The age of post-liberalism is finally here

In their fruitless quest to outflank the far-right, elite liberals on both sides of the Atlantic are increasingly indistinguishable from the very thing they claim to be a bulwark against

As I write, far-right anti-immigrant mobs are still demonstrating against asylum seekers throughout the UK. Between these riots and Nigel Farage’s Reform Party leading consistently in the polls, the response of Britain’s so-called Labour government has been at once embarrassingly inept and dangerously Powellite. The same metropolitan liberals who, among other things, once derided Jeremy Corbyn for his insufficient attachment to Europe have since made a particularly rabid streak of cultural parochialism their own.

Faced with his own deep unpopularity, Keir Starmer continues his doomed quest to Farage-ify the Labour Party and outflank Reform. At present, this involves the cringeworthy exaltation of flags — a task characteristically undertaken by Starmer himself with all the charisma and vim of a substitute teacher. In the 21st century, centrist politics has supplied us with a never-ending stream of sentient press releases who are congenitally incapable of conveying even the slightest trace of authenticity or humanity. Sir Keir, somehow, leaves every one of them in the dust.

Anyway. Back in 2020, I wrote an essay for Jacobin that was partly about Starmer, published under the title “Patriotism is a dead end for the left.” At the time, none of us could really conceive how far a Starmer-led government would swing to the right, but I do think the piece holds up especially well in light of where things have ended up. Having once presented himself as the heir to Corbyn’s project, Starmer — like many of his peers in the American Democratic Party — has since abandoned even a nominal commitment to the rights of migrants and asylum seekers.

In both cases, centrist liberals (and their reserve armies of consultants and spin-doctors) have convinced themselves that this is in fact a gesture of savvy realpolitik. Between appropriating far-right narratives about immigration, empty flag-waving, tough-on-crime hokum and so on, the logic holds there is a broad majority to be captured through the embrace of “patriotism” (at least as they understand it). The likes of historical precedent, current opinion polls, and basic common-sense suggest it’s a strategy doomed to fail even in the narrowest electoral terms.