The White Tory Whale

Zero Seats!

There’s a meme about the upcoming election in Britain involving the simple slogan “Zero Seats”. The slogan relates to the impending wipeout of the Tory Party. It isn’t being used by British liberals but by politically engaged people on the right. Naturally, such a statement and goal immediately invites the counter-proposition: “Labour will be even worse”. Labour could very well be even worse than the Tory Government, but the impetus to utterly ruin the Tory Party once and for all remains regardless. Similarly, given that we live under a “Uni-Party” system, the claim can also be made that it makes no difference which “cheek of the arse” sits in power, to quote George Galloway. A more tactical mode of thinking holds that once the Tory Party has its back broken, space will be cleared for a better alternative or at least a change in how politics functions in Britain. Unfortunately, this strategy also has its problems because a new “firebrand” political force would simply be legislated into obedience or outlawed by the regime.

This is to say that the compulsion to see the Tory Party destroyed has crossed the bounds of political pragmatism and entered a mode of pure hatred, with an implicit understanding that the Party is a mortal enemy to be annihilated regardless of the cost. It could very well be that the naysayers are proven correct, and Labour, like the Biden regime, crank up the pain dial still further for the hapless natives. Perhaps we will all end up in a Net Zero 15-minute digital control grid with the long-awaited digital ID tracking system imposed on us. Is it possible that immigration numbers could crack 2 million in a single year?

In a sense, none of this matters because, for a huge swathe of people in Britain, the Tory Party has become a symbolic stand-in for everything loathsome and detestable about the country. We have all become little Ahabs, and the Tory Party has become our White Whale. Long-time followers will know that I have a particular fondness and love for the Herman Melville masterpiece, and this is not the first time I’ve alluded to Moby Dick, which I regard as a quintessentially Faustian work.

Ahab’s hatred for the whale is boundless and infinite. It is also irrational and all-consuming. Yet, it remains true that Captain Ahab has a legitimate grievance against Moby Dick, who chewed off his leg and, symbolically at least, unmanned him too. Here the rational faculties of man assert themselves; at the end of the day, Moby Dick is merely an animal - an immense and powerful animal, to be sure, but not cognisant of malice or sinister devilry. The Tory Party absolutely does have agency and is adept at sinister devilry. However, the yin-yang two-party system scares us with what is to come rather than the wrongs inflicted upon us already. In this regard, to wave away the potential for negative consequences in the future in order to enact vengeance for what has transpired in the past breaks the logic inherent within the system.

We can try to disguise it as a grand strategy, but truth be told, it is for “hate’s sake”. Or rather, the potential destruction of the Tory Party is not so much a political stratagem as a pursuit of catharsis. In the same way, Ahab views the killing of Moby Dick in spiritual and metaphysical terms rather than the giant haul of oil and blubber he’d acquire by it, or the plaudits he’d receive for such an act of heroism and derring-do.

The perfectly justified hatred of the Tory Party and the widespread recognition of that hatred has transformed the Party itself into a potential vehicle for a cathartic moment of peace and justice served, even if the consequences are ruinous. True justice would require a court of law and capital punishment, but for the lies, treachery, destruction of the nation, and demographic oblivion inflicted upon the British people, no catharsis has even been possible. Outrages linger and fester in our collective psyche like tumours, gnawing and tormenting us incessantly, day and night.

It is unhealthy to live like this. We seek release and closure, even if in a purely symbolic and performative way. Catharsis must be signalled in some form, and the Tory Party will be rightly earmarked for the role. The anger, disillusionment, betrayal, and horror at the trajectory of the nation will be heaped upon them in a ritualistic sense.

None of this is rational and it will all seem incomprehensible to spreadsheet bureaucrats and policy drafters busy crafting the next red-meat narrative to bamboozle the rubes once more. The Zero Seats slogan represents a pure negation of the paradigm; it is fatalistic and an expression of hopelessness — blasphemy against the mores of Liberal Democracy. It is to say, in essence, “I choose to be ruled by my enemies rather than you!”

It is to grimly express:

Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake I spit my last breath at thee. Sink all coffins and all hearses to one common pool! and since neither can be mine, let me then tow to pieces, while still chasing thee, though tied to thee, thou damned whale! Thus, I give up the spear!

It was Ahab’s fate to be forever bound to the source of his madness and torment. I propose we cut ourselves loose from it once and for all.