Ireland has a strange effect on the English. A fantasy land so near and yet so far; at once foreign and, in some intangible sense, never entirely so. “Lonely in Ireland, since it was not home,” reflected Philip Larkin in …
The farmers march on Westminster
I was a teenager when I began to ask my dad difficult questions about our small farm. Questions about whether we made a profit, and if so, what paid best. The sheep? The cattle? The barley or oats we grew?…
Chelsea’s bitches are back
On Tuesday nights, in the boarding houses of my single-sex school, girls crowded around laptops to watch seasoned Sloanes tear each other to bits on catch-up TV. They gawped as the cast of Made in Chelsea shagged each other’s boyfriends, …
How Osbornism failed
That American authority is shot. That an accord and relationship will have to be established with illiberal governments. That the dominance of the dollar is over. That the world will be defined from here on out by “multipolarity”, with Britain …
Labour should ignore its immigration extremists
In his influential 1939 treatise against utopian thinking in foreign policy, The Twenty Years’ Crisis, E.H. Carr made an analogy with domestic politics that seemed so obvious at the time it needed neither elaboration nor justification. “It is not the …
Labour’s war on pleasure
Was England ever merry? We’re stagnant, divided, increasingly heavily taxed, and even our Prime Minister promises it’s going to get worse. Barely two months into a premiership in which he promised to “tread more lightly” upon the lives of Britons, …
We need to talk about violent speech
As the British justice system continues to lock up overzealous keyboard warriors linked to the riots, and as free speech “warriors” respond with dystopian grumblings about an Orwellian police state, we find ourselves in a strange situation. Put to one …
Meet the three types of rioter
Since the first spark was lit in Southport, condemnation of the rioters has largely centred on their identity as “far-Right thugs”. Indeed, some experts, including the former head of British counter-terrorism policing, have gone as far as to call the …
Britain’s asylum hotel tycoon
Scarborough’s Grand Hotel isn’t so grand these days. Built in the shape of a V to honour Queen Victoria, this sandy-brick behemoth was billed as “the largest and handsomest hotel in Europe” when its doors opened in 1867. Edward VIII …
The North East is too nostalgic
“We had nowt, but we were happy” became my grandmother’s catchphrase in her later years. I was never sure if she was being serious, not least because I knew how grim the Depression had been in the pit villages of …
Britain’s Right is just as weird
The Democrats seem to have settled on a new and sophisticated campaign strategy: calling the Republicans “weird”. Ever since prospective vice president Tim Walz first aired the insult on a TV show a few weeks ago, it has become the …
Why prison guards have sex with inmates
As Britain’s summer of crisis continues, the penitentiary industrial complex could soon be overwhelmed. Not because of a lack of resources: estimates put the prisons’ budget at £4 billion. And it’s not for a lack of bipartisan thinking: the Labour …
Tommy Robinson is copying the progressive playbook
A strange and dramatic metamorphosis has happened over the last few days. On the one hand, Tommy Robinson, the Right-wing activist and former leader of the English Defence League, has shapeshifted into a Left-leaning analyst of political protest. On the …
How Britain ignored its ethnic conflict
Following the Manchester Arena bombing in 2017, the aftermath, like those of other recent terrorist atrocities, was marked by what later revealed to be a coordinated British government policy of “controlled spontaneity”. Pre-planned vigils and inter-faith events were rolled out, …
Why we need to conquer the sea
At their 19th-century peak, English seaside towns welcomed millions every summer. The middle classes flocked to the coastline, to “take the air” and spend their leisure looking out at the waves over which Britannia then ruled.
Seaside piers brought these …