Off to London

Poor Britain seems to be passing through one of her thin and surly seasons. The Guardian:

Riots and racism: why is the UK burning?

The mobs took to the streets after a string of incidents involving immigrants. The facts in such cases are commonly tangled, full of qualifications and ifs and buts — but a crowd with a rope in its hands has no need for nuance. It wants a neck.

This weekend the Financial Times turned, for an explanation, to our old friends and partners, James Dale Davidson and William Rees-Mogg. Their 1997 volume, The Sovereign Individual, proved uncommonly prescient and became a kind of holy writ in Silicon Valley. They foretold — the passage from the FT:

…An intense and even violent nationalist reaction…suspicion of and opposition to globalization and free trade…hostility to immigration, especially of groups that are visibly different…

The prophecy is already at work in America, where Mr. Trump came down on immigrants with both boots and gave up free trade for a wall of tariffs. And now the westerly winds appear to have carried the contagion across the water to Britain.

Even the Prime Minister is being fitted for the noose. Newsweek:

‘British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is expected to resign on Monday [today!] and outline a timetable for his departure, according to a report by The Observer, raising the prospect of a rapid leadership transition at the top of the government. The British newspaper reported Saturday that Starmer has concluded his position is no longer tenable…’

Liz Truss endured all of two months. Rishi Sunak clung to the wreckage for the better part of two years. Now it appears to be Starmer’s turn to swing.

Is Britain becoming ungovernable? Has she dug herself a hole so deep that no respectable ladder will reach the bottom? Or is the whole Anglo-American world merely reciting, line by line, the script of The Sovereign Individual?

The notion of the ‘Sovereign Individual’ was Nietzsche’s to begin with — by which he meant a man who was master of himself. Davidson and Rees-Mogg set it in a more worldly frame. They saw squalls gathering over the rich nations, where many people with very little real skill still drew handsome salaries. They predicted that the new technology would take a big piece out of their earnings.

But the swelling cyberworld they regarded, on the whole, with a hopeful eye — a place where a man might escape his parasitic government and live freer and more prosperous than ever before. That sunnier half of the prophecy has, thus far, declined to show up.

In Britain, matters seem to be marching off in the opposite direction. John Dienner:

‘Sadly, the great nation of England is speeding down the road to big government socialism. Following fourteen years of incompetent governance by the Tories, the Labour party was swept into office two years ago. It quickly proved to be utterly clueless about how to revive the over-taxed, over-regulated English economy. Labour’s leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, is about to be ejected from Number 10 by his own party members. The nation’s problems are many and there is no consensus on how to address them.’

There is no great mystery in it. On both shores of the Atlantic the tale is much the same: the government squanders too much of the citizen’s money, much of it on foolish lockdowns, stimmies, DEI, Iraq, Iran…etc.

But here is the latest counsel from the Wall Street Journal on how to squander money in a fashion that draws less grumbling:

‘The UK must cut welfare to fund defense spending. As the threat from Russia increases in Europe, pressure mounts on NATO members including the U.K. to meet the 3% core defense spending target as Pete Hegseth announces a “NATO 3.0 review” and U.K. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch offers to help Prime Minister Keir Starmer achieve much needed welfare cuts.’

America’s Undersecretary for War, Elbridge Colby, added his own solemn flourish:

‘There is again a great need for more British military strength in this critical time. We urge the UK to meet that need with urgency, scale, and determination.’

(Elbridge, you will note, is the son of Bill Colby, late director of the CIA and once a consultant to Davidson and Rees-Mogg — small world.)

What is so critical about this time?

Nothing, most likely — nothing save the need to keep the money flowing. The taxpayer dislikes seeing his tax money (even if he doesn’t personally pay taxes) used to coddle the immigrant. But ‘national security’ — ah, that magic incantation — is waved straight through the gate without a ticket.

More to follow, as we report from London.