, handing out flyers to people waiting in the security queue. I’ll never forget what the woman who handed me a flyer said: “I hate the Lib Dems, you’re all scum. If you vote through this Bill you’ll never be forgiven”. I will also never forget that there were four people immediately ahead of me in the queue, all of them with voting member badges. One of them, who had got the same spiel as I had, said to his friends, “You know what? I was going to avoid voting on the Lansley thing but after that, I’m going to vote it through.” The Labour activists who had assumedly come to try and halt the Bill’s progress using what could have been a decent route at Lib Dem conference had directly helped achieve the opposite of their stated goal.

I often thought of this when I watched Remain campaigners over the 2016-2019 period. Particularly as I have a lot of Leaver followers on social media despite having always been a vocal Remainer. I believe there is a reason for that: I never call them stupid, or racist, or say that they are fools or that they had some nefarious reason for voting the way that they did. I disagree with them on Brexit and that’s it. I haven’t othered them or demonised them. I just think that if Remain campaigners had figured out that this was a necessary first step in creating a dialogue, it might have helped their cause a great deal.

But that’s in the past. What’s in front of us now is this never-ending culture war. And Remainers can play a big part in defusing it. Stop thinking everyone who voted Leave is by definition a horrible person. Try and understand why they voted for Brexit; walk a mile in their shoes and it might give you some insights. If someone isn’t obviously a racist, don’t assume they are. Brexit is either going to work or it isn’t. Stop fighting yesterday’s war and focus on defusing the one we’re in right now.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post Here’s what was wrong with the way Remainers campaigned post-June 2016 appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why I think this man will be the next prime minister – before the next general election

I’ve written a few times already about why I believe Boris Johnson’s premiership will be a brief one. I will now outline a scenario for you involving him being deposed and replaced with Jeremy Hunt, all within roughly the next year or so. For various reasons, this process could take a little longer; this is a worst case for Boris Johnson I am about to outline.

Over the next six months, opinion on the government’s handling of the CoVid crisis hardens in all directions; everyone thinks they screwed up, often for completely different reasons. Some are convinced we didn’t go into lockdown quickly enough and this caused lost of life; others that HMG was too cautious in re-opening the economy, costing many their livelihoods. Added to this is no deal Brexit – it happens in January and is a complete mess. Rumbles about the parliamentary Conservative party defenestrating Boris start to become louder and louder. Then we have the local elections in May – and bear in mind, they will be double elections, taking in the 2020 set that hasn’t happened yet. In the face of CoVid and no deal, the Tories are walloped brutally, losing over a thousand seats. Meanwhile, Labour’s general election poll numbers have been rising and they are now between seven and ten points ahead of the Tories every time.

The end for Boris comes quicker than almost anyone had imagined. Wanting to strike in the direct shadow of the disastrous locals, the Tory backbenchers hand in their letters to the chair of the 1922 Committee. It is clear Boris has no support and he steps down. A leadership contest is called, the third one in six years. As per last time, many contenders enter the race. Sunak is considered the favourite at first. Gove gives it another try. Yet Hunt emerges as the likely winner soon enough. The advantages he has are unbeatable: he wasn’t part of the Boris Johnson government, which is the biggest one. He also screams corporate competence in an era where that has a lot of currency. Hunt gets Sunak to chuck in his bid to be leader by promising to keep him in Number 11. That done, Hunt strolls to victory.

Hunt governs early in his premiership as the anti-Boris. Pro-business, properly Conservative with all of the Leninism of the BJ administration vanquished. In order to win, he’ll have had to promise not to cave in and beg the EU for a deal that would look like a reversion to soft Brexit, so he’ll have to find some way to mitigate the negative effects of no deal without doing this, at least not immediately after getting into Number 10.

Hunt could beat Starmer in 2024 in much the same way Johnson won last time out – by presenting himself as fresh, nothing to do with the previous lot. The CoVid and no deal disasters had not happened on his watch; in fact, he can intimate that if only the Conservative membership had entrusted him with the leadership, none of it would have happened. Yes, Starmer is a solid chap. But so am I, and I don’t have the baggage of his pack of loonies trailing behind. Remember Corbyn and everything that came with him? The Labour Party hasn’t changed very much, just put a more respectable bloke up front. Forget about Starmer – do you want far left lunatics running the country?

If Hunt were to win the 2024 general election – or whenever the next one takes place – the victory would be massive for the Tories. There is a very good chance Labour could choose a terrible leader to succeed Starmer, should he step down after another Conservative victory. The left could take over the party again, leading to inevitable defeat in the election after that. Which means we would starting the 2030s with two solid decades of Tory prime ministers behind us with no end in sight. I want to stress that Hunt wouldn’t be guaranteed to beat Starmer – but he’d have a much better chance of doing so than Boris will, which I think Tories are going to realise sooner rather than later.

Again, this is a worst case scenario for Boris Johnson I have just laid out. It is possible he has some sort of big political recovery in the next year or so. Yet as I’ve said before, in order for that to happen, he either needs no deal Brexit to not be bad or to get some sort of deal from the EU at the last moment that is both practically sound (in other words, causes no serious disruption) and will keep his Eurosceptic backbenchers happy/give Farage no way in. It’s possible Boris finds a way to pull this off. I doubt he will but I have doubted him before and he’s sitting in Number 10 at present. I’d still put my money on Hunt from where I’m sitting now though.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post Why I think this man will be the next prime minister – before the next general election appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why people are writing off Nigel Farage too early, yet again

I feel like I’ve written something a lot this article many times before. I probably have. Either way, it doesn’t make what I’m about to write any less true.

In the wake of Nigel Farage no longer doing his LBC gig and his subsequent announcement that he is relaunching the Brexit Party, possibly under the guise of the Reform Party, a lot of those who do not like Farage are steaming in to call time on his relevance. This reminds me a lot of when Boris Johnson stepped down as Foreign Secretary and there were all sorts of obituaries on his political career. Needless to say how that turned out in the end.

This talk of Farage being finished is extremely premature. Every single way the next year plays out gives Farage an opening to come back politically. Boris panics and asks for an extension of the transition period at the last second – Brexit betrayed, Farage gets to be the hero to the Brexity nation. Boris plows ahead with the December 31st deadline for a deal but realises in the latter half of this year that his options have narrowed cataclymiscally. He gives in to the EU on an arrangement that will keep the UK wedded to EU laws for the foreseeable future – Brexit betrayed, Farage gets to be the hero to the Brexity nation. Boris goes nuclear and we have no deal – Farage gets to tell everyone that the fallout is all Johnson’s fault; that his ineptitude is why Brexit has flopped.

There is a thought amongst liberal Remainer metropolitan types that Boris is loved by the Brexiteers. You are living in 2019, people. Since then, he’s instituted lockdown, which they hate/think is a globalist conspiracy, have huge doubts about BoJo on immigration (again, mostly successfully stirred by one Nigel Farage) and are waiting for him to deliver on Brexit in a way where expectations will never meet reality. Brexit is heaven and no actual interpretation of it will ever match the fantasy. This has always been the ditch Boris is driving toward, whether he knows it or not.

The only way Boris can politically kill Farage for good is if he goes for no deal Brexit and against all expectations it is a roaring success. That’s it. Otherwise, it is very likely that Farage relaunches this party, it scoops 7-10% out of the Tories’ poll rating and then it’s only a matter of time until Johnson is politically finished. Yes, people have prematurely written Boris off in the past, far too prematurely, as they have done with Farage. That was before Boris was prime minister; the ways to escape his current predicament rely on a massive amount of luck. Bank on Farage coming back instead, whatever you think of such an outcome. I hope I’m wrong and that Farage really is finished. But something in my gut tells me this isn’t the case.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post Why people are writing off Nigel Farage too early, yet again appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How Boris Johnson has been played into a brutal corner that he might not escape from this time

His premiership has gone so differently than I’m sure Boris Johnson imagined. Some of that is fair enough; he couldn’t have foreseen a pandemic. A lot of what has transpired was less difficult to predict, however. In February, which seems like a very long time ago now, I wrote an article on here about how I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Johnson’s time in Number 10 was brief, even going as far as to speculate he could be out within a year. I got a lot of people telling me I was talking out of my arse at the time. What’s interesting is I’m certain that if I said the same thing today, far fewer people would disagree with me.

The Conservative Party is starting to panic a little. In Keir Starmer, they finally face a leader of the opposition who isn’t a joke. The polls have already begun to reflect this new reality. The economy has tanked in a way that is almost beyond normal comprehension. Quietly, behind the scenes, doubts are being flung around within Tory circles about Johnson’s ability to lead. The Cummings affair hasn’t helped – but it is about much more than that. The prime minister has been played into a corner and it is difficult to see how he gets out. He’s been in bad situations before in politics and escaped, so he might well find a way this time round. This corner really is pretty tight though.

The number of Tories who want to fast track opening up the country again, starting with things like relaxing the two metre rule, particularly with parts of the UK such as Northern Ireland and the Isle of Man starting to relax restrictions, is growing every day. Yet Johnson must be crapping himself about what to do here. If restrictions are relaxed in England, this could mitigate economic damage – but if the CoVid death rate significantly spikes again, it will be hard to avoid the conclusion that he sacrificed lives for the economy. But again, if he allows restrictions to go on and the economic pain gets even more severe, he faces open revolt within his party.

Added to all of this is the shit show that is Brexit. I wrote in the Spectator this week about how I thought we should push ahead with no deal Brexit. I expected to get a flood of Remainers screaming at me combined with some Brexiteer love. I got some of that but I was surprised to find many more Remainers saying in response, “Yeah, agree. Let them do it. Get it over with and let the Tories suffer the political consequences when it’s a disaster”. I also got of lot of stuff from Leavers along the lines of, “No, there won’t be no deal. The EU will fold at the last moment” that sounded a touch desperate, as if faced with no deal for real, there was recoil.

Boris Johnson faces a massive problem here, on the same scale as his CoVid dilemma. If he caves in to an extension of the transition period, the political fallout will be massive. Brexiteers will be furious, while everyone else will see a major promise being broken. If he pushes ahead with no deal, he is taking a tremendous gamble. If the disruption from no deal is minimal, Johnson will emerge triumphant. If it is a disaster, I think he’s finished. I believe at that point the Tories will collectively hang it all on Johnson, just as they were planning to do with May, and use the fallout to get a new leader who will have loads of time before another general election to turn things around.

Boris Johnson has already done the thing they elected him leader of the Conservative Party to do. He won them an election. Having achieved that, he is fast becoming surplus to requirements. I remain of the same opinion I was back in February, that Johnson’s premiership rests on weaker ground than almost anyone else thinks. He will require a great deal of luck to get through both the rest of the CoVid crisis and the next stage of Brexit.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post How Boris Johnson has been played into a brutal corner that he might not escape from this time appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

In order to end the culture war, we need to understand what each side values in a real sense

This week, Britain has seemed, at least to me, to be more divided than I can ever remember it. Far from the culture war cooling, it seems to be getting worse. The particular flare point was the BLM protests in central London and in several other British cities, with one incident in particular dividing people: the toppling of the Edward Colston statue in Bristol.

What has happened since the statue submerging took place is our whole era in miniature. The extremes on both sides of the debate go in hard, with those on the left describing the existence of the statue as a daily beacon to the deep racism of the UK, with those on the right talking about how it was a lawless act that will lead to anarchy. Enter the modern day political grift: there is way more milage in terms of Twitter retweets, likes and YouTube hits to be had for appealing to the most extreme version of your tribe’s instincts than there is to be had in trying to be as rational as possible about the whole affair. And so it goes.

The end result of this is the extremes win, to the detriment of sane public discussion. Since the extremes know how to broadcast themselves the loudest – and as just I’ve pointed out, the incentives are there for the extremes to get the most traction – everyone ends up feeling like they have to go in hard one way or another instead of taking a more nuanced approach. The vast majority of people in the country are more than capable of understanding both sides of a debate – and yet that gets lost in the need to pick a side. Go with the law and order bunch or with the antiquated monuments to slavers shouldn’t be tolerated crowd; in either end of the pool, you’ll find the water warm, with plenty of people there to agree with you. Try and swim into the middle and you’ll find it gets pretty cold.

I think the problem comes down to values and an almost wilful desire for each side to misunderstand the motives of the other. Even those who live in Bristol, campaigned for years to get the Colston statue removed and felt elation at its demise should be able to understand why some people looking on could be fearful of the police standing there, afraid to intervene as a mob destroys a piece of public property. The worry about what gets targeted next and if the police will be afraid to intervene there as well. On the other hand, even those who looked upon the destruction of the Bristolian statue with horror at the mob should be able to understand the feeling of upset the statue clearly caused a large number of people in that city. They can disagree with the means while still being able to understand the hurt the monument caused over many years.

What I’m saying is that most reasonable people are actually in the middle and are capable of understanding the other side of the debate while not necessarily agreeing with it. Except, again, we live in an age where the extreme end of the argument is the one that gets heard and then it becomes a question of, in the crudest way I can term this, do you want to be on the side of the anarchist mob or the white supremacists? Obviously, the vast majority of people want to be on neither when you put it like that.

If you’re centre-left and reasonable, it shouldn’t be difficult to see that threats against the police and public disorder are scary and alienating to a lot of people. If you’re on the centre-right, it shouldn’t be hard to understand that some people on the centre-left are getting pulled in by arguments around racism that are valid. I’m not asking you to side with far left agitators who are looking to exploit the issues here for the advance of their own agenda; I’m talking about centre-left people who are genuinely concerned about racism. Imagine how they are being pushed into defending unreasonable things because they want to be on the right side of that debate and feel that’s the only option. Reflect as well how the far right is using this whole thing to its advantage and how that is pushing discussion on the right as a whole into nasty places. There is some “Enoch was proven right” type stuff floating around social media that is shameful.

It seems the far left and the far right in this country would love a civil war, to borrow Rebecca Long-Bailey’s term here for a moment, “of sorts”. The rest of us should fear such an outcome, deeply. I don’t know how the rest of us get out of our silos and talk rationally to one another again but I do know we need to find a way, somehow.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post In order to end the culture war, we need to understand what each side values in a real sense appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

How the Left let the kids take over, with disastrous consequences

The day after protests in London took place, several young people came to clean off the graffiti that had been put onto the Earl Haig memorial. While they were doing this, a young woman approached and berated them. “Couldn’t even wait a day. Not one day, because of their precious memorial,” she said to them as they scrubbed “ACAB” (All Cops Are Bastards) off of the WW1 statue. She then gave them hell for putting signs left as litter into bins.

The young woman who berated the group from the Household Cavalry for cleaning off the statue was captured on video. Her face and her name (which I won’t place here but it is very easy to find on Twitter) have been splattered everywhere. Her moment of stupidity will live eternally. I feel very bad for her. She has been ensconced in a culture that made her think she was in the right when she said what she said and now she has had her moment of silliness broadcast to the world.

When Keir Starmer was elected leader of the Labour Party, I took that as being more of a symbol of the left smartening up than now feels like was the case. I figured they were finally going to halt the behaviours that have cut them off from much of Labour’s former voting base. Yet it seems like some of this stuff is so entrenched within the culture of the left that it cannot be excised simply because the man at the top knows how to wear a suit and avoids endlessly spouting bullshit about Gaza.

The problem comes back to the kids. Not young people in and of themselves, but the fact that the grown ups have by and large vacated the debate on the left and the kids have filled the vacuum with ideas and concepts that are severely unripe. You can point to the rise of Momentum but this goes further back, like most problems on the British left, to Ed Miliband. I know long time readers of this site will roll their eyes at me for bringing this up again, but I return to 2010 and Miliband comparing the cuts marchers to Suffragettes. It was a powerful line that still resonates across the British left, one that decoded meant: we have thrown in the towel on trying to be grownups. The language of the left from here on will be that of a 15-year-old who has just read Sartre for the first time and gets most of their politics from 80s punk rock records and their descendants. If you are not under 21 and very left-wing, look away now, there will be nothing of interest here for you.

I feel sorry for young people on the left today. They have been left essentially leaderless, their older generals simply trying to mimic the language of youth. Then they wonder why older Labour voters went for the Tories in droves. There is only so long you can blast student politics at people until they finally get the point that you aren’t serious. How does this get fixed? I don’t know. Starmer is a strong, intelligent man and perhaps he can massage it out of the system somehow over the next three years. If he can’t, I don’t know if anyone can. As ever, the long term fate of the British Left rests on Keir Starmer’s shoulders. Good luck to him.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post How the Left let the kids take over, with disastrous consequences appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

Why the Peter Hitchens YouTube incident highlights the importance of free speech

During the Coronavirus crisis, YouTube have worked to try and filter out what they deem as disinformation on CoVid. The first big example of this was removing David Icke’s channel from the site after he’d done a few videos on the virus from his own unique standpoint. For some of you, this might be easily justified – Icke dabbles in extreme conspiracy theory mongering, the most famous example being his assertion that the world is run by shape-shifting lizards. I am not here to defend Mr Icke’s views. Yet I think that removing his channel was the wrong decision. Not just on abstract free expression grounds either, but because of what has happened in this decision’s wake, demonstrating why free speech is so vital.

Karol Sikora, a professor of medicine, had a video of his removed from YouTube a few weeks back. It argued that we could learn some things from Sweden and potentially loosen lockdown more quickly. After some kerfuffle it was put back on the site – yet the fact that it had been removed in the first place is noteworthy. Again, I’m not asking you to agree with Sikora in any way. Yet surely simply offering an alternative viewpoint on this crisis shouldn’t be censored. Then we come to Peter Hitchens and his video. Hitchens has been an outspoken critic of the lockdown since it was put into place. YouTube did not take this video down; instead, it made it very, very difficult to find, ensuring that it does not come up in any searches one might do to try and find the video. I attempted to find it myself – unless you go to the channel it featured on itself and scroll through, you won’t find the video.

Again, I’m not asking you to agree with either Sikora or Hitchens. But when we start narrowing the debate like this it has an impact on everyone. You might say that this is a one-off crisis and thus the stricter definition of what can and cannot be said is justified. Yet history shows us that when this process is started it is difficult to reverse. I also don’t happen to think that trying to curate a common view on CoVid via censorship helps anything either. It doesn’t crush conspiracy theories – it actually fuels them, as those propagating the theories can point to actual, concrete repression as supposed partial proof. Coronavirus is a massive event in all of our lives and a discussion about it must take place, even if some of the things said are unpleasant to many people. Otherwise, resentment will fester and that will come out in unpleasant ways; viewpoints will become more extreme.

Some will argue that YouTube is a private company and is free to curate the material on it as it sees fit. Yet that then opens them up to what Trump is talking about in terms of them losing their neutrality provisions. If they curate what goes on the site, they should then become responsible for what’s there, which seems fair to me. In other words, YouTube is either a neutral platform for content or it consciously curates what is on the site. It cannot be both at the same time.

For left-wing readers, let me turn this around on you. What if YouTube decided to censor any video promoting socialism? Its justification being that socialism was an ideology that resulted in millions of deaths in the 20th century and that no reasonable person could adhere to its tenets as a result. Just for clarity, I would be against YouTube doing such a thing myself absolutely. Whatever my own personal view on something, I think that unless something directly incites violence, I think it should be allowed to be heard.

Free speech can be messy. I understand in some ways YouTube being worried about disinformation during this crisis and the possibility that it could risk human life. Yet I still believe in the end that the debate must be allowed to take place. Once you shut down one voice, you start shutting down others until your justification for shutting anyone and everyone down starts to become hazy. You start with the David Icke’s of this world and pretty soon you’re censoring anyone with an opinion that deviates even slightly from the norm. Censoring extremism doesn’t shut extremism down either – it simply makes martyrs of those who have been silenced. Maybe we all need to grow up a little and accept that sometimes people disagree with us and that this does not necessarily make them evil. That this is a radical thought in 2020 says a lot about the era we live in.

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I have a new book out now. It’s called “Politics is Murder” and follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.

It’s available here:

The post Why the Peter Hitchens YouTube incident highlights the importance of free speech appeared first on nicktyrone.com.

A parent’s view of the first day back at school in the age of CoVid

My son is in Year One and so he could return to school today. We decided on balance that we would let him go back. During the walk to school he was neither nervous nor excited about returning; just strangely indifferent. His questions while we walked were the usual bag of six-year-old tricks: he wondered what the day of the year was when we all stayed up really late and fireworks went off by the London Eye (New Year’s Eve, in case that wasn’t apparent) and then asked me why we celebrate the end of December in that way but not the end of May. As usual, I tried to answer him as best I could.

His mood changed as soon as we got to the school itself. Seeing all of his teachers wearing gloves and visors freaked him out a little, I would argue understandably. Particularly given it wasn’t his regular school but one close by that he’d never even been to before. He walked through the gates and then they took his temperature via one of those forehead reading contraptions; as expected, he came out normal on that front. Then he was whisked away from me into a queue of other children. I wanted to hug him and tell him it was going to be all right but that wasn’t part of the set up. Not complaining about that – they have to make everything as safe as they can – but it was still a difficult moment. Thankfully, my son braved it out.

I find it sad that just writing about my son returning to school could be in anyway looked at through partisan political lenses but that, it seems, is where we are at the moment. The right have mostly decided that opening the schools again for certain age groups is the correct thing to do, the left have mostly decided the opposite. I myself have no idea what the correct thing to do is and further, I’m really sick of people who don’t know any better than me about any of this asserting that they are sure that they “know the science”. Particularly given the science on CoVid is difficult because it is a novel virus; scientists are learning new things about it all of the time. I have read a great deal on this topic and I am nowhere near being able to say that I know whether opening schools today is the right thing or the wrong thing to do for certain. As a parent, I’m glad my son gets to go back. He was going a bit stir crazy and was struggling to do any homework near the end of May. He misses his friends and needs some time with people his own age. That’s all I know for certain.

Time will tell whether opening schools again today was the correct thing or the wrong thing to do. Whether it made no apparent difference to the spread of the virus or seemed to have a negative effect. In the meantime, I just wish everyone would stop being so certain that they know what the right answer is at the moment.

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