Stop sneering at Reform voters

Over the past week, many respectable people have been asking us and themselves: what’s the best way to stop Reform UK? Here’s a suggestion: stop ignoring or dismissing the concerns of those who voted for Nigel Farage’s party because you consider these issues too embarrassing or impolite to discuss. Or, even better: stop disdaining and sneering at people who are poorer than you.

This is what has always added insult to injury among those who feel left behind. It’s the haughty derision from their material betters – from the overclass that recoils in horror at their supposedly unrefined opinions and unsophisticated ways. It’s the lordly contempt shown by then prime minister Gordon Brown in 2010, when he called a Rochdale pensioner a ‘bigoted woman’ for voicing concern about immigration. It’s the ill-concealed odium that was on display in 2014, when Labour MP Emily Thornberry posted a snarky picture on social media of a Rochester house decked in English flags. It’s the same sniffy disregard that was laid bare last Friday, when Lucy Powell, the leader of the House of Commons, waved away concerns about grooming gangs as ‘dogwhistle’ politics.

Since the 1970s, Labour and the left have defined themselves foremost as ‘kind’ and ‘caring’ people, in contradistinction to the supposedly nasty and selfish people on the right. It’s the vacuous and performative compassion of the liberal left, and the disproportionate load placed on this pose, that has helped to bring about the cleavage between the so-called progressives and the working class.

That’s why, ever since Labour became the party for the refined, well-meaning middle-class, immigration has always been an inconvenience. For progressives, to speak in remotely negative terms on the matter is almost unthinkable. To be called ‘racist’ is without doubt our culture’s biggest taboo, and this is why Labour hasn’t spoken honestly and frankly about immigration for decades. It’s terrified of the subject, for reasons both practical and existential.

This is why Labour can only deflect and evade on matters pertaining to race and ethnicity. It’s why Jess Phillips, Labour’s safeguarding minister, huffed with impatient irritation last month when the rape gangs were mentioned in parliament. It’s why, in January, Keir Starmer accused those calling for a public inquiry on the matter of jumping on the ‘bandwagon of the far right’.

Most people are bored beyond tears with the empty smear, ‘far right’. But politicians and left-wing commentators resort to the verbal tactic deliberately. It’s because to be ‘right wing’ in the public subconscious is to be selfish or evil, while to be ‘left wing’ is to be caring.

It’s unfortunate, then, that one of the most pressing problems for Britain today, in the minds of millions, is a subject matter on which no one can emerge looking very nice: immigration.

The narcissism of preferred pronouns

Whether you believe that woke is dead, moribund or in abeyance, the hyper-liberals’ obsession with pronouns shows no signs of abating. According to revised guidance from the University of Liverpool, when meeting strangers, it is now recommended not to ask them how they refer to themselves. ‘You don’t want to ask about their pronouns’, reads the advice. ‘This could make them feel like you’re asking them to out themselves as transgender, agender or nonbinary, which they might not want to do, particularly if you work in a conservative office.’

This seems to overturn the previous woke view, in which asking people their preferred pronouns was deemed very important indeed, lest one commit the sin of misgendering a stranger. What still hasn’t changed, however, is this morbid fixation with pronouns.

This fixation has been one of the most unappealing aspects of the trans movement, reflecting a curious combination of narcissism, megalomania, intemperance and neediness. Who honestly cares what you call yourself? And why do you worry whether everyone calls you by your personally curated form of self-address? Whatever happened to spurning mainstream sensibilities? That’s what truly liberated, transgressive folk do. They don’t live in meek conformity to the opinions of others, worried about what the neighbours might say.

Liberal society should consist of independent, tolerant and hardy individuals who live in voluntary relations with each other, respecting the difference of others, but never demanding respect from others, let alone affirmation. You can’t expect society to comply with all of your fantasies and desires.

Why we must protect our private lives

The concept of privacy is often viewed with distrust or bafflement in our era of permanent hyper-connectivity. This state of affairs was presaged by the words of Eric Schmidt, the former Google chief executive, when in 2009 he remarked: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.’ We witness it more innocuously today in the tabloids, which are apt to describe a famous person who shuns the limelight as a ‘recluse’ or ‘hermit’. We see it even in ourselves, asking friends why they aren’t on social media or wondering why they no longer post on Facebook.

So a new book by British sociologist Tiffany Jenkins on the matter is welcome and timely. Strangers and Intimates: The Rise and Fall of Private Life charts the history of the relationship between the public and private spheres, bringing us up to matters today. We live in a time, Jenkins writes, when there is now ‘a growing suspicion of privacy itself’.

A society in which the public arena is viewed with hostility is the stuff of dystopian nightmares. Literally: it is an intrinsic feature in Aldous Huxley’s 1932 masterpiece, Brave New World.

Most people who have read or heard of the novel will be familiar with the aspects of the story: the passive obedience, the humans hatched from pods, the groupthink, the soma that induces blissful stupor and keeps the urban populace docile. Yet none of this soft totalitarian society could have been achieved without the constraints placed on privacy and solitude.

‘But people are never alone now’, says Mustapha Mond, the Resident World Controller of Western Europe. ‘We make them hate solitude; and we arrange their lives so that it’s almost impossible for them ever to have it.’ A school provost, Dr Gaffney, explaining why his library contains no works of fiction for the children, elaborates: ‘We don’t encourage them to indulge in any solitary amusements.’

This is why privacy matters, and why we need to be left alone at times: to say what we think, and to be at one with our thoughts and ourselves.

Patrick West is a spiked columnist. His latest book, Get Over Yourself: Nietzsche For Our Times, is published by Societas.