I’m going to teach you one of the most powerful sentences in the English language — four words that define what it means to be British:
Mind your own business.
The sworn enemies of every true Brit are the bossy bureaucrat, the nosy neighbour, the local gossip, and the curtain-twitching nebbisher.
The nosy Parker.
The right to a private life — to do what you want in your own home without interference — is a fundamental British value.
The Rise of Katie Lam and the New Authoritarian Right
Katie Lam, the new rising star of the Conservative Party, was only elected last year. Already a Whip and tipped as a future leader, she’s wasted no time making her mark.
Lam believes the UK should revoke Indefinite Leave to Remain for many people who are already settled and living here — part of the Conservatives’ and Reform’s ongoing competition to appear “tough on immigration.”
The reason? To make the UK “culturally coherent.”
A less diverse, more homogeneous, more conformist country.
Despite the outrage, Kemi Badenoch backed her, confirming that this view is “close to Conservative policy.”
From Powell to Lam — The Breaking of Boundaries
There have been figures on the British right who crossed moral and political lines before:
- Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood” speech.
- Oswald Mosley’s embrace of fascism.
- Keith Joseph’s 1974 flirtation with eugenics.
Each was punished. Each became infamous.
But now the boundaries between the British Conservatives and the far right have broken down completely.
The principle that mainstream conservatism does not:
- make overt appeals to prejudice,
- encourage political violence, or
- ally itself with authoritarian movements
…has been abandoned.
From Law and Order to Mob Rule
On law and order, immigration, net zero, multiculturalism, and human rights, leading Conservative and Reform figures now say things that would once have been unthinkable.
One of the central pillars of Conservatism used to be the defence of democracy from the mob.
Now, with mobs fighting police and threatening asylum seekers, Conservatives pose for selfies with them.
The Numbers Don’t Fit the Narrative
Despite all the noise, small boat crossings are down — nearly 20% lower than the same period last year, and 50% below their 2022 peak.
But rather than celebrating this success, the Conservatives and Reform simply move the goalposts — shifting from stopping illegal migration to reversing legal migration.
Ethnic cleansing, rebranded.
The Authoritarian Turn
It’s tempting, especially for white Britons, to shrug this off as another fringe idea. But this is no fringe.
A mainstream political party now claims the power to define “cultural coherence”, to measure compliance, and to deport people who don’t meet the government’s standards.
That’s not just racism — it’s authoritarianism.
A state obsessed with conformity, blurring the line between private and public life, enforcing ideological compliance through fear.
It’s the ultimate betrayal of the British tradition of privacy and liberty.
A government of bossy bureaucrats and nosy Parkers.
Everything Is Now Fair Game
Even a decade ago, Lam’s comments would have landed her in infamy alongside Powell and Mosley.
Now she’s tipped as a future leader.
The boundaries have gone. Nothing is off limits — not even the most deeply held British values of freedom, decency, and the right to be left alone.
Going off on a tangent to your political theme here, a little bit.
Privacy in the UK is dying. The right to privacy is right up there with the right to free speech, but for some reason people take it for granted, they understand the consequences of being silenced, but do not seem to realise the two are closely interlinked, they are two sides of the same coin.
I think the attack on privacy rights comes for corporations, greedy for more data, but the buck falls to Governments who also have their own agenda. Politicians are also easily swayed by money, but also by convincing arguments made by those who can get closest to them – lobbyists, think tanks and the like. Often laws are passed with good intentions by people who do not understand the long term scope of such laws, and often lack basic knowledge in subject fields.
Take the Investigatory Powers Bill for example. This bill allows for all kinds of alarming privacy intrusion, including making ISP’s keep its customers browsing data for a minimum of 12 months. Of course, we were pinky promised that it would only be used for the most heinous of crimes – terrorism, human trafficking, sex abuse and the like like. If you believed that, I have some magic beans for sale. I don’t like the idea that someone could just see my internet history at the touch of a button. Peoples browsing history contains so much personal data you may as well be looking through their diary – Political leanings, health, sexuality, shopping habits, viewing habits, hobbies, to name just a few. There is no benefit for individuals by the government holding these records, but there are downsides, and there are lots of them. I always use a VPN because of this.
Then you have the Only Safety Act, a law so useless it could have been drafted by a monkey. Anyone with even a basic understanding of how the internet works can bypass this with a VPN, and that’s just one tool. It is my belief that this law is just the first step in its ultimate goal, which is to ban the private use of VPN’s, of course VPN’s will still be available for businesses and governments, but not for us plebs. After all, VPN’s defeat the purpose of the likes of the Snoopers Charter and taking away privacy for people in general.
The EU are trying to pass a law (and its likely the will), which will break encryption. Private messages, emails, social media posts and so on, will no longer be private. Of course, the same Trojan horse will be used to pass this – public safety.
Serious criminals can get around these measures quite easily; I can get round these measures easily. Anyone spending a couple of hours looking it up would be able to bypass such measures. Most people won’t though. So one must ask the question – If the government know such measures are easy to bypass then why implement them at all? Mass surveillance is the answer.
These laws aren’t targeted at serious criminals, they are targeted at the population. You said we are becoming more authoritarian, its true, but so is the rest of the western world. Such measures can crush dissent before it can claim a foot hold. When people are too afraid to communicate online because of their views, then this effects both their privacy and their freedom of speech – different sides of the same coin.
Of course we are not there yet. We may never get to my somewhat dystopian predictions, but great journeys start with a single step, and we are more than single step into this journey. Maybe this government, and previous governments had no intention of such laws being misused, and perhaps they are not being misused, but the groundwork is being laid. If not this government, could a future, more authoritarian government misuse these powers?
The sad thing is that the public are happy to let things slide. Often quoting a fallacy that makes my skin crawl – “Nothing to hide, nothing to fear.”
You missed out Digital ID Cards, which will be used to access/limit access to on-line services. When Cameron became PM he scrapped the outgoing Labour Government’s ID card plan over concerns about how much data it would colate. A few weeks later I was told to contract with credit reference agencies to gather the exact same data
I did miss out ID cards, it was already an essay, I didn’t want to turn it into an epic!
So if an ID card can be used in the same way as a digital ID on a phone, then why the insistence on having it on a phone? They do the same things, user data is stored in the same place and accessible by a barcode or maybe something else like NFC. Why are they lying about its use, everyone knows they’ll do nothing to stop immigrants working, but what better time to get public approval, ride the wave of anti-immigrant rhetoric. Want a job, you take your passport, its hardly a inconvenience and its not like you’re doing it everyday. ID to buy an age restricted item, it only effects a small portion of the population and there are other forms of ID for that as well.
So if a normal credit card sized ID card does everything that a Digital ID on your phone does, then why does it have it be on your phone? I think its because the government want you to carry it all times . What basic info digital ID has today, can morph into something else with a quick software update tomorrow.
There is a perception, true or not, that one of the attractions of coming to the UK is that we don’t have ID cards, and therefore it is easier to work illegally?
Is there? Who holds this perception? As far as I’m aware the only people that perceive this is the government. Maybe its something people smugglers tell their customers, even if ID Cards are made mandatory, people smugglers will still tell people they can work in the UK without them and it would be true. Why not enforce current laws?
I also remember a poster in the Guardian comments section (can’t place them any more, sorry) who argued that the UK’s lack of ID cards (or compulsory registration of residence) made it a magnet for illegal immigrants: they also argued that the reason the Tories opposed compulsory residence registration is that such a register would automatically also be a (fully accurate) electoral register, and the Tories (as the homeowners’ party) had an interest in suppressing electoral turnout among the segment of the population which moves frequently.
Just remembered who it was from the Guardian’s comment section: it was optimist99 (the link points to the comments they posted on the issue of ID).
I can’t answer on behalf of the Ministry of Justice about current laws. But the “perception” I have heard inside and outside the UK
Mass deportation of immigrants to “make Britain white again” simply doesn’t make economic sense for a country like the UK (or indeed like most other rich countries today) where the biggest burden on the national finances is a massive elderly population.
I wonder if the right-wing politicians behind these attacks on Indefinite Leave to Remain are actually seeking to turn Britain into something more like Dubai, in which a white British Herrenvolk lives off the labour of a mass of semi-enslaved third-world immigrants? In this plan those immigrants would allowed to live here only for so long as they are useful workers, and deported well before they could reach retirement age…