There's a really interesting set of articles by Sam Freedman on the rise of the radical right and the decline of the centre right and the tensions and overlaps of the hard economic libertarians (including all the "tech bros" ) and the populists. Also we now have a network of alternative media outlets that bypass the mediation (and fact checking!) of the mainstream media.
here's the latest
https://samf.substack.com/p/when-the-clock-broke?r=72szy
There seems to be a lot of upheaval in a range of nations where insurgent parties gain support and could potentially make radical changes to the way things are done and to prevailing attitudes. This could be a good thing, or it could be a very bad thing - it depends.
Why is it happening?
I suspect it has multi-dimensional causes. One of them is resentment among some worker groups and social classes. Globalisation and large scale migration has worked against the interests of quite large, but not much regarded groups in society. Americans call them, 'blue collar workers', we might say, 'working class'.
Working Class though doesn't define them closely enough. Who has done badly depends on where they live inside the UK. There are strong regional differences in how 'working class' people have done. It depends on what underpins local economies.
In London and the South East, working class people still have opportunities and decent incomes, albeit that housing costs more there. This is not so in the one time dynamo of the UK, the Industrial Midlands and the North. There are areas far from London which have been very badly neglected. Industry left for China, and nothing else grew up in its place other than very poorly paid work in call centres. Even that has migrated. This leaves a large number of very disappointed people who seek alternative politics - hoping for change.
I don't want to harp on too much about migration, but cheap and willing migrants have undercut the opportunities for such people as I have mentioned. It is undeniable that European and more distant migration over the last twenty years suppressed wages and opportunities for large numbers of people who forty ears ago had good incomes and good lives in industry. The industry evaporated and replacement jobs had very poor wages and terms and conditions. Gig Economy, Zero hours contracts and poor wages. None of those would have been possible without an endless stream of migrants who would tolerate them.
The reason we have a shortage of care workers is that the pay is appalling the work is hard and the conditions are abominable. They have to travel from client to client in their own unpaid time. In some areas, travel can be the largest part of the days work, but is unpaid. The answer is not to bring in 100,000 migrant care workers as Sunac did (and their 80,000 dependants) - it is to pay them properly and provide decent conditions. The answer to a shortage of agricultural workers or warehouse workers is the same. Pay and conditions.
None of the traditional parties were offering change - the ground is wide open for any party who offered solutions, irrespective of whether they could actually deliver change.
Incredibly, the traditional left completely abandoned the people who were their core support - the white working class,in favour of left wing - metropolitan concerns about internationalism, and social attitudes their core supporter never shared. Labour by 2019 had moved so very far from its roots in working class industrial Britain as to put a half crazed, unpatriotic, peacenick, metropolitan lefty, activist up as a potential Prime Minister. Jeremy Corbyn. He openly stated that he would never use the armed forces - even if attacked.
No one who knew the traditional industrial world could have imagined a less palatable potential leader for 'The North'. Everything Corbyn stood for, was despised by large numbers of northern people. The Labour vote collapsed and they - unbelievably - voted for Conservatives, even in traditional mining areas. Labour was full of people like Corbyn - at least they stood behind him and smiled - Even Starmer did so.
The Northern working class voted Conservative - voted for Boris and were betrayed. His levelling up promise was bull.
He wasted a massive majority where he could have done so much - albeit that covid was no easy problem to be confronted with, and nor was the Russian invasion of its neighbour - impacting fuel prices in an unprecedented way which crushed family finances for many and damaged many aspects of the economy. These things were not Boris's fault, but he achieved nothing for the people who had given him their trust.
Farage is an opportunist. I don't like him. I don't trust him, but his party will continue to gain in popularity because the traditional parties neglected a very large proportion of the UK population. They not only ignored them, they mocked them. People who come on here and put up confected images of Farage with a Hitler moustache are doing exactly that. People who put images of Mussolini under my posts about working class concerns are doing exactly that. Working class concerns about work, migration, house prices are nothing to do with European fascists of the mid twentieth century.
Africa: Rapid urbanisation & densification. Policy focus needed on housing, food, health.
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