Too true Canum Maum.
Identity politics comes firmly under the heading:
You can fool some of the people all the time, all the people some of the time, but you can't fool all of the people all the time.

And to that I add, thankfully the pendulum of sense and reality, appears to be swinging back.

Dan

Correct!
A small comment on the return to Enlightenment traditions.
The ‘Great Conversation‘ which contains most of the ideas of the great philosophers, thinkers, writers and theologians has continued for nearly 2000 years. Most wrote seriously of the events of their times and made predictions fir the future.

From today’s perspective, Only one name from the 20th century could seriously be added to that great list of learned people, mostly men,

James Burnham.
Although he wrongly, predicted Germany would win the 2nd war, that prediction came to pass in economic terms with Germany’s eventual domination of Europe.Burnham wrote of the start of the beginning of the self-destruction of socialism in 1945. He saw its two great champions destroy each other.
He predicted in 1945 the rise of The Managerial Class - the group Graham describes so factually.
He predicted in 1949, the uniting of the working people and the entrepreneurial classes to elected leaders who would destroy the Managerial Elites.

Well done Graham ... you’ve very accurately confirmed his predictions.

Keith Kennelly

Ps Burnham’s three books should be required reading in our education institutions
The Managerial Revolution, 1945, The Macheviallians’ 1949, and The Suicide of The West 1960s?
They are heavy reading ... in the language of a true scholar.

.

Dear Graham,

.

You wrote :

1. « The primary argument that has won in the UK is that while cooperation between countries is a good thing, and supranational bodies are an important mechanism to achieve that, these bodies should be no more than coordinating mechanisms »

Is not the UK itself such a supranational body ? The UK is a unitary state composed of four countries : England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland (c.f., the UK parliamentary web site : http://members.parliament.uk/region). And is not the UK more than just a “coordinating mechanism” ?

What freedom of choice do each of the four countries have as to who does the “coordinating” – UK or EU ?

2. « … the Tory take-out message was "Let's get this thing done" – "this thing", not even "Brexit"… ». Well, Boris made no bones about what he meant by “this thing” :

http://www.newsmax.com/newsfront/boris-johnson-brexit-bulldozer-gridlock/2019/12/10/id/945321/

3. « This UK election was about two things – whether the nation state is the best and primary unit of democratic governance; and welfare capitalism versus retro-socialism, cultural Marxism, and Modern Monetary Theory »

The election gave me the impression it was about two things too, Graham, but not the same two things that you indicate in your article.

What I saw was that Boris was engaged in an all-out electoral campaign to “get Brexit done” as though he was disputing a second referendum on that single important question. Whereas, as you rightly pointed out, “labour had no real position on Brexit”. Labour was not campaigning in a pseudo-referendum on Brexit. It was campaigning in the 2019 UK general election. Boris and Jeremy did not appear to me to be participating in the same election.

Boris and the Tories won what they (rightly or wrongly) interpreted to be a pseudo-referendum on Brexit and now have to deal with the very real, vengeful, Moby-Dick demolisher they just roped in (much to their surprise) on the basis of “winner takes all”.

.

Keith Kennelly- James Burnham sounds interesting and dangerous. Appropriate material for my reading list. I'll be careful not to burn my fingers. Thanks.

Banjo- Mate. In battle it's not your hair cut that wins. ;)

I feel we are, or maybe, at an inflexion point in history. We'll need to await Trump's re-election bid to know for certain.

But just now it seems that the post-WW2 institutions and certainties are being unwound.

The march toward all-encompassing multi-national organisations has stalled and is no longer favoured or paid homage to. The US is resigning as the world's policeman. The UN is on the nose everywhere. COP25 shows that there isn't and never will be agreement about how to reduce world emissions, even for those who think such things matter.

The guiding notion of free-trade is being rejected. Not because it doesn't work as advertised but that it doesn't work in the real world. Nations like China, Vietnam and India have or are playing the system and, while the west was prepared to turn a blind-eye to it for a while, they no longer will.

Previously it was hoped that if we allowed China to cheat while they developed, they'd eventually become good free-traders and abide by the rules. No one thinks that any longer. And so they are now being called-out on their cheating and being forced to back-track.

Equally, the lower and much of the middle-classes in the west are now realising that they were played for chumps by the elite pushing free-trade and multi-nationalism. They were told that it was good to allow manufacturing and its jobs to go overseas because those jobs would be replaced by something better.

But the jobs weren't replaced. Instead an elite whose jobs were never in jeopardy got the benefit of cheap foreign goods paid for by cheap foreign labour, while the lower classes got shafted.

/cont