Can we stop asking nicely now?
For years the right have exploited fears based on nothing more than prejudice. We have to challenge this at every turn.
Telling us to wait for change has been the mantra for the centre, the moderates, the liberals and the progressives for decades. We waited. The change we got was populism.
Obama waited so long it was only until the polls supported same gender couples being able to marry that he did too. Labour listened so much to concerns over migration they helped fan the flames of xenophobia which brought us Brexit. The Trump victory has been spun as a sign of the economic anxiety of the times – nearly ten years after the credit crunch – despite the fact that at its heart, Trump’s rise was a movement of white supremacy.
We’re told have to hear out Putin while more camps open in Chechnya. We have to listen to the legitimate concerns of voters whose anti migrant sentiment is risking economic ruin just for the illusion of “taking back control” when we’d never actually lost it.
Every time a non-right wing candidate takes to a podium or despatch box, I swear they’re trying to find a fancy way to ask us to like them. I don’t want to like them. I don’t want someone to go down to the pub with. I want a leader whose going to charge into a wall for us.
The right have been calculated with their rhetoric. They prey on fears. For those doing badly, they make sure there’s someone in the firing line to blame. White cis heterosexuals can’t get a job after uni? It’s not the fault of the government. It’s migrants stealing jobs, it’s women for demanding respect that’s making you feel inadequate, it’s LGBTQ+ shoving their lives in the face of Britain. It’s an easy sell for people who are looking for someone to blame, who need a reason for life not working out. They’re not going to want to hear that the asylum seekers detained in Yard’s Wood have it worse, that hate crimes have spiked since Brexit, that many trans people are afraid to leave their house because of the abuse they get. The right focus upon selfishness and it works.
The opposition have not stood against this. The arguments have been about listening to ordinary people, hearing concerns, tilting our heads and giving a sympathetic nod to someone who can’t get a job and is blaming the Polish neighbour down the street.
Yet, the right’s arguments are often defunct. There are few facts to them and they’re easily argued. They almost never are faced down however, because the opposition wants to seem like a sympathetic father. It’s not good enough.
We need to stand behind our principles. Okay, so the right want to cut off foreign aid to “look after our own”? Then let’s break down why this is bullshit. If we to continue to drop bombs but don’t supply aid for people to survive then migration is just going to increase…and we know how much the right love that.
Foreign aid also fosters democracy. Poverty increases hatred, isolation and resentment towards the West. A lot of countries are in poverty in the first place because we raided their nations. We took resources, wealth and often people. Then we gave loans to be the nice guy, conveniently forgetting countries needed money in the first place because of us, so we gave massive debts – when really, we should have been paying reparations. We left a legacy of poverty and understandable resentment so it’s not really that surprising if someone ideologically hates the West and joins a group who wants to hurt the West. Foreign aid increases diplomatic respect, it strengthens bonds internationally and helps those with nowhere to turn. Even then, if you want to take the most selfish attitude with foreign aid, if you want to forget the fact we’re all humans and we share one world, then foreign aid keeps us safe and strengthens our global position.
There. An issue the centrists couldn’t deal with, because they were too scared. They would just say “well, we should help because it looks good for Britain” which is a useless answer that nobody on any side of the political spectrum ever buys.
It’s truly staggeringly easy to stand up for what’s right. What is right is often the most logical. However, nobody ever says that because now we have to accept ignorance is equal to expertise and hatred isn’t really being mean – it’s having economic anxiety or something.
Why shouldn’t we use Trident? Because there’s other nations with nuclear power and if we’re lucky enough to avoid wiping out the planet by triggering a massive nuclear war then in about thirty years whoever we bombed is going to want to come after us. We’ve got Trident but it’s pretty weak compared to other nations. The old super powers could easily overshadow that and our allies are changing every day thanks depending upon Trump’s mood when he wakes up on a morning.
Why should we have migrants? We’ll be poor if we don’t. Japan had low migration and a low birth rate and its economy stagnated. We need people to pay taxes. We also need people to look after the elderly. It’s not as though we’re in a position to talk when we have over a million expats in Europe, a significant amount whom are retired. Yet, we complain about people coming here and using our health care system (which isn’t actually a problem guys, that was another lie the Daily Mail sold you and did you even stop to fact check it?).
There’s an open goal about who the real leaches are. Most in work benefits go towards subsiding employers who won’t pay a decent wage. The real people scrounging off the state are employers who won’t uphold their responsibility to the British public. Politicians like to talk about hard working people so much, so why don’t they start sticking up for them against abusive and negligent employers?
Rhetoric is there to be spun. When politicians don’t stand by their words then no voter ever believes they’ll stand by their policies. I don’t want a nice guy inspiring hope. I want a Rottweiler snarling at any abuse or oppression that raises its head. I don’t care about how economically beneficial migrants are. My personal view is that, if you want to come here then come here. Who am I to deny the right to freedom of movement? However, too often the right slam left wing ideas as not being viable or as being bad on security when it’s simply not true.
We need to destroy the right’s argument. We’re good on security, we know what works in the economy while the right has failed. More than that, we can deliver social justice and that’s something the right will always want to keep out of reach.
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