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Sorry there was another important point you raised I forgot to address: the distinction between ethics applied to individuals and ethics applied to the government. Yes I did notice this in one of your recent articles, and is quite relevant to the discussion. Although I'm not sure whether utilitarianism is the overarching ethical theory (although as a Williams fan I am rather skeptical of all ethical theories, so that may be what's driving it), I do agree that special relationships and group memberships do not, and cannot work at the national level. It would create immediate contradictions for a state, which is made up of everyone, to simultaneously favour two groups over one another.

However, as representative democracy, I think group membership does work in politics from the bottom up. The individual votes for the local representative that best represents them, and this representative will, usually, work and support the interests of who they represent. But then at the top level, the state does, or at least should, take an impartial role in consideration of the representatives.

So how would IP fit into this? A group of people who identify with the shared experience of a percieved injustice gather together on the basis of this shared experience. There will be political leaders who will represent such groups and others who will not, and the state will, hopefully, take the impartial role based on the multiple representations.

There is something you have exposed here on your example of detractors from groups I have realised, which is important to make note of. In my example of family, there is an intuition to not abandon one's family. But in IP, I do not hold such a strong view, I base the special relationship on shared experience, so if one wants to leave the group, then they do not hold the shared experience. But as you note well, the reaction from the group is similar to someone abandoning the family (calling them an uncle tom for instance). So there is indeed a worry here, the question is whether this is intrinsicly IP, or merely a poor application of it. In my hopes to rebuild IP from the ground up, I hope the latter.

I understand that this is an extremely crude outline of the political process, something you obviously know much more about than I do (on that note please correct away on possible, or probable, misunderstandings here).