The Culture Wars of Woke Imperialism: How Progressive Liberalism Is Killing the UK’s Left Catherine Liu puts her finger on one of the great weaknesses of the modern liberal-left: what she describes as the “hyper-subjective blackmail of the collective”, where one person can effectively bring an organisation to a standstill by declaring themselves upset or offended. The political objective disappears while everybody scrambles to affirm the individual. Political movements cannot be built around satisfying every individual's feelings, nor can they survive by shaming, silencing or cancelling anyone who refuses to provide the required affirmation. That may sound harsh, but politics is collective by its very nature. Of course we should care about one another as human beings. But if we're serious about building collective power capable of confronting an economic system that concentrates wealth and ownership in fewer hands, then the movement cannot be permanently held hostage by the subjective feelings of whichever individual claims the greatest offence. We've seen the consequences. “No debate.” Expulsions. Cancellation. Purity tests. Ever-smaller circles deciding who is sufficiently righteous to remain inside them. That doesn't build working-class power. It builds cliques. There is nothing particularly radical about creating political spaces so brittle that disagreement itself becomes an offence. A serious movement must contain people who disagree, argue, challenge one another and still stand together when their material interests coincide. I've had tiny, increasingly cultish organisations try to cancel me for saying precisely this. So be it. The working class is millions of people with different beliefs, backgrounds and opinions. If your politics cannot accommodate them unless they first learn the correct vocabulary, affirm every fashionable orthodoxy and keep their disagreements to themselves, you aren't building a mass movement. You're building a private members' club.