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Welcome to another month of asking what a right-wing Britain fit for the 21st Century looks like - and how we win it. If you want access to these high-status insights, make sure you subscribe below.

What’s coming up…

Azanufuturism

[[ ]] Hampstead at dusk, dismal and soundless. The iron gates of your compound yaw open to reveal the urban warscape of Neo-Praetoria. Your armoured Tesla tracks its lane as you head to the inhab bar. The sound of gunfire, off in the distance; you’re getting used to it now. You check the rich fields of data on your neurosurgical Russian military detector sleeve (paid in the cash you reserve for black-market trades; Bitcoin is for legitimate transactions) and see it’s the Latinarcos flaring up again. They iced three of your SynSec guards last week.

Silhouetted in the halogen arcflare of the factory domes, you see a column of Metropolitan Police Mobile Air Cavalry Division spinners heading towards the rising smoke, their chromed thermoplastic armour refracting off the dimmed simclouds. A single rocket trails up towards them. Highly cinematic.

Ukraine and a return to realism

Since that war, the role of European forces has been to provide something akin to the Limes Ruthenia, providing a deterrent and slowing force until the Emperor could arrive with the reinforcements necessary to repel the barbarians marauding. But, as before, the Emperor will no longer hear our calls. There are no more legions. We have only ourselves, and we must hold.

The man who should be King

In 1886, amidst the political turmoil surrounding Gladstone's Home Rule Bill, Lord Randolph Churchill passionately criticized the Liberal MPs who had deserted Gladstone. As they joined him, Churchill, almost teary-eyed, pointed to that grand old man - still on his feet, defending his position - and asked;

"And that is the man you deserted. How could you do it?"

I think about this quote every time a new Robert Jenrick video appears on my Twitter feed.

Exit Management

The morning proceeded much the same, same as any other morning. Miles saw them in and Beamish saw them off, as the Doctor liked to joke between them. They were careful not to let clients hear, of course; Dignity, Civility, Release, that was Exit Management’s motto.

What you missed…

Parties, like powers, have no right to exist. Their futures must be fought for, and won; if they fail in that cause, if they cease to serve a purpose greater than their own perpetuation, then they will be consigned to history’s pages, heard no more.

Our party is no exception. Our great and long history does not bestow a God-given right to exist, and we have no ordained destiny as a permanent fixture of British politics. Political parties are merely the faintly contemptible vessels in which the liquid of ideology is offered to the public; they exist only so long as that liquid is sustaining, only so long as we remain a vehicle for something vital – a vision, a cause, a purpose that speaks to the nation we seek to govern.

We still have elections. We still have ministers. But we no longer seem to have government. Political promises collapse on contact with reality. The levers of power are there—but nothing happens when you pull them.

This is the paradox of what we will call ‘shallow sovereignty’: governments appear to rule, but cannot act. Their authority is formal, but not functional. Over time, the ‘decision space’ - within which politicians can meaningfully make and implement decisions has collapsed. It is this hollowing-out of effective choice, not a lack of will, that explains the growing impotence of democratic politics in Britain.

Despite all this, Soft power continues to be very popular in SSR Blighty. This, I’m afraid to say, is a consequence of our post-imperial delusion and a coping mechanism. Soft power places far more importance on the things in which Britain is still a world leader; as mentioned in the press release for the Soft Power Council, things like ‘culture and creative industries, sport, education and institutions’. This creates an incentive for our leaders to promote the idea of soft power, because if soft power is relevant, then Britain is still a global superpower, and our leaders are thus far more important than they might otherwise be.

I do genuinely believe that the bellicosity of Centrist Dads on Ukraine is the result of declining testosterone levels. Let me explain…

Last year, I attended a seminar on 'how to report on migration', hosted by an NGO. For the most part, it was neutral, solid advice; but the activist journalists with me on the call, who were almost exclusively pro-migration, advocated framing public understanding of immigration through 'human interest' stories.

There is solid reasoning for this; human stories are specifically intended to stop people thinking about immigration as a political issue, and to increase pro-immigration sentiment.

The working poor Guilluy talks of have by and large been removed entirely. Now, in London, those who lose out are Nicolas, 30 ans, taking increasingly long commutes from increasingly remote zones of London in order to pay increasingly high taxes to support increasingly economically unproductive immigrants in social housing they will never qualify for. To add insult to injury, after years of failing to hit his housing targets, Sadiq Khan has managed to lobby central government to lower them, as well as unlock more funding to buy houses on the open market and convert them into social housing.

As the social contract grows worse and worse, and the conditions for emigration grow easier, how much longer can this be sustained? Can we expect Nicholas to stay in Britain, taking his beating?

Philip Hammond has reportedly made millions since becoming a Lord. With the economic incentives currently at play, it is simply more profitable for businesses to pull the immigration lever, and to pay people like Hammond to swing their weight behind such calls. Until that changes, don’t expect there to be an end to calls for more immigration into [sector I stand to profit in].