Between Truths by Roland Smith

I’m Roland Smith, a UK political commentator independent of any political party, pressure group, think tank or media outlet.

I’m based in the Chiltern Hills near Amersham, north west of London. I grew up around here, then moved to Oxford for my higher education, ended up staying in/around Oxford for twenty years, and then moved back to these hills with a family in tow.

I work in the Tech Industry ‘by day’ and have been generally fortunate in life. I don’t come from a moneyed background - state schools; 3-bed 1960s house - but since then I have sometimes found myself in the top 1% of income earners in the UK. Life has dealt me a good hand (so far) and I’m very mindful of that.

Since 2009, I have spent far too long on Twitter (as was), before moving to Bluesky after Elon Musk gutted Twitter for his own ends.

My political journey has been an interesting one. Born to Labour-supporting parents (and 1975 ‘No’ voters), I moved right while in Oxford and ended up joining the eurosceptic movement after reading about the Bruges Group’s young founder, Patrick Robertson. I became entangled with that whole space throughout the 1990s i.e. the Maastricht wars, the ERM, and the first battles over a single European currency. I floated around the 1990s ‘Oxford University Eurosceptic’ scene, led by Daniel Hannan [but I was not at the University myself] and could occasionally be heard on local radio stations.

My interest reached a peak just before and during the EU referendum in 2016. I aligned with ‘Team Flexcit’ (calling for a first-step exit to a Norway-type position) and I wrote ‘The Liberal Case for Leave’ for the Adam Smith Institute, having also teamed up with their Executive Director Sam Bowman who made me a Fellow. During the referendum campaign, the term ‘Liberal Leaver’ soon entered political parlance, and I was quoted in various newspapers and interviewed by the BBC and Sky.

I didn’t have anything to do with the Vote Leave campaign, Dominic Cummings, Leave.EU or any other Leave outfits or people associated with them, although there were some rudimentary back channels (Twitter DMs).

In my opinion, the Vote Leave campaign was awful, and then things went wrong the moment ‘Leave’ won the referendum. Partly: ‘we were only supposed to blow the bloody doors off’. For me, this feeling of things going wrong eventually culminated in a belated despairing tweet in 2018 (during Theresa May’s ‘Chequers Deal’) where I withdrew my support for Brexit. A couple of others joined me. To my eternal shame, I realised far too late that Brexit was going to turn out badly. I should have listened more to those people who had at some time in the past been involved with euroscepticism or had flirted with it, but who ultimately did not support Brexit e.g. David Allen Green, Ian Dunt, Sam Bowman….even Bob Geldof.

But the experience of changing my mind in one area has proved to be a hugely liberating, positive experience with all sorts of useful side effects. I thoroughly recommend it. I now constantly examine political positions and assumptions on a rolling basis. Suffice it to say, I never got the ‘zeal of the convert’ on Brexit, although if I had my time again I would definitely vote Remain. I voluntarily ‘handed back’ my Fellowship of the Adam Smith Institute. It didn’t fit anymore.

I couldn’t tell you with any certainty what my overall political position is today because I’m not sure myself and frankly I don’t really want one. Not having one provides broader intellectual flexibility. But I say I’m a Centrist because (a) I probably am, (b) onlookers would say I am, and (c) I wouldn’t know what else to say when asked.

This ‘Between Truths’ Substack is my way of stepping back from the hurly-burly of microblogging sites like Bluesky and looking more deeply at why everyone is so upset with everyone else and with everything. The so-called ‘culture wars’, in other words, and what might be done about them.

I have no particular plan for the Substack beyond that, but I expect to write about something specific in the ‘culture war’ space when the mood takes me and when family/work commitments allow.

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This is currently (and may possibly be forever) a freely accessible Substack. You don’t have to pay. In fact, you can’t pay, you can only say what you would be prepared to pay if I ever made it a payable site. I’ve thought of turning off this feature because what’s the point of it if I’m going to keep the whole thing free? But it’s kind of nice.

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