Hollowed Out
Western nations are under the control of supranational organisations, and our politicians are just putting on a show
I have just finished Matt Goodwin’s essential book Values, Voice and Virtue. It is a cool-headed, statistically supported, analysis of the vast, and widening, gulf between the beliefs and desires of the ‘graduate, metropolitan elite’ and, well, everybody else in the UK. It’s a detailed, and illuminating analysis, I hesitate to paraphrase, but broadly speaking, in his view, the elite want to spend their days signalling their ‘progressive’ beliefs to each other while bringing home huge paycheques, with little regard to the societal damage caused to their nation. Meanwhile everybody else wants their nation to be run broadly in line with traditional Judeo-Christian values, and ‘common law’, to provide opportunities for social mobility, wealth accumulation, and passing that wealth on to off-spring, to be moderate-tax, high-growth, and to be somewhere once again where people can express their opinions without being, sacked, cancelled, or otherwise penalised.
This is a huge gulf. Elite ‘luxury’ beliefs embrace open borders and high levels of migration, denigration of the benefit and social value of the nuclear family, elevation of minority racial, ‘gender’, and sexuality rights above the rights of the white, heterosexual, ‘cis’ gender majority, and a blind faith in the benefits of scientific and technological ‘progress’.
The book maps the differences clearly between these groups, and also mounts a sterling defence of the majority, who are not as the elite would insist, simply racist ‘gammons’, but tolerant people who see the societally destructive effects of fast-moving, radical social change, and feel the economic damage of a high-tax, low-productivity economy in their wallets, and future prospects.
This is good and necessary but there was an observation in this excellent, but moderate, book that really struck me as radical and worthy of a book in itself:
The new elite’s strong and passionate support for Britain’s EU membership might have been less problematic had there not been a glaring ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of the organisation. To be democratic, organizations need to fulfil three criteria; they need to give people the right to participate by casting a vote; they need to give them the right to be represented; and they need to give them the right to organize meaningful opposition and compete for control of the executive. While the EU was certainly procedurally democratic, allowing people to vote every five years and be represented in the European Parliament, it was never substantively democratic because its core executive remained out of reach for voters. (Values, Voice and Virtue p.51)
and
Rather than being genuinely democratic, other experts conceded that the EU had evolved into an ‘enlightened despotism’. While it consulted the European Parliament every now and then, it ultimately sought to marginalize the masses.
As Britain’s national democracy was hollowed out, then, it became increasingly clear that the country’s leaders were no longer deriving their sense of authority and legitimacy from their vertical relationship with the voters…but from their horizontal relationship with other global elites, whether in the EU, the universities, think tanks or Davos. (Values, Voice and Virtue p. 53)
This may sound like something we already know, something that stands to reason, but it is something that almost all mainstream political commentary, even on the ‘right’, largely ignores. There is an increasing, and accurate, sense among ordinary people that the politicians in their parliaments, even the leader him- or herself is just acting out a role, rearranging the deckchairs. While politicians engage in this conspicuous ‘busy work’, all decisions of any substance, all policies, are made in the supranational organisations, the UN, EU, WTO etc.
It is not a matter of debate, but fact, that national governments sign up to international policies and laws without any consultation with their electorate, or explicit explanation of what is going on. These international regulations, that national citizens did not vote for, and often do not even know exist, form the parameters within which national policies are made.
Worryingly these elite have no problem with destroying the sovereignty of the nations they purport to govern by subjugating them to international policies. Why? Is it just because they identify more with each other than they do with ordinary people who feel connected to their neighbourhood, their local landscape, the traditions of their region and nation? Or is it that the rewards of handing over the sovereignty of their nation, bit by bit, to an international organisation are too enticing to be refused?
An MP or PM, who has made themselves useful to the international organisations, may find themselves moving on to high-level positions in NATO, the EU, or the UN. Whilst salaries at these institutions may be lower than the equivalent in private companies they are far from unattractive, according to Quora the salary of the Secretary General of the UN is $227,253. Such roles also offer the incumbent high social status (Antonio Guterres, Secretary General of the UN, is officially referred to as ‘His Excellency’), generous expenses budgets, gorgeous houses, and a life-time of influence and power, even after they have left office.
These are heady delights indeed and those who have weakened attachments to their nations, and a moral compass calibrated towards liberal narcissism rather than public service, may easily be swayed towards betraying their nation’s interest for such perks. Once we understand that our politicians are not at liberty to respond to our needs because of the international shackles they have locked themselves into, the issue for we ordinary voters is how to wrest power from international organisations and return sovereignty back to our national governments. Clearly this is not an easy proposition. And, if we could seize back such power how do we ensure we have national governments that will accept it, and not just hand it back again in a consequential, yet clownish, game of pass-the-parcel.
Interestingly Trump came closest to beginning to cut away at these international shackles when he withdrew from several organisations and international agreements. When he declared Jerusalem the capital city of Israel, in 2017, he violated a United Nations resolution of 1967. He took America out of the Paris Climate Accord. In January 2017 he signed an executive order withdrawing the US from the Trans-Pacific Partnership in an effort to bring jobs back to America. He also withdrew from the Iran nuclear deal, imposing harsh sanctions instead, and the UN Human Rights Council, citing its prejudice against Israel. In 2019 Trump also took America out of UNESCO.
As would be expected from Trump this is something of a mixed bag in terms of reasoning and success. Less than four months after America officially withdrew, Biden rejoined the Paris Climate Agreement. He similarly took the US back into UNESCO in July 2023. When it came to the Trans-Pacific Partnership it seemed Trump had made too strong an argument that it threatened American jobs so Biden had to find another international group to join and it was the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework.
This scenario itself illustrates a problem with trying to pull out of international agreements and legislation that hamstring national governments, if the leader who initiates these withdrawals is unable to hold power for more than a few years, such actions can be easily reversed, and the nation subjugated once more.
Moving beyond whether Trump had any lasting success with his withdrawals from international agreements, he did show a healthy scepticism of international organisations some of which (trade agreements) seek prosperity for some (business owners and investors) at the expense of those whose wages and jobs will be under threat. Others such as the Paris Climate Agreement tether national governments to ‘green’ targets.
Although some of his actions were short-lived Trump did show that withdrawal from international organisations and agreements is possible and, if there is a genuine will to do so, it does not have to take years of hand-wringing over how complicated it all is. Furthermore, Trump demonstrates that a maverick politician who decides, whether through ignorance or sheer determination, to sever ties with the ‘international order’, can garner vast amounts of support and can actually ‘get it done’.
Unfortunately other politicians have been warned, through Trump’s conspicuous victimisation by the administration that followed his, that such boldness, such a bucking of the rules of international ‘cartel’ politics, will not go unpunished. Better to be a Viktor Orbán, a similarly maverick, but no doubt cannier figure, who has so far been protected by being returned to office with a secure majority. (Read Christopher F. Rufo’s interesting article on Viktor Orbán here). In today’s uncertain politics who can expect to be so bulwarked against international opprobrium? Even the insanely popular ‘Boris’, despite winning a huge majority for the Conservatives in 2019, was ousted from his own party just a few years later and his successor, Liz Truss, went the same way just forty-four days after being chosen by the Conservative membership.
For the politicians this may seem like the most febrile, torrid era they have ever lived through, but it seems their masters have more power over them than the electorate, so it is to the masters they bow. Still the success of a figure like the leader of Hungary can give the beleaguered populations of western autocratic technocracies some hope. First they must look for a strong, charismatic figure, with clear policies, courage, and at least some honour and then they must vote for him or her.
I had planned on taking a ‘deep dive’ into some of these organisations and the rules they have promulgated, such as the UN Sustainable Development Goals, but behaving as if these are complex treaties that have to be picked apart carefully we play into the hands of the international technocratic elite and risk paralysis by analysis as has happened in the case of Brexit. As an electorate we need to find the politicians who will call out the bullshit and give them support and confidence to follow through on their pledges. The fall of Boris Johnson will perhaps always be something of a mystery. Despised by many for his enactment of lockdown and the subsequent totalitarian measures, rather than being rewarded for his part in furthering the globalist coup, he was defenestrated. Perhaps he was caught in a pincer movement: hated by the electorate either for breaking lockdown rules, or bringing them in in the first place, and then hated by the globalists for refusing to lockdown again when instructed.
Breaking the stranglehold of the globo-Marxist elite has to be a joint endeavour between people and the small number of principled, strong politicians they support. Each can gain strength and reassurance from the other. Viktor Orbán may be the real deal for his nation. He has been in politics since the nineties and strove for sovereignty and a return of national identity for his nation. Trump may be just a showman with some good instincts, but few principles. Who on earth knows what Boris is?!
There are politicians around Europe who are variously questioning aspects of ‘Net Zero’ but not the entirety of ‘Net Zero’ itself. Others are pushing back at the erosion of free speech in real life, and online, others still are questioning DEI in the workplace, and CRT and gender ideology in schools and universities. Not many are calling loudly to just sever the Gordian Knot. Revoke the ‘Net Zero’ pledge, renounce the Sustainable Development Goals, or perhaps leave the UN altogether. The world will keep turning on its axis. Nations will not make war on a country because it no longer wants to reduce its ‘carbon emissions’. A world of opportunities for productivity and employment open up if gas and oil extraction resumes or increases, if nuclear power plants are built, if homes and factories can use this cheaper, domestic, truly reliable energy. The electorate would immediately feel the benefit of ‘green subsidies’ being removed from their energy bills and support would swell.
Similarly withdraw from trade agreements that disadvantage domestic manufacturing and employees. Cut away ESG and DEI that hampers companies and allow them to focus on productivity over political correctness. Cut back DEI managers in the NHS and all government departments, thereby saving money and improving productivity by making merit the only criterion for employment.
We can argue every tiny, nit-picking policy that contributes to the field of weeds that is international ‘co-operation’ or we could just get out the scythe and cut a swathe. ‘The devil is in the detail’, so ignore the detail.