> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://goodoil.news/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Live and Let (the State) Die - URL: https://goodoil.news/live-and-let-the-state-die/ - Published: 2026-08-18T04:30:07.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-18T04:30:06.000Z - Description: How about I do attribution studies for politics? That is actually a magnificent idea. Unfortunately, I have an intellect, I have a conscience, and I have far better things to do. But I swear if I did this there would be editors and peer reviewers willing to bestow publication and celebration on me. - Author: Reproduced with permission - Tags: UK Politics, World Politics [**James Alexander**](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/08/16/live-and-let-the-state-die/?ref=goodoil.news) *James Alexander is a professor in the Department of Political Science at Bilkent University in Turkey.* I want to make an exact argument here that I think is fundamental. There is a relation between: - “Climate change,” “Net Zero,” Green, Environmental politics, and - Immigration, Colonisation, Decolonisation, Cultural Problems. The death of Rod Liddle algorithmed me back to the Ray Honeyford story and it was musing on that disgraceful episode that made me think about this. For there is a relation between these two. There is a relation between the issue of global warming/climate crisis/extreme weather events and the issue of race and immigration that we have associated for almost 60 years with the name of Enoch Powell. Both of these issues are discussed at maximum volume now. For both left and right there is an existential crisis. For the left it is about the planet. For the right it is about the state. First on the state. I have said it before and I’ll say it again. Until we have some grand theory of global order and an international treaty, or a subsumption of states into a World State or, more likely, a subsumption of them into Schmitt’s *Grossraüme* or Orwell’s Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia (China, Russia, America): until any of that happens, then we will have states. And, as Machiavelli put it in *The Prince*, the major interest and activity and necessity of the prince (i.e., any government) is *mantenere lo stato* – to maintain the state. This is really the first purpose of government, order, all politics: to maintain the state. Anything that subverts that, if unconscious, is disastrously negligent, and, if conscious, is treason and treachery. What is the state? This is a difficult question. I know as I have several times tried to write a theory of the state. “Legitimate monopoly of violence” is the Weberian definition. But better is to say that it is a complex that includes and can refer to (i) the government and (ii) the entire body politic ruled by the same government. You could argue that this constitutive ambiguity is a problem. Aye. But it is also a solution: since it imposes on us a language and hence a logic and also a law whereby we cannot think of ourselves as a nation or body politic until we have been somehow united by a single, effective, government. (Anarchy is out.) And this government has to be willing to defend us, and also define us against our enemies: defend frontiers and marches, in older times, and impose borders, in later times. Anyhow, difficulties aside, we can ignore all of Hobbes/Rousseau/Hegel if we like, and simply return to Machiavelli, and say, “Whatever the state is, it must be defended.” And this means, now, that the nation must defend the government and the government must defend the nation. The way both make sure that they are doing this is called “accountability”. I am stating the obvious. I am being obvious about the state. But this needs restating exactly because it has been forgotten by our elites. And, NB, I do not mean by “defend the state” to make drones or increase defence spending or anything like that. I simply mean do whatever is necessary to make sure the thing does not fall apart. My exact argument depends on my using the old language of right and left. I am going to use left to mean pro-immigration, generally woke, extremely concerned about climate change, and right to mean anti-immigration, anti-woke and at least sceptical about climate change. This is no doubt too simple a contrast, but it accounts for much. Left is stupid-clever for the sake of a newfound fantasy, and right is remembering, dimly, what humans have always needed. Here is a history of “the environment”. This is a history in two stages. First humans took nature for granted. I think the best way to think of this is to imagine a life happening within a frame. At first humans lived within a frame, and assumed the frame was fixed: by nature, or by God. We were permitted to exploit nature as much as possible, act as steward of it, what you will. It changed no doubt. But no one imagined that the world, the frame, was altered by *our* activity. It altered of its own accord, by its own logic, or by God’s will. We viewed our own enclosure of fields and deforestation with equanimity. Suddenly, around 1960, this point of view switched on its axis like the magnetic polarity of the earth, and the original view was forgotten. In the original view we trusted nature or God. But now we saw the frame of our existence as a sort of output or consequence of our activity, and we began to worry about it as if it were *only* a consequence of our activity. Everything we did was perceived to have vast scalar consequences. We were damaging the earth, endangering the planet. This was so, whether we were talking about nuclear war, overpopulation, ice age, global warming or eventually underpopulation. This is, now, what I would say is a generally barely conscious absolute presupposition of modern thought: that we affect the world, totally, decisively, destructively, and therefore that we must impose severe limits on our activity. Is that clear? First. The world is as stable as it is, so use it as you will. Then. The world is unstable, is being run down by our predations, and we are now anxious, expecting the worst, and suffering from environmental health problems. This has changed our view of the state. Of course, obvious point: it has relegated the state to the sidelines, and seems to require us to have a “global” solution for everything: Capitalism, Covid, Climate, you name it. But there is more than this. I think what has happened is that our traditional political anxiety about maintaining the state has shifted to maintaining the planet. This is at the root of the unthinking word “sustainability”. Instead of *mantenere lo stato* we have *mantenere il pianeta*. Maintain the planet! Restrain. Constrain. Suppress. Oppress. Anything that is necessary. Now, the particular problem in modern Britain, or England, or the United Kingdom, is that we were a strong state before everyone else, and certainly before the word *state* existed. Henry VIII used the word, but never really took off until we began to lose faith in our empire, which was in the late 19th century, which is also the same time that, by reaction, we began to believe in and become conscious of our empire. The jumble of territories, settlements, colonies, factories and capital investments were sanctioned by Versailles but subverted by our debt to the Americans and officially deconsecrated in 1945: which is when we began to withdraw from India, Mandatory Palestine, etc. Now all this abandonment of ‘empire’ was called ‘decolonisation’: and as decolonisation went on we had the epic events of Keynes at Bretton Woods, Acheson’s saying “not yet found a role”, Macmillan’s vain attempt to join the EEC, Heath’s success at getting us in, and then the Thatcher-and-Blair combination-punch of private-public feelgoodery, and, finally, as the Race Relations industry urgently did its work, we discovered not only that ‘racism’ was unacceptable, but that we should talk about it *more* the *less* racist we became. Back in 1991, when I went to university, when Britain was still firm majority ‘white’ (a highly unfortunate phrase), there was almost no concern about race. I was at Cambridge, and the place was full of all sorts of foreigners. Not so many were black, but I can tell you that no one ever looked down on Kwasi Kwarteng or Chinua Achebe’s son Ike. A few of my friends were this and that, but I, and we, really did not care. We heard about ‘positive discrimination’ in America but that just seemed ridiculous. What no one anticipated was that the reaction against ‘racism’ would, over time, become more toxic than the original racism. No doubt racist abuse was unpleasant for those who suffered it, but the reaction has now spread everywhere, to even places where racism did not exist: and the reaction has become the world in which Jason Arday was considered an ornament for Cambridge University and Jesus College. It has become more toxic than the original racism because the original racism was a sort of toxic side effect of a meritorious instinct to defend our state. Whereas our antiracism/decolonisation/reaction against racism has become an excuse and fig leaf for a complete abandonment of the instinct to defend our state. And you cannot get more toxic than that. The entire discourse about ‘racism’ is part of the discourse designed to encourage us to stop defending our own state. Another part of that discourse is the climate chunter. In short, I allege that the current established elites are cleaving to a climate doctrine, partly because some of them believe it, but *actually* because they *do not want to defend the state*. This is why pro-immigration and pro-extreme-weather doctrines go together for so many people. These people worry about the fragility of the planet, and care nothing at all about the fragility of the state. This reverses almost everything in world history since Herodotus. For centuries we defended states. Now we have nausea about defending them. We have lost our instinct for ruling. No one wants to defend the state, since they assume someone else is doing it: and meanwhile it is not so much that they fiddle while Rome burns but throw oil on the Rivers-of-Bloody-City as it burns. This is the point. Anyone who talks about climate change feels nausea whenever they think about the actual responsibility of ruling. They are looking for a justification to be irresponsible and an alleged sense of responsibility about the planet is the best justification there is. Let me repeat this directly so climate credulists can understand it: “You are looking for a justification to be irresponsible: and your supposed sense of responsibility about the planet is the best justification there is, isn’t it?” \* I feel I must add an appendix on Sadiq Khan, who has [come again](https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/aug/08/burning-summer-climate-denial-green-policies-sadiq-khan%E2%80%9D?ref=goodoil.news) in the *Guardian* to tell us about science. > We are living in an era of extremes, and my fear is that – without urgent action – the worst is still to come. In this context, climate denial and delay isn’t just delusional – it’s deadly. Because it won’t be President Trump and the fossil fuel companies paying the price for failure – it will be the rest of us. If we are to protect our planet and the people who call it home, we must turn the tide on climate denial by preparing for a hotter future and embracing Net Zero like never before. The Great Man also says: > The notion that climate action represents ‘woke nonsense’ relies on the ridiculous premise that the climate crisis isn’t real – or that if it is, we won’t feel its impact on our lives. This year has proved just how wrong that is. Hang on. How has this year proved anything? You notice *hot weather*. Ah. You posit a cause, *climate change*. But soon-to-be Lord Khan: is *hot weather* the same as *climate change* or something different? If it is the same, you are offering us a truism. Then let’s just call weather “climate change” – pardon me, “climate crisis” – from now on! Hurrah! Farmer in July: “Ey up, Ted, climate crisis a bit hot today, ain’t it?” Farmer in January: “Ey up, Ted, climate crisis a bit cold today, ain’t it?” Of course that is not what Khan means. They are different. But if they are different you have to *prove* a causal relation between two different things. That’s a C minus for your paper, Young Sadiq, well done. Now back to your seat. Oh, but what’s this? This is where Sadiq Khan and everyone else would like to bring in Attribution Science. What’s that? [Attribution Science](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/03/24/its-time-to-stop-the-misleading-extreme-weather-headlines/?ref=goodoil.news) What is it? - First, suck on pencil: design a computer program that (i) models our weather as if there are no carbon emissions and (ii) predicts no or little extreme weather events. - Second, and this is the laughably ‘evidence-based’ bit, throw pencil away and cry “Eureka!”: open the newspaper, look at all the red-and-orange graphics on the television, and observe that there are many extreme weather events happening. Then infer from all this that these events are caused by – climate change which is caused by – humans. Attribution studies. Academic rubbish. How about I do attribution studies for politics? That is to say, as an exercise in political science? What if I were to model, say, politics over the next 10 years *as if there are no right-wing people*, and make the model such that it predicts peace, harmony, NatWest sponsorship of rainbows, Zack Polanski lying down with Jeremy Clarkson. Brilliant. Then open a newspaper, and blame everything that goes wrong in the next 10 years – on the ‘far right’. That is actually a magnificent idea. Unfortunately, I have an intellect, I have a conscience, and I have far better things to do. But I swear that if I did this there would be countless editors and peer reviewers willing to bestow publication and celebration on me. I should ask Leverhulme and the British Academy for cash. And ask Anthony Fauci for advice on how to get a prize. This article was originally published by [the Daily Sceptic](https://dailysceptic.org/2026/08/16/live-and-let-the-state-die/?ref=goodoil.news).