Britain turning left?

My landlord seems now to be accepting that I didn’t do anything to flood his garage and basement beneath my apartment. But amidst the chaos yesterday, crisis number one, his extension line to that same flooded space that got disconnected to pull through fiber for Internet service to my apartment got lost.

I have taken photographs for evidence of a lack of damage inside my apartment. I honestly have no clue where the water is coming from.

That’s two dramas in the first four days I have lived in this new apartment. It is now day 5 and neither has been resolved.


Brexit

My skepticism of Matthew Parris’ claim that Britain has turned to the political left in the wake of Brexit[1] is instinctive. I do not know this writer well enough.

What I will suggest is that anyone who has read Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged[2] should recognize an utter impossibility to her utopia. Fundamentally and inescapably human beings are a social species; we rely on each other to survive, physically and psychologically. Capitalist individualism contradicts that reality. No matter how much Rand’s acolytes, who never matured beyond adolescence, may have wet dreams of unrestrained capitalism, it could never actually happen because the social cost would simply be far too high, indeed incomprehensibly so.

Again, I do not know Parris. I also have paid insufficient attention to British politics to evaluate his examples. But I suspect his claim cherry picks those examples; that his claim that Britain is moving left in fact reflects a pause in the neoliberal agenda as its social costs have become apparent.

Neoliberalism is, for capitalist libertarians, I suspect including Parris, merely a baby’s first step. So for capitalist libertarians, a pause looks like a leftward move. But the rest of us should be more careful, particularly as the Tories continue to hold the government.

Matthew Parris, “Brexit Britain has taken a sharp turn to the left,” Times, September 4, 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-britain-has-taken-a-sharp-turn-to-the-left-8vsjf9mn9


Abortion

Sarah Jones, “Texas Is What a Real Mob Looks Like,” New York, September 1, 2021, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/09/texas-6-week-abortion-ban-is-what-a-real-mob-looks-like.html

Robert Barnes et al., “Supreme Court refuses to block Texas law banning abortions at six weeks,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/texas-six-week-abortion-ban/2021/09/01/e53cf372-0a6b-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Daniela Santamariña, “What abortion policy would look like in the U.S. if Roe v. Wade fell,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/06/11/abortion-rights-roe-v-wade/

Felicia Sonmez, “Sen. Collins repeatedly asserted that Kavanaugh considered abortion rights settled law. The justice’s decision on Texas’s restrictive law suggests otherwise,” Washington Post, September 2, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/powerpost/abortion-collins-supreme-court-kavanaugh/2021/09/02/b6de0b98-0bfa-11ec-a6dd-296ba7fb2dce_story.html

Chantal Da Silva, “Texas judge grants restraining order against anti-abortion group, temporarily preventing lawsuits,” NBC News, September 4, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/texas-judge-grants-restraining-order-against-anti-abortion-group-temporarily-n1278509


  1. [1]Matthew Parris, “Brexit Britain has taken a sharp turn to the left,” Times, September 4, 2021, https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/brexit-britain-has-taken-a-sharp-turn-to-the-left-8vsjf9mn9
  2. [2]Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged (New York: Plume, 1999).

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