Lunch With the BD #1 - Ed West

I meet Ed West on a ludicrously sunny afternoon, in an Italian restaurant nestled somewhere between Hillingdon and Havery. The author of such books as The Diversity Illusion and Tory Boy sits down and orders puttanesca. He does so, he says, despite suspecting that he cooks it better than most Italians. “I wouldn’t voice this opinion in Italy,” he adds, “But there are lots of things I keep to myself which I nonetheless know to be true.”

West is the master of delivering hard truths gently. Tory Boy, which was first published under the title Small Men on the Wrong Side of History, explores cultural decay, human limitations and conservative failures with wit and eloquence. Laughing along with its prose, one almost forgets its gloomy implications.

Sipping beer, and gazing out across sun-dappled streets, where lovers stroll and children skip, it seems morbid to ask him about the serious subject matter he explores in his political books or in his excellent Substack newsletter “Wrong Side of History”.

Instead, as I surreptitiously extract packets of garlic sauce and ketchup to squirt across my pizza, I ask him about his engrossing popular history books, like 1066 and Before All That and Iron, Fire, and Ice: The History That Inspired Game of Thrones. What first attracted him to the subject, and how does history inform his view of the world?

“I’ve been obsessed with history since I was very young,” West tells me:

I remember finding a book of kings and queens when I was eight and just been fascinated by the strange names you find as you delve back into the distant past; Edwy and Ethelred and Athelstan. What would their lives have been like, I wondered, and it just felt magical imagining it? So I’ve had my head in a history book ever since.

I suppose my worldview is pessimistic, but my reading of history is that ambitious dreamy plans never really work out as people intended; and I think too many people in power obviously don’t read that much history. I don’t say that, as it feels way too ‘er, historian here’, and I dislike that aspect of modern academic history. History is supposed to be fun, and interesting. It should also be funny – history is one great black comedy.

Today’s tears are tomorrow’s jokes. There’s no escaping that. The name of West’s newsletter suggests a certain pessimism regarding the prospects of his own ideas. Is left-wing success inevitable? “It’s obvious why someone might think that,” he tells me:

...because most of the direction of travel in the past few decades has been in one direction. A lot of Tories have also convinced themselves of it, in a quite defeatist way; you can see this in the way many suggest they don’t want to be seen as transophobic in the way that they were seen as homophobic in the 80s. I find it extremely unlikely that in 30 years’ time people will say ‘I can’t believe those Tories opposed giving puberty blockers to vulnerable and confused 13 year old girls’ or ‘they didn’t allow rapists to be placed in a women’s jail, the bigots’.

More likely the whole thing will be forgotten or downplayed, as with all progressive failures. After all, lots of the great liberal causes have been abject failures, they just don’t become the subject of plays, films or novels. Liberal prison reform in the 60s was an insane disaster – homicide rates trebled in New York and Chicago, millions of Americans fled from their homes. Similarly, progressive child-centred education, which was still the thing when I was a child, is gone and forgotten mainly. It just led to record numbers attending private schools and people going to church to get into religious schools that stuck with the old ways.

Civil rights was the absolute centre piece of the 60s, and Martin Luther King spoke of the arc of history, but the problems people hoped to solve remain unsolved, and if you read Christopher Caldwell’s Age of Entitlement you’ll appreciate that civil rights laws had all sorts of unforeseen consequences.

The latest thing is Tories lamenting that ‘oh no, more diversity and greater urbanisation means an electorate that is less Tory, so we need to embrace diversity and immigration’. If you’re worried that history won’t be kind about you, why not follow Churchill’s advice and try writing the history yourself?

Inspiring words! I’ll drink to that. I order another two pints. West interrupts to say that he’ll have coffee so I order an espresso alongside my beers.

One of West’s most striking recent essays explores declining fertility rates in Russia, Ukraine and across the world. As a childless man, it is a subject I feel awkward about opining on, but it is one of the most significant phenomena of our time. It has its advantages, West notes, like declining violence, but it also means that people can be lonelier and that an ageing population is increasingly devoted to expanding social care. Is it something we can address politically, I ask him? “I don’t really think so, to be honest,” he says:

Despite the stereotype of conservative men, I’m not pro-natalism just because I’m a massive sexual inadequate who’s scared of women and wants to keep them in their place – there are other reasons as well.

I think the fertility drop off is a tragic development, because people tend to accumulate regret throughout life, but very few people regret the kids they had. I don’t write about it, because childlessness is very sad for people unable to have kids, but for most people their career is going to matter very little compared to the children and grandchildren they leave behind. A couple of years back I was on holiday and my wife’s siblings and parents spent a whole evening talking, all of them, about their grandmother, who died twenty years back, and laughing at her memory. That seems such a testimony to a life well spent.

Many of my generation are going to end up very lonely and sad, partly because economics makes it so hard to have a family, but also for cultural reasons. So far Georgia seems to be the only country that has risen above 2.1 TFR through concerted efforts, and the church played a role that wouldn’t be possible in other countries. I think much more likely we’re going through a demographic transition and the world of 2200 will be populated from a bottleneck population of people alive today. Basically 93% of British people will be descended from Boris Johnson.

Modern, urban life just has a huge effect on fertility; it’s very hard, very expensive, there is too much social pressure in the other way. As with many things, there are also just too many bad memes floating about, too.

It has begun to rain. Big, blotchy clouds hang overhead and the sound of thunder gnarrs in the distance. I ask West about another of his favourite themes: the perils of Americanization. “It was once a rather fond cliché to say that when America sneezes Britain catches a cold,” he has written, “But that idea seems less benign now that America’s politics has mutated into something genuinely toxic and destructive.”

Does West think the war in Ukraine will renew the idea of Europe or lead to more reliance on the US? “After the referendum,” he smiles:

...I wanted to start a campaign group called Reactionaries for Remain, because I do think the American political disease is a bigger threat to our society than anything Brussels can manage. But when it comes to military threats, and I hate to sound like a Thatcher cabinet minister who’s had too much to drink, I’m afraid I just don’t trust Germany’s politicians. They just seem incapable of doing anything to counter the threat from Russia. Then again, I don’t trust the British government either. I think one of the outcomes of the Ukraine crisis is to cement the idea of Poland as one of the big players in Europe. It’s arguably the only major European power that sees Europe for what it is – a cultural alliance based on history and a shared idea of outside threat.

But the idea of Europe, and the West, is so disputed that I find it hard to see how it can be a united force. When liberal internationalists talk about the West as being something defined by liberalism and the rules-based order they may as well be speaking Moon-man language to me. It’s emptiness of ‘British values’ level.

There is a sudden crash as something strikes the window. Horrified, I see the crumpled body of a bird is twitching in the rain. West looks unmoved as he sips his espresso. Did he see what I just saw? Startled, but keen not to show it, I ask him about his writing on the quasi-religious nature of so-called "social justice" activists. Does he think sensible liberals can restore reason to progressive politics?

“When that Harper’s Letter came out,” West begins:

...where all the liberal thinkers criticised the new craziness, I went through Wikipedia checking their ages until I gave up because I was so depressed. The generational gap now between conventional liberals, who believe in free speech, honest reporting and freedom of conscience, and the sort of emotional communists who might be described as woke, is quite startling. I don’t think there’s much chance because doing so would mean trampling over so many taboos, and once you allow taboos to grow, it’s hard to break them.

Look at the 1619 Project, for example, a creation so laughably terrible as history, and which was feted by most of the establishment; a few historians stood up to critique it, but the fact that it was so highly praised is testimony to the sacredness with which liberal Americans regard blackness (make sure you cap the B – in fact, put it in bold, in a larger font). Which white liberal historian is going to turn around and say ‘sorry, but slavery was nowhere near as central to the foundation of the United States as you claim, even if it is very much part of the American story’? Yes, thank you, I would like my life ruined by 1,000 academics with personality problems, I’ll say that.

There is that fantastic N.S. Lyons Substack post about the causes of the current illiberalism, the post-liberal argument being that it is a product of liberalism, and I am certainly in that latter group.

There is another crash. This time it is a bigger one. Someone has charged into the window and is sprawled across the pavement. At first I think it is homeless man, mad on drink or drugs, but I see that he is wearing a suit. Blood is trickling from his forehead into his cloudy eyes. In the distance a dog is chewing on what appears to be a severed hand.

West continues to eat his pasta. Snatching glances through the window, into the storm, I ask him if right-wing ideas can be made more fashionable. “You know, Ben,” he smiles:

...conservatism is the new ‘punk’, it’s all the rage among the cool kids, they’re calling it ‘based’, I believe. Any day soon they’re going to rebel against this new wokeness, just like in ancient Rome the cool kids rebelled against the austere new Christian religion. And that’s why we all worship Jupiter now.

In all seriousness, some kind of conservatism always returns in some form; progressivism as now know it is just false, based on a false idea of human nature, the blank slate, and that can’t last forever. It’s also – except for the most talented and/or rich – quite a bad guide to life. So many very progressive people on social media are deeply unhappy people, dysfunctional and depressed. Melancholic people tend to make great artists but you wouldn’t want them as your guide to social relations and laws.

I glance out of the window again. The sunshine has returned. Looking down, I see no bodies on the pavement. Not even the bird. Smiling, I shake my head. What was in that beer?

How does West think the nature of British commentary has changed from his days at Telegraph Blogs to the days of Substack? “It’s funny,” he says:

...because in some ways Substack has basically recreated the blogging platform but managed to make it pay. Telegraph Blogs was a phenomenon, all the work of Damian Thompson who had a fantastic eye for writing talent (ie he thought I was good). The problem was that it just made no money for the company, even though it had a pretty large fanbase. I look back and cringe at a lot about what I wrote; I was far too confident in my views and I often sounded like one of the those confident and disagreeable Right-wing pricks who revels in being hated, which is not really me at all (I always wanted to be Bill Bryson, although I guess it’s too late for that now). Damian was just ahead of his time, I guess.

What ideas and interests does he hope to explore on Substack? “I’m planning to write a couple of pieces on my feelings about fatherhood,” he tells me:

...and the emotions it brought back about my own childhood and relationship with my own dad, and explore those deep feelings. But I might just give up and go back to writing my 100th piece about wokeness being a new religion.

I ask West if he wants another drink but he has an article to write. We pay up and walk into the sunshine again. As I stroll towards the tube station, I laugh and shake my head, remembering my morbid visions. Sure, a lot of things are bad about the modern world, but a lot of things are good as well! There is humour. There are children. There is Italian beer.

The dog scampers by with the hand in its mouth.

Spaghetti puttanesca - £18.99

Pizza Margherita - £15.99

Peroni x 4 - £21

Espresso - £4.99

The icy taste of realism - Priceless