It’s hard to know what is more emblematic of Britain’s economic predicament today: the Government pleading for investment from the owners of a ferry company that sacked all its workers; Robert Jenrick cutting a Union Jack cake to celebrate Margaret …
Reverse racism ruined South Africa
Jan van Riebeeck, commander of the Dutch post at the Cape, ranted in a diary entry of 28 January 1654 that the indigenous people’s misdeeds were hardly bearable any longer: “Perhaps it would be a better proposition to pay out …
Von der Leyen’s authoritarian plot
The European Union is about to enter what could prove to be the most ominous phase in its troubled history. In a few weeks, Ursula von der Leyen’s new European Commission will officially take office, at which point she will …
Alex Salmond’s failed populism
In the end, Alex Salmond’s was a career of failure — not in the cliched use of Enoch Powell’s aphorism but in the absolute terms of failing to achieve his specific and declared political ambition. Alex — he was a …
Why Kamala’s gun is a powerful weapon
In America, the gun is freedom’s prosthetic (followed by cars and credit cards). Yet Kamala Harris’s admission, first during an interview with Oprah Winfrey, then in one with 60 Minutes, that she owns a gun sent liberal heads spinning. Went …
Keir Starmer’s insulting hypocrisy
Keir Starmer’s premiership is well and truly goosed. One policy misstep after another, punctuated by tone-deaf doom-mongering and a freebies scandal that refuses to go away, have exposed Labour as a thoroughly undercooked governmental prospect. Some wrongly chalk this up …
The Tory counter-revolution has begun
The Conservative Party has two instincts lodged deep in its soul, each battling for supremacy. The first is the desire for the reassuring comfort of what it sees as solid, sensible government. We might call this the conservative instinct. The …
Iran’s expat opposition is a joke
On 28 June, the people of London were greeted by an unusual sight. That Friday, not far from the Iranian embassy, a woman filmed herself chasing an old lady across the street. “I am the daughter of Reza!” the attacker …
My day in the life of Boris Johnson
When Boris Johnson’s Unleashed was announced there were arguably grounds for believing it might be, in the Daily Mail’s hyperventilating guff, “Political Memoir of the Century!” Surely this self-caricaturing rogue, this Falstaff of British politics, would have some crazy stories …
What Harris learned from Hillary
With less than a month to go until Election Day, if the White House were awarded on the basis of professional political competence, then Kamala Harris would be the next president already.
The shrewd strategic moves began early. As soon …
America is grooming Meloni
Two years ago, a neo-fascist gained power in Rome. That, at least, is the impression you’d have gained from the Western establishment’s paroxysm of hand-wringing at Giorgia Meloni’s elevation. From her erstwhile praise for Mussolini to her fierce Euroscepticism, Meloni …
Do the Tories want an Everyman or an Ideologue?
In his essay on Tolstoy, the philosopher Isaiah Berlin divides the world’s great thinkers into “foxes” and “hedgehogs”. Remember, according to the poet Archilochus, the fox knows many things, while the hedgehog knows one big thing. The hedgehog, that is, …
Who killed Sue Gray?
And so, the power struggle is over: Sue Gray has lost and Morgan McSweeney has won. Keir Starmer did what he had to — but now there can be no more excuses.
The Prime Minister’s decision to replace Gray so …
Britain has learned nothing from Palestine
When I walk to my local supermarket in north Belfast, the journey takes me through a Catholic, Nationalist area, marked by Palestinian flags, to the edge of a Protestant, Loyalist area, where Israeli flags flutter, alongside Union flags, from the …
Britain has learned nothing from Palestine
When I walk to my local supermarket in north Belfast, the journey takes me through a Catholic, Nationalist area, marked by Palestinian flags, to the edge of a Protestant, Loyalist area, where Israeli flags flutter, alongside Union flags, from the …