BY STEWART SLATER Born in the tropics, my son spent his early months in a sawn-off baby-grow (think sleeveless fencing jacket or what I believe is called a “body”). One day, as his first birthday approached, his mother decided that he would go to Sunday Brunch in trousers and a shirt. It was impossible, as he sat at the table, merrily munching away not to … Continue reading Going Through the Motions
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The village sat in the valley. The land was rich and good. The people worked hard, planting and harvesting, building and mending. Life was not easy, but it was steady, and it made sense. One day, a group of strangers came. They wore fine clothes and had clean hands. They said they were architects. They had a plan to build something great. … Continue reading ‘Fixing the Foundations’
BY PAUL T HORGAN What seems to surprise many about the fall from office of Louise Haigh is, if her own account is to be respected, how quickly the police got on her case after she discovered that she hadn’t lost her company-supplied smartphone in a street robbery, and then switched it on after she found it in her dwelling. There may be a very … Continue reading Redhead, Red-handed
BY STEWART SLATER Educating in a few short years a Prime Minister who resigned in disgrace from the highest office in the land and, later, from Parliament, and the first Archbishop of Canterbury to fall on his pectoral cross, there was obviously something in the water at Eton back then. For it will not have escaped your notice that Justin Welby has resigned to take … Continue reading Protecting the Work
BY ALEX STORY Labour is run by extremists. The party always was. Attaining political power and keeping it to encrust its ideology within the political system, outside of political oversight, was and is its supreme aim. The wellbeing of the nation and her people come a very distant second in the order of Labour’s political priorities. Ideology features ahead of the reality, against which Labour … Continue reading How it Waddles
CSM EDITORIAL The Squires have long been fans of Robert Jenrick. We had hoped he would become leader of the Conservative Party and take the fight to this dreadful Labour government, hitting them hard where it hurts (though, to be fair, they seem to be quite capable of doing that to themselves without any help). Kemi Badenoch won the leadership contest fair and square, and … Continue reading Back Badenoch
BY STEWART SLATER We start this month with an apology. In the last of these ‘Reflections’ pieces, published October 1st, I wrote of Sue Gray, “she has power, so she does not need politics.” Five days later she resigned. Predictions, it turns out, are hard. Particularly those about the future. In my (partial) defence, the politics she needed was office politics, not the mass, electoral … Continue reading November Reflections
BY ALEX STORY “I don’t think there are big issues on which I’ve changed my mind”, said Sir Keir Starmer to Patrick Maguire, then a columnist for the New Statesman, in March 2021. Let us then investigate past patterns of thought to better discern future direction of travel ahead of Starmer’s administration’s first budget. From 1986 to the fall of the Berlin Wall in the … Continue reading Never Changing Your Spots
BY STEWART SLATER “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent” wrote Wittgenstein, thereby changing the world. For the “Linguistic Turn” he spawned in philosophy changed the task of the practitioners of his discipline from inventing new entities and processes to explain the world (Plato’s Forms, Hegel’s Dialectic etc.) to ruthlessly weeding out all propositions which failed their test of meaning. That those who … Continue reading Keir’s Class Confusion
BY STEWART SLATER Britain’s Attitude to The Rules The part of Boris Johnson’s autobiography which most immediately captured the public imagination was his confession that, in the midst of the pandemic, with fears that the E.U. was hoarding vaccines belonging to Britain, he considered ordering the army to cross the Channel to seize them. Pearls were clutched and sage pundits argued that here was yet … Continue reading Breaking, Making and Taking
BY STEWART SLATER “I stand here also as a black man” the Foreign Secretary portentously informed the United Nations. While sitting down. “I am a woman” was the overwhelming message of the Chancellor’s glossy video celebrating her position as the nation’s first female Second Lord (Lady?) of the Treasury. Their answer to the late Col. John Boyd’s famous question, “To be or to do?” seems … Continue reading Keir Canute
BY ALEXIA JAMES Last week, Baroness Sayeeda Warsi decided to bid farewell to the Conservative Party. To be frank, her resignation could have been announced at two in the morning, and it would have given everyone a chance for a good night’s sleep without missing a thing. For those of us who have watched Warsi navigate the Conservative ranks with all the grace of a … Continue reading Don’t Let the Door Hit You on the Way Out
BY STEWART SLATER Most governments end mired in sleaze and ridicule but most have the decency to wait until their second or third terms before doing so. It is the current administration’s great achievement that it has got there within a couple of months. For “Passgate” has morphed into “Clothesgate”, internet wags have christened the Prime Ministerial consort ”Lady Victoria Sponger” and even the Guardian … Continue reading A Scandal Most British
BY JON ALEXANDER Recently, we’ve watched Labour MPs and supporters desperately try to downplay the Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer’s donations from Lord Alli. They’ve attempted to claim it’s no big deal, that it’s not a large amount in the grand scheme of things, and that Sir Keir is above reproach and it’s all innocent. Ignoring the fact that someone representing a working-class party, who … Continue reading Labour Sleaze and Why it Matters
BY EFFIE DEANS We now have a left wing Labour government. If we are on the right our task is to defeat Labour and elect a right wing government. How are we going to manage to do this? It’s really a matter of simple arithmetic. So what is the cause of us having a Labour government with a massive majority? It is not that support … Continue reading Starmer LOVES Reform
BY JACK WATSON Louise Haigh, Labour’s transport minister, has expressed her support for low traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs), which would empower local councils nationwide to establish 20mph zones in urban areas. This initiative coincides with similar restrictions being introduced in Wales, where speed limits have sparked backlash from residents and road users. Following a poll published in The Telegraph showing that 70 percent of the population … Continue reading Low Popularity Zones
BY EFFIE DEANS Labour would like to create a society where everyone is equal and where poverty has been eradicated. Just as socialism is its long-term goal so too, I think is a world without borders where there are no such things as countries, no such concepts as nationality and where everyone regardless of race and religion can move where they please. This is why … Continue reading Labour Will Force Us to be Free
BY STEWART SLATER One of things which strikes me as I look back on the later stages of my education was how much time was spent learning to do things which I merely needed to understand. Knowing what a standard deviation is and what it tells me is certainly useful but I have never found the need to calculate one myself. Ditto, inventory valuation methods, … Continue reading Builders and Bureaucrats
BY STEWART SLATER Small children have much to recommend them. They are willing and indeed eager accomplices in any trick parent A wishes to play on parent B. They have a labrador-like desire to lavish affection on those whom they like. They are the perfect dimensions to keep chimneys clean. But they are not without their disadvantages. They are extremely competent at producing all manner … Continue reading Orwellian Silliness
BY STEWART SLATER A seemingly iron law of British elections is that, in the aftermath of a defeat, a caucus in the losing party will ascribe their failure to having been too far from the centre ground. This, hallowed space, an almost mythical source of electoral milk and honey is always, in another iron law, coterminous with the political territory occupied by said caucus. In … Continue reading The Authoritarian Future
