BY SEAN WALSH I think we need to get a sense of proportion and concede that, utterly shocking as it is, the Jason Arday affair is not the worst thing to have ever come out of Cambridge University. Can we agree that Kim Philby’s circle of traitors, which came close to handing the country over to Stalin, was worse, even if marginally? Although these days … Continue reading Truth, Not Credentials
BY MANRAJ ATWAL I rise to speak, I rise to speak, I rise to speak. There is a rot at the heart of our political system. It casts its shadow over Parliament, through the chamber, at the dispatch box and along the (largely empty) green Commons benches. It pervades our political culture, often recognised yet rarely analysed. And no, it’s not the product of an … Continue reading The Decline of Eloquence in British Politics
BY SEAN WALSH Instead of just being a regular guy and buying a motorbike, getting a tattoo, or doing the American Beauty thing, Andy Burnham had to include all of us in his mid-life crisis by becoming prime minister. It’s still shocking to think that the constituents of Makerfield hate the rest of the country so much that they would impose this on us. But it is … Continue reading Burnham’s Vanity Street Project
BY PERCY THORLEY When I was at school, many decades ago, it was considered a cardinal sin to ever deploy the word “nice” in an English essay or composition. It is a word of no real intent. One hears it all the time – “I will have a nice cup of tea” or “That Andy Burnham seems like a nice chap”. From such sentences we … Continue reading Honourable
BY SEAN WALSH In an episode of the 1990s comedy series Seinfeld, Jerry’s dentist decides to convert to Judaism “for the jokes”. When Jerry is asked if this offends him “as a Jewish person” he replies “No! It offends me as a comedian”. Comedy is not something that should be taken lightly. The political class would do well to remember that. It is a good … Continue reading Count Binface: A Gimmick So Funny It Requires a Labour Donor
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a quiet tragedy unfolding in the public houses and eateries of this sceptred isle. Not war, nor pestilence, nor even one of those ghastly craft ales now passing for bitter. No, it is a tragedy of mouthfeel. The tragedy of the paper straw. Cast your mind back, if not yet addled by the creeping conformity of the age, to the … Continue reading Gesture over Substance
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN There is a certain species of political creature that haunts the Westminster warren, a beast that is best understood not through the lens of constitutional theory or fiscal policy, but through the dusty, half-lit prism of an Irish builder’s breast pocket. I once knew such a builder. A tragic figure, in the end—murdered, as it happens, which is a rather definitive way … Continue reading Ethel
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN I used to attend a friary chapel. Not out of piety, you understand—more out of a grim sense of obligation, and because the coffee afterwards was surprisingly tolerable. But I sat there, Sunday after Sunday, while the priest carped on about the environment as though the Holy Spirit had retired and been replaced by a Greta TED Talk. And then, just when … Continue reading Regnavit a Ligno
BY ALEX STORY Pride Month 2026 is upon us. Men can be women and women men. Our police are even-handed. The state invests. Debt is wealth. And our politicians have our best interests at heart. The direction the country is taking, the changes to our society, our leadership, are all for the better. The broad trajectory is in line with the plan. As Pangloss, Voltaire’s … Continue reading Tout est pour le mieux
BY ALEX STORY Few stories highlight our country’s fall more clearly than that of Henry Nowak’s murder. Henry was stabbed five times with a shastar, an eight-inch Sikh ceremonial blade by Vickrum Digwa. As Henry bled on the streets of Southampton, the police arrived and arrested him. He died in the early hours of December 3rd, 2025, begging for help. His last words were “I … Continue reading Enemies of the State
BY ANDREW MILNE One August, I swam across a lake in Bavaria with my two sons aged twelve and six respectively. Bavaria has its own treacherous weather systems. When we reached the other side – surrounded by dark cliffs and mysterious forests – a thunder storm rumbled into action. Rain jetted down pocking the mere’s surface. All of us were good swimmers but the prospect of … Continue reading The Makerfield Con
BY ALEX STORY The United Kingdom is no such thing. The disingenuous promises of the recent past, such as devolution, multiculturalism, and “gender” (also known as the politics of biology), have disunited the country. These have created irreparable fissures across our country’s body politic. The carefully laid mortar, built over centuries between the state’s institutional building blocks, is coming off. However, in the meaningless vacuum … Continue reading Progress Back to Naught
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD It is no secret that the recent local election results were catastrophic for the Labour Party. Of course, this comes as no big surprise. Labour’s policies are bankrupting the country. Yields on UK government bonds show that the market has lost trust in Britain. More or less everything is impoverished, broken or dysfunctional. Britain has become a bloated welfare state whose … Continue reading Give Oxford, Cambridge and Camden What They Voted For
BY ANDREW MILNE What happens to Israel today is what happens to the rest of the West tomorrow. ‘It is time for the silent majority in the UK to raise their voices,’ says Chief Rabbi, Sir Ephraim Mirvis, speaking after the stabbing of two Jews in Golders Green. I have a problem with the Jews: I adore them. I love them like the brothers and … Continue reading The Night Hounds of Upper Galilee
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD Let’s face a few difficult facts, the kind of facts that trigger that ever so British response: “Oh, well, we had best talk about something else” (before ‘heating the pot’ in the hope of redirecting the conversation to less saturnine matters). Over a short period of time, our country has become in parts unrecognisable. The apple orchards have been replaced with … Continue reading The Unforgiveable Scarring of Britain
BY ALEX STORY Truth is the first casualty of war. Opinions on a conflict depend deeply on the prevailing culture, erasing nuance in the process. The less of it there is, the easier it is to convince yourself of your righteousness and your opponents’ wickedness. For instance, the current Iranian question divides the world into three main groups: The first staunchly believes that the Israeli … Continue reading War, Truth & Revelation
BY ALEX STORY By Munich, on the Isar, a fast-moving river, every summer, mostly in the sun, hundreds of large rafts float down one after the other, transported by the stream. Each carries up to forty people, a sausage & beer stand, and a music band. Men wear lederhosen, women dirndl, the traditional dress that shows just enough to make you wonder but too little … Continue reading The Fragile Raft
BY ALEX STORY “Whose you for?”, asked the rotund lass with a swarm of multi-hued father-less children running around the front porch. “Cambridge”, I replied. “Tough luck, chuck. I’m Oxford”. The colours had a lot to do with it, I discovered, and the fact that the Boat Race, like the Old Queen, had always been around. The lady and her children watched it every year, … Continue reading Ignorant Self-Righteousness
BY ALEX STORY “Are you thinking what we are thinking?” asked the billboard close to Denton town centre, close to Manchester. Not far from the billboard, as the Conservative candidate for Denton & Reddish for the 2005 General Election, I was talking to three ladies. One was 28, the other 15, the last laid in a pram. “Are you sisters?” I asked. “No”, roared the … Continue reading Accelerating Towards the Cliffs
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the Underground Man Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground is the pseudonymous monologue of a spiteful and bitter former government official who inherited a sufficient amount of money not to need to work again and devoted his life to vice. Dostoyevsky’s philosophical novella is concerned with the hypothetical utopia where all of man’s needs are met, where everything is safe … Continue reading The Underground Man
