Carl Benjamin: It should really go without saying…

It should really go without saying that punitive partisan policies that target sections of the electorate for voting in the "wrong" way is distinctly un-British and, frankly, shameful. Threatening sections of the electorate with punishment, in the form of placing dangerous migrant camps in their midst, might seem like a clever strategy on the surface, but it attacks something foundational concealed beneath our politics and is deeply unwise. We are a nation and, as Edmund Burke argued, have shared national interests that go beyond our provincial concerns. These interests go beyond the mere material. The unspoken assumption of Britain is that, despite any political divides, we are British and therefore will treat one another in a manner that recognises the fundamental legitimacy of the other person and their claim to a decent life. Regardless of disputes, they ought to be able to go about their day comfortably and safe in the knowledge that this is their country and they belong to it. This is the psychic fabric that itself has been damaged by mass immigration: bringing in millions of people from countries who do not have this special attitude is what brings about the intangible feeling of unease that causes "white flight". It's why the country feels less safe, whether or not it actually is, and why people wish to live among people like themselves. The world becomes predictable and you can feel at your ease that tomorrow will be like today, and today will be like yesterday. Carving up areas of the country into ideological chunks that can be dealt a cruel hand because of their voting record is the hard edge of politics that we really must avoid. Ideology turns countrymen into enemies, brother against brother, over ephermeral abstractions that have devastating and permanent consequences. The ideological politics of the Blair era is what brought these problems to our doors in the first place. It was understood by them that "rubbing the right's nose in diversity" was a punishment, to be weaponised against their enemies. The logical conclusion of this was Zack Polanski's building a society without the right entirely. The Green-voting areas targeted by Reform are well-to-do white areas of the country, who have not yet had to live with the consequences of their politics. This is the axel around which the emotional impact of the policy hinges, and reveals the horror of what Reform plan to do. Yes, they're stupid, but they are going to be like babes in the woods in the face of it. Reform have taken up the destructive politics of ideology from the other direction, and if we look at what it has brought into existence without the mystifying lens of political ideology, it seems monstrous. In concrete terms, what we are seeing is a Muslim man who is threatening British men, women, and children with the rapes and murders caused by unvetted illegals co-religionists in order to gain political power. Why should we think he would stop there? Such behaviour ought not to be rewarded. This kind of ideological politics is completely alien to British life, and very foreign way of approaching the political dispensation of the country. It is a direct attack on the psychic fabric of the nation and renders us into two opposed and irreconcilable camps, where the human feeling that bound us together is severed. It also solidifies the control that ideology has over both sides: once one is attacked by the other, the victim will feel obliged to respond in kind. We must rise above this kind of politics before it destroys the precious metaphysical inheritence of the nation and forever drags us down into a place from which we cannot escape.