Due to covid, Australia has been closed to immigration for eighteen months. Despite lockdowns, this has resulted in a fall in unemployment and an increase in wages (things we are told are not affected by immigration) The governments response is to import two million GDP cattle, as soon as possible, to restore low wages. High immigration has bipartisan support among the major political parties, so their is no democratic alternative.

Economic Liberals love immigration because it means cheap labour, keeping wages low. Social Progressives love immigration so they can use minorities as pawns to help them get into power like we see with the Democrats in America.

@@samhirst2830 Exactly in two party democracies there's barely a cigarette paper between their policies, only the rhetoric changes.

Care to elaborate, John?

@@tobyyorke2539 Yeah, why not. Due to their "civic nationalist" positions, these men can only ever refer to symptoms. Tim "The Zionist movement is needed today as much as ever" Stanley referring to the violent nature of "far right-wing politics" is knowingly rhetorical nonsense (his statement "the pattern is that of being well-armed, and militia-style politics", which tries to disguise the fact that it is not possible to characterise "the right" as violent, is a corker). Tim Stanley is more on the neoliberal side, and as such his ideas are a little less equivocal, and he is also more dangerous for that reason. On William Clouston's side, even though he loves describing himself as a "social democrat" he is slowly morphing into a neoliberal, apparently without realising it. This is an effective change, since his total lack of opposition to neoliberlism (or I should say its root causes) equates to acquiescence. "Every sensible person should have been expecting Trump to contest the election should he lose, because he said that ... all he was doing is reciprocating, times ten, 2016". This is a great example in how his views are essentially determined by the general mainstream consensus. William Clouston is not stupid. He knows, like anyone who has taken any time to investigate Trump's claims, that the US election of 2020 was fraudulent. But he *is* weak. The weakness here manifests in the cowardice needed to claim that the 2020 election was clean. One hallmark of the equivocal, weak or subversive character is the conscious willingless to draw false equivalencies like he does here between the 2016 and 2020 elections. His reading of the "Covid-19 pandemic" has parroted the same mainstream talking points (his weak and insincere opposition to lockdown is farcical). Neither of them are prepared to discuss the stark facts that are ruining the society they presume to hold dear. For example, don't these fools realise that the "civic nationalism" or "classical liberalism" which they claim to espouse is demonstrably flawed just by looking at America's trajectory? In America's case, you don't even have to look that hard either! I remember hearing Clouston denigrate the policies of Victor Orban a short while back. Does he know realise that Orban's government is about as close to the idealised "social democracy" to which Clouston only pays lip service? These guys are maxing out their intellects (by talking, talking, talking) and in doing so expressing absolutely nothing intuitive, and therefore very little truth. Each time I hear these cyphers having their hollow, articulate conversations, I am amazed to feel even *more* embarrassed for them. With each discussion, the make-believe paradigm they operate under is increasingly contrived (given how quickly the world is moving around them), and, therefore, the deliberate professing of their ideas can only now be read as subversion. You can actually hear in their voices how little they are invested in what they are saying. Tim Stanley has that nasal insistence thing, which sounds sterile and faintly narcissistic. The cadences of their sentences say a great deal, and it's really obvious in Clouston in this interview; his expression is circular, soporific and disinterested. He will never generate any enthusiasm or meaningful conviction in anyone because he can't even do it in himself! Still (perhaps *for this very reason*) they are referred to as "sensible", "voices of reason", "rational", etc. I would preface these descriptors with the word "merely". It is "sensible" to walk when crossing the road. Does this always apply when drivers do not drive sensibly? It is "rational" to obey the speed limit. But what if your wife is giving birth? There is an emergency in the west which requires a sense of urgency in politics. Clouston points at everything that does not, essentially, matter. The fact that these things are relatively unimportant is actually what qualifies those things as suitable topics for conversation. "Any organisation not explicitly right-wing will go to the left". I know Clouston would not characterise the SDP as a "right-wing" party, but a couple of years ago he seemed to be expressing what were essentially "right-wing" talking points, since the only meaningful use of the term "right-wing" refers to social conservatism, and this is what he seemed to be going for. The SDP are now a firmly "centrist" party. They become less relevant by the day, and will never achieve even moderate success. Theirs is the most impotent, equivocal political position you can take. The centrist is unable to express himself robustly, is incapable of action (which he sees as "distasteful"), and instead he loves talking, talking, talking. Talking about how misguided those on "the left" and "the right" are, and about how there is a "niche" for him and those like him. The centrist in fact does not interface with the ideas of "the left" or "the right" at all, so how could he possibly harness the best from both? Clouston likes the "Blue Labour" sort of thing ("There can be a synthesis of some of the ideas"), but refuses to acknowledge that the success of the reciprocity of which such an arrangement is perhaps moderately capable depends on an *unequivocal* nationalism, and an unrepentant resistance to subversion within society. He is not that way inclined. What he wants is that the synthetic construct that exists only in his mind be overlaid onto a reality which increasingly will not accommodate it. He has read, heard and thought a lot about these ideas, and he actually does know they aren't reflected in the world around him, but he still really does like them, and he'll discuss them with anyone, as long as they're already that way inclined too. He doesn't realise how artificial his philosophy is. He seems to think he's really on to something. As political and social activity in society becomes more and more unequivocal (the expressions of nationalism and globalism in almost every sphere of life has never been clearer), he willingly divorces himself from reality and anchors himself ever more firmly in intellectual doldrums. He will advocate neither for nationalism nor globalism, and will therefore allow himself to be pulled in inertia drift towards the latter. He may have once swam weakly against the current of degeneration, but has since given up and allowed himself to float until he has ended up static, treading water together with those who chose to do the same. This is why he sounds so calm, and resigned. He appears to have made peace with this decision. He's comfortable here. Nothing unpredictable. No-one here to trouble him, to hold him and his ideas to account. He risks nothing. And ruffling feathers is uncomfortable, and low-brow. He in fact feels the privilege of making pronouncements which I expect he knows will never be manifested, and avoids any "danger" arising from swimming against the current of globalism by espousing any ideas which explicitly diagnose the problem and offer a robust solution. He is conscious of some ambivalence within himself, but his intellect glosses it over makes it easier to deal with. It is this awareness which makes him profoundly irresponsible. To be able to talk, talk, talk *around* an important topic without acknowledging its centre shows a voluntary relinquishment of responsibility. To know and not to say. I'll repeat: he *only* discusses symptoms. There is no animation, and, effectively, no natural intuition in him whatsoever. The SDP is a box of floating "ideas" with no structure to them, no overriding principle. Essentially it is an empty box with the words SDP written on the outside. There is no life, let alone humanity here. No direction. There is just talking, talking, talking. At any given point in the future, these caricatures will be saying the same things, in the same ways, but more so. They will sound tireder, vaguer, even less interested. And can Clouston go one interview without referring to the vacuous, flimsy, nihilist John Gray (whose oppositional, fart-sniffing and soulless "philosophy" digests itself on close inspection)? I dare you, William!

@@John-he6yh Peter Hitchens is that you?