It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy
This is superbly bang-on:
“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”
Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right
The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election
I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy
Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?
He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.
It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.
Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership
The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.
It leaves a real danger of sliding into a weird sort of new autocracy with no one willing to challenge the liberal consensus. What we've seen from history is great advancement when the existing consensus is challenged, from the enlightenment to heretical scientists to Calvinism/reformation and the end of colonialism. It is in cultures where the consensus can't be challenged like Islam where there has been no leaps forwards for society, in fact they have gone backwards with women's rights, gay rights and minority rights all going backwards based on an unchallengable consensus view.
Liberalism faced two pretty robust challenges after achieving hegemony. The first from about 1917 starting in Eastern Europe, and the second from the 1920s and 30s starting in Southern and Central Europe. It won both challenges. Finding a new creditable alternative is a bit of a task.
You seem to have missed the rise of China. Hint: it’s not exactly liberal
It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I don't really see what new challenge China poses. To me it's your bog standard authoritarian regime, which liberalism has seen off in the past. It's uniqueness is that it's very successful economically, as the received wisdom tends to be that such systems can't outcompete their democratic, liberal rivals. Classic end of history stuff, but it's an idea that I broadly find myself agreeing with. If we take the Fascist powers, they achieved pretty impressive feats of military power early on in the war, but by the middle of that war even the junior allied power, Britain, was massively outcompeting Fascist Germany in terms of industrial output. And then there was the United States of America, with all the might and power of the new world stepping in to the rescue of the old. I believe by the middle of the war the USA accounted for over half of the world's industrial and economic activity, and this continued into the 50s. The Americans had huge advantages in population, industrial and natural resources and they used them. None of the Axis powers had anything like what the Americans had to rely on (indeed, in some readings of the war the Axis powers were motivated to conquest by their desire to gain such resources). China today is, to my mind, to nationalist dictatorships what America was to liberal democracies.
I still think liberal democracy is superior because one of the reasons China got so rich is that they embraced, for a time, something of the liberal order. They allowed it to go so far, became stinking rich as a country (if it's not clear, I'm painting in broad strokes) and now we're seeing the reaction. I don't think their hybrid model of a decade or so ago could have long endured, and I don't think it has. Presently, they are rich. It is to be seen if the riches remain as they increasingly adopt the cult-of-personality model or if they begin to decline.
Are we past the days of having peers as PMs, in the sense of it being even legally possible? Though Lord Home got himself a safe seat as a MP pdq if I recall the recent discussion here. I'm sure someone could be persuaded to apply to the Chiltern Hundreds if need be, in a nice safe seat.
Nothing that legally says the PM cannot be in the Lords - although I imagine that there would be no such thing as a safe seat for a by-election these days, if a party tried to force one in such circumstances.
Halifax turned down PMship in 1940 on account of being a Lord
Is that so? I'd always assumed Labour wouldn't support him.
I read a couple of articles that had it as his for taking, but bottled it. He didn’t fancy being a war leader. Didn’t think we could win. Didn’t want to fight. The recent film of Churchill portrayed it like this? Is this revisionist history? It’s been revised and is more accurate?
Labour wanted Halifax and that was the general consensus of the Commons. The King wanted Halifax and was a bit upset when Halifax raised the objection of being a peer and so not able to operate effectively in the House.
That’s where I disagree with you Rottenborough. I can’t do it because I am a Lord buries the truth and distorts true history which needs to be revised, therefore your favourite history books on your shelf you always thought was history are lying to you and you need to get new ones. The truth being “havn’t slept for a week thinking I have to be war PM, I think we should make deal with Germans anyway.”
Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses.
By 1940, it wasn't even accepted that a PM couldn't sit in the Lords. It was only 38 years then since it had last happened (the equivalent of 1984 from now), and Curzon had been seriously considered as a PM candidate in the early 1920s.
While it was certainly seen as unhelpful that a PM might sit in a House where the main opposition had barely any representation, it wasn't an absolute bar.
In any case, there were provisions that could have been made to ease the difficulty. One was to amend the HoC standing orders, to allow a non-MP PM to be able to address MPs from within the chamber; IIRC, another would have been for the king to put Halifax's peerage into abeyance.
Either way, you don't lose a world war for a point of minor constitutional principle which wasn't even convention at that stage. Had Halifax been the MP and Churchill the peer (far from impossible), it's very likely that the latter would still have become PM.
Awesome post.
Opening bit
“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.
Absolutely spot on as the history as I know it. But does raise questions as, not without skills and merit was Halifax nonetheless not leadership material crucially in his own mind? And how history books would wrongly copy each other as the reason for the decision as something else?
One of the weaknesses of history books and historians is how so much of it just copies each other? Especially now in the internet age, it’s not so many sources as it appears if all says same thing with so few alternative perspectives.
Indeed - going back to primary sources often reveals interesting things.
A very good recent example was "Shattered Sword: The Untold Story of the Battle of Midway" which pointed out that much of the layers of scholarship on the battle was wrong. Among other things, the Japanese carriers had physical limitations which meant that various things couldn't be true. And a major Japanese source had been proved to be less than accurate y historians in Japan....
From my reading of the period, Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM - in a World War*. I think he would have jumped at the job, if it had been a matter of managing the continuing recovery of the economy, dealing with social issues and a bit of diplomacy.
*I seem to recall a story, that one of the pacifist types in the Labour party asked Atlee why he was serving under that "ghastly warmonger and warlover, Churchill?". Atlee is supposed to have replied that the country needed a warmonger.
I think what you have added to what David posted nails it now.
“ Halifax accepted that there was no constitutional bar on him being PM in the Lords; he turned the job down primarily because he didn't want to do it and recognised that Churchill would overshadow him, whatever their official statuses. “.
+
“ Halifax saw himself as the wrong man to be PM in a war “
= pretty much the true history of what happened. 👍🏻
Though still probably some questions around prevalence of “sign a truce rather than attempt a war” feeling? Like you said, go back to original sources, that would be a view of it from the other side of the war, without knowing that we won, without full or any awareness of the horrors of the concentration camps, and likely so many other ways where the view would be different, than the view of the same spot in history post war.
Halifax hated Hitler. His position *before* the fall of France was that no peace was possible with Germany, if Hitler was still in charge. We know this because he said this (and it was documented as being said) to an intermediary* with the German government.
It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.
Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"
Longitudinal analysis reveals high prevalence of Epstein-Barr virus associated with multiple sclerosis https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.abj8222 Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a chronic inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system of unknown etiology. We tested the hypothesis that MS is caused by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) in a cohort comprising more than 10 million young adults on active duty in the US military, 955 of whom were diagnosed with MS during their period of service. Risk of MS increased 32-fold after infection with EBV but was not increased after infection with other viruses, including the similarly transmitted cytomegalovirus. Serum levels of neurofilament light chain, a biomarker of neuroaxonal degeneration, increased only after EBV seroconversion. These findings cannot be explained by any known risk factor for MS and suggest EBV as the leading cause of MS.
Note that something like 90% of adults will have had EBV.
Thanks for sharing, Mrs Jonathan suffers from MS. It's good to see science getting on top of this.
TimT said: I can't believe how excited I am at the prospect of having eagles nesting on our property. rcs1000 said: Just checking: do you own a small dog?
Bald Eagle update.
It's official, we have a pair of bald eagles now on our property at this very moment. One is perched on our roof, the other in the top of a tree across two pastures. They are active. Hoping this means they build a nest and hatch a brood in March.
Bald eagles grow to be about 15lbs. Our small dog is 22 lbs. Given physics, and two big Geman shepherds to help out, not so worried about Bernie. The free-range chickens, however ...
Eagles or chickens? What does PB think?
I’m sure @TSE could never be accused of being chicken.
It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy
This is superbly bang-on:
“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”
Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right
The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election
I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy
Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?
He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.
It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.
Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership
The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.
It leaves a real danger of sliding into a weird sort of new autocracy with no one willing to challenge the liberal consensus. What we've seen from history is great advancement when the existing consensus is challenged, from the enlightenment to heretical scientists to Calvinism/reformation and the end of colonialism. It is in cultures where the consensus can't be challenged like Islam where there has been no leaps forwards for society, in fact they have gone backwards with women's rights, gay rights and minority rights all going backwards based on an unchallengable consensus view.
Liberalism faced two pretty robust challenges after achieving hegemony. The first from about 1917 starting in Eastern Europe, and the second from the 1920s and 30s starting in Southern and Central Europe. It won both challenges. Finding a new creditable alternative is a bit of a task.
You seem to have missed the rise of China. Hint: it’s not exactly liberal
It's interesting, isn't it? I mean, I don't really see what new challenge China poses. To me it's your bog standard authoritarian regime, which liberalism has seen off in the past. It's uniqueness is that it's very successful economically, as the received wisdom tends to be that such systems can't outcompete their democratic, liberal rivals. Classic end of history stuff, but it's an idea that I broadly find myself agreeing with. If we take the Fascist powers, they achieved pretty impressive feats of military power early on in the war, but by the middle of that war even the junior allied power, Britain, was massively outcompeting Fascist Germany in terms of industrial output. And then there was the United States of America, with all the might and power of the new world stepping in to the rescue of the old. I believe by the middle of the war the USA accounted for over half of the world's industrial and economic activity, and this continued into the 50s. The Americans had huge advantages in population, industrial and natural resources and they used them. None of the Axis powers had anything like what the Americans had to rely on (indeed, in some readings of the war the Axis powers were motivated to conquest by their desire to gain such resources). China today is, to my mind, to nationalist dictatorships what America was to liberal democracies.
I still think liberal democracy is superior because one of the reasons China got so rich is that they embraced, for a time, something of the liberal order. They allowed it to go so far, became stinking rich as a country (if it's not clear, I'm painting in broad strokes) and now we're seeing the reaction. I don't think their hybrid model of a decade or so ago could have long endured, and I don't think it has. Presently, they are rich. It is to be seen if the riches remain as they increasingly adopt the cult-of-personality model or if they begin to decline.
What appears "new" - at least so far - is that it is authoritarian and successful, judged in terms of its power, including economic.
This all changes, of course, if the economy runs out of road.
It confirms that Cummings is infuriatingly clever and cunning - if you are his enemy
This is superbly bang-on:
“Cummings thinks remainers are invariably fools, above all the better-educated ones, because they are incapable of accepting that they might be wrong. His shorthand for these people is Jolyons (after the remainer lawyer Jolyon Maugham) or, as he says of Keir Starmer, the ones who can’t resist giving “the London idiot answer” to any difficult question because they daren’t think for themselves. When Starmer got himself tangled up over the question of whether “only women have a cervix”, it was, Cummings says, because “he’s a dead player working off a script” – and the voters can smell that a mile off.”
Remainers are invariably fools, ESPECIALLY the posher ones. Absolutely right
The article also contains the brilliant revelation that the only reason Cummings and Boris prorogued parliament was to drive their opponents crazy (it worked), get them to talk about nothing else, until they eventually went so mad they provoked an election
I guess Cummings could be lying, but if it’s true it’s genius. It all went wrong for Boris when he lost this guy
Na, it is just that he like you, wants to rebut the idea that Leavers are generally thick, so it remains an obsession of his, like it is yours. It is OK @Leon, you aren't all thick. Obsessed about a trivial and pointless thing, yes, but not all of you are stupid. That feel better now?
He's got a point about some remainers not being able to think independently of the consensus liberal London view. It's the whole argument I've had loads of times with a few people on here about wages at the lower end, there's loads of studies saying it wasn't impacted by A10 migration but then we've had loads of real world evidence of wage rises for those people since Brexit because of low skilled labour shortages. It's like those same people who can't see beyond the phrase "follow the science" on the pandemic. Sometimes the consensus view is wrong and it's been difficult to get some more ardent remainers to see that, whether that's on wages for the lower skilled or on the correct post-vaccine pandemic response.
It's almost as if the consensus is there to exist and not be challenged, which we know is a recipe for disaster in the long term.
Yes. I think it’s essentially the religious module in the human brain, which is at work here, the bit of our mind wired for faith. Except god is replaced by secular atheist faith in this or that liberal piety. In this case, the secular faith is EU membership
The mad posh Remainers confronted by Brexit are like hardcore Catholics confronted by “heresy”. They cannot understand how or why anyone would believe this, Brexit is evil and wrong and can never be right.
A book I read recently - it may have been 'Sapiens' by Yuval Noah Harari, or it may not have been - had as one of its central premises the tendency of the human brain to divide people into 'us' and 'them'. It went on to see how much better 'us' liberals were at not doing this - not like 'them' conservatives. And how 'us' liberals were therefore better. It was a very interesting book with an absolutely startling lack of self-awareness.
I find it interesting that as religion as such fades in the population, the instincts and habits we associate with religion have been re-purposed.
Cookie - sounds like someone has read Jonathan Haidt. I always love this video from him
Comments
I still think liberal democracy is superior because one of the reasons China got so rich is that they embraced, for a time, something of the liberal order. They allowed it to go so far, became stinking rich as a country (if it's not clear, I'm painting in broad strokes) and now we're seeing the reaction. I don't think their hybrid model of a decade or so ago could have long endured, and I don't think it has. Presently, they are rich. It is to be seen if the riches remain as they increasingly adopt the cult-of-personality model or if they begin to decline.
It was after the French defeat that he suggested the old WWI plan of an armistice with Germany if the BEF was pushed out of France and France fell.
Basically - "Shit, the Germans have won. What do we do now?"
*Swedish chap, IIRC.
This all changes, of course, if the economy runs out of road.
https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_the_moral_roots_of_liberals_and_conservatives?language=en