Northcote Road isn’t a kids’ play area
Make way for the motorists
Short form online video content is now becoming the primary mode for political communication and so we are treated, on X, to witnessing pioneering young men and women attempt to chase virality through cutesy little stunts.
For the most part, these videos and the stunts therein reflect the extremely narrow worldviews of late millennials (now in their early 30s), oddly posing as ‘young people’, who earn about £35k pa in their first proper job in London. The great Andrew Orlowski has coined the term ‘Mansards’ (a reference to one garbled Create AI Streets campaign) to describe these people and I will use that term throughout this piece. ‘Mansards’ are not complete failures, but they have usually missed at least a few adult milestones having a child or buying a house.
This is borne out in the micro-issues that Mansards focus on. Fertility is a real concern but when these people discuss it, it is only in reference to the availability of IVF treatments - a siren song (for most women) that is a distraction from the radical restructuring of gender norms that would be necessary in reality to achieve a replacement TFR. Mansards also have a myopic fascination with rental prices in London. The fact that the very market forces they celebrate may be sending them and their talents a ‘price signal’ that it’s time to give up and accept the commute from Peterborough is apparently lost on them.
This self-obsession reveals itself most keenly when Mansards focus on trivium such as the closing hours of pubs in Westminster, graffiti on the tube and fare-dodging. This is London viewed through the prism of a Lincolnshire expat Parliamentary assistant with no social connections in the city except other blue jumpered ‘neo-liberals’ who they first crossed swords with over free drinks at an Adam Smith Institute event.
It degrades the ‘right-wing’ political project in two ways. The first being that it is such an easy target for mockery and scorn. You, who probably had your first alcoholic drink at University, are now flabbily demanding that the staff of the Red Lion pub stay up until 4AM to accommodate ever longer disquisitions on the merits of street votes, between yourself and your merry band of MA War Studies graduates - because you are too afraid to go somewhere as exotic as Dalston - are essentially broadcasting your own lack of social development to the world. Eventually there will be a leftie with more brains than John Merrick who will recognise how ripe this is for ridicule, and the ‘new right’ will become even more cringe inducing than it already is.
The second is that it minimises the actual horror of living under the thumb of Tony B-Liar. There are rape gangs carrying out barbaric acts against white children all across the country. Why do the Mansards not film themselves visiting a kebab shop in Rotherham? Why not give a voice to parents who live near new migrant hotels? These videos would earn you much more than a deferential retweet from Neil O’Vaccines. Apart from honour there is much more engagement to be had targeting ethnically motivated crime, as an example.
The truth is that the lodestar in a Mansard’s life is to become a Tory MP, and to that end they will not even position themselves on the right of a shifting Overton window. Safe ground: Chagos, property-owning democracy etc. If this describes you, the reader, stop - because your putative political career will be a total waste of time. The country is going to the dogs and if you think you have the right to waste a seat in Parliament at this late of an hour in service for reasons of pride then you will be swallowed whole by what comes next. We have no need for Neckers or Kerenskys where we’re going.
Almost universally the Mansards have never acquired for themselves a full driving license. Celebrated mutual Bermuda was, I think, the first to point out how this renders their form of YIMBYism redundant and out of touch. They believe pensioners will ‘street vote’ to turn their garages into Mansard play pens and will give up their cars in exchange for trams. You could not believe these things if you either knew any old people or had children (for whom cars are a necessity) - and as these people tend to be childless Lincolnshire expats hundreds of miles away from their parents they know neither.
It is this personal failure which is probably behind the video that this article has been written to rebut. Two ‘young’ Tories make a scene for X where they obstruct a road to eat pasta and drink wine. The little tykes are protesting the local Labour council’s decision to stop closures of Northcote Road - adjacent to many graduate hotspots in South West London (Clapham, Balham etc). The pressing issue of our time is apparently that there is not enough outdoor space for them to stuff their piggy faces with, in one of the leafiest suburbs in London bedecked on every street by pubs with massive beer gardens.
In service of raising this issue they decided to obstruct hard working motorists, people driving vans and lorries etc. They feel no shame at all in chasing online approval at the expense of the workers who make sure their tatty little flatshares have running water, nor the taxpayers earning enough to subsidise the net fiscal drain incurred by their meagre PAYE contributions by way of the IPSA payscale. Those people are, in the video, reduced to faceless cars, beeping impotently as our gluttonous heroes tuck into their carbonara avec chicken wine Al Fresco. Heugh-heugh-heugh! Those silly drivers just don’t get it!
Part of what explains this sociopathic behaviour is the rage-filled hate Mansards have towards drivers. This is the same Millenial generation that brought us the ‘Fuckcars’ subreddit after all. It comes from a mixture of pig ignorance and feelings of inferiority.
Pig ignorance, because they cannot grasp that the lives they live rely on motorised transport even if they never use it. When Extinction Rebellion was in full flow circa 2019 some supermarkets had empty shelves because they couldn’t receive deliveries. You cannot deliver these goods nor carry tools on a bus, but even if you could, if the Mansards had their way that journey would take our hypothetical tradie hours and hours of waiting in traffic because another arterial road has been shut for ‘vibes’. Recreating these ‘vibes’ is apparently the means for the Tories to connect with young people. It reminds me of when John Oxley tried so laboriously to coin the phrase ‘Taylor Swift Tories’. We have a whole new batch of real life Alan Partridges regurgitating yoof culture from ten years ago in a desperate attempt to relate to American teenage girls and the Left’s capacity to satirise has completely atrophied. This is what happens when you leave the Private Eye in the hands of one man for almost forty years.
But the more important aspect of Mansard psychology that the sight of cars enrages them because it reminds them of their own personal failings. Their generational compatriots on the left suffer from much the same problem - why is Ash Sarkar so wound up about 4x4s?
I can actually empathise with this. It took me much longer than it should have to get a license myself; I can remember well walking to the theory test centre through some industrial estate and being confronted by the sight of four seventeen years olds tooling about in a Corsa. They were laughing about something, but in that moment it felt like they were laughing at me. I have never felt closer to the person of Elliot Rodger in my life; a dark horrible fury rose up in me. The Mansard is the Incel of the Road. ‘Just check your mirrors before you take off, and try and have a chat with your examiner, bro.’
My personal fate took a different turn. I am a man of the pink. But I can somewhat understand the complex feelings of personal frustration and failure that erupts from having to take buses in foreign countries because you can’t rent a lovely air-conditioned box to take you hither and thither.
With that said, even in my worst moments I would never have lacked the self-awareness to take those frustrations out on law abiding members of the public. This video is the equivalent to Elliot Rodgers throwing a full big gulp of cola at a group of beautiful blonde men and women for having the temerity to enjoy themselves in his eyesight.
If he had been stopped then, the cycle of escalating violence would have stopped with it. Do you want to see a Mansard charge head long into oncoming traffic on video? Do you really want to see that?
Are you sure? Are you absolutely certain?
A free idea for any chasers of internet virality. Film yourself giving out wired earphones to people playing music out loud on the Tube. Don’t cop out - no just picking on White people. The fear of physical confrontation is the main sensation people feel when they hear the Tikky Toks, be their champion, it will do much better than graffiti. It’s not my battle. I retreated to the constant AirPods Pro many moons ago…