Quotes of the week

The ultimate aim is to leave the place better off than when you found it. The reality for Grant Robertson is so far from that it is tragic.

He will defend at least some of it because some of it is ideological. But whether it’s pipes, trains, ferries or debt welfare the numbers don’t lie and the numbers are desperate.

He softened it with his wit, humour, and personality. As I have said many times, I always liked him, and I enjoyed talking to him.

But let the record show the Grant Robertson era was as ruinous as any you will ever see.  – Mike Hosking

The criticisms have come thick and fast in the wake of the coalition government’s announcement that there would be sanctions applied to job seekers who choose not to actively look for work, despite help and support that is supposed to be coming from MSD officials. If after all that help and support you, choose not to take a job, then sanctions will apply.  

I’m starting to know what you mean when you say the media is biased. All of the images shown on all of the mainstream media show an aggressive looking Luxon laying down the law, and emotive headlines from the Greens and the like, talking about the cruelty of it all.   – Kerre Woodham

 How are they doing that? By asking you to work if you can? To offer you help and assistance to get work? How is that cruel? I would argue allowing people to stay on benefits when they have the ability to work as far more cruel. And if the taxpayer is funding a benefit for a person and their family, that person is not providing for themselves in their whanau. They are state dependent. That’s not being self-sufficient. That’s not self-supporting. That’s not having choices.

And okay, if the sanctions that National are proposing don’t encourage people to seek long term employment, which of Labour’s policies did? How did Labour help these young people find meaningful work? The stats under the previous government are pretty damning.   – Kerre Woodham

Being on a benefit is just poverty, you know, that’s your future. You rot on a benefit. This government is being responsible. This is a courageous policy and you know it’s taxpayers money and for beneficiaries to be on this for 13 years is an absolute disgrace, and it is a long standing Labour view that they have a right to be on benefit and not work if it’s a basic job, you’ve got to find something big and paying very well before they’ll push it … It’s supposed to be a fill in where people survive while they take the steps to a better life. If they’re on there for a very long period of time, there’s no way they could survive. So, what else are some people doing to manage to be on there that long? – Christine Rankin

40,000 people under the age of 25 on a job seeker benefit, an increase of 66% compared to six years ago – that tells me that Labour’s policies have not worked when it comes to getting young people into meaningful work. That tells them that it’s okay to rely on the state for the rest of your life. Where you will have few choices, limited options. It will always be grinding poverty.

How is that kind? And I would really love to know. I didn’t hear that question being asked of Marama Davidson yesterday. I don’t see that it’s kind to keep people on benefits, and yet what do you do? I know of a business that’s had to closed down in a very small town in the Far North. They were desperately trying to get young people in the district where unemployment is high because there are few opportunities. They would take the van. They would knock on the doors, they would give them the soap, the shampoo, the clothes they needed to turn up for work. The longest one of the kids lasted was three days and then they just could not get up in the morning. They’d stayed up all night. They tried, I think, about 11 or 12 young people, young men and women, and the kids had the best of intentions initially.

But because they’ve come from three years where they haven’t had to show up for anything. During Covid that wasn’t even an option because the schools were closed. They don’t know how to get out of bed in the morning and how is letting them keep doing that good for them. For any young person? You see, that to me is the cruelty. We’re just running on different train tracks. The Greens and Carmel, who I think is fantastic and does great work with the people, but the stats don’t lie. The number of kids under 25 on job seeker has increased by 66% since Labour became part of a government and then sole charge.

What the hell is the future of those kids?  – Kerre Woodham

Worse for the government, in the absence of Luxon’s clear indication of nuts and bolts solutions to the problems he outlined in his speech, ministers are dependent on the advice of many of the very people most hostile to their policies. I cannot recall a time when any government’s plans have been so threatened. Certainly, the basic public service ethos of employees needing to deliver the policies the public voted for is being challenged.

The Minister for the Public Service, Nicola Willis, ironically, is the very minister who under her other hat as Minister of Finance, has the most direct interest in the implementation of the new government’s policies. It’s certainly time for a new State Services head, and it might be time for a full-scale inquiry into the bureaucracy so that civil servants are told in no uncertain terms of the responsibilities that accompany the rather lavish salaries they enjoy. And any inquiry should include TVOne and RNZ that have been over-indulging the political whims of their employees ever since last October. – Michael Bassett

Funny how transactivists don’t need to check anyone’s pronouns to know who to intimidate. – Yvonne Van Dongen

The three governing parties have agreed that “the coalition Government will make decisions that are … principled – making decisions based on sound public policy principles, including problem definition, rigorous cost-benefit analysis and economic efficiency.”

It is a total reversal of how Labour made decisions. Labour set impossible aspirational goals, for example, the “Road to Zero” to eliminate on-road fatalities, created a media campaign and then implemented a gesture policy, such as lowering speed limits.

Labour failed because their policies did not address the problem. – Richard Prebble 

Replacing poll-driven gesture decisions with proper problem definition and cost-benefit analysis would transform government.  – Richard Prebble 

Government decision-making that is problem-defining and subject to rigorous cost-benefit policy is very effective. –

While it’s a business maxim not to throw good money after bad, governments do it all the time. Departments spend tens of millions of dollars rather than admit they have made a mistake.

If governmental decisions were based on data and evidence, many programmes would never have begun. – Richard Prebble 

We all benefit when the opposition pushes the government to do better for us, challenges where they’ve been remiss and forces change when it’s needed. This applies no matter who’s in government.

Democracies function best when their component parts are strong and right now, Labour is missing in action. – Tova O’Brien

Lawmakers should ask if new and current laws serve us well. If not, they should be changed or abolished. Also important is consideration of what the role of government in our lives should be, and what should be left to individuals and communities. Ever more restrictive and stringent regulation doesn’t help, it detracts from the self-responsibility inherent in our society and risks the statute book replacing common sense and good behaviour.

Good law should be clear, enforceable, and routinely enforced. If proposals do not meet these criteria, we should go straight back to the drawing board. So when you next jest “there should be a law against that” be careful what you wish for. – Heather Roy 

Efeso Collins was a good person. There can be no greater achievement in life. – Damien Grant

But I think the time has come for us to start treating people who are about to become parents the way we treat people who want to drive a car or a truck or a motorbike.

We’re dreaming if we think we’re doing enough just teaching them about changing nappies and feeding. And I think we need to turbo-drive our ante-natal training. – John MacDonald

I think we’re on a road to nowhere if we’re going to keep relying on Oranga Tamariki to do all the heavy lifting and to keep kids in this country safe. – John MacDonald

I think your life is enriched by learning about different cultures and different ways of thinking about things… personally… I find this one of the most fascinating things in the world.

But that’s a personal choice.  it’s shouldn’t’ be a job requirement for an estate agent  – Heather du Plessis-Allan

This is the kind of red tape nonsense this country doesn’t need if we want to make doing business easier .

If it’s not related to the job, leave it out, no matter how worthy you think it is. – Heather du Plessis-Allan

To claim that the countryside is racist is one of the most ridiculous examples of Left-wing identity politics. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem within our society – the urge to constantly view everything through the lens of race or gender, plead victimhood and point the finger at an oppressor. Whether it’s the patriarchy, or colonial masters, this desperation to divide society is ripping through our institutions, creating a culture of fear and self-censorship.

This is why it’s essential to challenge this ideology relentlessly, wherever we see it. The premise of the charity’s bonkers report is that, as a predominantly white environment, the countryside is not welcoming to ethnic minorities. Sadly, we’ve come to expect this kind of hokum from civil society and the public sector. – Suella Braverman 

Firstly, just because there are more white people than non-white people somewhere does not make it racist. The UK is a majority-white country, so of course there will be many areas where there is very little, and sometimes no, ethnic minority participation. I do not see a problem.

People are different, they have different interests and inclinations. Ethnic minority people tend to live in urban areas. Does that make Wembley, (where I come from and which is now a majority non-white area), racist because there are fewer white people who live there? Of course not. – Suella Braverman 

Lastly, this is not just wrong but dangerous. We need to stop making white people feel guilty for being white. Critical race theory, white privilege and unconscious bias should be constantly debunked as Left-wing militancy. It’s wholly disempowering for ethnic minorities to be judged by skin colour rather than by character.

Why cast me as a victim and rob me of my agency? Why foster resentment? The truth is that so many people are terrified to challenge this groupthink which is taking over our country. They’re scared of being labelled racist and losing their job. Best just keep your head down, they think. But we cannot become self-censured identikit automatons who parrot the same Orwellian newspeak. It’s why a Labour government would be so dangerous and why we need to fight back. – Suella Braverman 

As someone who has spent 40 years in higher education, it is clear to me that we are no longer teaching students how to engage with those with whom they disagree. We are teaching them that disagreement is an occasion for harm and trauma. This is a disaster on many levels.

— Prof. Gary Francione (@garylfrancione) February 22, 2024

So it indeed turns out that ending child poverty doesn’t happen just because you declare it a goal. – Steven Joyce

At the same time we learned that, despite record low rates of unemployment, there are nearly 70,000 more people receiving job-seeker benefits than in 2017, and that adults on the benefit are now on average expected to remain so for 13 years, with teenagers a whopping 24 years.

So what does this tell us? Firstly, that a politician declaring they want to do something doesn’t on its own mean anything (a lesson we have learnt repeatedly in recent times). In this case it contained a whiff of conceit. I’ve never met a politician who doesn’t want to end child poverty – the only political question is how they plan to go about it. – Steven Joyce

 Leaving more families dependent on benefits is a case of misplaced “kindness” which is not a path to reducing child poverty. On top of that macro-economic conditions are much more important than whatever the government does or doesn’t do on the micro front. High inflation and out-of-control government spending always hurts those on the bottom rungs of society the most. The first thing a government must do is control inflation.

The second thing is to ensure that those who can work, do.  – Steven Joyce

I don’t know how anyone can see taxpayer-supported income as a lifestyle choice, but there are clearly some who do. That’s just storing up future trouble for them and society. The very public consequences of the withdrawal by Carmel Sepuloni of most benefit sanctions should also be a salutary lesson for those who promote the lunacy of a government-funded universal basic income.

The big lesson from the previous Government’s failure though is the more uncomfortable one. Long-term welfare dependency and poverty has been with us for decades, and it will take a concerted effort over considerable time to alleviate it. It will also involve doing things differently. – Steven Joyce

That one right person in the right place can make a lot of positive difference if we are prepared to empower them to do so. And all this will take time, family by family.

That suggests a family-centred social investment approach where we stop worrying about what the programme is called, stop declaring it must all be run by a central government agency, and instead back individuals and organisations who can prove they are getting results. They could be community housing providers, whanau ora organisations, primary health providers, or committed social workers like Jo. We need to back them and trust them.

And we need to remain wary of politicians who offer “quick fixes” like ending child poverty. In the case of the most marginalised families with the most complex needs, there simply aren’t any. – Steven Joyce

To me, government should focus on certain things and let that entrepreneurial spirit shine through in other forms of society and actually promote that. – Sir Russell Coutts 

You do a deal with major events in New Zealand. You do a deal with the city – in our case Christchurch or Auckland.

You’d think that’d be enough, right? But no, it’s not. Now you’ve got to go away and deal with the local iwi, you’ve got to deal with the harbourmaster, you’ve got to deal with environmental [agencies].

All of these discussions, and any one of them could trip you up. – Sir Russell Coutts 

If anyone thinks that my leader is weak, then they have no idea about the guy and haven’t seen him in the settings that I’ve seen him. – Chris Penk

At university, I had a left-wing view of the world which was around collectivism, but my thoughts evolved into thinking that people working together was equally able to be applied to a right-wing view of the world. If we think about limited government — if we believe as I do, that by encouraging society through community groups, iwi organisations, sports clubs, churches, business, whatever — if we allow those entities that are not government to work together and to be encouraged, with some government funding, I felt as though that was a better way of realising my ideals of collectivism. – Chris Penk

If we want to see change in our public service and the people involved to take more responsibility, we need to treat them with respect. You get the best out of people by inspiring the best in them. If we don’t value those who serve, we can’t be surprised when they don’t go the extra mile and give the best service.

Instead of public floggings, we should listen and make change that will improve people’s lives. After all, isn’t that what both the politicians and public servants have in common? – Paula Bennett

Quotes of the week

That particular answer was historic. It’s a rare thing for a multi-millionaire to beat a Labourite on the issue of tax fairness. – Thomas Coughlan

Labour’s 2017 election spending promise was exceeded by $16b.

Robertson did it again in the 2020 election. In the pre-election forecast, government spending was forecast to be $116b in the year to June 2024. Last week, that spending estimate was revised upward to $139b.

In other words, the 2020 election spending forecast was exceeded by $23b. 

On the Finance Minister’s record, the latest spending forecasts will be massively exceeded. The promised return to a balanced budget in 2027 is a fantasy. – Richard Prebble 

The Howard League has a programme that assists prisoners to get driving, forklift and heavy vehicle licences. Over 90 per cent get employment. Reoffending is minimal. If it is possible to get convicts back into the workforce, how hard can it be to reintroduce beneficiaries to work?

We know mass immigration does not work. Why not try something that we know does work? Doing the work ourselves. – Richard Prebble 

In the last decade or so, we’ve reduced carbon emissions, we’ve increased the output from renewables, and we are seen as a world leader. But it’s also right that we put economic growth and household budgets and the cost of living ahead. And fundamentally, we’re not going to save the planet by bankrupting the British people. – Suella Braverman

Then why not just say “Women are women”?

Oh, that’s right, you can’t, because the “trans” part means they’re something other than women.

Your statement is self-referentially incoherent.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) September 17, 2023

These days there is an awful lot of dismissing. It ranges from ignoring news that does not fit a particular world view to ruining the careers of gifted academics who believed it was their role to speak out.

I’ve written before about being dismissed on a variety of charges, most of them beyond my control (Old white man guilty on three of four counts).

Dismissing, in its varying stages of severity and consequence, is another way of saying we have forgotten how to tolerate our fellow human beings. – Gavin Ellis 

‘Co-governance’ – incompetently articulated by the Labour-led government – should have been a matter for free and open discussion in which the myths and realities could be explained and debated. Instead, any opinion that does not cede significant control to tangata whenua is slammed as ‘racist’. 

Even group discussions on the forthcoming general election have become more measured, hesitant, noncommittal, or non-existent. It has become much safer to shut up and keep to yourself any thoughts that might be marginalised.

And I detect in our news media the same reticence, a ‘better-left-alone’ zone in which to park topics that might prompt adverse public reactions. Better to stick with the current ‘orthodoxy’. – Gavin Ellis 

Zero tolerance is a misguided belief that the potential to take offence must not be tested. It takes long-overdue protection of stigmatised groups to illogical ends. It presumes an inability to respectfully dissent or disagree, and in so doing privileges one group in society over another. – Gavin Ellis 

We need to start discussing our differences and our differences of opinion and our approaches to life. There is no better place to start that dialogue than in our news media. However, media  will need to disabuse themselves of the notion that their own staff should have a greater footprint in the public sphere than those within society itself. – Gavin Ellis 

Commentators said Christopher Luxon needed to look Prime Ministerial. He did. What commentators forgot was it was also important for Chris Hipkins to look Prime Ministerial. At times he looked like a boy in a man’s job.

Psychologists say we are not who we think we are. We are the riders on an elephant. It is our subconscious that really makes our decisions. We the riders just rationalize our subconscious decisions.

Our subconscious minds were asking “who looks the most Prime Ministerial?” – Richard Prebble 

There’s a whole series of young deaths in the family and I suspect that probably all of them had the issue that I’m confronting now.

And like me, they didn’t go for a test because they are males and they thought ‘it’s okay – I’m just a bit short of breath, I’ll get over this’.

I think men tend to do that more often than not. I think the lesson out of all of this is, listen to your body, read your body, but more importantly, listen to your wife. – Barry Soper 

Not a single economist supports Labour’s GST policy. This is a flimsy band-aid that won’t even take fruit and vegetable prices back to where they were a year ago.

The Government’s own tax working group also found that only 30 per cent of GST reductions are passed on to consumers – meaning per cent of the $2.2 billion policy becomes a subsidy to producers and supermarkets. – Nicola Willis 

If this is what success looks like, then the current government is lending new meaning to the tyranny of low expectations. – Steven Joyce 

To fire up our economy again, we need to spend much less time on grand visions, and much more time on releasing the animal spirits that drives the risk-takers. – Steven Joyce 

We’ve tried the government-led, over-regulated, anti-foreign investment, closed shop and it hasn’t worked. If we don’t change something our economic melancholy will clearly get worse. It’s time to embrace the world and let our risk-takers loose on it. Let them find their own niche and stop holding them back. After all, who dreamed we’d be sending rockets into space before we did. – Steven Joyce 

This obstruction and wokery cannot continue: it is designed, quite simply, to stop democracy working. – Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg

Labour’s biggest problem right now is that nobody is talking about them as a potential government at all.

Instead all the focus has been on what shape a National-led government might take.

That has left Labour trying to fight the ghost of a foregone conclusion. – Claire Trevett 

Genders are what people have now instead of a personality and a character.

— Alice Smith (@TheAliceSmith) September 22, 2023

 

Did you see the one about. . . .

There’s a new type of cultural mafia in town. If we don’t stand up to them, free speech will cease to exist – Sarah Vine :

. . . We like to kid ourselves we live in more civilised times, but the truth is these days we all have that metaphorical gun to our heads. There is a new kind of cultural mafia in town, one that styles itself as kind and caring and compassionate and socially sophisticated — but which is, in fact, just as ruthless, just as determined, to bend us to its will.

Every day, in all sorts of ways, they make us offers we can’t refuse, and we find ourselves being asked to say and think things that are manifestly not true.

And so we agree that women can have penises (Lib Dem leader Ed Davey maintained in a radio interview on LBC today that this was ‘quite clear’). And that men can give birth. We applaud as people with thighs like tree-trunks and Adam’s apples accept first prize in female sporting competitions, dwarfing their exhausted and bemused rivals.

We do our best not to flinch as biological males get paid untold sums to advertise tampons and sports bras. We stand back as children are given puberty-blocking hormones and encouraged to mutilate their bodies. We allow convicted rapists to inveigle themselves into women’s prisons.

We watch in silence as those whose views or behaviours don’t comply with the dogma of the impeccably woke are defenestrated, their words and actions twisted out of all proportion.

We nod as our books and plays and comedy sketches are re-written, excised of nuance, purged of meaningful, thoughtful, original or — God forbid — humorous content. We accept our history being re-written out of context and time, sacrifice our heroes to the modern cult of victimhood and blame.

What else can we do? We see the threat, take the hint, keep our heads down. We play the game. Not because we want to, but because we have to. We’ve seen what happens to those who don’t, and it’s not pretty. Most people can’t afford to lose their jobs, their livelihoods, their reputations.

When the woke mafia comes for you, they mean business, helped by the fact that they have skilfully infiltrated pretty much every institution in the land. Schools, universities, arts organisations, public bodies, the civil service, the law, medicine, certain sectors of the media. You name it, they own it. Or if they don’t, they know someone who does.

And you never quite know who they are, which one of your colleagues or friends is going to be the one taking notes, recording your mistakes, totting up your infractions. They are the smiling assassins, the ones who cry discrimination, all the while singling out their targets for elimination.

If what you say or believe runs counter to their beliefs, they will come for you. Not in an open and honest way, not by engaging in a debate, or attempting to challenge you intellectually, but by means of intimidation. They will undermine your reputation, cast you as a monster, unleash the mob.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman, Dominic Raab, the late Queen’s lady-in-waiting Susan Hussey, JK Rowling . . . the list is endless. Their latest target is Baroness Falkner, chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a woman whose only ‘fault’, as far as I can see, was backing legal reforms guarding the rights of biological women in single-sex spaces.

Isn’t it because of her stance — one shared by many women, including myself — that she has been targeted by the woke mob? Her ideology runs counter to theirs, and so she must be removed. . . 

It takes courage to stand up to the mob, and not everyone has it. Not everyone has Rowling’s deep pockets, or Braverman’s thick skin. Not everyone can cope with having their reputation destroyed, their livelihoods stolen, their words and actions twisted beyond measure. Especially when, as in the case of Falkner, she is simply trying to safeguard vulnerable women in places such as prisons and hospital wards.

But the truth is that if we don’t follow her example, and stand up to the threats of the woke mob, none of us will be safe. Freedom of expression will cease to exist, and we will have no choice but to believe what we are told, regardless of the reality staring us in the face.

Meaningful debate will be silenced, and we will be like my old friend standing in the earthquake zone, staring at the dust and ruins — and watching his integrity go up in smoke.

You can’t gaslight your way out of a problem by telling people it’s not happening – Kate Hawkesby :

. . . A fatal mistake governments make is when they deny stuff isn’t happening, especially stuff we see before our very eyes on a daily basis.

It’s like when the PM said there was no looting happening post the cyclone in Hawkes Bay, when very clearly everyone else knew it was going on. You can’t gaslight your way out of a problem by telling the people most affected by it, that it’s not happening. . . 

We probably all know somebody personally now who has been impacted by crime, even if it’s our local dairy.

And the crime’s more brazen these days, that’s one thing the Minister does accept. But when five of our police districts now have more gangs than police officers, we know we have a problem.

And even when the government reaches its 1800 new cops mark next month, the Police Association says that’s still not enough, it doesn’t make up for all those who’ve left – we need double that many more now.

You can’t argue with facts, and the stats say that ‘between 2017 and 2022, the number of serious assault reports increased by 121%, while reports of acts intended to cause injury went up by almost 30%.”

This is not a safe country anymore, and it seems the last person to wake up to this fact sadly, is the Police Minister herself.

Why King Charles must never apologise for the wrongs of history – Brendan O’Neill :

There are a fair few things I’d like to see King Charles apologise for. Those meddlesome ‘spidery letters’ he wrote to government ministers. His green doom and gloom. Prince Harry. But slavery? The British Empire? No. Never. Charles should utter not one word of contrition for those historical events. For if even he, the literal king, were to cave to the woke insistence that ‘the privileged’ must self-flagellate for the crimes of their forefathers, it would set a terrible precedent. It would represent the final victory of that jealous god of identity politics, with disastrous consequences for democracy. . . 

Kings and queens were bastards. They chopped off heads, imprisoned princes, taxed people to within an inch of their lives, conquered countries, put down rebellions. That Charles’s family tree is pock-marked with iffy people is literally the least startling thing about him.

But he still shouldn’t apologise for any of that stuff. For one simple reason: he didn’t do it. Charles has never owned a slave, sent ships in search of booty, put a wife on the chopping block. It is nearly 3,000 years since Ezekiel said, ‘The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father’. Now the noisy identitarians of the 21st century want to reverse all that. They far prefer God’s implacable rage in the Book of Exodus, in which He seethed: ‘[I] am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations of those who hate Me.’ That the woke are so infused with Old Testament fury, with such a severe urge to punish even the descendants of wrongdoers, confirms what a menacing and regressive movement theirs is. . . 

There is a distinctly therapeutic feel to the letter. The signatories are essentially entreating the king to recognise their pain – and to alleviate it, in all his graciousness, with words and maybe money. They want His Majesty to ‘acknowledge the horrific impacts’ and ‘legacy’ of the crimes of yesteryear. That is, soothe our historic hurt with your kingly validation.

This is one of the twisted ironies of the politics of apology: it can boost the moral authority of the person who’s being pressured to say sorry. The Indigenous campaigners are not only dragging the king – they’re also imbuing him with an almost godly power to lift them from the pit of generational despair. . . 

He seems instinctively to recognise that the fashion for contrition can benefit the elite. It expands his dominion, granting him jurisdiction not only in the concrete worlds of pomp and constitution, but also in the emotional world of easing the little people’s traumas.

We all laughed – well, I did, sorry – when Princess Diana said: ‘I’d like to be a queen of people’s hearts.’ Yet now her husband, so long depicted as the yin to Di’s yang, might just embrace such a role. Charles is king, but it’s Diana’s world. I can envision a future royal tour in which Charles and Camilla sail the Earth validating the ‘pain and suffering’ of once-colonised peoples. It would be of a piece with the campaigning of the new Prince and Princess of Wales, Will and Kate, who are obsessed with the mental health of the plebs. If royal authority at home is increasingly justified in the Oprah-ite language of relieving the anguish of one’s subjects, why not overseas too? The identitarians don’t seem to realise that the thing they want – the king weeping for old wrongs – would be a new form of colonialism. Emotional colonialism. Where once monarchs sought to deliver foreigners from ignorance, now they’d deliver them from PTSD.

Elite empowerment is a key part of the showy penitence of the modern era. This is why so many political actors, from Tony Blair to the Vatican, enthusiastically seize every opportunity to let their lip wobble. . . 

All of these things are best understood not as genuine expressions of sorrow, but as arrogant displays of emotional literacy; as declarations that one has ascended to the plane of therapeutic correctness, and is thus fit to rule in the era of emotion.

Yet while the cult of contrition might be helpful to elites looking for new ways to justify their rule, it’s a disaster for the rest of us. It is divisive and anti-democratic. The woke rehabilitation of God’s jealous visitation of the crimes of the father on to the son is utterly destructive of public life. It is a form of racial collective guilt – and racial collective pain. All whites come to be seen as the morally stained sons and daughters of ancient crime, and all black, brown and Indigenous people are reduced to the morally scarred sons and daughters of those crimes. This depressing, deterministic creed turns us from equal citizens into either ‘the privileged’ or ‘the oppressed’, where the former must forever repent to the latter. . .

Such a debased spectacle would not be a challenge to monarchy at all. On the contrary, it would represent a kind of Battle of the Bloodlines, where two different versions of historically determined authority would be fighting it out for control of society – the historically determined divine right of King Charles vs the historically determined divine pain of the woke. My turn to apologise: sorry, but I prefer equality and democracy to the rule of any given identity.