Britain

Wednesday

Jack Hadfield

The rise of anti-migration direct action in Britain

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.

Noa Hoffman

Burnham wins over Trump – but can it last?

Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham yesterday cleared his first major diplomatic hurdle as his meeting with Donald Trump in Manhattan passed without serious incident. During a 30-minute encounter on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the President bestowed on Burnham two of his highest compliments, calling him a “natural businessman” and a “great prime minister.” Trump dialed up the niceties further by describing UK-US relations as “more up now than they were with your last prime minister.” Indicating that Burnham had impressed him personally behind closed doors, the President explained that “based on my relationship with your prime minister Andy, I think that we’re doing very well.

Wednesday

Paul Wood

Britain’s sanctions against Israel will backfire

The historian Niall Ferguson, sometimes of this parish, said: “The law of unintended consequences is the only real law of history.” The new British Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s government is getting a lesson in that with its new sanctions on goods from Israeli settlements. The sanctions are meant to help the cause of a Palestinian state but may have the opposite effect. As an added bonus, they could hit British exports to the US. Ben-Gvir demanded international sanctions against Britain as long as we remain in possession of territory ‘violently stolen from the Argentine people’ The “comprehensive reset” of British policy towards Israel comes in the middle of a rancorous Israeli general election campaign.

Britain Israel

Tuesday

Alexander Larman

Who should pay for Meghan and Harry’s security?

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.

Monday

Theo Hobson

Do Meghan and Harry know what the monarchy means to Britain?

Dear Harry and Meghan, welcome back to Britain. I hope that things go well for you. But let’s be honest: a lot of us are a bit worried about your return. Please allow me to explain why I think this is. We feel that you do not really understand what the monarchy means to us. This might sound strange – you, Harry, were born into it and know it from the inside, so why should you take lectures from a commoner? But maybe an insider can sometimes be blind to what is clear to outsiders. The monarchy is how a certain aspect of the British national psyche is expressed. It’s an old-fashioned part of our national psyche, but it is not dead. It is difficult to talk about, because our culture is very used to ironizing and disparaging it, and is embarrassed about affirming it directly.

Monday

Patrick West

Jason Arday wasn’t the victim of a ‘racist witch hunt’

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.

Friday

Sean Thomas

British men should lean into their evil reputation

I was about 19 years old and threatening to kill myself with a Bic disposable razor (not easy: I was bluffing) when I realized that Women Love Bastards. The revelation arrived like this. I was a heartbroken student, having been dumped by, ah, let's call her Emilia. For months I mooned about, bereft, wondering why Emilia had chucked me when I was so NICE – attentive, gift-giving, loyal. Then a good female friend – bless her wicked heart – took me aside and said: "Sean, girls don't like nice. They like a guy with swagger. Stubble. Slightly mean." She sighed. "I think we prefer bastards, if I'm honest." Putting down the razor, I picked up her advice, and I have used it ever since. I’m happy to say it works.

evil british

Tuesday

Joshua S. Treviño

Americans, do your duty: support England

Soccer is not a quintessentially American sport. Just as Brazil is forever the country of tomorrow, soccer is always the American sport of the the future. It is always coming but never quite arrives, or at least not to the extent that its most-fervent advocates would wish. Wearied British or European readers may be bracing for American anti-soccer invective. This is not that: soccer is a glorious game that deserves to be a major American sport, and though it will never eclipse football or baseball, it is possible to envision it as a second tier American sports.

Wednesday

Matthew Parris

We should fear drones, not invasion

From our UK edition

A stray thought of my own while watching Iranian drones tracing fiery paths over the Gulf, a stray quote from Ukraine and the background rumble of uncertainty about Britain’s Defence Investment Plan, have set my mind racing. My conclusion is at the same time obvious yet unnerving. As a European power, we have been watching the Ukraine war from almost the front row, but it has seemed a world away. Nightly on television we’ve seen Russian and Ukrainian attack drones streaking through the sky, half-reminiscent of a grisly firework display. From our armchairs we’ve read about how this conflict is turning into a competition between drone capabilities.

Saturday

Laurie Graham

Why do men think it’s acceptable to wear a hat in church?

There’s often a traffic jam in front of the Battle of Britain window in Westminster Abbey and I recently found myself jockeying for position with a man wearing a baseball cap. A hat, in church! I thought I ought to say something, but as I was with an official guide, I decided it perhaps wasn’t my place. A very English cop-out, I confess. Then I saw a second man in a cap and, hat-radar activated, I started counting. And stopped at seven. Clearly, it was impossible that seven male hat wearers had all slipped unnoticed past the Abbey’s considerable security and, equally clearly, there must be a new attitude to hats in church and I hadn’t received the memo. I thought I’d check with the Very Reverend Dean.

hat

Friday

Roger Kimball

Why socialism will fail

The philosopher David Hume warned us not to mistake “constant conjunction” for causation. It’s good advice, though it is not the sort of universal disturbance in the force that some philosophers, eager to jettison old certitudes, believe it to be. Hume himself eventually rejected that “pretended skepticism” as a juvenile affectation. Like the rest of us, he recognized that reasoning from induction, from observed realities, introduces us to that great guide in the cognitive adventure of life – probability. Don’t let the appearance of a black swan down under disturb you: good mental hygiene and faith in the soundness of inductive reasoning go together. I indulge in this preliminary expectoration (apologies to Søren Kierkegaard) because I arrived in London on June 22.

Douglas Murray

Andy Burnham’s worryingly vague vision for Britain

Once again the question occurs: “Why do they want it?” Keir Starmer held a very important role in the legal profession before entering parliament, but for some reason he desperately wanted to be even more political. As soon as he became an MP it was plain that he was so keen to get the top job that he was even willing to go through the Jeremy Corbyn period – immiserating his reputation and presumably himself by spending years having to pretend that Corbyn was a suitable candidate for prime minister. Serving in Corbyn’s shadow cabinet was not something that any decent person would do – leading some of us to conclude either that Starmer was not a decent person or that he had such a surfeit of ambition it didn’t matter because it was a means to an end.

Thursday

Gus Carter

The Spectator’s role in the birth of America

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.

Wednesday

Gavin Mortimer

Britain is the weak man of Europe on border control

Britain and France have rewritten the "one in, one out" migrant deal nearly a year after it came into effect. The treaty, described as "groundbreaking" by both countries last summer, has struggled to stem the numbers of migrants heading from France to England in small boats. It soon became apparent that the deal contained a loophole that enabled a handful of deported migrants to return to Britain in the back of a lorry. Britain's Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has agreed with her French counterpart, Laurent Nuñez, to close this loophole by tweaking the treaty to stipulate that its terms apply to any returning migrant regardless of whether they enter a second time by boat or by vehicle.

Thursday

Jawad Iqbal

Keir Starmer’s delusion is becoming tragic

Keir Starmer has entered what might be described as the peak delusion period of what remains of his time in Downing Street. There was fresh evidence of the Prime Minister’s all-consuming divorce from political reality in his latest comments about his fellow Labour politician and political rival Andy Burnham, who is widely predicted to win the Makerfield by-election today, and then go on to launch a leadership challenge to turf the PM out of office. The British PM just doesn’t get it Anyone and everyone knows all this and more, except Starmer apparently, who called Burnham “a great asset” and said he deserved “a big role in government.” What is Starmer smoking? The only big role in government that Burnham wants is Starmer’s job in Number 10.

Monday

Roger Kimball

Why America is sounding the alarm about Britain and Europe

Back in November, the State Department warned that “mass migration poses an existential threat to western civilization and undermines the stability of key American allies.” In February, in his address to the Munich Security Conference, Secretary of State Marco Rubio expanded on that theme. After the Berlin Wall fell, Rubio noted, many in the West thought “the end of history” had finally arrived. Utopia was nigh. Western nations opened their borders, forsook spending on defense in order to bolster the welfare state and “outsourced” their national sovereignty. This was, Rubio warned, to ignore both human nature as well as the lessons of “over 5,000 years of recorded human history. And it has cost us dearly.

Henry Nowak

Thursday

Ed West

What is ‘Q Manivannan’ doing in British politics?

In an age full of nepobaby second-generation politicians posing as "outsiders," new Green Party MSP "Q Manivannan" is the real thing. Indeed, the St. Andrew’s postgraduate is so much of an outsider that he doesn’t even hold British citizenship or permanent residency, and is unable to take up paid employment as a condition of his student visa. "Q" was allowed to stand for office last month because the Scottish government – the Wuhan Lab of terrible ideas in UK politics – recently changed the rules allowing foreigners with only limited leave to remain to compete in elections. Although Manivannan faced a probe into his visa, the powers-that-be ruled that being a politician wasn’t a real job.

Thursday

Tim Shipman and Noa Hoffman

Inside the farcical coup against Keir Starmer

It is an old adage of leadership contests that “if you shoot for the King, you’d better not miss” – but no one expected the starting gun to be fired at Charles III. At the exact time when the monarch was reading the King’s Speech to Parliament on May 13, allies of Wes Streeting, the health secretary, put a bomb under proceedings by making it clear that he is set to challenge Keir Starmer. “Yes, it’s inevitable,” one says. Streeting resigned the following day. The timing horrified MPs even on Streeting’s wing of the party. A cabinet minister declared: “Having failed with his kamikaze coup, Wes has now undermined every single one of his colleagues and disrespected the King.

Simon Heffer

It’s time to uncancel Enoch Powell

Despite a career of nearly half a century in public life, Enoch Powell is generally remembered for one utterance only: the so-called "Rivers of Blood" speech he made in Birmingham on April 20, 1968, in which he voiced his opposition to the race relations legislation being taken through parliament by the then Labour government. Powell was the Conservative opposition’s defense spokesman. His speech threw the leader of his party, Edward Heath, into a profound panic, and he sacked Powell immediately, initiating decades of assertions that Powell was racially prejudiced. Powell always said – entirely honestly – that he never made a speech about race: just speeches about immigration policy and his profound disagreement with how it was usually managed.

Wednesday

Lawrence Newport

Britain is sick of the Westminster psychodrama

The British Army has long lived by a simple maxim: “Prior preparation and planning prevents piss poor performance.” It remains as true today as ever. Disasters are rarely unavoidable or destined to occur. Usually, they are the consequence of decisions – or the refusal to make them – over several weeks, months, and even years. Any government would be wise to follow this advice before entering office. Yet Keir Starmer's Government, much like many of those that came before it, will fail because it lacked the prior preparation and planning to prevent the poor performance it subsequently delivered. Each time Westminster convinces itself that the problem was just personnel Living standards in decline. Industries leaving. Jobs going elsewhere. Wages stagnant. Communities fractured.