It is the current fashion in populist and nationalist circles to be anti-Brexit. As I have mentioned before, I think Brexit is a distraction and that nothing can change until the present dispensation of politics in Westminster is also eliminated, which is identical to that of the European Union. Having seen various podcasts and posts by so-called nationalists who have latched onto Brexit as some kind of potential quick fix to our problems, I also think that becoming too involved in Brexit often turns nationalists into populists. They then quite quickly become attached to the cults of personality of various celebrity politicians, one of whom is Ann Widdicombe, who returned from retirement to join the Brexit Party just in time for the European elections at the end of May, resulting in her being elected as an MEP. I recently saw that many alleged nationalists had posted this video of her first speech in the European Parliament on Facebook and elsewhere:
The video is from that bastion of populist media Russia Today, the mouthpiece of Vladimir Putin's Eurasian politics and shows Ann 'sticking it to EU'. Indeed, people were so pleased with her performance that they did not even bother to listen to some of the buffoonery she actually came out with, or perhaps they wilfully ignored it, which would be worse. I would call Anne an idiot, but if one knows one's etymology, that would be insulting to someone from the countryside. Ann's problem is that she obviously did not spend enough time in the countryside. A born urbanite, she grew up in Bath before moving to study in Singapore, then Bath, then Oxford, before moving to London to pursue her career in politics. Her bourgeois Christian liberalism can be heard throughout the speech in which she rants about 'democracy' and 'the oppressed' to signal her 'virtue'. I will come back to this point, but the obvious bufoonery comes when she talks about the EU regulations on fishing:
I've found out that on my first day that this place has decided - at least this place hasn't decided - the powers that be have decided to actually increase the size of fishermen's meshes, thereby reducing their income by 40%.
I have broached this subject before: trawling with micro-mesh nets has led to the complete destruction of the eco-systems in Britain's coastal waters. The seas are all but barren from five miles in and this silly wench wants to continue overfishing. The EU on this particular issue is correct and the populist absolutely in the wrong. The unsustainable policy Widdicombe supports will not even help the British fishermen in the long run, because before long, there will in any case be no more fish to catch at all; but because one idea is associated with a particularly detestable group and an opposing idea associated with a group who seem to make the right noises in other areas, a stupid idea suddenly gains merit. The Brexit Party, it is important to remember, ARE NOT nationalists. I wish I had a pound for the amount of times I have heard people claim Nigel Farage to be #OurGuy.
The fact is that Farage, Widdicombe et al are Whig liberals, and as Whig liberals, they are just as internationalist as their socialist/communist counterparts in both Westminster and the EU. For them, Britain is a club which anyone can join, just as long as they promise to uphold liberal values. The liberal Left are not quite as barking mad as the extreme Left, but equally, they pose no threat whatsoever to the Leftist hegemony, because they will capitulate every time the Left uses their own morality against them, as soon as one of the trigger words like 'oppression', 'racism', 'bigotry', 'homophobia' etc. appears. In fact, it is often the liberal populist who instigates the discourse to try to beat the social justice brigade at their own game and on their own terms. This speech above by Ann Widdicombe is a prime example, and what is sad is that, unlike the more cynical Farage, whom I have discussed before, I think that Ann is actually sincere in her populist beliefs, as a committed Christian, but too stupid to realise one cannot win playing by the rules in a rigged game. The post-Marxian Left have always had a term for such people: useful idiots. Of course, the term is used ironically these days, as the idiots the Bolsheviks refered to were the peasantry, whom they intended to use as revolutionary footsoldiers and hence the etymological term as people who worked the land; whereas now they are the liberal bourgeoisie a.k.a. conservatives.
Ann's useful idiocy can be seen by the fact the extreme Left always pick fights with her as a soft target, such as when she was invited to participate against Stephen Fry and Christopher Hitchens in an Intelligence Squared debate (see video above). Ann has to defend the position that the Catholic Church is a force for moral good in the world, and on her side is a low-IQ African bishop, who has also obviously been carefully selected as a useful idiot. The extreme Left denies race realism and IQ even as they exploit it. Ann's commitment to the liberal values both Christianity and militant atheistic Leftism share, but not historically the Roman Catholic Church, is her weakness and is the ultimate source of her liberal morality. It is based on the idea that the perceivedly greatest sufferer and most oppressed is most adored and that the oppressor is by extension evil. As the Roman Catholic Church has historically deviated from Christ's teachings because of its fusing with Roman law and philosophy from the founding of the Church of Rome, Ann's position is made untenable.
Nevertheless, a smarter debater would have at least made a good fight of it. Just as it is possible for materialists to attack spiritualists with materialist arguments, so it is possible for spiritualists to attack materialists with spiritualist arguments. When Hitchens talks of human dignity, one might ask where that human dignity comes from if we are mere lumps of meat. Is the whole purpose of life to avoid pain and grow fat and comfortable as Fry and Hitchens have? Indeed, if Fry and Hitchens are so concerned about all the suffering in the world, why have they not cut back on their lives of opulence and plenty to help those with nothing, although that is a material argument? The problem is Ann and Bishop Onaiyekan do not have the courage to state the spiritual argument that people need to suffer in order to overcome the source of suffering to reach a higher level of spiritual truth. How can one write poetry having avoided pain, conflict, suffering, struggle and all that makes life harsh and therefore real? And perhaps most importantly is to ask whence Hitchens' and Fry's Benthamite morality comes from if one removes its Christian foundations. Why does it matter if someone who has no consequence in the world suffers or dies? Suffering cannot be its own morality. It is a shame that no one of a level to ask such questions will ever be asked to a live debate against these charlatan philosophers, but the Left always pick their targets.
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