BY JOHN MUSGRAVE ‘Enough is enough,’ is a phrase now increasingly heard on the lips of all good men and true. The follow-up phrase: ‘They really ought to do something,’ is overused and self-defeating. The problem here is the word ‘THEY,’ a much-abused pronoun of dubious provenance. When we expect ‘them’ to do something we abrogate responsibility. In the real world ‘they’ don’t exist. Suits … Continue reading Enough is Enough
BY STEWART SLATER I have a friend. This might be hard for those of you who read my articles to believe, but there you go. People are odd. To spare his blushes, let us call him “Robert”. Robert is, like me, at that stage where others refer to him as middle-aged. He prefers “Late Youth” and expends considerable time and sweat in confirming this (to … Continue reading A Wasted Reshuffle
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The Hamas-Israel war has created a febrile atmosphere in Britain, at least on social media. The usual suspects on both sides are there for all to see. On the one side, the extremist Islamists – al–Muhajiroun types marching with Caabu and Hizb ut Tahrir numbnuts supported by weird, anti-Semitic allies like Nick Griffin and those Queer for Palestine wannabe building divers. On … Continue reading More Weeblemen Required
BY STEWART SLATER Three Tales of Two Cities I am a victim. A victim of a hate crime. Many years ago, in a land far away, I had a dispute with a taxi driver. I was, I think rightly, aggrieved that my journey home from the office had taken several times the usual duration since the first half of the trip had, despite my repeated … Continue reading Bob’s Law
BY STEWART SLATER Most battles in the Ancient World follow the same pattern. One side starts with the high ground and, about half way through, finds itself on the low ground. The reason for this is surprisingly simple – most people are right-handed. They hold their sword in their right hands, and their shield in the left. By taking a step to the right, therefore, … Continue reading Inverting the Battlelines
BY STEWART SLATER Sometimes, one can only stand back in awe. Perhaps at some sublime piece of sporting skill. Maybe at a dish in the final of Masterchef. Possibly at some shocking feat of magicians’ legerdemain. Or at the sight of Liz Truss addressing the Tory faithful about how to save Britain, an act of chutzpah so brazen, it might almost count as performance art. … Continue reading Shameless
BY PAUL T HORGAN It is one of life’s small fortunes that Russell Brand did not overly intrude on my television-watching up to the point I ditched my TV licence over two years ago. It was actually the increasingly dominant televisual culture of the kind that Brand represented (and that I was paying the BBC to watch) that prompted me to restrict myself to catch-up … Continue reading Brand X
BY GILES BRADSHAW The Wild Justice Director Mark Avery has given qualified support to disobeying the Hunting Act. He believes that it is “fine” provided that: I’m going to assume this is also the position of the campaign group to which he belongs. And I think this is a reasonable position to hold. I’d like to give qualified support to Avery’s qualified support of hunt … Continue reading Breaking the Hunting Act is “fine” says Avery
BY ROGER WATSON If anyone reading this can afford it, could they please pay the money to whoever it is who has captured the Roman Catholic Church and is holding it to ransom? This is not the first time my church has appeared on these pages. The past two years have seen an increasing level of politically charged nonsense from CAFOD (Catholic Fund for Overseas … Continue reading Captive Catholics
BY ALEX STORY A picture, as the saying goes, is worth a thousand words. A few months ago, one was taken in Yorkshire, in Rishi Sunak’s constituency. In it, the Prime Minister stands in the middle of a courtyard. Around him are a handful of conservative activists. He looks desperate for attention and affection, a cramped half smile frozen on his melancholy face – to … Continue reading Certain Defeat Over Potential Defeat
BY ALEX STORY In the UK, temperatures this summer have been normal. Across much of Europe, the weather has been rather damp. There have been some warm spells, of course, but nothing out of the ordinary. To anyone with an understanding of history, this season was very much par for the course. And yet, our media and our leaders have screamed like headless chickens about … Continue reading Manmade Destruction
BY FRANK HAVILAND The monstrous case of Lucy Letby reminds us that the devil wears many faces. The particular evil in this instance is that she chose to hijack the compassion afforded by a nurse’s uniform to facilitate her crimes. While abhorrent, this should not surprise us; where else should evil gravitate, if not to those professions which grant immediate access to the vulnerable, the … Continue reading Lucy Letby: The Moral Case for Capital Punishment
BY DANIEL JUPP Modern liberal democracies were the result of having already tried everything, from the life of the nomadic hunter-gatherer to the feudal society to monarchical autocracy to the bloodiest of anti-monarchical revolutions. They were the result of brilliant men from Plato to Edmund Burke thinking about how a society should be constructed, who should rule it, and on what basis the authority of … Continue reading Freedom in the Balance?
BY STEWART SLATER One of the more depressing discoveries of the post-pandemic era, for those of a libertarian/classical liberal/Thatcherite persuasion, has been the innate authoritarianism of the British public. The pandemic revealed that large swathes of the population were more than happy to restrict the freedom of their fellows, and many wished to carry on doing so – 25% of poll respondents wanted to close … Continue reading In Defence of Coutts
BY STEWART SLATER So, it was Huw. To be fair, for all the drama of Mrs Edwards’ statement, it was hardly news. For, after several days of drip-fed “revelations”, whether by exploring those parts of the internet less concerned with libel laws, or by a simple process of elimination, everybody knew, even if, technically, nobody “knew”. As soon as the news dropped, the caravan started … Continue reading Huw Dunnit
BY STEWART SLATER The French, let us admit, have their uses. They host the world’s finest annual sporting event. They know their way around a kitchen. In ladies’ fashion, at least, they have few equals. And they produced Le Mepris. Described by Sight & Sound as the “greatest work of art produced in postwar Europe” (don’t let that put you off), from the opening shot … Continue reading Beyond Contempt
BY ALEX STORY Our institutions have ditched sanity and reason. Their official mandates are no longer a priority. Theirs now is the destructive ideology of Gender and Biology. Every nook and cranny of the State, including our three main political parties, drip with this intellectual poison. Having thrown clarity out of the window, they sell confusion. And they do so with the conviction of converts, … Continue reading A Bridge Too Far
BY STEWART SLATER Let’s start with an easy one. What is truth? Your answer is probably something of the form “A statement is true if it corresponds to reality” because that’s what most people think. But not all. A philosopher, one of that breed whose job is to suggest that everything you instinctively believe is wrong, would point out that the exact nature of “corresponds” … Continue reading Our (In)Coherent Elite
BY NIALL McCRAE & RICHARD INGS Who’s awake, who’s ‘woke’ – and who’s working for the other side? An intriguing and sometimes exasperating feature of the Great Awakening (an enlightened reaction to the Great Reset) is the tendency for members of the movement to accuse peers of duplicity. James Delingpole, for example, wrote on TCW last week of the dubious motives of the Together Foundation. … Continue reading Controlled Opposition?
BY ROGER WATSON ‘That surprises me’ is a response I often get to something I have said or done when I am speaking with friends and relatives who are more left-wing than me. Admittedly, it is not hard to be more left-wing than me, adhering as I do to a set of very traditional and conservative values. I dabbled with left-wing politics as a student. … Continue reading No Surprise Lefties Are Moving Right
