Opinion
I rarely put much credence in celebrity opinions, because celebrities are generally not very bright, not very worldly, and terrified of saying anything they know their peers (and paymasters) won’t approve of. That said, occasionally, a celebrity does something that breaks the mould and shows a rare streak of independent thinking. Especially when it’s someone who has no need to fear for their career any more, either because they’re too big to cancel, or, more often, when they’ve given up said career anyway.
For former actress Holly Valance, it’s a bit of both. A former Neighbours star who disappeared from public view — and married a billionaire. Valance has neither a career to care about, nor any fear of winding up penniless because of it.
So, she’s saying what she really thinks — and, as it happens, tapping into a zeitgeist the media elite don’t want you to know about. There has been much, if muted, commentary on how GenZs seem to be much more conservative than the usual run of youngsters. In fact, they seem to be the first generation in living memory to be more conservative than their predecessors.
“I would say that everyone starts as a leftie and then wakes up at some point after you start either making money, working, trying to run a business, trying to buy a home, and then realise what crap ideas they all are. And then you go to the right,” Valance – appearing to riff off that famous (yet misattributed) Winston Churchill line – said in a clip that has now clocked up more than 122,000 views on YouTube alone.
But it appears that GenZs are starting off more to the right than previous generations at the same age. Which is all the more remarkable considering how thoroughly they’ve been indoctrinated by the Long March left for all their young lives.
“The stuff they’re teaching in school. I don’t think sexuality and children should be in the same sentence. I don’t think anyone’s sexuality is anyone’s business. You don’t know about mine. I don’t know about yours, why would we?” she said.
She hit out at [Greta Thunberg], claiming “the demonic little gremlin” has been made a “goddess in classrooms”.
“All the kids are all coming home with depression and anxiety”, she said. “Why would you go to your music lesson or bother doing your homework or get out of your bed if you think we’re all going to be dead in five years anyway?”
Valance also touches on another strain of the zeitgeist which the mainstream “conservative” parties are completely failing to twig to: young people who are sick of the left aren’t going to flock to rich posers in blue ties mouthing the same globalist, “Build Back Better” platitudes of the left. They want an actual alternative, not a wet, soggy imitation of the Greens, just in more expensive suits.
She is abandoning [the Conservatives] and will instead vote for the insurgent Reform Party established by Nigel Farage at this year’s general election in the UK.
“Last time I voted Conservatives. Next time I’ll be voting Reform. The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting a different outcome and I’m sure as hell not going to Labour,” she said […]
Valance’s frustration with both major parties is the one commonality between her and her peers back home.
Younger voters are not solely focused on the parties or the policies in particular, they are just looking for an alternative […]
“I support anybody who sticks to what they believe in and isn’t a turncoat, doesn’t do a million flip flops and U-turns, even to the nutters on the other side, if you stick to what you believe in and you keep reiterating that over years and years, I can always respect that. I might not agree with you but I get that more than the changing of minds, the flipping around and never having any conviction, not being staunchly for or against something. That’s confusing and I think people are sick of that.”
The Australian
Hence the “shocking” success of so-called “far-right populists” from Giorgia Meloni to Javier Milei, Geert Wilders, and, most recently, Andre Ventura in Portugal. Even back in the 80s, Brits would tell me they voted for Margaret Thatcher because she said what she meant, and she stuck to it.
Because one thing remains true about young people: they like to rebel against the Establishment. Nowadays, the Establishment is the Boomer left who’ve been running the show since the late 80s. The left, as John Lydon notes, is the “snivelling self-righteous twatty” Establishment. So, more and more, the young are giving them the finger.