Sam Ashworth-Hayes is a former director of studies at the Henry Jackson Society.
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On the Welsh coast, surrounded by Snowdonia, the village of Fairbourne sits on a low, flat stretch of land. With sea on one side and mountain on the other, it seems perfectly situated. It is also doomed. Defended by high banks, the village is already substantially beneath sea level during storm tides. As sea levels
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Politicians are lining up to condemn the US Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. Activists are warning us that this is the start of a fresh assault on abortion rights in Britain. What starts in the core spreads to the periphery; a new wave of pro-life policies will soon be here. What’s less clear
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Today, the RMT will succeed where the Luddites failed. For 24 hours, they will unwind the most impressive part of the Industrial Revolution, stripping Britain of trains. They will repeat the feat on Thursday and Saturday. The government, meanwhile, will wring its hands, complain about the losses faced by workers and businesses, and do very
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Last week, Boris Johnson’s ethics advisor – a role that must sit alongside Vlad the Impaler’s anger management therapist in the annals of doomed job descriptions – resigned. Downing Street so far hasn’t commented on whether Lord Geidt will be replaced, with a spokesman saying only that Johnson will ‘take time’ to consider the decision.
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Oxford is a city that makes you proud to be British: its beautiful dreaming spires attract tourists and the cleverest students from across the world. But is there something darker lurking beneath the glorious architecture? Some Oxford students think so. ‘Uncomfortable Oxford’ is a student-run company which, for £13, takes you on a tour of the
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The Bank of England has just raised interest rates for the fifth time in the row, warning that inflation is expected to pass 11 per cent by the end of this year. If it had escaped your notice, everything is getting more expensive, and the government is powerless to help. The extent of the Bank’s
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On Saturday immigration enforcement officers went to Peckham to pick up a man suspected of overstaying his visa. When they arrived, a crowd of protesters turned up to stop the ‘immigration raid’, blocking the van from departing. When the police turned up, they also found their way blocked. Eventually, they gave up. The arrested man
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Why is an ice cream brand lecturing Britain on the morality of its immigration policy? Ben and Jerry’s, otherwise known for flogging overpriced junk food, has weighed in on the government’s new policy of sending mostly single men dodging Britain’s border control to Rwanda. The plan is ‘cruel and morally bankrupt’, ‘racist and abhorrent’, according to
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What planet do our politicians live on? Labour’s video memorialising George Floyd, and pledging radical change to education and justice policies to combat the sort of ‘structural racism’ that led to his death, suggests which country. All this time I’ve believed I live in Britain, when in fact we’re all living in America. What other explanation could there
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Pigs may fly, Hell may freeze over, and a month may pass without a Conservative MP revealing the moral decay at the core of the party. Yesterday, former MP Imran Khan was sentenced to 18 months in prison for sexually assaulting a 15-year-old boy. In Westminster, meanwhile, rumours circulated that a senior MP had sexually
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It can be hard to remember just how strange things were during the pandemic. Every day the front pages covered the virus spreading from city to city in minute detail, while politicians and citizens alike excoriated each other for failing to show sufficient concern about the disease. With the benefit of those two years, it’s
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With a sense of reluctance, I went into a voting booth this week and ticked the boxes corresponding to my local Labour candidates. My rationalisation was simple: I wasn’t voting for Labour, but against the Conservatives. There is a tangible stench of decay surrounding the Tory party at present. At best, it is incapable of
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The leak of a draft Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade has sparked a furious reaction in Britain. Yet for all the backlash in British political circles, the reality is that the proposed shake-up of abortion laws in the United States doesn’t really matter here. Our nominally conservative-leaning parliament just voted to make abortion easier, and the
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If there’s one quality that defines Elon Musk other than his entrepreneurship, it’s his ability to drive his detractors mad. From this perspective, his attempt to buy Twitter is his greatest success yet. With Twitter poised to accept a buyout today, we can expect more entertainment on this front. We can also expect a significant
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It’s an odd accusation to levy at Boris Johnson’s government, but the Conservative party feels grey. Flights of fancy suggesting a bridge to Northern Ireland or – a thought to make 19th century Royal Navy strategists shudder – to France have given way to a carousel of scandals and disappointments. The former is cheap or
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Ali Harbi Ali has been given a whole life sentence. But perhaps this is too steep an introduction. Perhaps, like me, you’re beginning to lose track of the various perpetrators of Islamist terror in Britain as the news blurs into a constant revolving track of incidents, arriving to a sense of outrage deadened by repeated
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While Russia has agreed to pull back its troops from Kyiv, the signs of a wider breakthrough in peace talks are far from promising. Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba insists that his country will not trade ‘people, land, or sovereignty’; and the US state department believes Russia too is unlikely to make compromises. Yet while striking a
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In 1697 Tsar Peter the Great set out on a great journey across western Europe, seeking the support of European monarchs in his confrontation with the Ottoman Empire. Unsuccessful in securing alliances, he returned instead laden with ideas acquired in his travels through Britain and Holland, which he promptly put into action in modernising Russia.
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The slow return of the 1980s has reached its logical conclusion. The prospect of nuclear annihilation is haunting our nightmares once again. Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has been marked by a willingness to engage in blatant nuclear sabre-rattling of a sort not seen since the end of the Cold War. From his statement that anyone ‘interfering
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Fuelled by repeated appeals from President Zelensky, western support for a no-fly zone in Ukraine is growing. The number of Americans in favour of a no-fly zone outnumber those against by 45 per cent to 20. People seem to feel that something must be done, beyond the sanctions already in place and the provision of weapons. A no-fly zone is something;
