Latest news with #JohnMcTernan
Times
06-07-2025
- Politics
- Times
Cryo-liberals are still dishing up deranged delusions
Occasionally, I come across something that captures the very essence of cryogenic liberalism. Cryo-liberals, for those not in the know, are perfectly frozen political specimens from the 1990s and its end-of-history dreamland, when the answer to every problem was open borders, open markets and open arms. Their heyday coincided with Blairism: sharp-suited social liberalism combined with the post-Thatcherite free market settlement. Since then the world has changed, but the cryo-liberals are still with us and, in many areas, still running the show. Cryo-liberals are at their best when they're full of data and thoughtful examples from history to make their case. They're at their worst when engaged in such delusional denials of fact that it takes your breath away. Here's the Platonic example that popped on to my radar this week, like many unwelcome things, on X. 'Races and ethnicities don't exist,' tweeted John McTernan, the Blairite political strategist. • A tinderbox of disconnection and division threatens our democracy I'm going to write that out again: 'Races and ethnicities don't exist.' Not just 'race and ethnicity have been misused' or 'races and ethnicities are not useful policy categories' or 'race and ethnicity don't mean what your prejudices say they do'. They simply 'don't exist'. McTernan was engaging with a topic that obviously makes him uncomfortable: the question of whether there is any ethnic component to English identity. The answer is quite obviously yes, in the sense that you can plot the population of England on a genetic chart, which measures the frequencies of particular mutations in the genome, and distinguish a cluster, formed from a mixing of various other groups, that has populated the southern British Isles for most of the last three or four thousand years. And I say that as someone whose genome, if plotted, would not appear in that cluster. It is simply a fact, like the fact that there are different models of Barbie. Now I can understand why many people may feel queasy that this sort of fact is entering our political discourse. A new era is upon us, in which voters are rejecting the ideology of universal cultural compatibility. This change brings risk. There is a lot of vile race-baiting rising up social media feeds, promoted by racists and grifters. But the right response is not to deny the reality that there are different ethnicities — clusters of identifiable genetic sameness and difference. Truth, as we learnt from the trans debate, does not care about your feelings. And lying or denying the truth doesn't make you nice or better or cleverer than other people. It makes you a delusional, dangerous dinosaur. • Emma Duncan: Division, decline, decay? What a load of rot Geneticists sequencing the DNA of a man found buried in a pot in Ancient Egypt have found that a fifth of his lineage was from Mesopotamia. This was a period in which both regions were home to civilisations that were starting to develop writing and taking great leaps forward in architectural and political sophistication. Perhaps their development was related to interbreeding and population exchange. There. That wasn't so controversial, was it? I mentioned in my last column that lettuces are used in Chinese new year rituals to symbolise future prosperity, via a pun. The Chinese word for 'lettuce' and for 'growing wealth' are similar. This prompted a reader to send me some lyrics from Guys & Dolls in which the word 'lettuce' is used to mean cash: 'There are well-heeled shooters everywhere/ And an awful lot of lettuce/ For the fella who can get us there.' I can only assume this is because greenbacks might seem salad-like when leafed through in wads. And it rhymes. The response to the news that the Bank of England may replace Winston Churchill on our banknotes with an array of wind farms was utterly predictable. It's almost as if someone is sitting inside our institutions trying to think of the best way for them to sabotage themselves. What's next? Replace the King with Glastonbury Tor?
Spectator
01-07-2025
- Health
- Spectator
Labour MPs need a reality check on Britain's ballooning benefits bill
'No one votes Labour to cut the welfare state. People vote Labour to grow the welfare state. That's the role of the party.' That's what John McTernan, Labour strategist, said on Coffee House Shots last week. He's absolutely correct, of course. But the ballooning cost of the benefits bill means that Labour now faces an uncomfortable decision, for which many of its MPs seem ill prepared. The total cost for Personal Independence Payments (PIP) alone is expected to reach £35 billion by the end of this decade, up from £16 billion in 2019-20 and £26.5 billion in 2024-25. The total benefits bill, including the state pension, universal credit and other benefits, could hit £324 billion by 2030. Labour has few options for balancing the books Yet Labour has few options for balancing the books. They've already hit the country once with a devastating tax raid which has left the economy reeling. Gilt yields are well above where they were during the mini-budget. But even the modest proposals to reduce the benefits bill have been watered down, given the inability of scores of Labour MPs to stomach a marginal deceleration – not a reversal – of benefits spending. As Richard Burgon, MP for Leeds East, put it: 'The Government shouldn't be balancing the books on the backs of disabled people.' This, for some Labour MPs, is a point of principle. But what do Burgon and his colleagues really believe is behind the growth of PIP? Is it just that we are getting older? Sicker? That the pandemic changed things? Or that underfunding of the NHS is leaving people suffering with longer-term conditions? Certainly, Britain appears to be sicker than in previous years. And with the NHS in the state that it is, it's probably inevitable that there would be uptick in bad health. But are we really supposed to believe that, for example, the number of people with Tourettes has climbed three fold: 1,661 people with the condition now receive PIP, including 857 who receive the mobility part of enhanced PIP (making them eligible for Motability), this is up from 545 in January 2019. Or that the number of people receiving PIP for sleep apnea has gone from 429 to 3,001? Or that there should really be people receiving PIP for writer's cramp (seven), acne (14) and factitious disorders (18)? Or is it the case that the almost four-fold increase in the number of people receiving PIP for eczema is partially attributable to the very normal human phenomenon of responding to incentives? If it becomes easier to access free money, it seems likely that more people will, shockingly, take that free money. Is it perhaps the case that, given how few PIP assessments now take place in person, some less than scrupulous fellow citizens and residents feel more confident in emphasising the disabling effects of, say, their tennis elbow, or obsessive compulsive disorder? And that, perhaps, the Department for Work and Pensions is less able to identify the genuinely needy and those gaming the system? Maybe this isn't the case. Maybe there is a reasonable explanation to all of this. And the various benefit claims, broken down in the Taxpayers' Alliance's benefits dashboard, can all be explained away. But for any Labour MPs still planning on voting the government's already diluted plans down, it's surely time for them to advocate for an urgent public inquiry on what is driving the devastating surge in sleep apnea across our island.
