Latest news with #OvertonWindow
Spectator
06-08-2025
- Politics
- Spectator
Land value and the Somebody Else's Problem paradox
'The Somebody Else's Problem field can be run for years on a single torch battery. This is because it relies on people's natural disposition not to see anything they don't want to, weren't expecting or can't explain.' The SEP, as I hope many of you remember, is a cloak of invisibility featured in Douglas Adams's Life, the Universe and Everything. It perhaps arises from a universal aspect of socially driven behaviour – one which encompasses the Bystander Effect, the Overton Window and the Too-Difficult Box. Strangely, Donald Rumsfeld misses out one of the four (un)known (un)knowns: he does not mention 'unknown knowns' – things that we know but aren't aware of knowing, or pretend not to know. Yet this quadrant is rich in information, from tacit knowledge (Michael Polanyi's 'we know more than we can tell') all the way to wilful blindness. One of my favourite instances of a tacit understanding being breached happened in 1999, when someone (perhaps a proud Australian) fired up a barbecue in the interval at Glyndebourne. Nowhere in the previous 75 years of opera-going had it been necessary explicitly to prohibit this; it was just something universally understood. Life here in the south-east is packed with such shibboleths. Having grown up in Wales, I rely on my English wife to navigate the many unwritten laws of our Saxon occupiers: had I first visited Glyndebourne on my own, I might well have rigged up an extension lead from a nearby building and started microwaving things. But there are weird blind spots and third rails of this kind in political thought. Strange as it may seem to read this in The Spectator, I am delighted that people are finally discussing wealth taxes. Not because I am an uncritical supporter of wealth taxes in general, but because the country is doomed unless we can at least start a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of taxation without a bunch of nerds at the Treasury closing down the debate. In particular we need to start considering the role of land as both an untaxed source of wealth and an obstacle to acquiring it, depending on when you were born. There is an obvious starting point: council tax has become an embarrassing absurdity, where the owner of a semi in Bolton can pay more than the owner of a mansion in Kensington. Stamp duty is similarly idiotic. While reading Mike Bird's excellent book The Land Trap: A New History of the World's Oldest Asset it struck me again and again that, as a Someone Else's Problem Field, land value is the Jimmy Savile of economic thought: a problem hiding in plain sight; something everyone can see yet which is filed in the too-difficult box to be conveniently ignored. Fans of Henry George and the Land Value Tax have included Milton Friedman, Richard Nixon, Winston Churchill, Sun Yat-sen, Vivienne Westwood, Joe Stiglitz and Martin Luther King, yet it somehow gets kicked into the long grass every time. If you want a further endorsement, Marx hated the idea. Land is not even included as a distinct asset class in the UK National Accounts, despite being one of the largest asset classes in the economy. Instead it is included in the value of houses and other buildings under 'produced non-financial assets'. This is clearly daft: houses haven't got much more expensive, land has. In these very pages, I recently explained that you could use land value capture to pay for the whole of HS2, while also creating much needed housing along the route. I expected someone either to prove me wrong, or else to discuss adopting the idea. Nothing. We'll just have to wait another few decades for the SEP to run out. After all, we kids could all tell Jimmy Savile was a perv back in 1975.
Scotsman
31-07-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
Why a bland BBC report about migrants should make us fear for our future
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... In Glenn Beck's 2010 novel, The Overton Window, evil public relations genius Arthur Gardner – who helped turn Che Guevara into a style icon among other scandalous acts – decides time is up for American democracy. With the secret backing of a shadowy elite, Gardner sets out to create a world 'ruled by the wise and the fittest and the strong, with no naive illusions of equality...' In order to persuade politicians to get behind his diabolical plan, he skilfully shifts the 'Overton Window' of acceptable views using the dark arts of PR. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Beck, a right-wing US talk-show host, claimed his book was not simply a work of fiction but instead 'faction', ie a blend of imagination and reality. A delightfully waspish review in the Washington Post said the success of the book 'will be measured not by its literary value (none), or its contribution to the thriller genre (small), or the money it rakes in (considerable), but rather by the rebelliousness it incites among anti-government extremists. If the book is found tucked into the ammo boxes of self-proclaimed patriots and recited at 'tea party' assemblies, then Beck will have achieved his goal.' RNLI and Border Force staff help people disembark from a lifeboat after they were rescued in the English Channel (Picture: Dan Kitwood) | Getty Images Moving the window The actual Overton Window, developed in the 1990s by an American political scientist called Joseph Overton, describes a spectrum of political positions from 'more free', which in his libertarian view meant less government regulation, to 'less free', which meant more. At both ends of the spectrum, there are ideas that are considered 'radical' or 'unthinkable' by the public. These are outside the window of the 'politically possible' and are deemed 'unacceptable'. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Just inside the window are ideas that are considered 'reasonable', then, moving closer to the centre, 'sensible' and 'popular', while ones that have become government policy are in the middle. The job of a think tank like the one he worked for, Overton argued, was to shift the window so that good but politically unacceptable ideas would fall within it or that reasonable ones would become public policy. In recent times, Overton's radical idea, in various forms, has gained significant currency and is no longer the preserve of right-wingers, moving within its own Overton Window. The Encyclopaedia Britannica gives examples of political stances once considered unacceptable that became mainstream, including the abolition of slavery, the granting of women's suffrage, and the introduction of same-sex marriage. All three represent progress. A teacher sees offer her pupils with a Hitler salute, which they return, in Germany around 1933 (Picture: Imagno) | Getty Images Putin's destruction of democracy Beck's book may have delighted delusional right-wing conspiracy theorists but it also performs a useful function – as a reminder that the Overton Window can also move in ways that are sinister, dangerous and downright evil. The acceptance of the Nazis' vile beliefs by millions of ordinary people in 1930s Germany provides the ultimate warning of how vicious humans can become, all while believing they are behaving reasonably. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad Today, the level of support for Vladimir Putin in Russia is perhaps the worst example of an Overton Window shifting in the wrong direction, although that country's experiment in democracy was brief enough that acceptance of dictatorship was probably not much of a stretch. In the UK, attitudes towards trans issues have changed, although they appear to be heading back in the other direction of late, perhaps an indication that some politicians introduced policies which many voters thought were too 'radical'. READ MORE: Why huge blunder by Labour will put Nigel Farage in Downing Street BBC impartiality However, perhaps the biggest shift has been the rising hostility towards immigration, which helped win the Brexit vote, destroy the Conservatives, and is now powering the rise of Nigel Farage's Reform UK party. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad When anti-migrant riots broke out last summer, some on the hard-right expressed sympathy with the rioters, despite their victims having absolutely no connection to the incident that sparked the violence, the Southport stabbings. However, it was a fairly bland report on the BBC recently that really started to make me think about how far our 'Overton Window' has shifted. The idea of BBC 'impartiality' has always been something of a myth. They do try to be impartial, but what that actually represents is a very political question. It seems to me that what they are really doing is operating in the centre of our Overton Window, even as it moves around. 'Hostility' towards RNLI volunteers So the first line of that BBC report may strike many as perfectly reasonable: 'Lifeboat crew members who are called out to migrants crossing the Channel in small boats have told the BBC they make no apologies for saving lives at sea.' Another way to write this sentence would be: 'Lifeboat crew members who are called out to people in distress have told the BBC they make no apologies for saving lives at sea.' How on Earth could we have possibly got to a situation in which this needs to be said? Are we truly a country that might contemplate letting fellow human beings, whoever they are, drown when we could save them? Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad The article states matter-of-factly: 'The RNLI has faced accusations from some on social media, including Nigel Farage, that it was acting as a 'taxi service' for people trying to enter the UK illegally.' It then quotes RNLI volunteers defending their actions because of the 'hostility' they have faced. I don't think there's anything wrong with the article, it's more what it tells us about ourselves. An intelligent alien arriving from another planet might get the impression from the report that, while there is a difference of opinion, both views are reasonable to hold. So it might not take too much of a further shift to move the RNLI's philosophy – they are 'the charity that saves lives at sea' and aim 'to save every one' – from 'reasonable' to 'radical' and, therefore, outside the Overton Window of politically acceptable views.
New Statesman
21-06-2025
- Politics
- New Statesman
Meet the Blue Labour bros
Illustration by Nate Kitch Blue Labour has always been more of a collection of guys than a faction. From its beginnings in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it was Maurice Glasman and a small handful of Jons and not a huge amount more. It is now having something of a resurgence, and beginning to develop a degree of internal reality, although the reality of its actual influence remains debated. A Blue Labour group of MPs formed at the end of last year; now a parliamentary staff network has been set up. There are, I'm told, around 15 of these staffers so far, planning a roster of events and meetings and general association. Over the last few weeks, I've been speaking to some of the new staff group to try and understand them. What does this lanyard class that hates the lanyard class believe? You can paint a picture of who they are with heavy use of the caveat 'mostly but not exclusively'. They are mostly, but not exclusively, men, and mostly, but not exclusively, quite young. They mostly work for new-intake MPs; they are mostly white, and mostly from outside of London. In short, they look like any random sampling of Labour's parliamentary staff class would. Some work for members of the Blue Labour MPs group; some work for completely conventional Starmer-era Labour MPs. Their diagnosis of what is wrong with the country and what Labour should do about it is commensurate with the rest of Blue Labour in its Dan Carden and Jonathan Hinder era. One member of the staff network views Blue Labour as a project of 'realigning the party with areas it represents'. Having come into the party as a Corbynite, they say they 'used to be much more liberal on immigration', but now believe that in the country the 'Overton Window has moved' and have moved with it. One staffer talks about being the grandchild of immigrants and hearing her family and friends increasingly express concern that more recent immigrants are not well integrated – indicating, she thinks, that worries about immigration and integration are far from the preserve of racists and traditionally anti-immigration parties, but are something Labour needs to reckon with. Another staffer says that Blue Labour is concerned with people who have been 'ignored by the establishment for decades', suffering both 'economic neglect' but also being 'ignored on issues like immigration'. He reckons that the 'liberalism of Blair has dominated the party for two decades', with 'not enough focus on class'. Another thinks we have an 'economy too focused on London and the South East', and that Labour is 'not giving white working-class men anything'. 'You've got to read the way the world is going,' they say, and ask 'do we want it in a Labour way, or in a right-wing way?' However, while my impression of Jonathan Hinder is as a man of total conviction (believing among other things that universities should be allowed to go bust and that we should at least think very seriously about leaving the ECHR), the staffers seem just as animated by the process of thinking and talking about politics as they do by the positions themselves. Clearly one of the attractions is not the specific appeal of Blue Labour itself, but the space it provides to talk about things. Keir Starmer's Labour Party is not a very ideas-y place, and these are, on an intellectual level, painfully earnest young people. 'We debate quite a lot – it's good to talk about ideas and philosophy, and all the things staffers never talk about,' says one member; another feels there is a 'frustration with the lack of ideas from the progressive wing of the party'. A third notes that 'a lot of MPs are issues-led, but not political'. When I ask for political heroes, I get Crosland and Blair: my strong sense is that in a different internal climate, these people might not have found themselves at the door of Blue Labour, and instead been scattered, ploughing perhaps somewhat idiosyncratic furrows in a variety of different factions. However, while their attitude to the government could in broad terms be described as loyalist, the ideological vacuum of Starmerism – famously unburdened by doctrine – and the government's lack of (or even decidemad uninterest in) intellectual vitality brings them here. It's not surprising that the people who are here for the debating society have ended up in the tendency which began life as (and arguably has never been much more than) a series of seminars. The staff group's convenor does sees debate as part of the programme though: he says having 'debate and discussion' is really important in and of itself, but also hopes to help flesh out the Blue Labour policy programme (answering questions like, 'what is a Blue Labour foreign policy?' for example). This desire for debate also intersects with another current dynamic in the party: the total sidelining of the Labour left. Dan Carden, the leader of the Blue Labour MP caucus, was a member of Corbyn's shadow cabinet and came up through Unite (he has described his journey into Blue Labour as being from 'left to left'). Various members of the staff network started their political lives as Corbynites, and even those who didn't are fairly ardent believers in the need for a broad-church Labour Party. I hear some variant on 'Blair never expelled Corbyn' more than once in my conversations. One staffer thinks that thanks to Corbyn's foreign policy positions and the anti-Semitism scandal, 'the entire Corbyn project was delegitimised' and there wasn't a thorough evaluation of what worked and what didn't. Subscribe to The New Statesman today from only £8.99 per month Subscribe As much as one of the older members I speak to wants to stress that Blue Labour is not just a reaction to Reform and has been 'going for 15 years', the experience of Corbynism and of the loss of Red Wall seats in 2019 has clearly imprinted itself deeply on the tendency's new iteration. The new Blue Labour owes significant DNA not just to the valiant seminar-convening of Jonathan Rutherford and co., but also to post-2019 projects like the moderate 'Renaissance', the Corbynite 'No Holding Back', and the Labour Together thinking on show in 'Red Shift', the report which famously brought us Stevenage Woman. This post-Corbyn inheritance is also present in how the tendency talks about the state and the economy. In one staffer's view, Blue Labour's 'economic populism is more important than its cultural elements'; the group's convenor immediately says that it is Blue Labour's answers on political economy that most appealed to him. The staffers' views chime with the views of Blue Labour MPs Jonathan Hinder, Connor Naismith and David Smith, who wrote in LabourList last week that their agenda is 'an explicit challenge to the neoliberal, capitalist consensus, and it belongs to the radical labour tradition'. There is a reticence amongst the staffers when it comes to Glasman and some of his more recent interventions (the repeated assertion that progressives don't want you to enjoy sex with your wife; an appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast; tirades about the chancellor and the attorney general). While the group's convenor (who tells me that he first became interested in Blue Labour because when was younger he would 'watch and read stuff online, lectures and articles, by Cruddas and Glasman') says the Labour peer's connections with the Maga movement are 'realpolitik', conversations Labour needs to be open to having, others are less positive and more awkward when asked about their long-time standard bearer. They also acknowledge that Blue Labour has, as one of them puts it, a 'brand issue' within Labour, a party whose membership are in the main bog-standard left liberals. They aren't wrong: one Labour MP I spoke to about this piece called Blue Labour 'four guys who claim they do have girlfriends but that they go to another school'. It's hard to escape the impression that this MP and critics like them won't be persuaded by one staffer's arguments that Blue Labour is 'not anti-liberal, it's a critique of liberalism' or another's earnest assertion that he just wants more of our political conversation to address the 'moral plane' of people's lives. Arguments about the out-of-touch nature of the political classes are probably not best made by Westminster bag carriers – as the bag carriers well know. (There are 'too many of me in the economy', the group's convenor, a white man in his 20s with an Oxbridge degree, tells me ruefully.) Everything, however, starts somewhere. Political history is scattered with the vehicles of bright young things, some of which went places and some of which didn't. This group of earnest young people could do worse for themselves than as the staff vanguard of Labour's most discussed faction – even if not all the discussion is wholly positive. That being said, the staff network claims fairly moderate ambitions for itself and its tendency: 'Can I ever see them putting forward NPF or NEC candidates? Honestly, no,' one member tells me. In the meantime, though, there's another seminar to attend. [See also: Labour's 'old right' has been reborn] Related
The National
17-06-2025
- Politics
- The National
John Swinney could light a path through the far-right fog
We've gone past the protest vote stage, and shifted to increasing adherence to an imagined world of tidy moral sorting, in which only the 'deserving' are allowed a stake. As Feher notes, and as Assa Samake-Roman rightly amplifies, this is not an accidental by-product of voter alienation, it's a stepping stone to unchallenged domination. READ MORE: John Swinney launches report showing Scotland 'must be in charge of destiny' In that context, the leaked comments of Patriotic Alternative founder Mark Collett (as published in The Sunday National on May 18) are essential reading. Collett boasted of 'massive shifts in the Overton Window' and spoke openly of influencing Reform UK from within by fielding covert candidates. When bad-faith actors say the quiet part out loud, it's a good idea to take them seriously. So far, too few have done so. Labour won't, as they're too busy dancing to the tunes of Thatcher and Blair while invoking the ghost of socialism past. The LibDems are lost in a sea of 'balance,' on a novelty inflatable, and Alba have mistaken grudge for principle. The Greens might be allies, but their opportunism will require some grown-up restraint that they know they're capable of, but seem to begrudge at times. That leaves John Swinney almost alone in the political wilderness, with no dependable help coming. And yet, paradoxically, that might be where his strength lies. If Swinney has the courage to channel his inner John the Baptist (now that actual Baptist John Mason is rightly in exile), he could use this moment to reframe the SNP's message. Rather than vaguely resisting the far right, he could name the ideological architecture that underpins it. He could show how SNP policies such as public ownership, progressive taxation, and free prescriptions counteract the moral rot of producerism not with slogans, but with solidarity. READ MORE: UK 'feeding Scotland poison pills', John Swinney says To do so would require abandoning defensive posturing and leaning fully into moral clarity. The right have not made gains because their ideas are better, they've done so because they've fabricated a more engaging story. The rapt audience hears a rousing tale of identity, contribution, and resentment in which they're the put-upon hero fighting off 'bad hombres', and the good guys win and make everyone rich. Those on the relative-left (whose stance is actually not massively left-of-centre, but deeply grounded in nuance and justice) need to tell a different story: one that acknowledges complexity, foregrounds care, and reminds people that dignity is not a zero-sum game. We need to highlight the same old parasitism that prevails in Farage's fairy story. Swinney cannot expect applause from the usual corners, but if he speaks clearly to those who still believe in decency and shared fate, he may yet light a path through the fog. He needs to offer hope, while properly addressing the very real threat posed by this perilous political shift. Ron Lumiere via email IS honest John Swinney our latter-day Nero? The latest internet bot tried to persuade me that Nero fiddling while Rome burned had, like a lot of urban myths, no basis in historical fact – particularly since he was an accomplished lyre player and the fiddle hadn't yet been invented – but why let the facts get in the way of a good story? However, it's a handy phrase when you want to describe someone ignoring a crisis or neglecting serious matters. The Hamilton, Larkhall and Stonehouse by-election isn't a serious matter in the grand scheme of things, but a mealy-mouthed approach to the impending Holyrood election most certainly is. READ MORE: Yes campaigners react to John Swinney speech on independence Last week we learned that Alexander Dennis is closing with the loss of 400 jobs. It is described as the largest bus and coach manufacturer in the United Kingdom, with a 50% market share in 2019, and is based in Larbert. You might expect the First Minister to come out fighting but instead he offers the usual platitudes … no stone left unturned, will explore all options. How many times have we been here before? Last month we lost our one and only refinery and we all know about the reserved powers. But where was the fight, particularly since the company of billionaire Jim Ratcliffe was given a €700 million (£600m) UK Government guarantee to build a petrochemical plant in Antwerp, the biggest in 30 years? An industrial policy disaster for Scotland and surrendered without a fight. READ MORE: New Dumfries and Galloway Council leader admits 'vulnerable' position Swinney's steady-as-you-go attitude and trying to 'govern sensibly' to build support for indy simply won't wash any more. As for his wishy-washy Cabinet reshuffle … for one thing, the Constitution Secretary should have been reshuffled oot the door given his penchant for photo ops with the Israeli ambassador. His real and culpable failure, however, is being taken in by civil servants and studiously ignoring the opportunity for our country's freedom presented by incorporating the UN's International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into Scots law. The Covenant is unambiguous, in Part 1 Article 1: 'All peoples have the right of self-determination. By virtue of that right they freely determine their political status and freely pursue their economic, social and cultural development.' Those behind the petition (PE2135) have clearly established the nonsense spouted by the civil service that adoption of the convention in an infringement of reserved powers in the Scotland Act. The Great Fire of Rome lasted for six days and destroyed a large portion of the city, and rumours were that Nero ordered the fire so he could rebuild the city in his own image. God save us all from Emperor John's image of more and better devolution, which threatens an electorate so disillusioned that Holyrood will once again become a political enclave of North Britain. Iain Bruce Nairn
New York Post
31-05-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
NYC's cyclist crime and more: Letters to the Editor — June 1, 2025
Stop cyclist crime The bikes are totally out of control in New York City today ('E-bike danger an e-emergency,' May 29). The bike lanes next to the curb are borderline unsafe. Bikers ride at extreme speeds using gasoline and electric motors, while being oblivious to pedestrians and any traffic laws whatsoever. How many times must one see them riding on the sidewalk? Or going the wrong way on a one-way street? Riding against traffic? Running full stop signs and red lights? Advertisement How many vehicular accidents have they caused and just kept going? How many pedestrians have they injured or killed with no consequences? They think they can do anything they want with zero consequences from the NYPD because elected officials protect them. Every type of bike should be licensed, registered and insured. Peter Janosik, Philadelphia, Pa. Trump's triumphs President Trump opened the Overton Window wide and let fresh air chase away the stale ideas of the left ('End of the Woke Road,' Rich Lowry, PostOpinion, May 28). Advertisement Democrats imposed pronouns, equity for 'oppressed' people regardless of personal effort, political favor based on skin color and — perhaps the foulest idea of all — intersectionality. The woke destroyed many schools, from elementary to universities, with mephitic ideas. They reduced heroes' statues to rubble, rewrote our history and tried to transform our country into Nazi Germany for Jews. No matter what others think of his presidency, Trump has engineered a great victory for America. Advertisement Paul Bloustein, Cincinnati, Ohio Not all migrants While I have no problem with sending violent criminal migrants back to Venezuela, I find it cold-hearted and foolish to now be sending back the exceptional ones ('Ire at ICE detain of migrant student,' May 28). Under a Biden-era entry program, this boy was legally here and on track to become a productive member of society. He was in high school, working part-time to help support his mother and siblings and showing up to his immigration hearings. The government changed the rules, and he is now locked up. The old bait-and-switch is for catching rats, and not all immigrants are rats. Advertisement Donathan Salkaln, Manhattan Democratic doom One of the great things about Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez running against Sen. Chuck Schumer in a Democratic primary is that we can get rid of one of them ('Schu're in big trouble,' May 26). Schumer has become an increasingly pathetic political figure over the last few years. As a Jew, his silence over pro-Hamas activists threatening Jewish students at many levels is an embarrassing example of political cowardice. His 'we're moving forward' responses to questions about his role in covering up former President Joe Biden's mental capacity is insulting to the intelligence of Americans. If AOC wins, we're still stuck with an elitist phony whose concern for her constituents is a disgrace. Regardless, one is better than two. Robert DiNardo, Farmingdale Fugitive found You can run, but you can't hide (' 'Cop stomper,' busted,' May 28). The coward who beat up an NYPD officer was nabbed in Virginia. Will his mommy and family friend be charged with harboring a fugitive? The feds should give them a look. Advertisement Mike Lapinga, Staten Island Want to weigh in on today's stories? Send your thoughts (along with your full name and city of residence) to letters@ Letters are subject to editing for clarity, length, accuracy, and style.
