Britain

They sound like something from the late-Soviet Union, and in many ways they are. Rent tribunals are coming to a town near you, following the expansion of powers set out in the Renters’ Rights Act. Such tribunals have existed in some form for decades, but in recent months they’ve been beefed up – with predictable results.  Tenants now have a strong interest in challenging even the smallest increase. Since rents are suspended at the former rate pending a decision, and given the shortage of judges to staff these tribunals, the chances of the challenge being dealt with quickly are slim. Tenant groups are already advising their members to try their luck, perhaps in the hope that they will flood the system and render it inoperative.

As a Warwickshire girl, born and bred, I am rarely one to take issue with Shakespeare. However, when the intensely drippy Juliet mused ‘What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet,’ he may have committed a cardinal error. Only now, as I prepare to welcome a child into the world, do I realise how important names are. There’s the perennial dilemma: finding the sweet spot between ‘everyone is called this’ and ‘my child will get teased’. After all, you want a name that’s distinct but not an obvious bully-magnet, somewhere between ‘John Doe’ and ‘Moon Unit Zappa’. It’s important to maintain some secrecy. The question with which I am most bombarded by people who notice my bump is, ‘Have you thought of a name?

For a long time, the mainstream political parties have adhered to an omertà – a ‘never complain, never explain’ – on the subject of Englishness. The ghost of Powellism was deployed so effectively that the question of what it means to be English became the preserve of fringe figures on the right, while Westminster retreated into a fantasy world where national identity was, as once articulated by Sir Keir Starmer, defined by ‘cutting the half-time orange’. This cosy settlement is one of many things which the rise of Reform and Restore has blown apart.

On Monday and Tuesday, a so-called “mega dinghy” made its way across the English Channel from the coast of Normandy. Originating from the town of Vierville-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach, the inflatable represented what many Brits would see as a direct reversal of Operation Overlord, which began on D-Day. The prospect of around 60 illegal migrants landing on England's shores, many of whom will likely come from countries with much higher rates of violent crime, was not exactly welcomed in the area. Hundreds of people poured out onto the streets of Gosport, where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was expected to bring its passengers ashore after scooping them up in English waters.

It isn’t long now until the joyous day that Harry and Meghan once more make Britain their home, but several aspects of their return are still clouded in mystery. We have no idea, for instance, where they are going to be living – although the Cotswolds have been mooted. Once they arrive there, there is also the rather vexed question as to whether their no doubt hugely expensive security is going to be privately funded or the taxpayer’s burden. Two former home secretaries have gone public to argue that there should be at least some level of taxpayer-funded protection for the Sussexes. This may not be a wildly popular perspective but can at least be justified on humanitarian grounds.

For decades, voices on the liberal and progressive left have invariably rolled out the terror-inducing accusation of “racism” in order to get their way and silence opponents. It’s thus unsurprising to see, in the wake of British academic Jason Arday’s death, that they're still resorting to this cynical tactic, and in this case, to absolve themselves of responsibility for having exploited this vulnerable man in the first place. To call it a ‘witch hunt’ is predictable and unfounded hyperbole In response to Arday’s death, Jo Grady, general secretary of Britain’s University and College Union, said the “level of harassment he suffered and the racism he was subjected to has been sickening.

The Spectator was there at the founding of America. George Washington had six copies of the original, 18th-century Spectator at his Mount Vernon estate and read them often. He shared with Joseph Addison, The Spectator’s co-publisher, an interest in how to educate ideal citizens: men and women with wit and grit. Young Washington read The Spectator in the hope of bettering himself, too. Both of his older half-brothers had been educated in England and he wished also for the manners and polish of an English gentleman. For the pioneering, self-improving men who would go on to create an independent America, the 18th-century Spectator was both an education and a guide. “I bought it, read it over and over, and was much delighted with it,” wrote Benjamin Franklin in his Autobiography.