How the road to an increasingly expensive, increasingly divided society may have been paved with impeccably good intentions
This article developed from conversations and private musings shared with me by a friend with an academic background spanning cognitive science, logic, scientific method, linguistics and computing. He has no wish to be associated directly with the article, and individual arguments should not be attributed to him. What follows is my own interpretation, development and satire.
The AWFL — Affluent White Female Liberal — did not set out to destroy Western Europe.
That would imply a plan.
The achievement was rather more sophisticated.
It was the accumulation of thousands of perfectly compassionate, individually defensible decisions which, when assembled together, somehow helped produce a society that became progressively more expensive, less cohesive and increasingly bewildered about what had happened.
Before anybody becomes unnecessarily excited, the AWFL is not necessarily a particular woman.
She is an archetype.
She can be male.
She can be young or old.
She can probably be found in almost every Western democracy.
AWFLism is less a biological condition than a particular combination of prosperity, political culture and insulation from the consequences of one’s own beliefs.
Our archetypal AWFL lives in a prosperous metropolitan neighbourhood.
She works in an institution that has never had to compete particularly hard with reality.
She has excellent coffee.
Excellent broadband.
Excellent healthcare.
A house that has appreciated spectacularly.
And impeccable opinions.
She believes passionately in diversity, inclusion, sustainability and social justice.
She is occasionally less enthusiastic about diversity when it involves the composition of her children’s school; inclusion when it affects the value of her property; sustainability when it requires surrendering her overseas holidays; and social justice when somebody suggests redistributing some of her wealth.
But this is not hypocrisy.
Good heavens, no.
It is intersectional privilege with central heating.
Her political genius is the ability to convert personal abundance into universal morality.
She has a £900,000 house, therefore rising property values demonstrate economic success.
She has no difficulty getting a GP appointment, therefore the NHS is fundamentally sound.
She lives beside a railway station, therefore motorists are selfish.
She can afford an electric car, therefore banning petrol and diesel cars is progressive.
She has a secure professional salary, therefore higher taxation demonstrates solidarity.
Her children attend an excellent school, therefore comprehensive education is working beautifully.
And when somebody whose circumstances are rather different objects, they are not necessarily regarded as citizens raising legitimate material concerns.
They are problematic.
Step One: Make Everything More Expensive
The AWFL does not oppose capitalism.
That would be ridiculous.
Her pension depends upon it.
She simply believes capitalism must become kinder, greener and more socially responsible — while preferably continuing to increase the value of her house.
Housing offers perhaps the finest example.
Everyone agrees Britain needs more homes.
Almost everyone agrees younger people are being priced out.
Everyone deplores homelessness.
Everyone worries about rents.
Everyone demands action.
Then somebody proposes building 4,000 houses nearby.
Suddenly the mature oak tree at the bottom of the development becomes a treasured component of Britain’s national ecological heritage.
Development is essential.
Just not here.
Thus an entire generation can discover that the property ladder climbed by their parents and grandparents has gradually been converted into an ornamental feature hanging on the wall.
Eventually government discovers the solution:
affordable housing.
Which increasingly appears to mean constructing extraordinarily expensive buildings containing a small proportion of theoretically less-expensive homes.
The phrase expensive affordable housing deserves greater appreciation.
It has the philosophical elegance of a budget Ferrari.
Housing shortages, of course, cannot seriously be attributed to one political constituency. Planning restrictions, land values, interest rates, construction costs, population growth, household formation, infrastructure, local government, national government and decades of policy choices all matter.
But that would ruin the joke.
And AWFLism thrives precisely in the gap between supporting something in principle and experiencing it in practice.
Step Two: Immigration as a Moral Achievement
Immigration is where things become considerably more interesting.
The AWFL views immigration primarily through the language of compassion.
And compassion matters.
People escaping persecution deserve protection.
Economies need workers.
Universities attract international students.
Hospitals depend upon overseas staff.
Migrants create businesses, pay taxes, form families and contribute enormously to British society.
All perfectly true.
But government has another irritating responsibility.
It must also ask:
How many houses are available?
How many classrooms?
How many doctors?
How much transport infrastructure?
Where will population growth occur?
How quickly can communities absorb change?
What happens to wages at different points in the labour market?
What level of migration retains public consent?
And how successfully are people integrating?
These questions are not inherently racist.
They are questions of state capacity.
That distinction matters because contemporary British opinion on immigration is considerably more complicated than either political camp sometimes admits.
Oxford University’s Migration Observatory reported in September 2026 that immigration had again become highly salient to British voters: 43% identified immigration as an important issue facing the country in July 2026. Yet attitudes vary sharply according to the type of migration being discussed. Majorities viewed legal workers and international students positively, while unauthorised Channel crossings attracted far more negative attitudes. Younger people and graduates were generally more positive about immigration than older respondents, while political affiliation was also strongly associated with attitudes. (Migration Observatory)
In other words:
The public is capable of holding more than one thought simultaneously.
This can be deeply inconvenient.
The AWFL’s temptation is to transform what should be a discussion about numbers, infrastructure, integration and democratic consent into a test of personal virtue.
You don’t support her preferred immigration policy?
Perhaps you lack compassion.
You ask whether enough houses are being built?
Suspicious.
You ask about pressure on public services?
Dog whistle.
You wonder whether unusually rapid demographic change might occasionally produce social tension?
Congratulations.
Depending upon which corner of social media you have wandered into, you may discover that you became Hitler approximately four minutes ago.
This is a remarkably efficient debating technique because it eliminates the tiresome necessity of actually debating.
Step Three: Turn Climate Policy into Class Policy
Climate change is real.
So is the need to reduce emissions.
This should not be particularly controversial.
The interesting political question is how.
Because climate policy becomes electorally fragile when the people designing the transition do not experience its costs in the same way as the people expected to pay for it.
Insulation?
Excellent.
Renewable electricity?
Splendid.
Heat pumps?
Wonderful.
Electric vehicles?
Fantastic.
Higher household energy costs?
An unfortunate transition.
Restrictions on petrol and diesel vehicles?
Necessary.
The self-employed electrician driving a fifteen-year-old diesel van because replacing it would cost half his annual income?
He needs to rethink his lifestyle.
The professional making three return flights to international conferences?
Different matter.
Those are networking.
There is a larger problem here.
Environmental policy increasingly exists inside the same cultural ecosystem as other political identities.
A 2026 British study examining climate attitudes found significant associations between climate beliefs, political orientation, education and whether respondents considered immigration a major national issue. The research does not establish that one attitude causes another, but it demonstrates how environmental and cultural-political attitudes can cluster together. (Nature)
And that matters.
Because the moment climate policy becomes perceived not simply as environmental policy but as the lifestyle prescription of one social class for another, opposition becomes about considerably more than carbon dioxide.
A boiler becomes political.
A car becomes political.
A flight becomes political.
A steak becomes political.
Eventually practically everything except breathing develops an ideological affiliation.
Although give it time.
Step Four: Replace Class Politics with Cultural Politics
This may be AWFLism’s finest intellectual achievement.
Traditional left-wing politics had an irritating obsession with material things.
Wages.
Housing.
Ownership.
Working conditions.
Industrial power.
Employment.
Taxation.
Economic inequality.
The modern professional progressive movement certainly still discusses those things.
But it has also developed an extraordinary enthusiasm for something much cheaper:
language.
Why redistribute property when you can redistribute pronouns?
Why discuss industrial strategy when a corporation can change its Twitter avatar for Pride Month?
Why worry about whether warehouse workers can afford their electricity bills when the company’s senior management team has attended a three-hour seminar on unconscious bias?
The beauty of cultural radicalism is that it can be extraordinarily inexpensive for the affluent.
Economic redistribution might require giving something up.
Cultural signalling merely requires changing your vocabulary.
Thus the champagne socialist evolved.
She became the oat-milk socialist.
Same moral certainty.
Better Wi-Fi.
A professional earning £80,000 can demand radical transformation of society while remaining mysteriously untouched by the proposed transformation.
Indeed, one’s economic position may continue improving.
The house appreciates.
The pension grows.
The investment account performs nicely.
But radicalism remains intact because the correct opinions are being expressed.
It is revolution without the disagreeable business of losing anything.
Marx would presumably have required a few minutes to process it.
Step Five: Moralise Everything
Political disagreement traditionally involved competing ideas.
You believed taxes should be lower.
I believed they should be higher.
You favoured nationalised industries.
I preferred private ownership.
We argued.
Possibly over several pints.
Eventually somebody called somebody else an idiot and we went home.
AWFLism introduced something rather more powerful.
Moralisation.
If you disagree about taxation, perhaps you have a different economic model.
If you disagree about immigration, perhaps you are xenophobic.
If you disagree about gender policy, perhaps you are hateful.
If you question a particular diversity programme, perhaps you oppose diversity.
If you criticise a climate policy, perhaps you deny climate change.
The disagreement therefore migrates from:
“Your argument is wrong.”
to:
“There is something wrong with you.”
This is enormously important.
Because once political disagreement becomes evidence of moral defect, compromise itself begins to look immoral.
Why compromise with evil?
Why debate prejudice?
Why tolerate intolerance?
The logic is internally coherent.
Unfortunately, it also destroys the machinery required for pluralistic democracy.
Sooner or later the people being lectured discover an inconvenient feature of representative government.
They can vote too.
The resulting political realignment is visible across parts of Europe, although it varies considerably between countries and cannot plausibly be explained by a single cause. Germany’s September 2026 regional elections, for example, produced substantial gains for the AfD alongside gains for the hard-left Die Linke and significant losses for established centrist parties. Reuters reported economic anxieties, industrial pressures, immigration and dissatisfaction with established politics among the factors shaping the contests. (Reuters)
Elsewhere the picture is different: Sweden’s September 2026 election saw the Sweden Democrats lose support while the centre-left narrowly prevailed. (Reuters)
That variation is important.
Europe is not marching uniformly in one ideological direction.
But across several countries, traditional political alignments are clearly being disturbed.
And perhaps one lesson is that repeatedly informing voters that their concerns are morally unacceptable does not necessarily make those concerns disappear.
Sometimes it merely makes them angrier.
The Great Paradox
The central paradox of AWFLism is that almost every individual belief can be defended.
Environmental responsibility?
Reasonable.
Tolerance?
Obviously.
Immigration?
Often economically and socially beneficial.
Minority rights?
Essential in a liberal democracy.
Public services?
Vital.
Equality of opportunity?
Absolutely.
The problem arises when good intentions are treated as sufficient evidence of good policy.
They are not.
Intentions tell us why somebody acted.
Outcomes tell us whether it worked.
And perhaps this is where the background conversations that prompted this essay become most interesting.
Scientific reasoning demands something politics frequently dislikes:
falsifiability.
What evidence would persuade you that your preferred policy was not working?
What outcome would cause you to reconsider?
What unintended consequence would make you change direction?
If the answer is nothing, you no longer possess a political hypothesis.
You possess a belief system.
And belief systems have an irritating habit of protecting themselves.
If the policy succeeds, the theory was correct.
If the policy fails, insufficient policy was applied.
If voters object, they failed to understand it.
If they continue objecting, they have been misled.
If they vote against it, populism has corrupted democracy.
At no point need the theory itself encounter the terrifying possibility of being wrong.
The Final Achievement
The AWFL did not destroy Western Europe.
That would be giving her far too much credit.
Western Europe has been transformed by globalisation, demographic change, deindustrialisation, technological disruption, ageing populations, housing shortages, migration, energy policy, weak productivity growth, financial crises, government decisions, European institutions, wars, pandemics and — inconveniently — voters themselves.
No single metropolitan archetype explains that.
But the AWFL represents something recognisable in contemporary politics:
the emergence of a prosperous professional class whose cultural preferences can sometimes diverge considerably from the material concerns of people who experience the consequences of those preferences differently.
And therein lies the joke.
She wanted to save society.
She saved herself first.
She wanted equality.
Her postcode appreciated.
She wanted diversity.
Her neighbourhood gentrified.
She wanted affordable housing.
Her house doubled in value.
She wanted working-class empowerment.
Then explained to working-class people on Instagram why they were voting incorrectly.
She wanted tolerance.
Provided, naturally, that everybody tolerated the correct opinions.
She wanted environmental responsibility.
Provided Heathrow remained open for the skiing holiday.
And she wanted to save Western civilisation from its prejudices.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way, she developed an extraordinary prejudice against anyone who disagreed with her.
The AWFL did not destroy Western Europe.
She simply spent thirty years supporting increasingly expensive decisions on behalf of everybody else —
and then expressed astonishment when everybody else became rather cross about the bill.
Postscript: Free Speech, Terms and Conditions Apply
No contemporary European satire would be complete without free speech.
Because the modern liberal democracy has developed an intriguing relationship with offensive language.
We celebrate freedom of expression.
Passionately.
We defend everybody’s right to speak.
Absolutely.
Subject, naturally, to the appropriate policies, codes of conduct, community guidelines, workplace procedures, safeguarding considerations and whichever subsection of the Public Order Act somebody has recently discovered.
The question is not whether genuinely threatening or criminal communications should be investigated.
Obviously they should.
The more interesting question is how a liberal society distinguishes genuine intimidation from somebody merely being obnoxious on the internet.
Because nothing quite captures the confidence of a mature liberal democracy like somebody posting an unpleasant tweet and subsequently discovering that the state may wish to discuss their choice of adjectives.
The AWFL naturally remains absolutely committed to free speech.
Terms and conditions apply.
