US Midterms to UK's technocracy: Can traditional parties capture our imagination?

Plus the importance of courage and highlights from Buxton Battle of Ideas

I wonder if, like me, you are having a hard time decoding the results from the US midterms? I don’t just mean the slow and often bizarre results (like a dead man getting elected). I mean the fact that most pundits are struggling to figure out what they mean.

What is clear is that it was obviously not the red wave that Republicans had forecast. As many have it, it was more of a trickle. Trump’s nomination as Republican candidate looks by no means secure after the poor showing for many of the Republicans he backed and the success of Ron DeSantis.

Lots of explanations for the muted Republican showing have been offered. I was reminded of a really informative session we had at the Battle of Ideas festival, where panellists argued that although there is no real enthusiasm for Biden’s Democrats, the abortion issue had totally transformed the election. Many, they predicted, would hold their nose and vote Democrat to ensure that women’s freedoms were protected. From the vantage point of now, this looks quite prophetic. I suggest you go watch the debate if you want to learn more.

Is politics better in pubs than parliament?

But aside from the ins and outs of voting patterns, I have been reflecting a little on the fact that mainstream politics seems so uninspiring. This was a topic we covered at length at the Battle of Ideas festival in Buxton last weekend. Whilst the day of debates was brilliant, so many people seemed increasingly to be looking for something outside of party politics. We had representatives from lots of grassroots organisations and discussion groups there, and I felt that this kind of politics - politics in the pub, on the street, in local groups grappling with big issues - is where the energy is today. I am not a big fan of political prescriptions, but I’d urge you all to search around locally and see if there is someone near you hosting interesting debates and discussions - and if not, consider starting something yourself!

Despite this, I do want to give a mention to one of our speakers, Rick Moore, whose speech was - as many joked - probably the only thing that could rejuvenate the Conservative party if it were adopted as the manifesto. He published it over on his Substack and I suggest you give it a read:

Politically Homeless : What is next for red wall voters.

Whether or not the existing parties can be reimagined (I am personally more and more sceptical on that front, despite the stirring words there from Rick), what is clear is that we all need a healthy dose of courage - above all the courage to think differently.

So I am delighted that Alan Miller, a campaigner for the #Together campaign, has allowed us to share his speech from the closing keynote session at Buxton with you all. Read it and let us know what you think.

Courage: is anything worth fighting for?

The first step of courage is to dare to know. ‘Have courage to use your own reason’, as Immanuel Kant argued in his 1784 essay, What is Enlightenment?

Kant argued that the Enlightenment had as it’s clarion cry: ‘Dare to know things through reason. Dare to be wise.’

Yet even in 20 BC, Horace - who Kant quoted in that famous essay - suggested that courage lay in the persistence of reaching a goal, the need for effort to overcome obstacles. Horace sang the praises of courageous human endeavour: daring to know, daring to use reason, and daring to speak up against the mores of the day. All of this, of course, takes courage.

It is this daring to know – sapere aude as Horace and Kant knew it in Latin – that thinkers across history have believed will break the shackles of despotism, and reveal, through public discourse, what benefits society as a whole.

So, what is courage?

Socrates was courageous in that he allowed himself to conclude that he didn’t know anything. In Plato’s dialogue, Aches, he pushes his fellow citizens to answer what constitutes courage. Socrates insists that it is not just vigorous pursuit of a goal – because evil can be pursued vigorously and enthusiastically, but not be worth the name courage.

Courage, I would argue, comes in the public sphere. We all can show levels of personal courage privately, or in matters of life and death such as on the battlefield. But it is in the public sphere where courage truly comes to life.

In the dialogues Euthyphro, Apology and Crito, we see the trial and death of Socrates. These dialogues show him for the man he was – his commitment to being virtuous, to daring to think, in dire circumstances where he faced not just death but notoriety in the eyes of his fellow citizens. Plato shows the injustice of his trial and Socrates’s willingness to suffer in the service of the truth. This willingness was courageous.

Such courage has been on display right across human history.

For one example, we travel to 31 October 1517. This is the day that Martin Luther nailed his Disputation on the Power of Indulgences (known as the Ninety-Five Theses) to the door of All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Saxony. The thesis denounced indulgences as a means of salvation.

The Church ordered Luther to retract his statements, but he refused, repeatedly making statements denying the papal foundations of the church. Demonstrating immense bravery, he went on to say: ‘I cannot recant, and I will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I cannot do otherwise.’

Or we can look to 1650, where Rene Descartes, famous for ‘I think, therefore I am’, explained that hope and fear are both always together in any pursuit, and so to pursue your goals, and the truth, requires courage.

Or let’s examine the period of the English Civil War in the mid-seventeenth century. The war meant many had taken it upon themselves to pursue freedom as Commoners against King and rulers, courageously fighting for a different society. William Walwyn, a courageous man linked to the Levellers, and one of the authors of An Agreement of The People, captured the spirit of this period when he said, ‘a few diligent and valiant spirits may turn the world upside down … and shall with life and courage engage accordingly’.

Or we can look to Thomas Paine in the 1760s. He spent time in prison in France and died poor in London, but his work championing the French Revolution and insisting on democratic rights and freedoms, and especially in his timeless book, Common Sense, demonstrated immense courage. His courage changed the course of the world – contributing significantly to the American Revolution.

In our modern period, we know of many examples of courage, such as the Suffragettes who risked beatings, imprisonment and vilification in their demands for universal voting rights. So, too, with the American civil rights movement: King’s ‘I have a dream’ ricocheted across the world, inspiring many, including the movements for national independence. Getting voting rights for all citizens took enormous courage and guts. It inspired millions.

When considering all these historical examples, we often think of such profound and terrifying things: leaders who gained independence for nation states and heretics who did not succumb even under torture.

Yet as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible reminds us, the modern period can throw up many different challenges. The spirit of witch-hunts can infect even the most modest common endeavours.

It is in this context, then, when we consider courage, that we have to talk also about duty. Duty in the public sphere, to one another, a commitment to principles, to ideas, values – and what the Greeks called virtue.

Here I stand - I can do no other.

In order to have courage, we need to have a commitment to believe in what matters as well as the courage to debate openly, to challenge, to learn new things, just as George Orwell did. After bravely fighting as a volunteer in the Spanish Civil War, he had the courage to openly state the harm Stalinism was doing, and gave us Animal Farm.

The past few years in Britain have shown that it takes enormous courage to argue and speak up for what you believe. Whether this was for Brexit (where the contemporary version of calling you a witch was to declare you stupid, xenophobic and ignorant to silence you), or on any number of questions related to the culture wars (where they will try to de-platform or ‘cancel’ you). To speak up publicly, to argue for free speech when you may lose your career and reputation, to be a heretic against the new forms of inquisitions – all this takes immense bravery.

We should remember though, that courage is infectious.

When we stand up, when we speak out and challenge, it inspires others. It is what creates solidarity with other people who think similarly, and encourages them to stand up together.

I’m sure we all remember what we were doing at the moment Boris Johnson announced that we were to stay at home, that Britain was to have an entirely new imposition called Lockdown. This ill-thought-out, draconian attack on the demos, on the people, was followed by many more egregious assaults:

·      Vaccine passports on ‘Freedom Day’

·      Vaccine mandates for care workers and NHS staff

·      Suspending parliament and democratic scrutiny

·      No cost-benefit analysis

·      Suppression of free speech and critical inquiry with Stasi-like references to ‘following the science’ and ‘keeping you safe’

·      Education damaged, families isolated, loved ones dying alone

·      Nudge and psychological propaganda

·      And, of course, more lockdowns

But many were courageous. Many brave frontline NHS staff that had been at the coalface for the entire period said, ‘no’ to vaccine mandates. Over 1,000 hospitality venues said they would not institute vaccine passports and would be Open For All. Ordinary people up and down the country came to national protests and local rallies to challenge lockdowns – many who had never been on any kind of protest in their lives. We stood Together.

And we stopped them!

Remember that those that want to silence us, those that want to de-platform, censor and cancel us, are scared. They don’t have confidence in their ideas. They’re scared of the power of our ideas, and they think people are rubbish, ignorant, untrustworthy - even evil. We all have a duty to speak up to stand up together. We the many, they the few.

There are many more battles to be fought. There are the care workers that should be reinstated and compensated. We need to say no to compulsory IDs, digital or otherwise. We need true freedom of speech and association, which is under assault from both the government’s Online Safety Bill and Big Tech censorship. There is the cost-of-living crisis. We need to put the public – through innovation, wealth creation and ingenuity – at the centre of politics and society. The demos, the people, must be front and centre. We need an insistence on our rights, to privacy, autonomy and choice. We need to reclaim and defend parental responsibility – and democratic accountability.

To do all this, we all need courage. We need to commit to do our duty to principles of freedom, democracy and rights.

So, I’d ask you all to speak up. Be brave. Be courageous when you may be shouted down or threatened with cancellation. The more of us that do this, the stronger we - and democracy - shall be. We need to be courageous to fight for these ideas with our fellow citizens. Let’s be inspired by the courage of our fellow citizens challenging terrorists on the street!

When we do so, together, we inspire others around us to do the same. We create solidarity and we change the world. Let’s all do so, together!

Alan Miller is co-founder of the Old Truman Brewery, Night Time Industries Association (NTIA), Recovery, Open For All and the campaign Together. He remains an active campaigner for #Together.