Douglas Murray

Almost a decade ago the Irish academic Liam Kennedy published a tremendous book with the title Unhappy the Land: the Most Oppressed People Ever, the Irish? It is a dissection of one of the most curious pathologies in the world: the desire to have been oppressed; a glorying in being repressed. Kennedy, like a few other brave writers (Ruth Dudley Edwards, Malachi O’Doherty, Kevin Myers) has the courage to point to an under-examined seam in Ireland’s history. Specifically he takes aim at the mawkishness that exists in contemporary Irish affairs. The desire to be the first victim, perhaps the greatest victim, of all victims, anywhere in the world. You see similar strains of aspiring victimhood in other mini-nationalisms.

The only MP I have ever really wanted to marry is Thangam Debbonaire. The former Labour MP for Bristol West and I have little in common. But it has sometimes been a desire of mine to marry her and take her surname, so becoming Mr Debbonaire. Marital relations would doubtless be fraught, but on the plus side there would be the thrill of friends being able to say things like ‘Darling, you know the Debbonaires are coming for dinner?’ Which would more than make up for it. Since being booted out by the voters at last year’s general election, Debbonaire has been elevated to the House of Lords, where she still attracts my attention.

One of the occupational hazards of being a journalist is being hounded by litigants. Indeed, one of the reasons why much of the media finds it easier to report fluff than to write about difficult issues is that the latter can be costly in terms of money, as well as time. Three years ago I wrote a column in this magazine about some of the downsides of diversity. At the time there had just been serious disturbances in Leicester between local Hindus and Muslims. One of the people who decided to throw himself into the middle of that trouble and to try to make things worse was an online pugilist known as Mohammed Hijab. Hijab had already been filmed intimidating Jews in Golders Green and whipping up a crowd of masked men outside the Israeli embassy in London.

There are deep ructions across Europe, as in Britain. All come down to the same thing. The societies in question have decided to take in more people than they could ever absorb or integrate, and have done so at a rate that will ruin these societies financially as well as socially. It’s a little late for the occasional minister to talk about the fabric of the country being under ‘strain’, or the need for greater ‘social cohesion’. These things have been shot for years. What is interesting is not just what a mountain Wagner is for modern Germany, but how they deal with it The problem is that every counter to this problem has the same Charybdis. Oppose the migration extremism and even now you will be accused of Hitlerian tendencies.

‘Smash the gangs’ is the fascinating slogan that Keir Starmer’s government has settled on for tackling illegal migration. What is the government going to do to stop the hundreds – sometimes thousands – of people sailing across the Channel and coming into England each day? ‘We will smash the gangs,’ they say. The slogan is interesting for reasons beyond the tough-guy rhetoric. For it suggests, of course, that it is people-smuggling gangs that are the main problem. Perhaps our government sees them as being like press gangs back in the day, roaming around northern France, waylaying passing migrants and forcing them on to rubber dinghies to begin a new life in Britain.

An interesting event occurred in London at the weekend. A young man who goes by the name of Montgomery Toms attended a Pride parade. But he did not attend in order to dress in bondage gear while shouting ‘Love is love’ and ‘Free Palestine’. Instead he went with a sandwich board which had a trans flag on it, followed by an equals sign and then the words ‘mental illness’. This is a tactic pioneered by an American man known as ‘Billboard Chris’, because his name is Chris and he wears a billboard. Chris’s schtick is to walk around with a sign saying things like ‘Children cannot consent to puberty blockers’.

Anyone who has visited Canada or Australia in recent years might have noticed an interesting new tradition. This is the trend for issuing a ‘land acknowledgement’ at the start of any public event. Before discussion gets under way, some bureaucrat or other will get up and note that we are all fortunate enough to be on the land of X, and then garble the name of some not-especially-ancient tribe. The moment gives everyone a feeling of deep meaning and naturally achieves nothing. Even our King indulged in some of this in May when he opened the latest session of the Canadian parliament. Before getting down to the meat of his speech, Charles said: ‘I would like to acknowledge that we are gathered on the unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg people.

The American critic and classicist Daniel Mendelsohn has just published a new translation of The Odyssey. In his superb introduction, Mendelsohn also does something that many modern translators and critics avoid, which is to point to the oddness and different-ness of Homer’s world. For that and many other reasons, reading Mendelsohn’s fresh and clear translation was a counterweight to one of the great imperatives of our time: ‘Let us look at this long-ago thing only in order to see if it can shed any light on the glorious us and now.

Five years ago, the man who is now Lord Hermer gave an interview to the Times. The then QC was asked how he’d want to be remembered. The answer he gave was curious. ‘The world will be a better place,’ he said, ‘when privileged men like me stop seeking a place in history.’ I’m not sure who Lord Hermer thinks should be seeking a place in history, though I assume he was just paying lip service to the spirit of 2020 and wanted to be read to mean that in future most of the running should be done by underprivileged transsexuals. While I cannot agree on the substance, I can agree on one specific. The world would certainly be a much better place if people like Lord Hermer stopped seeking historic roles.

It is 60 years since William F. Buckley said that he would ‘rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University’. Yet even the godfather of American conservatism would be surprised at how much more attractive the folks in the phone directory appear today. Harvard is currently having a major row with Donald Trump’s administration. It results from the way in which the university responded to the 7 October attacks in Israel. While the Hamas massacres were still on-going, more than 30 Harvard University student organisations signed a letter which claimed to hold the ‘Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence’.

It is said that since Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, it is once again possible to use the word ‘retarded’. Or at least to use it without being cancelled by a group of demonic online third parties pretending to be woefully offended by the use of an often-useful term. I don’t know how long this window of opportunity will remain open, so let me note while I can that it is hard to think of a country in the world that has a more retarded public discourse than Britain. Almost everyone in public life aims to stop any discussion of the issues via obfuscation and misrepresentation The journalist Andrew Norfolk died this month at the age of 60. For once the term ‘brave’ deserves to be used of a journalist.

Regular readers will know that I have an obsession with home burglaries. Specifically those occasions when a burglar goes into a British home, helps himself to the contents of the household and finds that the last people on his case are the British police. Scanning some recent burglary statistics, I was struck again by the almost miraculous failures of force after force. Take Kent Police. In a recent breakdown of crime statistics, the force managed a career high. In one of the areas where they are meant to have oversight, there were 123 home burglaries. Of those 123 burglaries, they managed a great, round zero in their detection rate of the burglars. Or 0.

They say that death and taxes are the only certain things in this life. I would add BBC bias into that mix. It was probably about 20 years ago that I first went on Newsnight. In those days Jeremy Paxman ruled the roost and taught me an early lesson in live television. Jeremy asked me my view and I gave it. He then turned to the other guest and duffed him up a bit. I made the mistake of smiling briefly, only for Paxman to turn on me and say something along the lines of: ‘I don’t know what you’re grinning about.’ He then proceeded to duff me up a bit too. Lesson learned. Back then, when you left the Newsnight studio, your phone would explode. Like Question Time some decades ago, it was must-watch television.