Britain is broken, evidence of our fragmentation is visible all around us. Hostile vehicle mitigation barriers mark the entrance to our town centres. Our Christmas markets are adorned with armed police. And at the football, or gigs, body and bag searches are the norm: intrusion has become routine.

Liberal democracy depends on a demos, and a demos depends on monoculture.

“A liberal society depends on certain habits, customs, and moral norms that it cannot itself generate.” — Francis Fukuyama

I’m not a fan of the dilution of “far-right”, but these guys are going to have some difficulty beating the allegations.

There is a non-zero % chance Trump is playing 4D chess here, using threats to force Europe into defending itself independently.

Cultures remain stable when their norms work with our psychological tendencies. They destabilise when rules, values, or reforms are imposed that contradict how we intuitively experience fairness and belonging.

“The mind is not a blank slate, and it cannot be shaped at will.” — Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate

If we cannot describe what unites us, we cannot understand why our societies become divided. This is why understanding culture, properly defined, is vital.

After the US black-bagging Maduro, and the Trump admin’s noise around Greenland, many seem frightened by the realisation that international law has been exposed as a myth, that might does, in effect, equal “right”, insofar as power ultimately determines which interpretation of “right” is enforced. 🧵

The confusion around what culture is comes from the misconception that culture is its expressions: the fashions we see, the foods we taste, our flags and our anthems. Culture is better thought of as a binding agent: the social force that allows humans to coordinate at scale.

Liberal Britain really needs to see this. Nationalists are too often lumped into the same extreme category. This interview with Steve Laws by Andrew Gold lays bare the crucial distinction between civic nationalism and ethnonationalism. Culture matters. Race does not. youtu.be/GSuXaBpGlA4?...

"Not so long ago, I was a happy warrior for liberal multiculturalism" spectator.com/article/ive-...

Great compilation of Alaa Abd El-Fattah's greatest hits here👇

True British patriot 👌

What a delightful guy. Great job @teamlabouruk.bsky.social

And now the BBC (forced to report some of this) is now whitewashing the story. Nothing in this article about his racism towards white people, calls for genocide, terrorism, rape threats, homophobia or various violent murder tweets against the police and white people. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Describe your Bluesky account in a single image

I imagine the full extent of this hasnt made its way to Bluesky yet. So lets have a look at some of the sentiments expressed by Alaa Abd El-Fattah. The man Keir Starmer was "delighted" to welcome to Britain today. 🧵

“A nation is not an idea only of local extent and individual momentary aggregation; but it is an idea of continuity, which extends in time as well as in numbers and in space.” — Edmund Burke

In complex systems theory, a strange attractor describes a stable pattern toward which behaviour repeatedly converges, even when individual actions appear variable or chaotic.

“Culture” in the UK most often refers to fish and chips, the Royal Family, music, art, and fashion. It can also refer to diversity through what is commonly understood as multiculturalism: curry houses, the Notting Hill Carnival, drill music, exotic clothes, song, and dance.

“Culture” is one of the most abused words in modern politics. Used constantly. Understood rarely. This confusion has real consequences.

This map isn’t political at all. It’s cultural. The light blue areas reflect an intuitive, felt culture where legitimacy depends on consent. 🧵

This is true. It resonates because it draws on real culture and aligns with the deeply felt human instinct to defend oneself and one’s group. Many people genuinely feel under threat from small boat incursions and would willingly volunteer to stop them. The same is not true of Ukraine 🧵

I wonder what this correlates with? Especially in the UK context.

Liberal democracy can not survive multiculturalism. It requires an unstated monoculture to provide shared behavioural norms, trust, and order. Without that, it must either become illiberal to enforce cohesion or collapse under its own contradictions.

The UK is in a preference cascade. Opposition to mass immigration is becoming an 80/20 issue. The veil has lifted: slowly, then suddenly, and now everywhere at once. With this realisation comes an obligation: we must plan for our new state. VI. The British Dream: open.substack.com/pub/commontr...

A live exchange showing the gap between professed progressive values and actual behaviour. "Solidarity" when it’s abstract, elitism when it’s personal 🧵

London 2012. A nation still celebrating while the fall had already begun. "V. Britain’s Place in the World" explores how we mistook spectacle for strength and lost our footing between empires. Link in the replies.

Post-Brexit Britain’s future remains uncertain. So far we’ve sought refuge within our junior role in the special relationship, yet the pull to rejoin Europe remains deep. Caught between two empires, the question is whether Britain can chart an independent course of its own. 🧵

Britain’s problems are many, but one runs through them all: a crisis of identity. We have gone from an empire on which the sun never set to a middling power in visible decline. At the same time, we have undergone rapid cultural upheaval from mass migration and a weakening of local roots 🧵

Socialism is rising in 2025. Embodied in Zohran Mamdani in 🇺🇸 and Zack Polanski in 🇬🇧. "Tax the rich" is now a buzzword. And as the left champions open borders. There is a contradiction here: mass immigration is a pillar of the left’s sworn adversary: neoliberal capitalism. 🧵

You've done it multiple times. You misrepresented Pettis yourself when you disregarded my comments on education and claimed reindustrialising is just capital flows.

And what about the guy working at Tesco with £40,000 of student debt? Who could have learnt something useful to his life that is actually marketable?

The ENTIRE sector doesn't create value. Parts of it obviously do, as you would know i realise if you bothered to argue in good faith or listen to anything your opponent says. Is the concept of optimising, streamlining, perfecting, calibrating whatever name you want to give it alien to you?

Ive Never Said They Dont Stop Fucking Making Up Arguments. 🫠

You have critiqued me relentlessly. Why dont you offer your prescription? For the sake of argument, everything I've said is now wrong. What is your solution to the problems i have tried to address? How do we manage a post industrial society?

Germany South Korea Singapore Taiwan Japan up to the 90s China (obviously????)

Do you honestly feel Blairs 50% of children should go to Uni target has been a net positive for the UK? Please give your reasoning.

But you dont understand? you misrepresent arguments and pretend not to hear things that disprove what you've said. Combined with trying to shut down the conversation with appeals to authority, which in reality are no more than pompous intellectual posturing that has no substance in reality.

You’re arguing as if every degree creates productive capacity. It doesn’t. Most strategic industries rely on a mix of engineers, technicians, and skilled trades. Closing low-value universities doesn’t weaken innovation. It strengthens it by redirecting resources into sectors that actually produce.

We can do multiple things at the same time for a variety of reasons and benefits 🤷‍♂️ I didn't propose the Glasman solution either i proposed my own, unlike you i do not defer my reasoning to higher authority.

You’re arguing against Fordism, which isn’t my position. Reindustrialisation today means rebuilding strategic capacity: energy, defence, advanced engineering, semiconductors. Every one of those sectors needs skilled domestic labour. A country that can’t make critical things isn’t sovereign.

Reindustrialisation needs both capital flows and a domestic skills base. High-skill automation still relies on technicians, engineers, and vocational training. Use your own logic instead of insecure appeals to authority. No country has rebuilt industry without rebuilding its skills pipeline.

No reindustrialising? Our academic institutions are a part of the problem, overproducing elites and funnelling them into bullshit unproductive jobs. Half the universities need to close or become vocational colleges. You didn't even mention productivity. Brexit is in the past. That ship has sailed.

Define fascism for me...

This is literally Anglofuturism you have no clue of what you speak.

Oh, we need to do far, far more than that.

Everything I don't like is fascism # 783427

Politics aren't supposed to be fun! They are a response to reality. If you ever want the world to get a little less miserable, then you really need to understand this. Or carry on flailing around in the dark, wondering why everything is so shit.