Yesterday 03:04 AM
https://unherd.com/2025/12/the-tragedy-o...-substack/
INTRO (excerpts): Keir Starmer seems to have tasked ChatGPT to post on Substack for him. Or perhaps it was a wonk, or even Starmer himself; from the language it’s hard to tell. [...] The only memorable line is a catchphrase: “a Britain truly built for all.”
[...] Obviously, it seems to say, we all agree on the answer to the question: what is “Britain”? And clearly we all agree who’s included in “all”, as in “a Britain truly built for all”? Except we don’t.
Especially since Brexit, how we define Britain, and who should be included in it, is so intractable a dispute that it appears to have swallowed our entire ability to do politics. Nothing could be less settled than what Britain is, or who is included in “all”.
And the irony is that the digital platforms Starmer (or KeithGPT, or whatever) is embracing (he’s also recently joined TikTok) are a key reason we’re having these arguments. TikTok is Chinese; Substack is based in San Francisco; both are used all over the globe. And this de-materialised, post-geographic quality maps strangely onto our struggles over what a nation is, and who’s included.
[...] in relatively recent history, a “nation” has implied both a defined geography and its occupation by a defined group. And the paradox of a national leader leaning so heavily into the internet is that this medium is so post-geographic in its effect as to make nation-states as such appear increasingly quaint: an impression the most radical tech elites are now embracing as the future of politics.
[...] European nation-states, as the historian Carlton Hayes showed, were never tight-knit tribes but instead “agglomerations of peoples with diverse languages and dialects”...
[...] Wherever printing centres took root, from 1450 onward, the dialect in that particular area would become gradually more widespread, fixed and culturally dominant. These print-powered dialects morphed over time into the “official” languages of much larger polities, while other dialects lost status or disappeared. The circulation of printed books and newspapers in these newly standardised vernacular languages in turn forged “nations” into self-conscious political units...
[...] It wasn’t just print, of course. But print helped to fuse geography, language and power into modern nation-states [...] In time, many of these “small empires” became large ones — such as, perhaps most notably of all, Britain...
What does any of this have to do with Britain now? And what does it have to do with Substack? Well, it’s not a coincidence that elites around the world began dreaming bigger than nations or even empires, just as new broadcast media emerged to challenge print for the public’s attention... (MORE - missing details)
INTRO (excerpts): Keir Starmer seems to have tasked ChatGPT to post on Substack for him. Or perhaps it was a wonk, or even Starmer himself; from the language it’s hard to tell. [...] The only memorable line is a catchphrase: “a Britain truly built for all.”
[...] Obviously, it seems to say, we all agree on the answer to the question: what is “Britain”? And clearly we all agree who’s included in “all”, as in “a Britain truly built for all”? Except we don’t.
Especially since Brexit, how we define Britain, and who should be included in it, is so intractable a dispute that it appears to have swallowed our entire ability to do politics. Nothing could be less settled than what Britain is, or who is included in “all”.
And the irony is that the digital platforms Starmer (or KeithGPT, or whatever) is embracing (he’s also recently joined TikTok) are a key reason we’re having these arguments. TikTok is Chinese; Substack is based in San Francisco; both are used all over the globe. And this de-materialised, post-geographic quality maps strangely onto our struggles over what a nation is, and who’s included.
[...] in relatively recent history, a “nation” has implied both a defined geography and its occupation by a defined group. And the paradox of a national leader leaning so heavily into the internet is that this medium is so post-geographic in its effect as to make nation-states as such appear increasingly quaint: an impression the most radical tech elites are now embracing as the future of politics.
[...] European nation-states, as the historian Carlton Hayes showed, were never tight-knit tribes but instead “agglomerations of peoples with diverse languages and dialects”...
[...] Wherever printing centres took root, from 1450 onward, the dialect in that particular area would become gradually more widespread, fixed and culturally dominant. These print-powered dialects morphed over time into the “official” languages of much larger polities, while other dialects lost status or disappeared. The circulation of printed books and newspapers in these newly standardised vernacular languages in turn forged “nations” into self-conscious political units...
[...] It wasn’t just print, of course. But print helped to fuse geography, language and power into modern nation-states [...] In time, many of these “small empires” became large ones — such as, perhaps most notably of all, Britain...
What does any of this have to do with Britain now? And what does it have to do with Substack? Well, it’s not a coincidence that elites around the world began dreaming bigger than nations or even empires, just as new broadcast media emerged to challenge print for the public’s attention... (MORE - missing details)