Nigel Farage and the futility of British values (2024)

A pint of British values and a packet of crisps, please (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Perhaps this is because the Huns and Vandals were too busy sacking and pillaging to write poetry. It’s also true that there’s a rift between the largely civilised values of Virgil or Horace and the atrocities perpetrated by the empire they served. In the modern era, however, with the gradual spread of humanitarianism from the 18th century onwards, it’s hard to find many people eager to defend crucifixion or mass murder. You might claim that these things are regrettably unavoidable from time to time, but not that they’re inherently good or morally indifferent. This is one way in which the age of Gladstone differs from the era of Caligula. We may not be ethically superior to the ancient Romans, but at least we feel bad about it. We are aware that there can be a discrepancy between what we value and our actual behaviour, a gap which most of us are conscientious enough to regret.

A good deal of political life involves what philosophers call a performative contradiction, where what you say is at odds with what you do. This is more bluntly known as hypocrisy or lying through your teeth; but it’s actually more complex than that, because people can believe that they believe something without actually doing so. (They can also believe something while not knowing they do.) To determine what someone in this situation really thinks, it’s advisable to examine the beliefs implicit in their behaviour rather than rely simply on what they say. If I profess to love white mice but spend all my free time dissecting them without anaesthetic, then it isn’t true that I love white mice, whatever my protestations. Compassion is a matter of what you do, not what you feel. It doesn’t diminish the value of handing a coin to a beggar that you don’t feel a warm glow as you do so.

There is, then, a surprising degree of global consensus about what constitutes sound moral values. As far as I’m aware, there are no political parties anywhere in the world fighting for inequality, injustice and a callous indifference to the suffering of others. Plenty of political organisations promote these values in reality, but we haven’t yet reached the point where they inscribe them proudly on their banners. We have yet to witness the emergence of the Screw the Poor party or Put All Women On the Moon campaign, though this could still happen. There may come a time when the desirability of genocide is once again touted, as it was with the Nazis. In the meanwhile, however, vice pays homage to virtue by denying its own nature and masquerading as a form of righteousness, or at least as an unfortunate necessity.

Surely, though, there are regimes, perhaps autocratic Islamic states in particular, which flagrantly flout much of what we in the West hold dear? There are indeed such set-ups, but we should recall that one of the most regular offenders against so-called Western values has been the West. What of the atrocities committed by the British in Kenya, the Belgians in the Congo, the French in Algeria and the Americans in Vietnam? The list could be extended indefinitely. Some Islamic countries preach intolerance, but those who abhor this bigotry should try being a communist in some parts of the US or a Muslim in some areas of France (one might soon have to add: a Catholic in Ireland).

Tolerance is a rightly limited commodity: Britain doesn’t tolerate those who practise hate speech, or those who blow up children for ideological reasons. In any case, the values of authoritarian regimes are largely rejected by the people forced to live under them, which is why we witness regular outbreaks of rebellion in such places. They are a sign that these men and women are just as devoted to justice and freedom as the citizens of the West, and that many of them, like Alexei Navalny, are ready to give their lives for them. When there is no dissent, it doesn’t mean that men and women are delighted to be locked up and beaten but that they are fearful of voicing their own views.

It isn’t that some people think that mass beheadings are a splendid idea while others don’t, still less that these groups correspond respectively to the West and the Rest. The United States may not celebrate mass beheadings, but it certainly believes in mass electrocutions. The true difference lies in how we justify our values. Almost everyone objects to rape and murder, not just flag-waving British patriots from Hampshire or Sussex, but we can’t agree on why we agree on this. And this is a genuinely novel historical situation, one which would have struck a citizen of ancient Athens or 14th century Florence as bizarre in the extreme. The modern age is the first in history which must acknowledge that we disagree on the most fundamental of questions; that we shall probably never achieve a consensus on these matters; that we consequently have to find ways of peacefully coexisting while radically dissenting from each other’s most cherished convictions; and that this is known as liberalism. Ethics isn’t a list of decrees but an endless argument. Oscar Wilde valued lying, indolence, insincerity, superficiality, extravagance, hyperbole and saying the most outrageous things purely for theatrical effect. The Sussex flag-wavers may find this scandalous, but so-called British values demand that it be given house room.

“The modern age is the first in history which must acknowledge that we disagree on the most fundamental of questions.”

Farage’s targeting of the young is unsurprising, given that Right-wingers like himself have a disreputable history of picking on that particular cohort. The young, and not just those of Muslim persuasion, are more likely to question the conventional mores of the time than the middle-aged, which is why they make a lot of conservatives uneasy.

Maybe national service will get them to shape up. This is really quite a smart idea from a Tory standpoint, since many of the values which young people in Britain are wary of are military in origin. Like hospitality in Arabs, they are cultural traits rather than basic moral values. Loyalty, team-spirit, toughness, honour, character, valour, austerity, self-discipline, leadership, physical prowess: the nation divides between those like the present monarch who consider these values utterly vital, and those who think they have their origin in a tiny, unrepresentative sector of society (the officer class, public schools, Boy Scouts and so on), and stem ultimately from Britain’s repressive colonial history. Why should you conceal your emotions, sometimes with psychologically devastating results? Because if you don’t, you may betray weakness in the eyes of your colonials, and in doing so risk even more devastating consequences.

Finally, there is a curious phenomenon known as family values, which are particularly popular in the US. Families centre on children, and children aren’t supposed to know about sex, so family values really means “no sex”. If children can’t talk about it or be interested in it, neither should we. Family values means a way of life permanently arrested before the 9pm watershed.

America is, of course, an intensely Christian nation, unlike Godless Britain, which makes its love of the family rather puzzling. The New Testament is consistently hostile to this institution, a fact which seems not to have been noted in Delaware or Wichita Falls. It begins with a sexual transgression on the part of God himself, who enters the womb of a Palestinian virgin. The Holy Family of Jesus, Mary and Joseph is a parody of a regular domestic unit. Jesus answers his parents sharply after he is lost in the temple, and gives a similarly abrupt response to Mary when she asks him to perform a miracle at Cana. When he is told that some of his family are waiting to speak to him, he tells them brusquely to wait. A woman who cries out that his mother should be blessed also gets the rough edge of his tongue. He has come, he declares, to set one family member against the other, pitting son against father and mother against daughter. It doesn’t sound at all like the kind of thing that would go down well at a Trump rally — let alone a party organised by Nigel Farage.