Giles Fraser, Guardian Columnist and radical Priest attacks “Cosmopolitans” and calls for New Patriotic Party – “Home”.
Giles Fraser: Fighting “Rootless Cosmopolitans”.
Clergyman Giles Fraser is a bit of character.
During his time at St Paul’s – as Canon – he backed the Occupy! movement.
More recently he has embarked on a journey which began with his studies of Nietzsche, then passed through his staunch denunciation of the ‘atheist’ French revolution, and, above all, Charlie Hebdo, who misused freedom as “white atheists to sneer at non-white believers”.
Then he attacked the “The oppressive individualism of human rights.”
As you do.
Pride is not normally considered a Christian virtue, but this has not stopped our Padre this week from terminating his voyage with his very own proud call for a new political party.
He begins with this lament for the past.
The Labour party began as a party for the working class, reflecting the patriotic communitarian commitments of working class people. Many who were not themselves working class were attracted to its values of fairness and social solidarity.
But towards the back end of the 20th century, the party was increasingly taken-over by those who espoused a cosmopolitan and liberal philosophy of individualism that was too relaxed about the effect of market forces and indifferent to the importance of communal life.
There was a dangerous hubris about the way liberals accepted no limit to individual self-assertion. Under the banner of progress and spreading liberal values, we invaded Iraq and brought the world to the very edge of another world war.
Enough is enough. It’s time for a new political party. My one would be called Home. It wants a United Kingdom that is generous at home and reluctant to intervene abroad.
Liberals, human rights – all vanity.
In touch with Twilight of the Gods Fraser has thus spake.
Let’s Concentrate on Home
Home is a party that accepts we are no longer a global power. The empire is long behind us, and, therefore, we do not need an expensive global military to go with it. We would immediately cancel Trident and substantially reduce our budget for the armed forces. We will be extremely cautious about foreign military interventions. Withdraw all forces from the Middle East. We need more police and fewer soldiers.
Exit EU, without a deal if necessary: no to the Single Market, no to the Custom’s Union. We must have a home of our own, and others should respect we have our own way of doing things. We need a British Bill of Responsibilities and Rights. The seat of government should move to Manchester during the refurbishment of the Houses of Parliament, and an English Parliament should remain there when the United Kingdom government returns to Westminster.
…
Home is a patriotic party. Not narrowly nationalist, but nonetheless proud of our heritage. It believes in stable communities, full of people who are very definitely citizens of somewhere. Deracinated cosmopolitanism, and its accompanying philosophy of liberalism, has transformed us into a society of atomised individuals, cut off from each other and ill at ease together. Home is a proposal for the fightback.
Liberalism has broken us – we need a new party to call Home. 7th of June.
This looks, probably because as it is, like 1930s neo-socialism, a half-way house to the nationalist far right.
Fraser is only one anti-EU figures to go in this direction.
Sovereigntism, a “home of our own” is the maison commune of many an anti-globaliser.
Communities, the real destination of the once influential communitarian thought of Michael Sandel and others, end up being exclusionary Nation States for all this fretting Man of the Cloth’s warm words.
Fightback Forsooth!
Rootless Cosmopolitans.
There are those, less enchanted, and full of resentiment who have picked up on some of his language.
Here is a recent example of how Fraser is Beyond Good and Evil.
Tendance Coatesy 
“My brain wasn’t working. It was lazy and thoughtless. And I apologise”.
Well, at least he apologised. But when *s* this buffoon’s brain ever working?
If he wasn’t aware the of provenance of phrases like “rootless cosmopolitanism” /”deracinated cosmopolitanism”, then he really does need some basic education in 2oth Century history.
As for the rest of his reactionary, nativist drivel: it’s Goodhart without the brains.
Jim Denham
June 8, 2018 at 3:52 pm
Exactly, it’s hardly an expression he’d have picked up from his old china Del Boy down the Rub-a-dub-dub.
Perhaps he saw this and rather liked the idea.
Though more fundamentally Fraser echoes (though I doubt if he knows this), the turn of a whole swathe of left-wingers and others in France.
Andrew Coates
June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm
This has been pointed out,
“This <em>former member of the Socialist Workers Party</em> recently tweeted of the ex-US Defence Secretary Dick Cheney: “Once again Cheney is using 9/11 as an alibi for his moral bankruptcy. Utterly shameful.”
“But he is also regular lecturer on moral leadership at the army’s Defence Academy at Shrivenham.
Paul Handley, managing editor for the Church Times – for which Canon Fraser writes a regular column, describes him as a deeply thoughtful man.
“His ease as a media performer means there is a danger that people write him off as not a serious man,” he says.
“But he feels very strongly about moves to remove the protestors from outside St Paul’s. He and his family have no Plan B about what to do now.”
Whatever Canon Fraser does next, he is unlikely to keep a low profile.”
St Paul’s Cathedral Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser in profile. 2011.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15476070“
Andrew Coates
June 8, 2018 at 5:43 pm
Well glad you pointed this out, guess his party is now dead in the water. Though you could have let him stand for parliament, get 50 votes before giving it up. At the last count there are 492 political parties in the UK and this clown thinks we need a new one? We don’t even need the ones we’ve got!
Steven Johnston
June 9, 2018 at 8:40 pm
Actually Jim Denham if you actually read The British Dream by David Goodhart which I have several times you will see that not only does he take a diametrically opposed view of the world to Fraser but is able to substantiate his arguments. Have you read the book?
Dave Roberts
June 10, 2018 at 10:49 am
I have not only read The Road to Somewhere. The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics. David Goodhart but reviewed it on this Blog.
The other book’s I read some time back, but mainly his articles in Prospect.
https://tendancecoatesy.wordpress.com/2017/07/16/the-road-to-somewhere-the-populist-revolt-and-the-future-of-politics-david-goodhart-review/
Andrew Coates
June 10, 2018 at 10:56 am
Life’s too short, Dave: I’ve read many of his articles and reckon I’ve got a pretty good idea of where he stands (“Somewhere” vs “Anywhere”, “Blue Labour”, etc, etc. In my opinion he’s a highly genteel racist.
Jim Denham
June 10, 2018 at 10:54 am
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