Starkey: Britain Is the First Country to Turn Back the Liberal Tide

The United Kingdom bucked the global trend by being the first nation to reverse the march of liberalism but the “profound danger” of woke politics backed by a displaced religious zeal threatens these developments, constitutionalist Dr David Starkey has said.

Speaking to Breitbart London’s James Delingpole, British historian and broadcaster Dr David Starkey noted the sudden and remarkable appearance of woke culture in British and American universities. It was a unique combination of cultural factors in the Anglo-American that allowed this to flourish, he said, remarking:

“The worst excesses of ‘woke’ only happen in the Anglo-Saxon world… one of the driving forces of this, and why it is so prominent in America, one of the elements of it is it professes to be reason, but it is driven by religion. It is a mistaken religious impulse — all of these things are powered by puritanism. It is a peculiarly Anglo-Saxon and American phenomenon.”

Dr Starkey noted the treatment of prominent left-wing political figures as modern-day saints in the new woke-green religion, such as “child saint” Greta Thunberg and UK hard-left leader Jeremy Corbyn. “This is the profound danger we have now, the grotesque excesses of the left are imbued with religious certainty. Corbynism was manifestly a religious movement — look at them all at Glastonbury [chanting Jeremy Corbyn’s name — ‘JC’, like Jesus Christ]. It is this weird displacement of religion”, he said.

But while the Anglo-American sphere produces a breeding ground for radical wokeism, it also provides a unique political system where change is possible without revolution.

More here