The countryside is on fire, The Guardian has published another article about replacing meat with mould grown in vats, and the World Economic Forum wants to block out the sun with a Brazil-sized raft of space bubbles. This isn’t the …
The leadership contest the Tories deserve
Of the 15 British Prime Ministers since the end of the Second World War, only two — Attlee and Heath — both initially entered and finally exited Downing Street at a general election. The coronation of Sunak or Truss will …
Are feminist historians rewriting the past?
On a tile high in the roof of a temple in Pietrabbondante in Italy, there are two messages. One is in Latin and the other in the ancient language of Oscan, but in English they read:
Detfri slave of Herennius …
The narcissism of modern weddings
Most vicars much prefer funerals to weddings. At a funeral, the meaning-of-life question is front and centre. Here, religion is important, even to the uncommitted. But a great many weddings have long been an “experience”, often only homoeopathically religious in …
Kemi Badenoch has saved the Tories
With Kemi Badenoch’s elimination from the race, the Conservative party lost its chance to win a future. After all, the simplest, if least inspiring case to make for Kemi Badenoch was always that of urging the wavering Tory party to …
How the Moonies took over Japan
In his novel Confessions of a Mask, the Japanese author Yukio Mishima has a character describe his countrymen as living in a “reluctant masquerade”. It’s a good metaphor: Japanese life, while outwardly harmonious and benign, is still dictated by etiquette …
Has Thor destroyed Marvel?
There’s a 2005 episode of Doctor Who in which David Tennant’s Doctor turns against Prime Minister Harriet Jones and undermines her with six words: “Don’t you think she looks tired?” Veiled as concern, it’s barely a criticism at all but …
Weston-super-Mare made me a writer
On the morning of my 63rd birthday this month, I posted a quote by Kingsley Amis: “No pleasure is worth giving up for the sake of two more years in a geriatric home at Weston-super-Mare.” Looking back at my long, …
Do the Tories care about women?
In Orwell’s 1984, Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. Last week came the discovery, surprising to many, that Tory leadership hopeful Penny Mordaunt has always been at war with self-ID. This is the policy — first promoted by …
The socialist case for Trad Architecture
Ask a conservative why Britain’s cities and towns often look so ugly, and you’ll likely be told that it’s intentional: the result of post-war utopianism and the establishment’s inexplicable embrace of modernist architecture. For the traditionalist magus, Roger Scruton, such …
Why Scotland sacrificed its wilderness
When my aunt met my uncle, he was a pipe-smoking deerstalker, employed by a Highland estate to manage a herd of reds across some 20,000 acres. He had a team of terriers for fox control, he often rehabilitated injured birds …
Gavin Newsom won’t save the Democrats
Burdened with a decomposing President and a clearly overmatched Vice President, the Democrats are on the hunt for a saviour. For many in the party, Gavin Newsom, the 54-year-old perfectly coiffed Governor of California, seems like the perfect solution. No …
The return of Covid fearmongering
The usual suspects have been out in force demanding greater health restrictions as the story of rising covid cases is peddled through the media. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has been urging governments to employ “tried and tested measures” such …
Donald Trump is not finished yet
A perfect rerun of the political battles of the Trump presidency is being fought in the January 6 House Select Committee hearings. On one side is Trump, guilty of idiocy, egregious lack of judgment, indifference to constitutional norms, and of …
Why Dutch farmers are revolting
“For many farmers it’s the end of their business and they will fight until the last. Sometimes these farms go back generations, they were built by hand, and people feel farmers heart and soul. This is all being taken away.”…