You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

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BELOW ARE TWO videos of recent media appearances by me. First is an interview on GB News’s State of the Nation, hosted by Jacob Rees-Mogg. Jacob and I discussed the very welcome criticism of the government’s net zero strategy by the GMB union, which represents thousands of workers in the oil and gas industries.

The second is an interview on Iain Dale’s show on LBC. This discussion centred on the reasons behind new polling data showing that many rank-and-file trade unionists had deserted Labour and thrown their support behind Reform UK.

Enjoy!

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

IT WAS ONE of the most troubling images I’d seen. Two Metropolitan police officers were manning the barriers at a protest in central London organised by the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement in the wake of the George Floyd killing. Only these officers were not focused on their duties. Instead, both had dropped to one knee – a deliberate gesture designed to show they were on the side of the protestors. The officers had become part of the demonstration they were there to police.

Anyone who believed that the thin blue line existed to uphold the law impartially – and particularly when policing high-profile political demonstrations – might, at that moment, have been disabused of such a notion.

Or perhaps that happened a few days later when police officers in Bristol purposely refused to intervene while BLM protestors vandalised a statue of Edward Colston and tossed it into a river.

Or maybe on the numerous occasions that officers had been filmed, in uniform, dancing and prancing at Pride parades. Or when a deputy chief constable released a video to mark ‘International Pronouns Day’. Or when any number of citizens were arrested for saying and doing things – reading from the Bible in public, for example – which were deemed to have offended against modern progressive ideology.

Such spectacles provided confirmation that, as well as being occasional defenders of law and order, police officers were now also political activists – and specifically for the most modish causes. Nowhere was this more evident than in the arena of racial politics, where the stance of the police was often scarcely different to that of some of Britain’s most radical race activist groups.

As it was for the police, so it was for most of the public sector, where a new ‘lanyard class’ of middle-class white liberal managers, armed with university degrees and guilt complexes, now ruled the roost, peddling hardline progressive dogma and professing to bring harmony and unity while increasingly doing the very opposite.

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As someone who has worked in an emergency service for nearly 30 years, I have seen this phenomenon up close. A well-intentioned and justified desire to eliminate prejudice began to mutate into something very different – namely a relentless political crusade which encouraged workers to see themselves as members of either a privileged or oppressed group, bombarded them with lectures promoting the new religion of ‘diversity, equality and inclusion’, and made career progression contingent upon being able to preach that particular gospel on demand.

And it was all buttressed by the Equality Act 2010, which – read Part 11 of the Act if you don’t believe this – made it perfectly legal for certain workers to be treated more favourably on account of their ‘protected characteristics’ (of which race is one).

For the police, the road to this new politicised world began with the appalling murder of Stephen Lawrence and the subsequent Macpherson report, which branded the force ‘institutionally racist’, and for which senior officers seem to have spent most of the years since desperately trying to atone. This has led them to some pretty dark places. It is, for example, the current position of the National Police Chiefs’ Council, as set out in its ‘race action plan’, that its desired goal of ‘racial equity’ means ‘responding to individuals and communities according to their specific needs’ and that ‘it does not mean treating everyone “the same” or being “colour blind”’. So much for equality before the law!

The same document also resolves to bring about ‘an end to racial disparities’ in policing outcomes, including ‘the likelihood of people being criminalised by the police’ – seemingly without concern for the differing rates of criminality among certain groups. The document reads as if it has been penned by the most militant BLM activist.

You can probably guess where I’m going with all this. It was against this whole backdrop of incessant race-based teaching and propaganda that police officers arrived at Belmont Road, Southampton, last December, having been mobilised to an altercation. Henry Nowak was bleeding out on a driveway. The man who had stabbed him five times, Vickrum Digwa, claimed to officers - falsely - that Henry had racially abused and assaulted him. A prostrate Henry, gasping for air, told the officers several times that he couldn’t breathe. He also said he’d been stabbed.

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But that didn’t matter. For the key accusation had already been made. The other man had alleged racism. That was enough for all the necessary warning lights and alarms to go off in the minds of the officers and for their intensive conditioning to kick in. Doubtless Digwa made the allegation in the full knowledge that that would be its effect.

Henry’s pleadings were ignored. He was placed in handcuffs and shortly thereafter departed this world. As the father of a boy, like Henry, in his first year at university in an ordinary English city, I cannot begin to explain how moved – and angered – I was when viewing footage of the incident.

I don’t know if the officers were motivated specifically by anti-white bias. But I think it highly likely their actions were in some way influenced by the ethnicity of the perpetrator and his claim of having been racially abused and assaulted.

In light of everything that police officers have been force-fed in the way of DEI dogma over the past quarter of a century, it is hard to see how it could have been otherwise. In fact, such is the intense focus on racial bias training in the constabulary concerned – Hampshire and Isle of Wight – a number of its officers have reported feeling ‘controlled and pressured’ by it. The same constabulary has publicly declared that ‘Being anti-racist, ethical and inclusive is top of our agenda.’ You might have thought that preventing and detecting crime would be the main priority for any police force. You’d be wrong.

It doesn’t take a lot, in this context, to see how police officers feel obliged to walk on eggshells when dealing with minority communities, or why they look the other way when, for example, evidence emerges that groups of Pakistani Muslim men are systematically raping young white girls in towns across England. Get it wrong, and bang goes the career. So best keep schtum.

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The reaction of the progressive elites to Henry Nowak’s murder is also highly instructive. When George Floyd was murdered, politicians and celebrities aplenty lined up to express their indignation and support the protests that swept the US and Britain. The ‘rage against the machine’ was, apparently, justified back then. But now all we get are appeals not to ‘politicise’ the murder of a young man or to ‘stir up tensions’.

Remember Rhiannon Whyte? She was the hotel worker brutally murdered in 2024 by an asylum seeker from Sudan. Her mother, Siobhan, has revealed on social media that political leaders have shown no interest in engaging with her, despite her having reached out to them several times. Are any of us truly surprised at that?

The elites are playing with fire. The public can see their two-tier approach, and they don’t like it. People recognise, too, that there has been a massive oversteer in the anti-racism crusade, and that it is leading to its own serious injustices and inconsistencies.

When even Jack Straw, home secretary when the Macpherson Report was published, argues that police anti-racism guidelines have gone too far, we are obliged to listen.

Ultimately, this isn’t just about the tragic last moments of a university student on a street in Southampton. It is about everything that goes with it, in particular the stark divergence in priorities between a liberal ruling class and a large chunk of the populace that increasingly feels as though the state machine is biased against it.

For that reason, I sense that the Henry Nowak murder will, in years to come, just like the Southport massacre, be seen as a pivotal moment causing a decisive shift in the public mood. I suspect that our politicians sense it, too. Which perhaps explains why they are so desperate to quell the growing backlash.

I fear they are too late. The anger and discord are here to stay.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

IT WAS INEVITABLE, wasn’t it? The moment Robert Kenyon was announced as the Reform UK candidate for the Makerfield by-election, the social media archaeologists were on to him, digging meticulously through layer after layer of his past commentary in the hope of excavating some valuable gem – one they hoped might render his campaign dead in the water before it had even begun.

Because that’s the world in which we now live, right? A world in which full-time offendotrons go hunting for evidence of ‘wrongspeak’ by their political opponents, all with the purpose of suppressing views they don’t like and ejecting from the public square anyone who dares express them.

Less and less are contentious issues judged on the merits of competing arguments. Instead, they are tested according to whether a particular argument conflicts with what passes for fashionable opinion among a cohort of self-appointed liberal-left political and cultural gatekeepers. And, slowly but surely, this new authoritarianism has seeped into our state and corporate institutions, so that the commanding heights of our public life are now dominated by ‘progressive’ ideology, and we end up at a place where a major city council sees fit to offer ‘safe space conversations’ to anxious staff ahead of a visit by Nigel Farage, a man who may very possibly be our next prime minister.

The whole thing has had a suffocating effect. ‘I disagree with you,’ has increasingly been replaced by ‘You mustn’t say that.’ The causing of ‘offence’ through the expression of an unwoke political or moral opinion is seen as a grievous sin, with transgressors fair game for vilification or cancellation, particularly if they have any sort of public profile.

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So you could sense the new puritans positively salivating at the prospect of unearthing something incriminating from Kenyon’s past, all the more so when it emerged that his ‘X’ account had for some undefined reason been temporarily suspended.

And, sure enough, they turned up some mildly embarrassing artefacts, including a tasteless remark about Carol Voderman and some spicy comments about women drivers and immigration.

But, look, Kenyon is an ordinary working-class guy – a white-van-driving plumber and former army reservist – who, during many years of activity on social media, has, like millions of others, occasionally engaged in some off-colour banter.

Though he speaks well in front of a camera, I dare say he never imagined he would one day stand for parliament and, while I am no supporter of Reform, I think the party deserves credit for selecting a local man with no background in politics and who appears to be the sort of bloke you might find yourself standing next to in the pub or on a football terrace. Much rather that than someone who has taken the conventional route to Westminster: university, thinktank or charity, MP’s assistant, minister’s special advisor, and eventually a safe parliamentary seat.

I do not argue that those who stand in elections are entitled to expect a free pass for anything they have done in their lives until that point. On the contrary, scrutiny of those who seek to govern our country is a good thing, especially where it shines a light on flawed policy commitments or exposes lies, hypocrisy or corruption.

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But that plainly isn’t what is going on with Kenyon. Instead, what we are seeing is character assassination, an attempt to convince voters in Makerfield that the Reform candidate isn’t fit to represent them on the green benches, not because his arguments are defective or he has committed serious impropriety, but because he is morally a Very Bad Human Being.

The pitchfork-wielders pursuing Kenyon have an innate loathing for what they see as the reactionary working-classes. They view such people as low-IQ ‘gammon’ unworthy of holding political office. Their prejudice was laid bare after the Brexit vote and still lingers.

They see politics as the preserve of their own kind – morally-enlightened guardians of civilised society who hold the ‘correct’ opinions and are therefore uniquely qualified to run the country and control its institutions. There is no place in the corridors of power for members of the lower orders who dare to express un-PC views from time to time.

But here’s the thing. Cancel culture, and the general attempt to demonise anyone who has ever expressed an unfashionable opinion, is meeting with growing resistance. Voters are increasingly unmoved by it. In fact, many are sick of it.

So when the progressive elites launch an assault on a new target, they are finding less and less that the mud sticks. When a country is functioning effectively, the masses are less inclined to rock the boat – or to rally to the support of anyone so minded. But when the nation is going to the dogs, they are more willing to get behind dissenting voices, to defend those from ordinary backgrounds who are brave enough to speak unvarnished truth to power, to express themselves in plain language like the man on the street, and to challenge the status quo.

If Robert Kenyon had stood for a mainstream party a decade ago, his past comments, once uncovered, would have sounded the death knell for his candidature and reputation. And there would likely have been little public protest.

Not so now. Things are shifting. People don’t care about such things any longer. They look at where the progressive authoritarians have taken the country, and they feel no kinship with them, nor any desire to see their critics silenced.

Cancel culture is on the retreat. Heresy is in vogue. You don’t have to be a supporter of Robert Kenyon or his party to welcome that long-overdue reset.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won’t agree with all of Mr Embery’s policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

IF I WERE a Reform UK operative running a mole at the top of the Labour party, I would give him or her one simple instruction: restart the Brexit wars!

For nothing would be more likely to inflict electoral damage on Labour, and play right into the hands of Nigel Farage, than the reopening of the rancorous EU referendum debate.

Many will therefore be utterly perplexed that Labour appears to be embarking on that destructive course. After Wes Streeting told a Blairite thinktank that Brexit had been a ‘catastrophic mistake’, an under-pressure Andy Burnham quickly declared that he would not be advocating a return to the EU in the upcoming by-election in Leave-supporting Makerfield – only for footage of him doing exactly that at last year’s Labour conference to immediately resurface.

We’ve since seen other senior Labour figures pressed in interviews to reassure Leave voters that there would be no attempt in the future to reverse Brexit – and in some cases conspicuously failing to do so.

All of which means that, having previously proclaimed the debate dead, Labour is fighting the battle all over again – and is suspected by many of secretly organising to force Britain back into bed with Brussels. Reform UK must think all its Christmases have come at once.

I happen to be that rare thing in politics: a pro-Brexit Labour party member. People like me were once commonplace inside the party. But that was back in the days when a rich Eurosceptic seam ran through Labour, rooted in the principles of sovereignty and democracy, and articulated by titans such as Tony Benn, Michael Foot, Barbara Castle and Peter Shore. Nowadays, any Eurosceptic is about as welcome inside the party as a hedgehog would be at a nudist colony.

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Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

WHAT DOES ‘CLASS’ mean in Britain today? Are the traditional markers of social class still relevant? As our material conditions have improved over the generations, do we still have a working class in any meaningful sense – and, if so, who belongs to it?

Well, an intriguing new study has found that many of us think of class in very different terms to how our forebears might have done.

The study, by research firm Attest, suggests that, for growing numbers of Britons, the old fixed class structures hold limited relevance and have been supplanted by perceptions of social status that are more fluid.

For example, more than a third of adult Britons regard themselves as belonging to a different class from that which they were born into, while one in seven are members of a new ‘polyclass’, meaning they identify across multiple classes.

Such sentiments are particularly prevalent among younger generations, with around half of Millennials and Gen Z declaring they have either moved class or hold more than one class identity. Similarly, those from privileged backgrounds are significantly more likely to identify across multiple class groups.

Perhaps none of this should come as a surprise. This is, after all, the era in which the political and cultural elites peddled the concept of gender self-identification, which advanced the principle that objective truth should be subordinated to our internal feelings. So, in that spirit, why shouldn’t, say, a person of high social status identify as a horny-handed working-class son of toil? Isn’t class fluidity as valid as gender fluidity? I jest only slightly.

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More seriously, the research does reveal something rather alarming – that class chameleonism of this kind comes with a price. Of the Gen Z polyclass, for example, just over a quarter say they feel they do not truly belong anywhere, and almost a fifth reveal that they experience ‘imposter syndrome’ as a consequence of their class identity.

It cannot be a coincidence – can it? – that this is the cohort of people in our society which has been most exposed to an ideological blitzkrieg that told them they were citizens of the world, that open borders were a good thing, that common identities were all a bit reactionary and intolerant (unless, of course, they were minority identities, in which case full-throated celebration was called for), and that being inclusive and welcoming, even to the extent that one’s own sense of belonging was compromised, was virtuous. And now these disorientated young men and women don’t quite know who they are or where they fit into society. Fancy.

When it comes to working-class Britons, however, the research tells a somewhat contrasting story. For this group, class remains a fixed feature of their lives, with around 70% saying they continue to identify with the class into which they were born.

Again, this isn’t surprising. After all, when one’s life chances – such as in the way of career progression and opportunities for travel and cultural exploration – are constrained by a lack of wealth, such sentiments as attachment to place, rootedness and a desire for social solidarity are heightened. Belonging often means something different – and more profound – to a person who is tied to a place as a result of the hand he or she has been dealt in life.

The Attest study also finds that, despite the blurring of class lines, classism and accentism are still alive and well, with 49% revealing they have been negatively judged because of their class background and 35% because of their accent. Such prejudice is a stain on our society. Nobody should be made to feel inferior on account of the circumstances of their upbringing or the way they naturally speak. Take Angela Rayner, for example. She may not be everyone’s cup of tea, but she surely deserves great credit for, in the face of constant petty snobbery, never attempting to soften her bluff northern accent.

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It is easy in this day and age to forget that working-class people continue to suffer this kind of discrimination. Or that the upper echelons of our society – across politics, media, industry, the law, and even some sports – are still heavily dominated by those born into wealth and privilege.

But, then, working-class people have never received sufficient credit for the efforts they make in ensuring that our society functions – the people who collect our bins and look after our sick and elderly and deliver our parcels, the brickies and plumbers and joiners.

But I digress. This latest research ultimately demonstrates that things are less clear cut on the issue of class than they once were. And that the traditional barometers for determining social status are in flux.

Some citizens will assume they’ve achieved such status in life that they have inevitably moved beyond their working-class roots – and, by the way, there is nothing wrong with such a sentiment. Why should anyone be condemned for wanting to earn more money, or to have the freedom to enjoy the finer things in life, or to advance in one’s chosen career? All of that is fine.

When all is said and done, however, even those who are doing well in life – those, for example, who earn a generous salary and own a nice home and car – are quite often just a month’s pay packet away from real grinding hardship. And it’s at such moments that, for all the attempts to divide us up into different class categories, those of us who are, in the end, required to sell our labour in order to survive suddenly realise that we perhaps aren’t so different from each other after all.

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

SO that’s it. Thursday’s election results were atrocious for Labour and are certain to sound the death knell for Sir Keir Starmer’s leadership. The inevitable hammering has been dished out by British voters and, soon enough, the removal vans will be pulling up to the rear entrance of 10 Downing Street.

Starmer is a dead man walking; there can be no doubt about that. And it will likely be no more than a couple of months before the curtain falls on his premiership. But Labour MPs and activists should banish from their minds any belief that his departure will lead to electoral rehabilitation. Because, oh boy, the party’s problems run far, far deeper than the shortcomings of its current leader.

In fact, in the absence of major shock therapy, the question of who leads the party will prove entirely irrelevant. It would be like the crew deposing the captain of the Titanic as it steamed towards the iceberg only to then fail to take the necessary emergency action.

Look, we all understand that most governments – even competent ones – experience a popularity crash mid-term, and this often manifests itself in heavy defeats in local elections. So it would be easy to dismiss Thursday’s events as standard political fare.

But these results do seem particularly significant, not least because on this occasion the official opposition also received a spanking. That is most unusual. And the big winner happened to be an insurgent party which still has just eight MPs and only came into existence five years ago. In the context of British political norms, that is extraordinary.

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Strikingly, that party, Reform, made tremendous inroads into both Labour and Conservative territory. In Red Wall Wigan, for example, it won 24 of the 25 seats up for grabs, while in Havering it won overall control and obliterated the Tories (who were previously the largest party).

Reform is evidently building its base around what the political writer and commentator David Goodhart has described as the ‘Gavin and Stacey’ alliance: the middle-classes in suburbia and the shires, and the working-classes in our post-industrial, left-behind towns. Brexit-voting Britain, in other words. And the strategy seems to be working.

Meanwhile, though they didn’t win a huge number of seats, the Greens picked up a decent vote share and put in their best ever local election performance.

All of this confirms that British politics is splintering all over the place, and that the old tribal loyalties are breaking down.

This phenomenon will surely only gather pace in the months and years ahead, particularly as the government and country face a very profound - and almost unprecedented – set of challenges. For not only is the country in a deeply parlous state – with the economy cooked, public services crumbling, the welfare system in a shambles and social disintegration breaking out in our communities – but nobody within government seems to have the foggiest idea of how to turn things around.

Instead of displaying the boldness and radicalism required to set the country on a new path, ministers simply tinker at the edges of the existing discredit system. So, on the economy, they raise a tax here and redirect a bit of money there while stubbornly refusing to use the government’s massive fiscal capacity to reinvigorate our productive sector and drive growth.

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The great economist John Maynard Keynes, once a guiding light for centre-left governments the world over, famously – and correctly – said, ‘Anything we can actually do, we can afford.’ Rachel Reeves rejects all that. Couldn’t possibly relax those ‘ironclad’ fiscal rules and risk upsetting the markets, you see. Even if such a course serves to plunge the country into recession, as it will almost certainly do.

We no longer make things in Britain. We don’t build houses. We don’t value vocation or skilled labour. We don’t maintain our roads. We have no energy security. We don’t catch and punish criminals. We can’t control our borders. We make people wait weeks for a GP appointment. The list of problems is endless.

Labour isn’t solely to blame for all these failings, of course. Most have been many years in the making. But the party did promise to start putting things right in short order. And, in many cases, it has fallen well short. Hence its poll ratings are scraping along the floor. For too many Britons, there is little tangible change from the final years of the last Tory government.

That is precisely why we are now into multi-party politics across Britain. The old establishment parties have shown themselves utterly incapable of breaking with orthodoxy and forging a brighter future. What they broke, they are not trusted to fix.

On social media a few days ago, a woman wrote of her despair that her son, having completed a law degree at a good university, applied for 150 jobs or internships, but secured nothing. This is the future our kids are facing – a desperate and often fruitless struggle to land a job and home, and become a valuable and productive member of society. And in many cases saddled with huge debt before they even get going. The expectation that life will be better and easier for our children than it was for us seems like a sick joke.

So Labour can and will change its leader. And, in time, the Tories may feel tempted to do the same with Kemi Badenoch. But these changes alone won’t change the fortunes of those parties. Different faces pulling precisely the same defective levers is not what the electorate wants or country needs. We need instead complete honesty about the extent of our nation’s predicament and a credible programme for recovery.

The British public have had enough of the status quo. They want a fundamentally different society. If that wasn’t clear before Thursday, it is now.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

I SNEAKED INTO one of my favourite watering holes in the fine city of Norwich a few weeks ago. I have been drinking there on and off for around 30 years, having been introduced to it by a relative who had moved to the area.

It’s a cracking pub, often bustling, and the recipient of multiple gongs (including the Campaign for Real Ale’s prestigious ‘national pub of the year’ award).

This particular visit occurred early evening on a Saturday. Sure enough, the place was rammed, with every stool, seat and table occupied, and thankfully with no strains from a juke box or clacking of pool balls to drown out the conversation flowing between punters. It’s a proper pub, you see.

But as I was quaffing a pint of Oakham Citra and soaking up the atmosphere, I noticed that the place was beginning to thin out. It couldn’t have been later than about 7.30pm. Yet over the next half an hour or so, a good number of customers left, and hardly any fresh ones came through the doors.

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By the time I departed, a short while later, the pub was half empty and much of the atmosphere and hubbub had dissipated. (One wisecracker later suggested to me that the Green-voting urban liberals of this trendy university city saw me, a Blue Labour foot soldier and GB News pundit, walk through the door and decided to drain their glasses and scarper – but I like to think that wasn’t true.)

I had witnessed this phenomenon – pubs that, once upon a time, were busy long into the evening now emptying out well before closing time – quite a bit in the past three or four years, but had not paid too much attention to it.

This latest experience, however, jolted me. If it was now happening here at one of the most popular taverns in the country, and one which, as I knew from personal experience, was once regularly well-filled until near closing time, particularly on a Saturday, perhaps we were looking at a definite cultural shift.

I was quite used as a young man to being in pubs when the bell for last orders sounded, often precipitating a rush to the bar. I suspect that there are very few establishments where that sort of thing still happens. Do pubs even have these bells behind the bar today? I cannot remember the last time I heard one rung.

I don’t claim to be certain of the reasons for why pubs are clearing out much earlier than was once the case, and I’m unaware of any specific research into it. Some will doubtless argue that pub prices are so prohibitive that customers are simply driven away – or at least forced to wend their way home sooner. And with supermarkets selling alcohol so cheaply in comparison, many drinkers will choose more regularly to have a tipple at home.

But I suspect it’s something more than these things. In my view, the whole covid saga fundamentally altered the nature of our society, and in particular our relations with each other and the balance between our home, working and social lives. During the long periods of lockdown, we became accustomed as a society to staying at home.

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We worked out with Joe Wicks on YouTube and stopped going to the gym. Men built ‘man caves’, usually including a mini bar, at the end of their gardens and no longer felt the need to go out for a beer. We held quiz nights with family and friends on Zoom and participated in work meetings in the same way. Many never went back to the office in any meaningful sense. We upgraded our home entertainment systems – because we spent so long staring at our TVs and devices – and no longer looked upon a night at the cinema as a treat. If we did choose to venture outside for the purposes of socialising, we were subjected – including in pubs – to absurd and dehumanising social distancing rules. So many of us just didn’t bother.

We got into the groove of spending our days and evenings in the comfort of our own homes – and millions have stayed there. So while a couple of hours down the pub in the afternoon might still be a welcome event, the thought, for many, of having a proper ‘session’ well into the evening and right up to closing time, with a bunch of other people, seems odd, almost unnatural or decadent.

Perhaps this new way of living had started to take hold before covid struck. Certainly the bonds of association and the sense of community that was once a feature of most of our lives have been slowly eroding for years. But the pandemic, and the concomitant heavy restrictions placed on the population by the authorities, unquestionably accelerated the shift. And, in a spiritual sense, we are much the poorer for it.

Pubs were one of those common spaces that acted as a social gel, bringing together friends and strangers, sustaining old relationships and helping to forge new ones. Likewise with local shopping parades, working men’s clubs, nightclubs (a staggering 36% of which have closed since the pandemic), churches, communal workplaces, youth clubs, libraries – all of them social hubs that bound us together; now withering on the vine as we retreat more and more to the comfort of our living rooms, home offices and smartphone screens.

It is surely undeniable that the decline of such places, and the consequent narrowing of our social networks, is contributing in no small way to the disintegration and atomisation gripping our society. Against this backdrop, it’s a minor miracle that couples are still able to meet and form relationships at all. Little wonder that our birth rate is falling off a cliff.

We desperately need to revitalise our civic society and breathe new life into those spaces and institutions that were once the seedbed of social interaction and human flourishing.

But is such a thing achievable at this stage of our malaise? Well, isn’t that just the sort of burning question that one might ponder while supping a pint or three in the snug at the local with a few friends.

In fact, I think I’ll do precisely that. Though I’ll be sure not to arrive after 7.30pm. Otherwise I’ll be talking to myself.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

A LABOUR prime minister on his way out of number 10. Potential successors jockeying for position. An appointments scandal. A major economic crisis looming.

No, this is not 2026. It is, in fact, 1976.

For it was half a century ago, almost to the week, that Harold Wilson sailed off into the sunset, sparking a leadership election in his party and causing a stir with the inclusion among his resignation honours (the famous ‘lavender list’) of one or two dodgy names.

Our present-day PM, almost certainly on the last leg of his own premiership and still embroiled in a controversy over one of his own high-profile appointments, could be forgiven for believing that history was repeating itself.

Not least because the impending economic catastrophe may wreak as much havoc as the IMF crisis did for the Labour government and country back then. However, just as Wilson departed before the worst of the storm broke, so Starmer is unlikely to be at the helm when it does so again this time around.

Wilson, of course, wasn’t pushed out of the door. In fact, his sudden resignation came as a complete shock to his party and the country. Starmer will almost certainly not enjoy such a luxury.

And that isn’t the only difference between then and now. Just consider the list of candidates in the election that followed Wilson’s departure.

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BELOW IS A video of an appearance I made on the ‘Thinking Class’ podcast hosted by John Gillam. John is an intelligent and thoughtful interviewer, and I thoroughly recommend his own Substack.

John and I talked about the state of British politics and, in particular, the serious challenges our society faces in the way of economic insecurity, deindustrialisation, demographic transformation and social disintegration.

Though the interview was filmed a few months ago, all the issues we discussed remain entirely relevant.

Enjoy!

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

TRADE UNIONS ARE a force for good in our society, and I’ll make that argument to anyone who cares to listen. Name a right enjoyed by Britons at work – the minimum wage, sick pay, health and safety protections, annual holiday entitlement, take your pick – and the chances are that the trade union movement was instrumental in getting it on to the statute book.

Without the courage and efforts of generations of trade unionists, our workplaces would unquestionably be less safe and contented environments.

I became a trade union member at 16, later serving as a senior official, because I felt my own generation had a moral duty to make sure our hard-won rights were not rolled back. That’s why I always get behind campaigns and legislation, such as the recently-introduced Employment Rights Act, designed to safeguard and extend those advances.

But while there is so much about the trade union movement that has made me proud, there is one thing that has made me truly ashamed of it. And that is its contemptible role in the whole transgenderism debate and, in particular, its shameful abandonment of women fighting to defend their sex-based rights.

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The trade union movement has been on the wrong side of this debate since the beginning. Drunk on radical progressive ideology, which it had been imbibing for years, the movement succumbed to the overtures of the trans lobby and began to preach its gospel. Biological reality suddenly became irrelevant. In the name of ‘kindness’ and ‘inclusivity’, people were expected to comply with what in their hearts and heads they knew to be a lie.

Initially, the blowback was limited. But then the demands of the trans cultists became ever more extreme. They wanted individuals to have the right to ‘self-identify’ as members of the opposite sex, and they insisted that trans-identifying males be given the right to enter women-only spaces – including rape crisis centres and prisons – and take part in women’s sports.

And so women began to organise and fight back. But when they did so, they found that their trade unions were not standing with them.

Even in more recent years, with trans mania at long last on the retreat and after women have racked up a series of victories in the courts and tribunals, most unions have barely shifted their position and continue to sell their female members short.

Female nurses, in particular, have been in the frontline of the battle to defend sex-based rights in the workplace. Take the case of Jennifer Melle, an A&E nurse from south London. During a shift, Melle was racially abused by an aggressive trans-identifying male patient (who happened to be a convicted sex offender). Instead of defending her, Melle’s NHS Trust employer took disciplinary action against her. Why? Because during the exchange with the patient, she had used ‘incorrect’ pronouns – a cardinal sin in our woke-captured health service.

Last week, Melle won a much-deserved settlement payment from her employer. Good for her. But it was no thanks to her union which, despite the sheer injustice of it all, totally abandoned her.

In another high-profile case, Fife nurse Sandie Peggie found herself in hot water with her employer after challenging a trans-identifying male colleague using the women’s changing room. Like Melle, she found that her union turned its back on her in her hour of need. An employment tribunal later ruled that Peggie’s employer had harassed her.

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In a similar case, a group of nurses in Darlington stood firm after their employer tried to force them to share a changing room with a trans-identifying male. Once again, the trade union – in this case Unison – was nowhere to be seen. The president of the union even went so far as to accuse the nurses of ‘anti-trans bigotry’. An employment tribunal subsequently ruled that the nurses had suffered discrimination and harassment.

Though such legal victories should be seen as a shot in the arm for the campaign to defend women’s sex-based rights, trade unions usually look upon them as setbacks. When the Darlington tribunal judgment landed, Unison released a terse statement declaring that it stood by its ‘beliefs in the rights of our trans, non-binary and gender diverse members’.

What a deplorable response to a ruling that should have been shouted from the rooftops, and what a display of contempt towards a group of women whose courageous actions in defending their rights at work stood in the best traditions of trade unionism.

In my own industry, the fire and rescue service, women spent years fighting for better provisions – such as single-sex toilet facilities and washrooms – in the workplace. The struggle was, in a male-dominated environment, long and hard. But, with the help of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), they eventually they got there.

Now the FBU, on whose national executive I once sat, has bought fully into trans dogma and looks upon anyone who seeks to uphold the principle of biological reality as a bigot or reactionary. When the supreme court ruled last year that women and men were defined by biological sex for the purposes of law, the union condemned it as being on the ‘wrong side of history’ (whatever that means) and motivated by ‘far-right ideologies’.

What a betrayal of women firefighters past and present and of the union’s own proud history in the struggle for sex-based rights in the workplace.

I hope that the trade union movement soon comes to its sense and distances itself from the trans cult. Too often, women who run into trouble at work for standing up against gender fanaticism are being forced to rely on Christian groups or the Free Speech Union to come to their assistance. That is a genuine scandal. Britain’s mainstream trade unions should be throwing their considerable heft behind these women and defending them when they come under attack.

Trade unions are needed as much today as they ever were. The battle against injustice in the workplace never goes away. But if unions remain determined to alienate an entire sex class – and many others besides – through their continued embrace of an increasingly fringe ideology, they will be hastening the decline of their own influence. And, ultimately, that is neither in their own, nor - given the vital and beneficial work they often do for Britain’s workers - the country’s interests.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

I HAVE RECENTLY been reading Joseph Anton, the memoir of Sir Salman Rushdie, the esteemed novelist who, at the back end of the 1980s, infuriated some mullahs in Tehran by having the audacity to produce a work of fiction which, as they saw it, ‘blasphemed’ against their prophet.

The memoir – whose title was the alias adopted by Rushdie during the many years he spent in hiding – provides a captivating and often harrowing account of the daily life of a man living under a death sentence handed down by a despotic foreign government.

The author’s acute frustration at the timidity shown by certain members of the British political and media classes in the face of the bullying theocrats leaps from the pages. Government ministers equivocated; members of parliament in constituencies with sizeable Muslim populations denounced him; ‘liberal’ commentators implied that he had asked for it; the archbishop of Canterbury called for an extension of the Blasphemy Act to cover Islam.

Truth be told, they were petrified. Some may have privately wanted the man with the pen to prevail over those with the swords, but they weren’t willing to put their own necks on the line by publicly expressing solidarity with Rushdie or condemning his persecutors. So they took the path of least resistance.

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What is striking from reading the memoir – which, it should be noted, was published before the author was stabbed by an Islamist in New York – is how little the atmosphere has changed in the years since. If anything, it has become even more oppressive. Every now and then, something will occur to prove the point. The hounding of a schoolteacher in Batley. The censoring of an artistic work. The wilful institutional blindness to the activities of rape gangs. The de facto blasphemy laws. The general desperation of the political and cultural elites to delegitimise any criticism of multicultural ideology.

A mood of nervousness still abounds. The elites remain terrified of the potential reaction of certain radical tendencies within the Muslim community to any perceived slight against their religion. And so they abandon the principles of free expression and critical thought in favour of affording to Islam a degree of indulgence and protection that no other faith could possibly hope to enjoy.

Christians, especially, are expected to accept every bit of criticism and mockery that comes their way. Their faith is an easy target, because those who aim for it know they will never be subjected to a fatwa ordering their execution.

When, during the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024 and before a global audience, the Last Supper was parodied by various crankish characters, including a couple of sexualised drag queens and a transgender model, there were many complaints, including from various Christian organisations. But there was never a hint that anyone involved with the performance would become a target. No threats of violence from Christian groups. No demands for revenge. The story was dead within a few days. Just imagine if the performance had centred instead on, say, the Qur’an story of Muhammad’s journey through the heavens on a winged horse.

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Similarly, last week, Donald Trump posted an AI-generated image of himself as Jesus Christ, tending the sick. The post was, like much of Trump’s output these days, in poor taste and caused some prominent Christian voices to publicly object and demand its deletion. But most of Christendom just rolled its eyes and went about its business. Again, no blood-curdling threats to kill or demands for retribution. Though they may have felt slighted, most Christians will have understood that, in democratic and pluralist societies, religious ideas and iconography cannot be protected against insult or lampoonery, and that believers are certainly not permitted to avenge their hurt feelings through violence.

In fairness, many Muslims also understand this and would not dream of persecuting – still less physically attacking – someone who had offended against their religion. And, lest I be accused of being an ‘Islamophobe’ (that awful word), I would point out that I believe there are aspects of the Islamic faith – such as the emphasis on family, community and self-restraint – that are commendable and, far from being ‘anti-British’, chime with the conservative and traditionalist sentiments of many non-Muslims across the country.

But the persistent threat from the faith’s militant elements has caused our weak-kneed political establishment to decide that some kind of special forcefield must be deployed around Islam, and that if anyone is stupid enough to breach it, they must expect the blowback.

Well, not in my name. Islam, regardless of the extreme views of a minority of its followers, must not be ringfenced in such a way, and if sections within it cannot reconcile themselves to that position, they must be confronted and, if necessary, dealt with under the law of the land. No quarter must be given to the bullies and fundamentalists.

There is a scene in the comedy film Alan Patridge: Alpha Papa in which Partridge, the Norfolk-based radio disc jockey, berates his studio sidekick off-mike for having made a rude on-air wisecrack about Islam. ‘Never – never – criticise Muslims,’ barks a flustered Partridge. ‘Only – only – Christians.’ He pauses. ‘And Jews a little bit.’

Yep. That just about sums up where we are.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

THERE IS A scene in the TV adaptation of that superb 1980s political novel, A Very British Coup, in which Labour prime minister Harry Perkins, determined to push through a new green energy policy, is rebuked by the leader of the United Power Workers’ Union, a character named Reg Smith. ‘My union see job losses ahead,’ argues the battle-hardened Smith, ‘and they won’t be bought off with promises of windmills’.

It was later revealed that Smith was something of a bad egg, but I am reminded of his slapdown every time I hear Labour leaders try to convince working people that the net zero crusade is in their interests.

You wouldn’t necessarily know it, but there are some in today’s trade union movement who have not succumbed to the militant environmentalism that has consumed much of the left (and a good deal of the right, too). They don’t always get much of a hearing, but they exist and, with the Iran war folly threatening both an economic and energy crisis, they are coming out swinging.

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You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

I WOULD NOT wish to live in a country that did not permit genuine freedom of religion. The regimes in such places tend not to be very pleasant, and it can be certain that where citizens are not allowed to follow the faith of their choosing, other fundamental liberties will also be curtailed.

A nation, if it is to be regarded as civilised, must surely grant licence, within the wider law, to religious believers to participate freely in all the rituals associated with their particular belief system.

Polling data shows this to be the majority view among Britons – a welcome state of affairs which serves to demonstrate the tolerant and accepting character of our country (while refuting the canard, repeatedly tossed out by various liberal catastrophisers, that we live in some hate-filled cesspit).

So when the shadow justice secretary, Nick Timothy, expressed his disapproval of the spectacle of a large number of Muslims taking part in an organised mass prayer at an ‘open iftar’ in London’s Trafalgar Square recently, arguing that it amounted to an ‘act of domination’, one might have assumed that his comments would be roundly denounced.

Certainly several of his political opponents inveighed against him, and in some cases called for his sacking. But the condemnation wasn’t universal. In fact, a number of voices across politics, the commentariat and social media came to Timothy’s defence, arguing that he had started a legitimate debate about the permissibility of mass ritual prayer in public spaces, and that they, too, had been uneasy at the Trafalgar Square scenes.

The mixed response stands in stark contrast to the zeitgeist just a few years ago, when such remarks by a prominent politician would almost certainly have sounded the death knell for both his career and reputation, and is illustrative not only of the extent to which the political weather in these islands has changed, but also how the broad consensus that existed in the SW1 bubble on issues such as immigration, integration and diversity is splintering.

I strongly suspect that Timothy’s remarks will have struck a chord with large numbers of people across the country, including many who would generally see themselves as upholders of religious tolerance. Why might that be so? Why would anyone who purports to support freedom of religion bridle at the spectacle of a mass public prayer by Muslims?

I think there are some fairly straightforward answers to these questions. Britain remains, officially at least, a Christian country. England has an established church; Scotland a national one (though some contend that this, too, is established). Census data shows that Christians represent, by some margin, the largest group among those who profess a religious belief.

Millions are, of course, irreligious. But many of these will – like that standard bearer of atheists, Professor Richard Dawkins – consider themselves Christians in a cultural sense. So they celebrate the faith’s major festivals; they enjoy singing and listening to hymns; they feel moved when entering an ancient church or cathedral; and they understand that Christianity is deeply intertwined with our history as a nation, moulding the character of our society over a thousand years and shaping our laws, customs, language, politics, architecture and music.

These people are, I think, inclined to believe that Christianity has, by and large, been a force for good inside their country. They feel, even as non-believers, an affinity with it; and they are reluctant to see its total erasure from our national life or its supplantation by some other faith.

Taken together, actual Christians and cultural Christians make up a clear majority throughout the country, suggesting that, for all its diminishing influence, there is life in the old faith yet.

Despite this, however, it is undeniable that the phenomenon of mass immigration, coupled with the obsession of our political and cultural elites and national institutions with championing multiculturalism at every opportunity, has meant that the complexion of Britain is changing fast, precipitating the gradual replacement of a dominant overarching culture – of which Christianity was a key component – with, well, everything and nothing.

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And the multiculturalism promoted by the elites is, in any case, not genuine multiculturalism. Rather, it is asymmetric multiculturalism, a construct which sees minority cultures enthusiastically celebrated, while the majority culture is consistently downplayed (and often denigrated).

This has led many among the majority culture to feel that their identity is being, if not erased, then slowly eroded, and that, as a consequence, they are losing their status in society. For this reason, a resentment has been building among them, coupled with a belief that Britain is approaching some sort of inflection point – a pivotal moment throwing up a choice between holding on to the country we are, and have long been, or turning into something new and unrecognisable.

They perceive, too, that their tolerance and goodwill have been taken for granted. Many of the changes foisted upon their communities and country were effected without their consent – and often in the face of their opposition. Time and again they expressed their feelings at the ballot box; time and again they were ignored.

Globalisation, even when it meant deindustrialisation and rapid demographic transformation, was good for them, they were told. Economically and spiritually enriching. Embrace it or be condemned as a ‘Little Englander’ or xenophobe.

A populace that was broadly agreeable to properly-regulated immigration and a modest degree of cultural diffusion had these things forced upon them in turbo-charged form. And guess what? They didn’t much like it. What they would have accepted in moderation, they rejected when it came at them uncurbed. For many, the upheaval caused through the rush to a new globalised economy had changed their lives, communities and country too fundamentally for them to just go on sucking it up.

It is this sentiment that, I am quite sure, explains why some members of the majority culture may have, like Nick Timothy, been uncomfortable with the spectacle of the mass iftar in London. It isn’t that they are racists or bigots. Neither is it that they believe Muslims should not be entitled to pray to their God. Rather, it is that the event – held inside an iconic square and under the watchful eye of a British military hero – served as a very public exemplification of the unwelcome transformational shift that has taken place inside their country.

Would these citizens have felt the same way if it had been Jews, Sikhs or Hindus at prayer? In most cases, probably not. Or at least any disquiet would have been less marked. But even that isn’t necessarily a sign of an irrational or hateful disposition towards Muslims. For it cannot be denied that, of all the non-Christian religions which have played a role in reshaping the cultural contours of our country in recent years, Islam – the most confident and assertive of them – has been the major contributor.

It is beyond question, too, that Islam, more than other religions, contains the kind of militant and radical strains – some of them highly-organised and vocal – that do not sit easily with Britain’s traditions of democracy and pluralism, and that there exist within it elements who see unbelievers – ‘infidels’ – as something less than human.

Such attitudes have manifested themselves in ways that have jarred – and sometimes horrified – the sensibilities of non-Muslims. The rape gangs scandal, the hounding of the Batley schoolteacher, the persecution of Sir Salman Rushdie, the barbarous terror attacks, the censorship of art and literature, the de facto blasphemy laws, the spectacle of a Wakefield mother prostrating herself before a group of angry Muslim men because her son had accidentally scuffed a copy of the Koran: it is simply unreasonable to expect people, even if they understand that not every Muslim is culpable, to avoid drawing a direct line between these things and Islam. Or to believe that Islam presents no greater a threat to the social fabric of the nation than does Judaism, Sikhism or Hinduism.

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So we should be slow to condemn those who feel a certain unease when they hear of mass Islamic ritual prayer events in public places. Or when Premier League football matches are paused to allow Muslim players to break their fast. Or when Ramadan lights are officially displayed along the capital city’s main thoroughfares (including, on at least one occasion, over the Easter weekend). Or when Sharia councils are given licence to operate. Or when – as appears to be the case at the time of writing – the king declines to issue a special message for Easter despite doing so for Ramadan just a few weeks previously.

In isolation, some of these things may seem inconsequential and barely worth troubling over. And those who do trouble over them, even in the most temperate way, will know that they are inviting the scorn of high-minded progressives everywhere. But small, incremental changes can slowly – and sometimes not so slowly – coagulate and create fundamental shifts. As the Catholic writer Niall Gooch puts it: ‘Countries don’t lose their coherence and distinctiveness in one fell swoop, by one single and obvious blow; but instead thanks to a constant acid erosion of all that makes them unique and self-confident.’

It’s all very well demanding that dissenters anxious about such changes ‘live and let live’ or show unlimited tolerance. But when the shift is in a direction that they do not wish to travel, such strictures are idle.

So is there a route through all this? Is there a way to arrest the decline of social solidarity and rise of communal sectarianism that we are witnessing in our communities? Is it too late to prevent the divisions that are playing out around us from widening?

Certainly there are no easy answers. But, as a start, we must recognise that multiculturalism – by which I mean hard multiculturalism; the state-sponsored variety that actively promotes separateness and difference for their own sake – has failed.

Instead of creating a country in which citizens from different cultures live in happy coexistence and in a spirit of peace, harmony and mutual respect, it has given us instead a land, if not of strangers, then of growing estrangement, a place where different identity groups go about their business quite often insulated from each other. Perhaps the effects of this are less deleterious in the gentrified districts of London or other fashionable cities where well-heeled liberal utopians – including a large number of our political and media classes – live their lives. Doubtless the wide variety of trendy restaurants serving exotic foreign cuisine and the availability of cheap au pairs help to persuade such people that multiculturalism really is a thing worth celebrating. But in the Bradfords and Birminghams and Barkings (and here I speak from personal experience) it is a different beast entirely. For it is in such places – the grittier, hard-pressed towns and cities of our country – that multiculturalism has really been put to the test. And it hasn’t fared well.

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So it seems to me that we face a stark choice. Either we continue along the current path, whereby our leaders persist in imploring us all to go on celebrating the fact that we are so different from each other and pretending that ‘diversity is our strength’, or we try to confidently reassert an overarching majority culture – the same one as fortified our country through many generations until a couple of decades or so ago.

The first option would, I fear, lead to the slow Lebanonisation of Britain, a process which would see our country become ever more divided along religious, ethnic and cultural lines, with a myriad of disparate identity groups retreating to their own tribes and living parallel existences from each other, such that, sooner or later, the divisions become formally reflected in political and institutional governance.

The second option must therefore be the preference. But it would take political courage. It would mean adopting a Japanese-style approach, whereby the longstanding national culture is unapologetically promoted above all others and public leaders and institutions do not obsess about championing cultural diversity as a good in itself. It is no coincidence that Japan can boast levels of civility, order and cohesion far in excess of most countries. Shared identity, common cultural bonds and universal moral codes are essential in engendering that kind of high-trust society. They are also critical in ensuring sustained public support for such concepts as wealth redistribution and the welfare state.

That isn’t to say that minority rights shouldn’t exist or that minorities shouldn’t be free to make their own cultural choices, including following their desired religion and exercising their right to freedom of expression and assembly. In other words, soft multiculturalism, the type that recognises and is willing to permit individual choice in such matters.

But when it comes to public policy, including decisions over the use of public resources or spaces, we should reject the view that all cultures are equal and therefore entitled to identical provisions. Instead, we should unashamedly place the national majority culture above all others.

So, on matters of faith, for example, only the religion of the established or national churches – Christianity – should be promoted by public bodies and institutions. By all means, hold your iftars in your mosques and homes; you should have every right to do so. But don’t expect the police or local authority to grant you a licence to do it as part of some officially-recognised event, and where it is likely to create a major spectacle or disrupt the lives of others. (It should be noted, incidentally, that the Trafalgar Square iftar was held in the shadow of St Martin-in-the Field, one of the nation’s most iconic churches. I do wonder what the reaction might have been if a large number of Christians had conducted a mass prayer session outside the central mosque in Bradford.)

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Plainly any attempt to reassert an overarching majority culture would be less effective if immigration were allowed to continue at the pace and scale of recent years. So a sharp reduction in numbers must be a priority. One could not seriously claim to wish to halt the deepening fragmentation of our society without also accepting that net migration figures must in the future be more modest and manageable.

Liberal sophisticates will, of course, recoil in horror at all this, just as they went into meltdown over Nick Timothy’s remarks. C’est la vie. Their beliefs, implemented with such enthusiasm over so many years, have brought us to where we are. They need to accept that the status quo has failed and will go on failing.

It is, in the end, possible to remain – or, should I say, return to being – a decent, civilised and harmonious society without genuflecting at every opportunity to every minority culture or believing that they are all worthy of the same treatment as the one that has been dominant in these islands for far longer than any of us can remember. The greater the level of cultural diversity, and the more we adopt a hodgepodge approach to these matters, the lower the levels of trust and solidarity in our communities. That is a truth that, sooner or later, we are all going to have to recognise.

Happy Easter.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

I WAS ONE of the few people on the political left who did not recoil in horror on either occasion that Donald Trump was elected as US president. I didn’t like the man and, if I were American, wouldn’t have voted for him. I found him crude, obnoxious and oafish. I still do.

But on some of the big questions confronting the West, he was undoubtedly on the right side of the argument. He understood the importance of the nation state and sovereignty. He saw that mass and uncontrolled immigration could be economically and socially disruptive. He spoke the language of reindustrialisation and was willing to face down the green zealots. He had no time for woke dogma and recognised the damage and divisions it had caused. He promised an end to US-inspired ‘forever wars’ which had caused death and mayhem across the globe. And he represented, for many, a welcome counterweight to the doctrine of technocratic liberal internationalism that had come to dominate Western political institutions. All of that was rather refreshing.

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You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

FOR ALL THE impassioned commentary, intrigue and invective, politics is quite a simple business. Or, at least, it should be.

Anyone who has travelled beyond the boundaries of Britain’s fashionable cities and university towns in the past two or three decades will know that voters in such parts – what you might call ‘normies’ – are more united in their desires and demands than many within the establishment seem to realise.

These voters are often to the left on economic issues – so they want to see strong public services, full employment, decent wages and pensions, and an end to huge wealth and income disparities.

But they are frequently to the right on cultural issues – so they have a firm belief in the concepts of family, community and nation; they want immigration to be tightly managed and criminals to be properly punished; and, though broadly tolerant, they aren’t excessively enthusiastic about multiculturalism or trans rights.

For decades, these voters have been neglected by the main establishment parties. Sure, these parties will often pay lip service to them and claim to be on their side. But they aren’t really.

That is because, on social and economic issues, these parties have embraced hyper-liberalism – a creed characterised by worship of the market and the self over the common good. And, in doing so, they have alienated many millions who had little time for this new orthodoxy and saw that it was laying waste to much of what they held dear.

For a long time, these voters sucked it up. But then, through Brexit, they began to make their voices heard. And in the decade since, those voices have become ever louder.

The old tribal loyalties are now disintegrating. The obligation that millions felt to vote a certain way because that’s what their parents or grandparents did no longer holds. The two parties that dominated the scene for over a century are in the political equivalent of intensive care, and nobody can be sure if they will make a full recovery.

Every now and then, a piece of evidence will emerge to demonstrate the profound extent of the realignment that is taking place. This week, it was a poll, carried out by Ipsos, illustrating support for political parties according to the financial wellbeing of voters. Respondents were broken down into four groups: ‘comfortably off’, ‘financially stable’, ‘just about coping’ and ‘financially precarious or extremely vulnerable’.

The data tells a story about how dramatically the Labour party’s support base has shifted. Of those in the poorest category, only 12% intended to vote Labour. Think on that for a moment. Just 12% of the most hard-up people in Britain would vote for the party which was created over a century ago to represent them and has throughout most of its history managed to command their support. What a remarkable turnaround.

So where are these votes going instead? Well, the preferred choice of 34% of them is Reform UK. Again, this is something of a staggering statistic, not least because Reform is ideologically a right-wing, free market Thatcherite party, and the working-class provinces in which many of these voters will reside were badly scarred by that type of philosophy when it was inflicted on them in the 1980s.

It is likely that many of these voters understand that history only too well. But their support for Reform is perhaps a sign that they feel it speaks for them on issues beyond the economy which matter to them a great deal. So the party’s commitment to defending national sovereignty, reducing immigration and challenging the woke dogma that pervades our institutions – as well as its more traditionalist stance on cultural issues generally – resonates with them, because they feel, rightly or wrongly, that it gives hope of a return to the sort of country they loved but have lost.

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The distribution of votes among the richest group surveyed in the poll is also quite striking. Among this ‘comfortably off’ cohort, 33% indicated that they would vote Labour (the largest share by some margin of any party), while just 18% opted for Reform. So the alleged party of the working class attracts a substantially higher proportion of votes from the wealthiest people in the country than does a party created and run by individuals who are themselves longstanding members of the financial elite. This truly is politics turned upside down.

For Labour, the poll findings stand as proof that there has been a massive oversteer towards servicing the priorities of the nation’s professional and managerial classes – such that its support among the working classes has plummeted.

Not that it is likely to happen, but if Reform were to ditch some of the free-market idolatry and adopt a more left-leaning economic programme, which included interventionist policies aimed at bringing about full employment, reindustrialisation and genuine levelling up, its current levels of support among Britain’s most hard-pressed voters might rise even higher. Left on the economy, right on culture: that remains the sweet spot electorally.

At any rate, what we can be certain about is that the tectonic plates continue to shift violently. And, as they do so, the landscape of British politics is being dramatically rearranged.

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

ON THURSDAY, I joined the Spiked podcast to discuss the Iran war, digital ID, the attack on trial by jury, and the introduction of a new ‘anti-Muslim hostility’ speech code.

The episode can be viewed below.

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A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

You probably won't agree with all of Mr Embery's policy prescriptions, but he will force you to think outside your usual political grooves — Wall Street Journal

SO THEY WENT and did it. After much wrangling, and in the face of a good deal of resistance, the government has unveiled its official definition of ‘anti-Muslim hostility’.

The definition – which runs to three paragraphs and has been introduced as part of a broader social cohesion plan – is designed to arrest what ministers say is a rising tide of hatred towards Muslims.

The text lays out what type of actions or behaviour will be deemed to cross the line. This can be, for example, ‘prejudicial stereotyping of Muslims, or people perceived to be Muslim, including because of their ethnic or racial backgrounds or their appearance, and treating them as a collective group defined by fixed and negative characteristics, with the intention of encouraging hatred against them…’

Where to begin with that word salad?

Critics have raised the alarm over the implications for free speech, arguing that there is potential for the definition to stifle legitimate scrutiny of both the religion of Islam itself and some its more controversial customs and practices. They also point to the fact that words such as ‘prejudicial’ and ‘negative’, as they appear in the above passage, are highly subjective, meaning that application of the definition may be wildly inconsistent.

These concerns are well-founded. There are few good reasons to support the introduction of this definition and plenty to oppose it. It has all the makings of a back-door blasphemy law and will persuade people that it is safer to just button their lip rather than express their genuinely-held beliefs in any discussion about Islam or Muslims.

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THE GORTON AND DENTON by-election was an unpleasant affair in so many ways. But one redeeming feature of the contest was its sparking of a long-overdue national debate on the subject of non-British citizens holding the right to vote in British elections.

For many Britons, this appears to have come as something of a revelation. Could it really be true that persons who are not citizens of our country are permitted to rock up to a polling booth and play a part in choosing the local MP? And is it also the case that these individuals have enjoyed that right from the moment they set foot on our shores?

Well, yes, these things are perfectly true. And not only for elections to the House of Commons, but also the Scottish parliament, Welsh Senedd, Northern Ireland assembly, and for elected mayors, local councillors, and police and crime commissioners.

Not every type of non-British citizen is entitled to vote in every category of election - certain rules, such as the requirement to be a ‘qualifying’ Commonwealth or EU citizen, are usually applied – but the fact remains that around two million people, possibly more, who do not hold a British passport are routinely helping to determine the composition of democratic chambers and offices throughout our land.

The issue reared its head in Gorton and Denton on account of the large number of people with Pakistani heritage living there. With Pakistan being a member of the Commonwealth, anyone from that country who was in Britain legally and resident in the constituency was free to cast a ballot in the by-election. With concerns also having been expressed over the integrity of postal voting and reports of widespread ‘family voting’ in the by-election, the entire arrangement is at last being subjected to some proper public scrutiny - and has unsurprisingly led to demands that the current system be overhauled.

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Conferring on non-British citizens an entitlement to vote in British elections is plainly indefensible. Perverse, even. The right to elect candidates to public office – especially to positions in which they wield significant political influence – should be reserved solely to those who hold British citizenship. No ifs, no buts.

I do not argue that non-British citizens should not otherwise be encouraged to play a full role in our civic life or that their views should be considered irrelevant. On the contrary, many of them will have much to offer us, and we can hardly complain about a lack of integration if we deny them the opportunity to be active participants in the life of our nation.

But extending voting rights to individuals who are not fully-fledged citizens – and may indeed not desire to become so – serves only to demean the franchise. As with any club or association, only those who are properly-accredited members should have the right to choose its officials and determine its rules. For a nation state, such a principle is even more fundamental. When a nation extends such rights to foreign nationals, it undermines the unique nature of the bond that exists between its own citizens and the state. Worse, it devalues the concept of nationality itself, as there can be no greater expression of national belonging and identity than having an exclusive say in the democratic affairs of the nation of which one is formally a citizen.

If I happened to find myself living as a British national in Pakistan, I would not for a moment expect to be placed on the electoral register and invited to help decide who should run that country. And if such an invitation were made to me, I think, out of principle, that I would decline.

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Why does it always seem that Britain does incomprehensible things like this? While it is true that the arrangement is a legacy of Empire – when anyone born within His Majesty’s dominions was deemed to be a natural-born British subject – its continuation decades later and in an age of mass immigration, as well as its extension to additional cohorts, makes no sense.

The situation should, of course, have been put right long ago. But when a country’s political and cultural institutions are dominated, as Britain’s have long been, by a metropolitan liberal elite which believes in open borders, regards everyone as a ‘citizen-of-the-world’, commands us relentlessly to be ‘inclusive’ and ‘tolerant’, and sees the relationship between citizen and nation as a purely functional and not emotional one, who in authority was ever going to have the courage to protest about it? These are ‘good people’ doing a ‘good thing’ in standing up for minorities, and anyone expressing an objection must have sinister motives.

Well, I do object. I do not see why I, a British citizen for over half a century, should have no greater say in my country’s democratic processes than someone who has been here for five minutes, does not intend to stay for any length of time, perhaps has little affinity for Britain or interest in its long-term future, and has no desire to ever seek citizenship. To defend such an arrangement is surely to render the concept of citizenship meaningless.

Reform UK has pledged to scrap foreign nationals’ voting rights if it wins power. But the change needs to happen well before then. For the status quo is untenable. And it is debauching our entire electoral system.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery

An edited version of the above piece first appeared on the GB News website.

Paul Embery is one of the most interesting, insightful and original voices to have emerged in British journalism for some time — Douglas Murray

THERE IS A revolution taking place in British politics. What happened early this morning in an unglamorous corner of Greater Manchester is proof that something seismic is occurring.

Some will argue that by-election protest votes against sitting governments are a feature of our political landscape and nothing significant should be read into the verdict of the electorate in Gorton and Denton.

They are wrong. Sure, all governments experience mid-term unpopularity, and voter anger is often expressed through the mechanism of by-elections. But in years past, a by-election defeat for the governing party in one of its own seats invariably meant a victory for the official opposition or the Liberal Democrats. In Gorton and Denton, these outcomes were never on the cards.

What we saw instead was Labour battling to hold on to the constituency in the face of a major advance by two insurgent parties – Reform and the Greens – who can presently boast no more than a smattering of parliamentary seats between them. And one of these parties ended up securing a momentous victory, while the other grabbed second place.

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I RECENTLY WATCHED In the Land of Saints and Sinners, a shoot-em-up type of film starring Liam Neeson and set amid the Troubles in 1970s Ireland. The movie was, as one might expect, replete with the cultural staples and fashions of that time and place: flared trousers, sideburns, cigarette smoke, pints of Guinness and, of course, gun-toting terrorists.

As the plot begins to unfold, Neeson’s character, a contract killer, can be seen travelling to a small coastal town in County Donegal, whereupon he enters a pub. Some sort of traditional Irish shindig is taking place and, as the camera pans round, the viewer sees a man playing the fiddle. Nothing unusual there, one might think.

Except that this musician is a black man.

After finishing his tune, the fiddler wanders over to the bar and begins chatting with Neeson’s character. He speaks with a strong African accent, and we learn that he hails from some war-torn country. The pair engage in a bit of small-talk, and the film promptly moves on.

It was, of course, a faintly ridiculous scene. This was 1970s small-town Donegal. If, in real life, a person had, in that place and at that time, entered a pub in which someone was playing traditional Irish music on a fiddle, it is almost certain that the performer would not have been a black man from Africa.

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The scene immediately jarred with me, as, I suspect, it did with others who viewed it. The whole thing seemed forced. The African fiddler appeared to have no particular relevance to the plot. His presence in the production seemed ahistorical and incongruous. It would be a bit like watching a film set in a tribal village in 1970s Africa and seeing Paddy McGinty hammering away on the old djembe drums.

The segment had the feel of having been shoe-horned into the film for reasons entirely unrelated to the storyline. As though the producers were trying to impart some sort of message. Which, of course, they were. The message being that they, the producers, are imbued with ‘progressive’ values, that they are proud cheerleaders for multicultural ideology, that films featuring all-white casts are inherently baneful (even where they reflect historical truth), and that they are willing to compromise the integrity and credibility of their work for the purpose of making their ‘enlightened’ views known to their audience. I certainly struggle to see any other plausible explanation for the decision to write the scene into the script.

It isn’t only film-makers, of course, who are guilty of this kind of virtue signalling. The entire phenomenon plagues our creative and cultural sector - to the point where it has become impossible to ignore. Television entertainment (especially drama), advertising, museums, libraries, the arts, publishing, tourism: these are just some of the industries whose chiefs seem intent on portraying our country and its history in ways that are wildly inconsistent with reality, often by crudely over-representing minority communities and cultures while downplaying – or, worse, constantly besmirching – the role of the majority population and culture.

Some years ago, I read a few of the crime novels of author Stephen Booth. The stories were set around the Peak District and centred on the work of detective duo Ben Cooper and Diane Fry. They were recently adapted for television by Channel 5. Inexplicably, Detective Constable Fry, an ordinary white British female officer in the books, was portrayed by an actress of Indian Punjabi descent. I am not sure what the audience was supposed to make of this. Was this ‘colour-blind casting’ at work? Or was the character herself an Indian Punjabi who had somehow acquired a quintessentially English name? I didn’t bother watching the series and so have no idea if any explanation was forthcoming.

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Similarly, a 2021 ITV adaptation of HE Bates’s The Darling Buds of May (titled The Larkins), set in 1950s rural Kent (about as ethnically and culturally homogenous a place as ever existed), was made to look as if it were located in contemporary Islington. Again, was this colour-blind casting in action? Or were the producers genuinely trying to convince us that this was how the Kent countryside looked seven decades ago?

‘Ah, but it’s fiction,’ some people will say, ‘and you can do anything you like with fiction’. Well, to a point. If, for example, a piece of work is intended to take you to a different world – something that falls within the genres of, say, fantasy or sci-fi – the producers may rightly take all sorts of liberties. But if the work is rooted in places and periods, or around events, that are – or were – real, and that actual living persons would ordinarily recognise and identify with, is there not some sort of duty to reflect these things, as well as one is able to, accurately? I think there is.

So when producers engage in deliberate distortion of this kind, they can hardly complain if their work is afforded less respect than would otherwise be the case. After all, the best productions are those that are plausible – those that, because of their believability, wholly capture the viewer or reader so that, for a short time, he is immersed in the world before him. As soon as I saw the African fiddler in In the Land of Saints and Sinners, I was wrenched from my absorption in the film and reminded that I was watching a work of total fiction – and not a very credible one at that.

I have, in fact, been making the case for some years now that, for many, this cultural and historical revisionism has become a relentless and tedious moral lecture. One need only speak to one’s fellow citizens in the pub or at work, or follow debates on social media, to comprehend the degree to which the phenomenon has had a corrosive and alienating effect, such that public faith in the bodies and institutions responsible for driving it has nosedived.

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Needless to say, my stance has persuaded certain opponents to accuse me of, well, you can guess. Anyone who dares challenge the persistent and politically-motivated falsifying of reality in this way is liable to have all sorts of nonsense thrown at him by the sanctimonious wokerati.

So it was with a sense of vindication that I read recently that an independent review into BBC output had concluded that the corporation’s over-representation of ethnic minority characters in its drama productions – especially in period dramas – can feel ‘clunky’, ‘inauthentic’ and ‘preachy’ to the viewer. The review, which was commissioned by the Beeb itself, found that diversity (let’s call it hyper-diversity, for that is what it is) can often seem ‘superimposed, rather than arising out of the subject matter’. This, suggest the authors, may leave viewers feeling as though they are ‘being lectured’.

The review cites a 2023 BBC adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Murder is Easy, which, though a traditional murder mystery set in an English village, bizarrely incorporated themes of anti-colonialism and West African Yoruba culture. It also questions the authenticity of the casting choices for the police drama Shetland, which has featured a string of characters of ethnic minority heritage – from countries as far afield as Tanzania, Sri Lanka and Jamaica – even though in real life the ethnic minority population of the Shetland islands, which lie between the Scottish mainland and Norway, stands at just 1%.

The review also finds that there is a perception among viewers that the BBC ‘can still be London-centric and skewed towards the middle class’, and that ‘the London-based perspective can cause programme-makers and commissioners to assume that the rest of the UK is close to London’s demographics’.

Speaking of the corporation’s executives who commission programmes, one stakeholder told the authors, rather fascinatingly, ‘Every single one of them lives within 15 miles of each other. They go to the same restaurants, and they read the same books. They go to the same plays, and they have the same friends.’

Perhaps the most instructive passage of the review was this one: ‘What needs to be avoided is ethnic diversity which looks forced and tick box, and we found our interviewees of colour as emphatic on this point as those who were white.’ In other words, the hyper-diversity zealots do not even enjoy the support of ethnic minorities in their crusade. So on behalf of whom are they are actually crusading? Only themselves, it would seem.

Maybe, just maybe, the tide is beginning to turn on these hucksters. If that proves to be the case, it won’t be a moment too soon.

A reminder that you can follow me on ‘X’: @PaulEmbery