Progressivism is politics as fashion. The product is status and provocation the marketing strategy. The socialist, the liberal and the conservative all address themselves to material circumstances, and aim to transform them radically, gradually, or as little as possible, but the progressive is concerned with the intangibles of life: identity, meaning and self-expression. His radicalism is mostly aesthetic, to be found in the symbol, the signal and the strut, and while it often gloms onto more substantive political programmes it is always concerned chiefly with ideological style.
Prime example: Zack Polanski. The Green leader is a political fashionista, displaying not a skerrick of principle nor attachment to anything except what is modish in the moment. He joined the Lib Dems in 2015, after five years of them propping up the Tories, then abandoned them in 2017, after they had found their voice again as an anti-Brexit movement. Political trend-chasing is mostly just cringe, but Polanski reminds us that it can be foolish, recklessly so.
Take the Greens’ Urdu election ad urging voters in Gorton and Denton, where only 82 per cent speak English as their main language, to elect Hannah Spencer in Thursday’s by-election. It’s easy to mistake this for inclusivity or good intentions but it is neither. Addressing the electorate along sectarian lines is not inclusive. In fact, it is exclusive.
People with limited proficiency in English find it harder to access services, are more likely to face delays while a translator is found, and this deters some from seeking the support they need altogether. If the person is a woman, disabled, or a minority-within-a-minority (e.g. a lesbian of Pakistani heritage), social and cultural braces reinforce the language barrier.
If there are a sufficient number of Urdu-only voters in Gorton and Denton to merit electioneering in that language, that is a failure of multiculturalism, one that should, at the very least, stir the curiosity of the socially conscious. Why is the state required to ensure English proficiency in the majority population, but no questions are asked when it abandons minorities to linguistic silos? What more might be done to encourage English-speaking and the increased integration that will surely come with it?
While sectarian activists and relativist academics would disdain the expression of such concerns – expecting English people to speak English is super problematic, you know – the drover’s dog grasps the problem that educated progressives pretend not to understand. In fact, it is those most vocal about the rise of the hard right who are least willing to speak honestly about these matters. They know fine well that a section of the population is uneasy, if not alarmed, by the speed and scale of cultural change unfolding in their country. The apparent necessity of Urdu-language electioneering is hardly likely to reassure them.
Progressives don’t want to reassure these voters. They want to rub their noses in it. However satisfying that might be on campus or on social media, in the shadow of the ballot box it is dangerously self-indulgent.
When you take a country which, until relatively recently, was culturally homogenous and, without even the pretence of a democratic mandate, transform it demographically through mass immigration, then enforce that transformation through a new state ideology of multiculturalism, and punish articulate dissent with the accusation of racism and inarticulate dissent with the criminal law, you are not creating the circumstances for cosmopolitanism, you are creating the circumstances for fascism.
Which brings us to the notion that the Greens’ intentions are benign. They patently are not. Polanski gave the game away with a follow-up tweet: ‘The right wing trolls hated seeing our campaign video in Urdu. So here it is in Bangla instead.’ Notice something? Polanski, the progressive, the believer in multiculturalism, casually exploits Bangla, the main language of 199,000 Britons, as a punchline to troll those objecting to sectarian campaigning.
It’s the kind of own-the-gammons snidery that will be lapped up by simpering midwits in the millennial media – ‘Zach Polanski Had the Perfect Response to Far-Right Trolls and the Internet is Very Here For It’ – but the irresponsibility should be obvious to everyone else. In democratic politics, there is no ‘it’s okay when we do it’ clause to escape the consequences of your political actions. When you use a stick to poke the bear in front of you, you pay the price; when you use a long stick to poke the bear in front of someone else, they pay the price. Maybe the Greens already have the votes of Bengali-speaking Brits sewn up, but Polanski has done them no favours by wielding their language as a social media cudgel.
The Gen Z Farage will come with no compunctions
The English left has been spoiled in its opponents. Reform is the ideal bogeyman for the sort of leftist who likes to boldly declare war on fascism but doesn’t want the risk that actual fascists come to power. Compared to the outbreaks of right-wing populism on the Continent, Reform is a mild strain. Nigel Farage has proved deft at prodding social and cultural wounds while sidelining the most extreme and racist reactions. When he could no longer contain the extremists, as happened with Ukip, he has walked away and taken most of the populist and nationalist vote with him.
Farage is a boomer, inculcated in the postwar patriotism of Churchill, Blitz Spirit and Who Do You Think You are Kidding, Mr Hitler? The Gen Z Farage will come with no such compunctions. The potential for a mainstream ethnic nationalist party in the lifetime of people reading this sentence is severely underpriced. If such a party does emerge, Polanski and those who treat politics as lightly as he does will have played an outsized role. The world doesn’t work the way progressives believe, where the privileged must be silent while the oppressed speak up. Encourage some identity groups to think or vote along sectarian lines, and you give licence for others to do the same.
That’s the problem with politics as fashion. Sooner or later, you’re going to start a trend.
