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Kenan Malik correctly notes that the migrant crisis is an invention & that the culture war is divisive, but then insists on presenting the usual liberal/conservative dichotomy in which the left is obscured.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
To ram this home, he then berates "the left" for obsessing about Kamala Harris's precise ethnic identity at the expense of policy debate without noting the the actual left are criticising her for her record on policy, not her culinary heritage.
This is an example of the manoeuvre in which liberals adopt left structural analyses but then berate the left on the grounds of virtue. It's the mirror of the right's adoption of social justice & revolutionary tropes to justify rolling back the state & indulging bigotry.
The reason why the media is full of former RCPers - like Malik, O'Brien & Fox - is not merely that they are grifters who will opine to order, but that they genuinely, viscerally hate the actual left & can't stop obsessively misrepresenting it.
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David Timoney
@fromarsetoelbow
The central claim here is an example of "One thing is not like another". Discrimination against people's beliefs (whether political, moral or religious) is not equivalent to discrimination on the basis of intrinsic characteristics, such as race or gender.
telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-m…
This is important because the proposed remedy - engineered diversity - would necessarily be far more intrusive & coercive in the realm of subjective opinion that objective properties. Ensuring 50% of all academics are "right-leaning" is not like ensuring 50% are women.
What Biggar is logically arguing for is a totalitarian quota system of unparalleled scope that would go far beyond doublethink. It would be necessary to prove beyond doubt that each academic's genuine beliefs could be accurately placed on a political spectrum.
Read 5 tweets
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David Timoney
@fromarsetoelbow
One of the oddities of British political history is the way that the systematic buying of influence slid from view during the social democratic era, being replaced by a narrative of personal corruption, often tied to sexual unorthodoxy or marginal social groups.
This was quite unlike other countries, where political corruption was pervasive because it was systemic: it was what "normal" people did when exposed to power. In other words, the US, France & Italy (to pick examples) saw it as the product of the system, not of the individual.
Before WW2, there were plenty of systemic British scandals, such as Lloyd George's peerages, but these were mostly presented as "bad form" by people who should know better or the machinations of cunning outsiders (often Jews &/or arrivistes).
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David Timoney
@fromarsetoelbow
Because Labour have turned the weans against them.
Serious point. The fracturing of the generational links began in the 80s. There was dislocation in the 60s & 70s, eg slum clearance & new towns, but the generations tended to move en bloc. That changed as a result of Right to Buy. Families were increasingly dispersed.
But the familial attenuation this produced didn't become a big issue until the 90s, when it was associated with the coincidence of a Labour govt (exacerbated by NuLab's rhetorical focus on youthfulness & change, & the expansion of further education - ie moving away to college).
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