Section: UK

Hunt’s defeatist budget needlessly fails to tackle our problems

Mark E Thomas

Hunt’s latest Budget shows the UK heading for a dismal future. According to the Office for Budget Responsibility, the UK is now facing two years with the sharpest fall in living standards since records began. The economy will contract again this year. The level of taxation is at the highest for many decades. Our growth […]

The Conservative capture of the BBC and why it matters

Jim Grace

The issue of BBC capture by government is serious. BBC capture by one of the parties is even more serious. But the worst scenario is what I think has actually happened: BBC capture by an extremist right wing fringe group that was no more than a weird sect within one party. The ERG / Brexiters […]

The view through the Overton window must be changed, and fast

Anthea Simmons

This week, under cover of darkness, 100 mature trees were felled in the centre of Plymouth, ripping out the green lungs of a city which had pulled itself up out of the ashes of WWII. In fact, these were the very trees planted to celebrate the city’s rebirth. This act of environmental vandalism has so […]

We CAN talk about morality and compassion and we MUST

Richard Haviland

The aim of so much of the ‘commentary’ which blights today’s UK is to persuade people there is no legitimate public conversation to be had about morality or compassion. To persuade them that there is only “virtue signalling”, “wokery” and “sanctimony”. Once enough people accept that premise, you are in deep trouble. Think about it. […]

If it quacks like a duck… Letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief

Dear Editor, One after the other, political commentators have been lining up to express solidarity with Gary Lineker … “but”, they add, “I wouldn’t have used that language”. Why not? There is enough evidence out there to justify his choice of words, it’s just that it has been drip fed to us so slowly we […]

Let’s kick the lies and myths on migrants into touch

Russ In Cheshire

We all think we’re rational human beings. So let’s put that to a test in a little thread, with sources. This is for those who are in a terrible tizz right now, and think Gary Lineker is actual Satan. “We are taking too many immigrants” There are 281 million migrants globally. https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2020-interactive/ We took 90,000. […]

The orchestrated campaign to get the BBC to self-sabotage

Erika John

Cancelling Sir David Attenborough, Gary Lineker and the BBC Singers and reducing BBC orchestra numbers all in a single week does seem like a bit of an orchestrated PR campaign to get the BBC to self sabotage. To quote Ian Fleming: ‘Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.’ There has been a long-running campaign […]

Tories: always spurious reasons to scrap human rights.

Jon Danzig

Once again, the Conservatives are threatening to leave the European Convention on Human Rights. But they’ve been threatening that for many years – and never for good reasons, only spurious ones. Always. Today, the Tories seem ready to jettison our 70-year alignment with the European Convention if that gets in the way of their despicable […]

Is market fundamentalism compatible with morality and religion?

Richard Playford and Mark E Thomas

Traditional Conservative politics, as the name suggests, amongst other things, places a significant emphasis on the conservation of the tried and tested, the reliable, the traditional, and so on. Traditional conservativism prioritizes practical experience over abstract theorizing, and prefers gradual changes, organically developing and emerging from the local community, to sweeping changes imposed from above. For a […]

The migrant dog whistle is blown again…

Jon Danzig

From today, the government has announced, “anyone crossing the Channel will be detained and removed to a safe country within weeks.” To be clear, Home Secretary, Suella Braverman MP, is not talking about those travelling from Calais to Dover with P&O, DFDS, or Irish Ferries. No, she is talking about desperate people, mostly genuine asylum […]

The Oakeshott WhatsApp leaks – beyond black and white

Richard Haviland

For a few weeks in 2009, when I worked for DFID and it looked as if the H1N1 (swine flu) pandemic might be of a similar scale to what we’ve seen with Covid-19, I attended official-level cross-Whitehall coordination meetings. The meetings were huge, drawing on civil servants from across Whitehall, often multiple people from one […]

The ultimate political tomato joke…

Richard Scott

A man walks into a greengrocer and asks for a kilo of tomatoes. The greengrocer tells him, “That’s £50, please, mate”. The man is shocked. ‘£50? Last week these tomatoes only cost me £2!’ ‘Well, today it is £50.’ ‘But why £50? You’re having a laugh!’ The greengrocer says, ‘I’ll explain it: – £2 for […]

Christianity and Shamima Begum

Chris Tehan

As readers will no doubt be aware, Shamima Begum’s quest to have her British citizenship returned to her has failed yet again. I’m not going to get into the details of why, and of what sort of threat she poses to our national security. Nor am I concerned with why she went to join ISIS […]

Shamima Begum: a time to confront our prejudices

Lucy-Ann Pope

In John Grisham’s 1989 novel A Time to Kill, ten-year-old Black girl Tonya Hailey is viciously raped, abused and left for dead by two White drunken men in 1980s Mississippi. Defence lawyer Jake Brigance, played by Matthew McConaughey in a film of the same name, takes on the defence of the little girl’s father, Carl […]

Will you be spending an eggstreme amount this Easter?

Plastic Free Axminster -

New Year resolutions have been made and broken, Valentine’s Day has come and gone and now we are about to be bombarded with Easter consumables, most of which are encased in single-use plastic! It is estimated that the UK will spend a mind-boggling £800m at Easter; £381m on eggs (ouch that’s a lorra, lorra calories!) […]

Sunak and the single market: proof that Brexit is absurd

Jon Danzig

Prime Minister, Rishi Sunak, admitted today that Northern Ireland is in a better position than the rest of the UK by having unique access to both the EU Single Market and the UK market. He excitedly told workers at the Coca-Cola plant in Co Antrim that this made Northern Ireland, ‘The world’s most exciting economic […]

Putin’s Brexit: letter to the editor

Editor-in-chief

Dear Editor I couldn’t agree more with Jon Danzig’s latest article on Brexit/Putin. I took this image on a placard, on the ‘National Rejoin March’ in October 2022. Putin acts like an old-fashioned Tsar and has even built a Louis XIV-style palace on the Black Sea coast, but he’s also a competent strategist. With the […]

A vote for Brexit was a vote for Putin

Jon Danzig

The main beneficiary of Brexit? Vladimir Putin, argues Jon Danzig. A vote for Brexit, was a vote for Putin Putin’s fingerprints are all over Brexit. There have been suspicions of this for some time, but the evidence is now compelling and urgently needs proper investigation. Motive is the key incentive for any crime. There have […]

A take-down of the top anti-migrant ‘gotchas’

Lou Calvey

Some comments on social media around migrants are so vile – I’m venting in a take down of the top anti migrant ‘gotchas’… God help me. 1. We need security checks!/people in the asylum system are criminals, drug dealers, terrorists, blah blah The asylum system takes years. You the think government aren’t doing background checks […]

Rishi Sunak is in trouble…

Martin Day

In fairness, it’s not an exceptionally observant point to make: anywhere you look, pundits are noting the unshakeable air of malaise around Westminster. It’s nothing compared to the death spiral of Johnson’s regime, or the barely-controlled hysteria of Truss’s brief reign of economic terror, but it’s there. The waters may be calm, but there are […]