The gladdest sight of a lacklustre May was Charles Dance emerging naked and magnificent, like Botticelli’s Venus, from the sea on Formentera. The UK press pixelated the actor’s genitals as if that justified the intrusion, but prurient types (me) still …
What nationalists could learn from Quebec
Weeks before the present election campaign began, Keir Starmer raised eyebrows when he called for Labour candidates to “fly the flag” on St George’s Day, in an attempt to displace the Tories as the party of patriotism. But in truth, …
How Britain abandoned Scotland
It’s half past midnight on the Isle of Benbecula — far, far away on the outer edges of Europe — and Angus Brendan MacNeil MP is getting into his stride. “If you want Scotland to stay, you should want Ireland …
Will Pope Francis kill the Latin Mass?
A month ago, 18,000 young people walked on pilgrimage from Paris to Chartres Cathedral in order to demonstrate their love of the Traditional Latin Mass — an intricate and solemn ceremony which, to the horror of Pope Francis, is attracting …
Keir Starmer’s moral vacuum
Who is Sir Keir Starmer, really? It’s fairly clear that the British public have difficulty with this question. Although by now they’ve probably picked up that he’s the son of a toolmaker, much else remains obscure. On the face of …
How will the Ukraine war end?
How will the war in Ukraine end? In an election overshadowed by a grim climate of international instability, it is remarkable that the only candidate to seriously address this question so far has been Nigel Farage. Laying out Reform’s foreign …
Politics is killing the talk show
“I’m not allowed to give any party-political views,” says Julia Hartley-Brewer, on Talk Radio, “but I’m certainly allowed to give my views.” And she goes on to do so. Because this is not the BBC, where presenters are (theoretically, at …
The epidemic plaguing Aboriginals
A little over 10 years ago, as a young anthropology student, I arrived in the dusty, shrub-infested outback town of Alice Springs in a champagne-coloured Toyota Camry. It’s an extraordinary place: vast and dry and scorched. I planned to spend …
The battle for Cornwall’s cowboy town
Britain’s forgotten peninsular is still being ignoredThe first question at the St Ives constituency hustings is about mobile post office provision in Godolphin Cross. I knew it would be. We sit in a Methodist church in Helston, under a sign: …
Who will win a post-heroic war?
Neither the West not its enemies are prepared to fightSome 30 years ago, I coined the phrase “post-heroic warfare” to acknowledge a new phenomenon: the very sharp reduction in the tolerance of war casualties. My starting point was President Clinton’s …
The trouble with political Christianity
In the apocryphal Gospel of Thomas, Jesus condemns those who “(either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree”. A regular critique of the nominally religious is that they claim to believe in, …
Trudeau has empowered Canada’s pimp lobby
“You’re all a bunch of feminists, and I hate feminists!” shouted Marc Lépine as he gunned down 14 female engineering students in Montreal in 1989. I first visited the city in 2012 to write about this particularly horrific, misogynistic massacre. …
Westminster’s gambling addiction
When, in the autumn of 1963, Harold Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister, there was no formal mechanism in place for deciding who his replacement would be. Back then, the Conservative Party still prided itself in a self-selecting process — what …
The great Brussels stitch-up
Since the results of the European elections started to trickle through, the continent’s elites have been scrambling to minimise their impact. Faced with a predictable surge in support for Right-populist parties, their strategy has been relatively simple: to fast-track the …
Why none of these charlatans gets my vote
“We won’t change anything, but we’ll be less corrupt, look after your money better and not rip you off so much — at least in our first term.”
This, essentially, is Labour’s message going into the election, and what passes …