BY ALEX STORY “You can’t negotiate with Leftards”. They “don’t care if they ruin your whole life”. They “will kill you”, said Javier Milei during a fiery exchange on a TV show three months before winning the Presidency of Argentina in December 2023. Argentina, the richest country in the world by the end of the 19th century, and top 10 throughout the 1920s, now ranks … Continue reading Zero Negotiation
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
CITY GRUMP Today my Editor has produced for us all, as we would expect, a superbly argued piece for retaining our age-old voting system at Elections, often known as First Past the Post (FPTP). In my last City Grump I argued for the opposite, meaning Proportional Representation (PR). Here is an attempt to put flesh on the bones of the PR case: I admit, … Continue reading The Case for Proportional Representation (PR)
CSM EDITORIAL This has to be the most depressing General Election in the last hundred years. Even Major v Kinnock had more about it than this garbage. Therein lies the danger. Who is going to turn out the lights this time? If Starmer, the liquid candidate, wins a massive majority, God help us. Those who voted for Corbyn – the deluded, unemployable graduates and ex-BBC … Continue reading Electile Dysfunction
BY STEWART SLATER “A person often meets his fate on the road he took to avoid it” Jean de la Fontaine That people might, by trying to avoid something, make it more likely is an idea which has fascinated me since I was a child. Whichever comic (remember them?) I took (Hotspur?) featured a story one week about a footballer who, told by a … Continue reading Don’t Panic
CSM EDITORIAL Let’s face it, Keir Starmer and his haircut would just about pass muster as transport secretary in Thatcher’s 1987 government. But he’s the only half-competent (whilst dreadfully slippery) player in a side that should have been permanently relegated in 2019. You’ll find more competent characters in the cheap offices in a Slough business park. When Wes ‘Dead-End’ Streeting is Labour’s go-to rescuer, you … Continue reading The Generally Lacklustre Election, 2024
BY STEWART SLATER Back in 2013, after his fourth world title in a row, it was clear that Sebastian Vettel was one of the greatest drivers in history. Today, after a stint at Ferrari which was rather less successful than his Red Bull pomp, he appears to have been a very good driver (better than Mark Webber, certainly) who happened to drive an absolute rocket … Continue reading Raducanu, Rwanda & the Risks of Reputation
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
CSM EDITORIAL The Daily Telegraph’s Allister Heath did not hold back in his column on Wednesday: Welcome to anti-democratic Britain, where the beleaguered majority is increasingly subject to the whims of an entitled, activist elite that often seems to despise the people over which it exercises so much power….” Meanwhile an Ipsos survey for London’s Evening Standard found that 76 per cent think Britain as … Continue reading Stopgap Starmer
BY GARY MCGHEE “Shot by both sides, on the run, to the outside of everything, they must have come, to a secret understanding…” (Shot By Both Sides – Howard Devoto/Pete Shelley 1978) I have never joined a political party and never bought wholly into any ideology. I mainly subscribe to the Groucho Marx view that I refuse to join any club that would have me … Continue reading The Rise of the Anti-Homosexuals
BY ALEX STORY The British Government is engaged in a war of attrition against its own people. Our borders, defended over centuries at such high costs, have vanished. Sue Braverman, our current Home Secretary, sounded earnest when she said the country faced an “invasion” last October. She was promptly attacked by government lawyers as either “reckless” or “deliberate” – Lawyers for whom we pay. They, … Continue reading The Long Road
BY JOHN NASH We humans are cave people – we have been since we were stood up on two legs, and today our modern cave is a really complex metaphorical cave that we call civilisation. It evolved from our need to protect ourselves from the violent and uncaring competition of nature in order to nurture our kind, and to reproduce in safety. It has worked … Continue reading The Scarcity of Common Sense
BY RORY CRANSTOUN In an episode of Chopper’s Politics, I was unfortunately reminded of Boris Johnson’s plan to usher in a so-called ‘green industrial revolution’ in Britain. Obviously another crypto-globalist fever dream poorly wrapped in Conservative paper, the Tory drive towards ‘net-zero’ is nothing more than another example of the all familiar promises to greenify our society. ‘Green’ public transport. ‘Green’ electric vehicles. ‘Green’ buildings; whatever … Continue reading The Scouring of the Shires
BY EFFIE DEANS Politics is partly about opinions and persuading others to vote for those opinions, but it is much more about truth. In an election we are faced with a choice between Labour and the Conservative parties. Each puts forward a set of policies and personalities and the voters choose between them. It’s partly a matter of taste. Do you prefer the Left to … Continue reading In Liz We Trust
BY STEWART SLATER “Only he who has no use for the Empire is fit to be entrusted with it.” said the Chinese philosopher Zuangzhi, and he probably had a point. Those who run for office generally do so on the basis that they think they will perform well in it. Most of them are wrong. If some political careers do not end in failure, the … Continue reading Officers and Ideologues
BY STEWART SLATER “Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart. Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head.” One of those zombie phrases whose origins are obscure, and so it gets ascribed to Churchill. Your correspondent, a cradle Thatcherite, always felt that such a characterisation was unfair for, while he has enough self-awareness to … Continue reading The Nasty Party?
BY EFFIE DEANS And as I sat there brooding on the old, unknown world, I thought of Sturgeon’s wonder when she first picked out the green light at the end of Covid’s dock. Her popularity was rising as the disease spread throughout Scotland. But we at least had a deliverer who could save us all from this sickness. We could be comforted by her daily … Continue reading The Great Sturgeon
BY STEPHEN PAX LEONARD Vaporised words linger in arid self-interrogation. There is an extended silence, a short sonata of raised eyebrows and then a meaningful grin. Ibbi, an Inuit hunter, sits in my freezing hut, patting his firm bulk full of seal meat. Implausible palindromes are whispered over black coffee, and jokes are shared about his embonpoint. Thin jokes, admittedly. Here we sit hour after … Continue reading Why Caring for the Environment is not ‘Woke’
BY PAUL NEWALL I don’t know about you, but I was quite disappointed at the Tory landslide victory on the 6th of May, not because I’ve returned to my Bolshevik roots, more that for the first time in over 20 years we have no meaningful opposition and that isn’t healthy for our democracy. In 1997, Tony Blair found himself standing on a Labour landslide with … Continue reading Election Blues
BY DOMINIC WIGHTMAN The countryside versus the town is a phony battle that has been conjured repeatedly over the ages, mostly as an excuse by opportunist charlatans and self-preservers who generally had a foot in both. Nonetheless, there is something increasingly perverse about those who rarely leave the perimeter of the M25 casting judgement on those distant swathes of green where their crops are grown, … Continue reading The New Countryside Roar
