Hanania is right - and his point holds more widely

This post from Richard Hanania has been getting a fair bit of coverage. What he says, at much greater length than I need, is this. While right-wingers in America might not like the US media, and while it's a bit crazy on a few hot topics (you can guess which ones), it's actually pretty good. Not only do the likes of The New York Times turn out large volumes of broadly accurate and interesting stuff, but also they have a commitment to fairness and impartiality which, if not always met (who is perfect?), is at least a lodestar they navigate by in good faith. That a good thing in itself and it also produces the result that the media's output is much better than any nakedly partisan alternative is or would be. 

All true. But there's a bigger point. (More below the break.)

One of the constant features of British politics is the import of American ideas. If you want to predict what concepts (or at least catchphrases) are going to be big here in a few months' time then look for the cool new thing over there. I surely don't need to give examples. 

This is perhaps inevitable, but it has various bad consequences for both Left and Right. On the Left, if Keir Starmer has one obvious Achilles heel then it's not his lack of charisma (see John Major's 1992 election result - more votes than Blair in 1997), it's Rosie Duffield/trans rights issues. Labour would be better off - it would have the full-throated support of JK Rowling, apart from anything else - if it had resisted importing a US culture war issue that gives it few votes and puts off many who are sympathetic to it.

It's on the Right, however, that I see a bigger danger. The way it appears from this side of the Atlantic - and Hanania's post is consistent with this perception - is that the mainstream US Establishment is firmly left of centre. The media is a good example of this, but Hanania's point could have been made more widely. Universities, big business, the professions, trade unions, the big cultural-charitable institutions, the oldest and poshest Protestant churches - all have more or less espoused various elements within the Democratic Party coalition. 

Of course, supporting the Democrats is not quite universal among the Powers That Be, but one gets the feeling that the kind of old and well-populated moderate Republican Establishment from which the likes of George HW Bush sprang is now no more, destroyed partly by its allies (e.g., Newt Gingrich) and partly by its opponents. 

The closest analogy for our purposes seems to the way that Remainers govern this country: even with our present Leave-delivering government, two of the last four PMs have been Remainers, and outside a few dark corners in Parliament and the press, Remain dominates the commanding heights of both the right-wing institutions (e.g., banks) and left-wing ones (e.g., universities).

So we see why the American Right seems to adopt a broadly confrontational approach to the Establishment, reminiscent of the traditional Millwall supporters ("nobody likes us and we don't care", chanted en masse). But there's no good reason for the UK Right to follow suit.

Let's just look at the media. The respectable media in the US is largely left of centre: NYT, New Yorker Atlantic and so on. But the media in the UK includes some perfectly respectable newspapers and magazines of the Right (Telegraph, Times, Spectator) and ones not inherently averse to the Right (FT, Economist). The BBC has all the virtues of the NYT enumerated by Hanania - and many more to boot. Its coverage of the Brexit referendum was laudably even-handed, despite the fact that the BBC's editorial and journalistic staff must have been overwhelmingly pro-Remain. These people are open to being persuaded by, or at least giving house room to, sensible right-wing ideas. Lashing out at the media - even at the BBC - is a bad move. And yet it happens.

The same points can be made about the rest of the British Establishment: it's not perfect, but it contains a lot of good. Yet the online Right seems to be flailing around from one 'burn it all down' pose to the next, whether a quasi-Dolchstoßlegende to do with Brexit, or a monstrous belief that all old people are hounding the young into poverty by refusing to allow the south of England to be concreted over, or despair-cum-fury that economic growth is the soiled victim of some evil combination of 'Treasury Brain' and 'cheems mindset' (Google may be your friend if these phrases mean nothing to you), or simple despair that 12 years of nominally Conservative government have left us with more immigration, more diversity initatives, more pronouns and fewer statues than ever. I have even seen King Charles described as 'woke': nothing is sacred.  

But the UK is not like the US! There simply aren't enough votes - there isn't enough of the country - outside the world supported by the Establishment. Becoming anti-elitists railing at the people who own and run the country is a silly thing for conservatives to do, especially in a country like this one, which is generally a nice and decent place, run by sensible and well-intentioned people, and reigned over by a genuine, real-life King. If the country really is going to the dogs - a belief with, I grant you, a distinguished pedigree on the Right - then it's doing so in a perfectly traditional way that does not require revolution. Let me direct you again to my cautionary words on Boosters and Doomsters.

I have written some thoughts to similar effect before. I return to them now for two reasons.

First, the bad news. The end of over a decade of Conservative government is approaching. While the government itself seems to be set on going out with a whimper rather than a bang, the prospect of the end has prompted the energetic elements of the Right to rage against the dying of the light with renewed fury. That is to say, the situation has got worse since I wrote in early 2021. If you want proof then look at the Truss/Kwarteng Government. In Kwarteng's words, they got "carried away": there must be some link between the reckless energy of the online Right and the reckless energy of the shortest premiership in British history. Ideas have consequences.

But now the good news. Ideas indeed have consequences - and no one wants to repeat the consequences of the Truss/Kwarteng days. The desire for sanity will filter back from the front line to the armchair generals in the think tanks. 

There is even more good news from America. As I said, if you want to know what ideas are going to be big here then look across the Atlantic. For one thing, we seem to have passed peak Trump, which means that peak UK craziness will soon be upon us too. And Hanania's article itself is a straw in the wind: Hanania is a coming man, and so being a bit more sane about one's opposition to left-wing flavoured institutions may well be a coming idea. If so, you read it here first.