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Elsewhere in this site we mention that we are experimenting with AI tools; and we invoked the MS design tool using this Magic Spell: "man wearing traditional Yorkshire ecky thump costume grasping stinging nettles." Early days, I fear... but at least it's free for now."... ... In which Pete North describes his recent journey as an online political observer and commentator, and the task ahead for the new breed of soothsayers and influencers that are steadily driving traditional media to face the possibility that they are no longer relevant. Today, the Evening Standard announced it is to stop printing a daily newspaper, blaming working from home and increased Wi-Fi on the London Underground. Twitter especially has been made robust and globally accessible at Elon Musk's insistence, and GB News is using for broadcast delivery and interaction. The "spaces" debating environment supports an unlimited potential audience and up to 12 speakers<h3>"...I've been on quite a few Spaces over the last few weeks and I can't remember exactly who said what, but a thought that wormed its way into my head, is that a degree of self-delusion is essential for any participant in politics. You have to believe in the impossible. Me especially.&nbsp;</h3>If I followed all my arguments through to their logical conclusion, I would have to admit that Britain is a defeated, colonised country and that it's too late to take it back. If I conceded on that, I would simply give up. Instead, I cling on to the idea that nothing is irreversible. That may be a delusion, but it's my delusion, and the one that sustains me.&nbsp;Here I have to remind myself that leaving the EU was once a delusion. Twenty years ago the possibility was so remote, but we all kept our eyes on the prize. We kept buggering on with our delusions. Which is what we must do now. We are still the majority. All it takes is determination and patience.If we are going to win, though, we're going to have to engage like never before. Voting alone won't fix this. It requires each of us to do more - to step outside our comfort zones and be leaders - even if that's just standing up to speak your mind when nobody else will. Join a party or organisation, even if you think it's futile. It doesn't matter which. Just get out and promote the idea that we *can* win. Later for all that politics bullshit.&nbsp;<h3>Looking at the political landscape right now, the British people have been frozen out their politics. Politics is now occupied by post-nation squatters. The Tory wets are consolidating their control over what's left of the Tory party, and the Labour party is poised to twist the knife. But they're surviving on borrowed time. &nbsp;Their age is over. They just don't know it yet.&nbsp;</h3>The political class are dinosaurs. They are relics of the old world order. They're clinging on by their fingernails. They may be fortified in an impenetrable Westminster bunker, with the media as their Imperial Guard, but soon they'll discover that they're going one way, and the people are going the other. <h3>Hell, even reality is going in the opposite direction to them. So just have faith in the law of political gravity. We can win. We will win. Faith turns delusion into the possible.</h3>

Grasping nettles

Nigel Farage has said Reform UK is becoming a "brand new Conservative movement". Sadly, it isn’t. It might be getting somewhere if it was. But ultimately, your party is what your website says it is. And if you didn't think it was important enough to update, you aren't to be taken seriously. We're now in an election period and Reform only has a working draft "policy" paper on its website - and it's lightweight drivel. I would vote for a new conservative movement, but I'm not voting for incompetent, lazy populists.This is because we’ve seen what happens when you come to power on the back of flim-flam and bluster. We got Boris Johnson, a woefully squandered majority, and Net Zero (because the policy cupboard was bare). Without thinking about what you’re going to do with power, there’s no real point in acquiring it.&nbsp;By now, most people on the right should understand what needs to be done.&nbsp; In interview after interview, Liz Truss outlines how she was sabotaged by the blob, noting that ministers no longer have any real power over their areas of competence. Blair’s constitutional mischief - a stealth revolution - must be reversed.This sounds like the sort of thing the Tories could and should have done with an eighty seat majority, but now we have to rebuild from the ground up and wait at least another five to ten years. Whether we succeed or not is entirely dependent on whether we have an "oven ready" intellectual product, with all the disagreements ironed out in advance. The last thing we want is opposition from our own side when we get hold of power.Then, as I keep saying, it’s not enough to simply roll back to last known working configuration. A restoration of parliamentary sovereignty overlooks that parliament did all this to us to begin with.&nbsp; Repealing Blairism is all well and good, but we still need some thought as to what replaces it.&nbsp;In a lengthy post, I spelled this out for Reform, but even if they understood it, they wouldn’t know what to do with it. I don’t think there’s any likelihood Reform will go away and do the thinking. They’re relying almost entirely on tub-thumping Farage speeches made up on the fly. The problem with that is that he's selling Farage rather than Reform, which means that the party, in policy terms, is getting relatively little exposure.&nbsp;Everything I'm reading about what Labour will do suggests Labour will finish the work of dismantling what's left of British democracy: the disastrous legacy of&nbsp;the last seven prime ministers. It's all reversible, of course, but it's going to require a National Conservative movement with a fully mapped out Restoration Act, and a plan to get busy on day one. But that’s just not how populists roll.If there is a way out of this mess, it will take a robustly conservative party that knows why it exists, what it wants to achieve, and how to do it. I’ve already <a data-mce-href="https://wote.uk/blog/distilling-the-essence" href="https://wote.uk/blog/distilling-the-essence" target="_blank" rel="noopener">set out the foundational principles of what a National Conservative party should look like,</a> and what a subsequent immigration policy should look like, but we must also think about governmental and democratic reforms. The most populists ever have to say on the matter is a forlorn plea for proportional representation.But the chief reason to choose principle over populism is that populism isn’t all that popular. Reform thinks it’s offering what the people want, but it’s not riding high in the polls, and conservative voters are more likely to stay at home (if the local election results are anything to go by). Even those who like Farage know he’s an unserious figure, and the electorate knows what he’s about. Reform may speak the same language as the politically homeless, but few believe they present as a credible alternative that’s ready for power.Without building a movement based on a coherent foundation, it could only ever be a protest vote dustbin, and sadly, it’s not even good at that. Farage hinted yesterday that he could be willing to make an election pact with the Tories, but with the Gaza effect eating away at Labour, Farage does not hold the same leverage that Ukip once did, and the Tory party doesn’t mind if Reform threatens MPs on the right of the party. Protest party politics doesn’t work if the target party has a death-wish.&nbsp;This is not to say Reform doesn’t have its uses. I won’t vote for the local candidate but will recommend Reform to people in my constituency with a view to degrading the safe seat majority of the Tory wet incumbent. That makes him easier to deselect next time around. Given the dismal conditions of this election, it’s probably never been more important to think locally, and about the longer term future.&nbsp;After the election, though, Reform doesn’t have much of a future. It may limp on as a protest vessel to keep the Tories out of power, but the real work is in popularising National Conservatism and beating the Tory party into shape.To that end, I have today joined New Culture Forum with a view to getting involved. Though I think entryism is the only game in town after the election, we also have to make the case for a robust nationalist centre right. Ultimately, the populist parties exist because there is no conservative party to speak of, so if we want real power, we have to go about building one. It’s difficult, but not impossible.&nbsp;This may sound deluded to some, but a thought that wormed its way into my head recently is that a degree of self-delusion is essential for any participation in politics. You have to believe in the impossible. Me especially.&nbsp;If I followed all my arguments through to their logical conclusion, I would have to admit that conservatism is vanquished and that Britain is a defeated, colonised country, and it's too late to take it back. If I conceded on that, though, I would simply give up. Instead, I cling on to the idea that nothing is irreversible. That may be a delusion, but it's my delusion, and the one that sustains me.&nbsp;Here I have to remind myself that leaving the EU was once a delusion. Twenty years ago the possibility was so remote, but we all kept our eyes on the prize. We kept buggering on with our delusions. Which is what we must do now. We are still the majority. All it takes is determination and patience.If we are going to win, though, we're going to have to engage like never before. Voting alone won't fix this. It requires each of us to do more - to step outside of our comfort zones and be leaders - even if that's just standing up to speak your mind when nobody else will. Join a party or organisation even if you think it's futile. It doesn't matter which. Just get out and promote the idea that we *can* win. Later for all that politics bullshit.&nbsp;<h3>Looking at the political landscape right now, the British people have been frozen out their politics. Politics is now occupied by post-nation squatters. The Tory wets are consolidating their control over what's left of the Tory party, and the Labour party is poised to twist the knife. But they're surviving on borrowed time. Their age is over. They just don't know it yet.&nbsp;</h3>The political class are dinosaurs. They are relics of the old world order. They're clinging on by their fingernails. They may be fortified in an impenetrable Westminster bunker, with the media as their Imperial Guard, but soon they'll discover that they're going one way, and the people are going the other. Hell, even reality is going in the opposite direction to them. So just have faith in the law of political gravity. We can win. We will win. Faith turns delusion into the possible. Follow Pete on substack at&nbsp; <a data-mce-href="https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/p/why-the-right-must-reject-populism" href="https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/p/why-the-right-must-reject-populism" target="_blank" rel="noopener">https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/p/why-the-right-must-reject-populism</a>

Why the right must reject populism

My writing of late has been exploring what the essence of conservatism is. This is a necessary exercise because genuine British conservatism can win where rootless populism cannot. And it has to be pitched firmly in the centre right. But what does "centre right" even mean when you have the likes of David Gauke, Rory Stewart and Amber Rudd laying claim to it? If those people are centre right then words no longer mean anything.&nbsp;In a post-Brexit referendum context, there is nothing centre-right about remainerism. Because real conservatism is about pragmatism.&nbsp;It was actually the president of the European Commission from 1977 to 1981 who said it best. In 1999, Roy Jenkins said “There are only two coherent British attitudes to Europe. One is to participate fully and to endeavour to exercise as much influence and gain as much benefit as possible from the inside. The other is to recognise that Britain’s history, national psychology and political culture may be such that we can never be other than a foot-dragging and constantly complaining member; and that it would be better, and certainly would produce less friction, to accept this and to move towards an orderly, and if possible, reasonably amicable withdrawal.”We did the latter. We're letting them get on with it the way they want to get on with it. With a sharply divided British electorate, there simply wasn't a mandate to go all in on the European project. This was always known, and our departure was always inevitable. The campaign to leave the EU began in 1975, before the EU was the EU.And there's something else that's fundamentally conservative. And it's not even "centre right". It's respecting the outcome of referendums. And as pragmatists, it is not for conservatives to try and drag us back to where we were never destined to be. We move forward. We believe, as a country, in national independence. We believe in internationalism, not supranationalism. Furthermore, we believe in national government and national democracy. That's your starting point.&nbsp;But then just this week, we have the supposedly "centre right" complaining about modifications to study visas. There simply isn't a conservative case (centre or otherwise) for allowing universities to expand beyond sustainable limits, selling visas to foreign students who won't complete courses, debasing the value of British qualifications in the process. It's grasping and short-sighted.&nbsp;<h3>The more one examines the ideas and attitudes of those who lay claim to the centre right, the more I'm convinced that these people are dissembling squatters.</h3>Far from being centrists or moderates, they advocate for the most radical changes to the makeup of British culture imaginable. These so-called "one nation" Tories are no-nation Tories. Or perhaps more accurately, post-nation Tories. Their misplaced sense of "pragmatism" is merely surrendering to the forces of globalisation without fighting back. This isn't pragmatism, it's supine indifference.If conservatism is to find its feet again, it must leave these dinosaurs far behind. The era of globalisation and "liberal internationalism" quietly died while we were all in lockdown.&nbsp;When we emerged from our collective incarceration, we stepped into a multipolar world, in which the post-war institutions are in a state of terminal decay, captured by a radical activist class. A world in which America is no longer the guarantor of European security. A world in which the EU no longer believes in free speech and free exchange of ideas. A world in which economic nationalism and national identity is roaring back to life. A world in which the young feel no obligation to maintain archaic international structures that were cemented in place many decades ago. A world in which electorates will no longer tolerate the stranglehold of duopoly and the false choice of consensus politics.The new conservatism must speak to this new world. It cannot be yesterday's men trying to put Humpty back together again. It must be prepared to build a New Britain, and a new settlement for the age of uncertainty. An age when the people demand more of a say in how they are ruled, and demand their politicians only act with consent.&nbsp;<h3>The centre is rooted in the nation state. The centre right is rooted in the time-honoured traditions that have withstood throughout. Nation, community, family, free enterprise and free association; the authentic centre of conservatism. If the Conservative Party can find its way back to these core concepts, it will rule for a generation and create a nation its people can be proud of.</h3>

Distilling the essence of Conservatism

The left is always bleating about the far right, but English nativist parties are electorally insignificant. They lose every deposit. It's nothing at all to worry about because they have no funding or social status. Everything is stacked against white working class people being able to organise. And as much as anything else, they tend to be politically incompetent and spend more time fighting each other.&nbsp;I've been an observer of politics for twenty five years now, and the far right is still made up of roughly the same people from the same low status places, with no exposure, and no foothold inside the establishment. Nick Griffin was their high water mark, and thanks to Brexit, they'll never reach that level ever again.&nbsp;There is, however, a new fascist movement in Britain. It's well resourced, highly organised, and given a free pass by the media and the usual "anti-hate" organisations. It masquerades as humanitarian in nature, and adopts the language of anti-racism. The new far right is a genuine threat because it knows how to game the dysfunction in our democracy. It stands to be more electorally influential than Ukip, not least because it is allied with the British far left. Islamism is flexing its muscles like never before. What makes it dangerous is that it knows how to play the PR game. They're sophisticated enough to be able to hoodwink British media and cry islamophobia! when criticised. They understand the power of the race card, and they know the establishment will come down hard on a white working class counter-movement. The establishment will roll out the red carpet for Islamists and pander to their every grievance. Especially the Labour party whose electoral fortunes depend on winning back the Muslim bloc vote. Though this new far right will present as liberal progressive Islam, their ideology is closer to that of Reinhard Heydrich than Caroline Lucas. But white liberals are too blindsided by their hatred of the white working class to recognise the Nazism in their own ranks. They see the brown faces around them and applaud themselves for being inclusive and diverse, even if that means embracing Hamas supporters and cheering on rapists. Evil no longer shows up in black uniforms with skull insignia. It wears liberal institutions as a skinsuit and adopts their language. (As <a data-mce-href="https://youtu.be/jPbGsvoNKMw" href="https://youtu.be/jPbGsvoNKMw" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Ronald Reagan observed </a>back in the 80s)&nbsp;Electoral law prevents an explicitly Muslim party, but they don't actually need one. They can simply co-opt existing parties. Once they gain control, they'll leave enough white useful idiots in place to keep up the pretence, but will become more brazen in their appeals to the Islamic bloc vote. At first they'll gain control of councils and implement speech codes. Then they'll take control of licencing boards and close down pubs. They'll give unrestricted planning permission for new mosques and they'll close down any investigation of mass grooming. Pretty soon they'll be calling the shots in education policy and serving Halal to your kids. They'll funnel your money into Islamic organisations and divert money to Palestinian causes, and they'll put white people at the bottom of local housing lists. They’ll rig the postal vote. We know this because that's precisely what they're doing already in the places they currently control. Sadiq Khan is one of them. Unlike white far right groups, the new Islamic fascist movement is highly organised, motivated, funded (by you) and unopposed politically. They're competent and quite ruthless in ways white far right never could be. Our zombie political class doesn't realise what's happening, and wouldn't act even if they did. The Labour party is only too happy to turn a blind eye to it when it suits them. As such, the Labour party are collaborators in what is a far right takeover of our cities. It may not be immediately apparent to the casual observer of politics, but it's there to see if you look close enough. This is the closest to actual Nazism we've ever seen on our shores. Just don't expect Hope Not Hate and other Judas goat operations to utter a single word of condemnation. They're ok with it just so long as the white working class are the losers. This is the new sectarianism, and it's only a matter of time before everyone is voting along ethnic rather than party lines. This is multiculturalism. The end of functioning society. Please subscribe to Pete's Substack feed at... https://www.northernvariant.co.uk/p/britains-new-far-right

Britain's new far right

<h3>Reimagining the Conservative movement&nbsp;&nbsp;</h3>The intellectual foundation of the renewed conservative movement would have to be sufficiently specific in its aims, but broad enough to absorb disagreement. I’ve given some thought to what that would look like, and have settled upon a secularised (and plagiarised) version of National Conservatism (.org), based on a limited number of core principles as follows (developed from <a data-mce-href="https://harrogateagenda.org.uk/" href="https://harrogateagenda.org.uk/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Harrogate Agenda)</a>1. National Independence. We wish to see a world of independent nations. Each nation capable of self-government should chart its own course in accordance with its own particular constitutional, linguistic, and religious inheritance. Each has a right to maintain its own borders and conduct policies that will benefit its own people.2. Internationalism not supranationalism. We support free cooperation and competition among nation-states, working together through trade treaties, defensive alliances, and other common projects that respect the independence of their members. But we oppose transferring the authority of elected governments to transnational or supranational bodies—a trend that pretends to high moral legitimacy even as it weakens representative government, sows public alienation and distrust, and strengthens the influence of autocratic regimes.3. National Government. The nation-state is instituted to establish a more perfect union among communities, parties, and regions of a given nation, to provide for their common defense and justice among them, and to secure the general welfare and liberty for this time and for future generations. We believe in a strong but limited state, subject to constitutional restraints and a division of powers. We recommend a drastic reduction in the scope of the administrative state and the policy-making judiciary that displace legislatures representing the full range of a nation’s interests and values.We recommend the localism principle, which prescribes a delegation of power to the respective states or subdivisions of the nation so as to allow greater variation, experimentation, and freedom. However, in those subdivisions in which law and justice have been manifestly corrupted, or in which lawlessness, immorality, and dissolution reign, national government must intervene energetically to restore order.We believe that government must be by consent, and that all decisions or policies resulting in fines, forfeitures or taxes are subject to a popular vote. We believe everyone has the right to freedom of speech provided they are not inciting violence or crime, or directly threatening another person.4. The Rule of Law. We believe in the rule of law. By this we mean that citizens and foreigners alike, and both the government and the people, must accept and abide by the laws of the nation without exception. The law must be enforced without fear or favour.5. Free Enterprise. We believe that an economy based on private property and free enterprise is best suited to promoting the prosperity of the nation and accords with traditions of liberty that are central to the British political tradition. We reject the socialist principle, which supposes that the economic activity of the nation can be conducted in accordance with a rational plan dictated by the state.But the free market cannot be absolute. Economic policy must serve the general welfare of the nation. Today, globalised markets allow hostile foreign powers to despoil Britain and other countries of their manufacturing capacity, weakening them economically and dividing them internally. At the same time, trans-national corporations showing little loyalty to any nation damage public life.A prudent national economic policy should promote free enterprise, but it must also mitigate threats to the national interest, aggressively pursue economic independence from hostile powers, nurture industries crucial for national defense, and restore and upgrade manufacturing capabilities critical to the public welfare. Crony capitalism, the selective promotion of corporate profit-making by organs of state power, should be energetically exposed and opposed.<h3>6. Family and Children. We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization.</h3> The disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the wellbeing and sustainability of democratic nations. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.7. Immigration. Today’s penchant for uncontrolled and unassimilated immigration has become a source of weakness and instability, not strength and dynamism, threatening internal dissension and ultimately dissolution of the political community. We call for a long term moratorium on immigration and aggressive policies to promote assimilation. We demand that those with no right to be here, or no means to support themselves, are removed, and unassimilated immigrants are encouraged to leave.I think @NewCultureForum is best placed to become an entryist right wing version of Momentum. This is what we must do to restore Britain. Please engage on Twitter (buggered if I am going to call it X) @WoteUk; original thread <a data-mce-href="https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1795137393521033508" href="https://x.com/FUDdaily/status/1795137393521033508" title="foundation ideas" target="_blank" rel="noopener">here...</a>

Reimagining the Conservative movement

<h3>The liberal position on asylum is lazy. It's not principled at all. It's pure moral posturing.</h3>A correct-thinking person should be appalled at abuse of the asylum system because it diminishes capacity and willingness to help those in genuine need.&nbsp;The soft-touch mentality says it's OK for anyone to break our immigration laws with impunity, thus they set the precedent that migrants can pick and choose which laws they respect. A functioning state cannot work with elective laws.&nbsp;This is dangerous. The public will not stand for the gaslighting. The establishment knows they are not refugees. They are economic migrants avoiding the law, in order to cheat their way onto the UK taxpayer funded gravy train. We know they are not refugees. Blatantly lying about this obvious state of affairs confirms that the establishment cannot be trusted to tell the truth on a wide range of matters where the civil and public service has been infiltrated and subverted.&nbsp;The British public are angry right now. The political class is rubbing our noses in policies they know we don't want. They're laughing at us. They know our votes are meaningless, and they win whatever happens at the election. Furthermore, they know they can deploy the full force of the state against dissenters. If we talk back, we end up in a police cell.&nbsp;They know we can't organise, and we won't take direct action, because generally we are law-abiding people. They exploit that. Everything they say and do is in bad faith. They'll keep pissing on us.Speech codes and X guidelines prevent me from fully expressing the depth of contempt I have for these people, and the effectiveness of prison as a deterrent prevents me from acting on that impulse. My only comfort is the certain knowledge that I'm very far from alone in feeling this way, and I live in hope that the shared sense of disgust will find a way to manifest itself in a productive way.&nbsp;But in the meantime, we can at least let our politicians know that they are despised without reservation, and their time of abusing their position will one day end. It is incumbent on all of us to be as unpleasant as possible to these lowlifes. We need to set a new standard of "toxic discourse". Pete North hosted an excellent space.. https://x.com/i/spaces/1OyKAWggNOWJb

The WOTE.uk Federation 2025

Blog: the Revolution starts here...

Grasping nettles

Why the right must reject populism

Distilling the essence of Conservatism

Britain's new far right

Reimagining the Conservative movement

Gaming Asylum