If you believe a word of this Russian hacking business, then you also have to believe the Russiagate rubbish about Brexit and about Donald Trump. I assume for your sake that you do not?
We are back to having a Political Class that is entirely American in culture, knowing little or nothing about Britain. Within that, you have to be a Republican or a Democrat, a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, a believer in Chinese conspiracies all over the place or a believer in Russian conspiracies all over the place. Most people in Britain are in neither of those camps, with absolutely no desire to be.
We are back to having a Political Class that is entirely American in culture, knowing little or nothing about Britain. Within that, you have to be a Republican or a Democrat, a Trump supporter or a Biden supporter, a believer in Chinese conspiracies all over the place or a believer in Russian conspiracies all over the place. Most people in Britain are in neither of those camps, with absolutely no desire to be.
But this nonsense will pass, or at least it will only come round from time to time. What really matters is that just as the Southern Strategy caused the two parties in the United States to swap sides on social issues, at whatever discomfort to their existing members and supporters, so the Red Wall has caused Labour and the Conservatives to swap sides on economic issues, at whatever discomfort to their existing members and supporters.
In both cases, there is the question of historiography. Republicans have come to regard their own first President of the United States with something between ambivalence and outright hostility, while Conservatives are going to adopt the same attitude, but decidedly more on the hostile side, to the figure whom they have hitherto held up as Britain's greatest ever peacetime Prime Minister.
As the Republican Party now includes and promotes full-blown supporters of the Confederacy, so the Conservative Party will very soon include and promote a great many full-blown supporters of the anti-Thatcherite side in the 1980s, and especially of the miners. The Red Wall also contains many centres of Irish Catholic population.
In both cases, there is the question of historiography. Republicans have come to regard their own first President of the United States with something between ambivalence and outright hostility, while Conservatives are going to adopt the same attitude, but decidedly more on the hostile side, to the figure whom they have hitherto held up as Britain's greatest ever peacetime Prime Minister.
As the Republican Party now includes and promotes full-blown supporters of the Confederacy, so the Conservative Party will very soon include and promote a great many full-blown supporters of the anti-Thatcherite side in the 1980s, and especially of the miners. The Red Wall also contains many centres of Irish Catholic population.
I am delighted to be living in what is now a marginal seat for the governing party rather than a safe seat for the Opposition. We are already getting an awful lot done. And I am delighted to have a Government that is economically to the left of the 2019 Labour manifesto. That is not because of Covid-19. Sajid Javid was sacked before that. The March 2020 Budget, which closed the era that had begun with the Budget of December 1976, was barely about Covid-19.
If you wanted to go back to that era, then you could always vote for Keir Starmer. I suppose someone has to. But those economic views are massively unpopular. Ours are what people want. Ours are what people are going to get. And ours are what people are already getting. From the Conservatives. The Centre is the think tank for this new era. It already has plenty going on.
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