conversation Britain Culture wars Videos 

Conversation: the eclipse of liberalism and the failure of conservatism

I was pleased to have a long video conversation (in two parts) with John O’Sullivan, former senior policy adviser to Margaret Thatcher and now president of the Danube Institute, a think-tank based in Hungary. Our conversation started by talking about my early years at The Guardian newspaper and my experiences while working there which led me to break with the left. We discussed my play, Traitors (yes, I did write one and it was actually performed at a fringe theatre in London in 1986), my experience of antisemitism which led…

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march Culture wars Videos 

The long march, and how to reverse it

I took part remotely in a discussion held in London by the New Culture Forum to discuss their new book, “The Long March: How the Left Won the Culture War and What To Do About It.” The first part of the title refers to the “long march through the institutions”, the strategy of achieving revolutionary change by infiltrating subversive ideas into all the cultural institutions of society and thus transforming it from within. As chairman Peter Whittle observed, however, it’s the latter part of the title that’s the most important…

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interview Videos 

Video interview with Gadi Taub

I did a video interview with Gadi Taub, a historian at Jerusalem’s Hebrew University and a columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz. We talked about my novel, The Legacy, and its themes of antisemitism, fractured Jewish diaspora identity and the pull of history, as well as my political and personal memoir, Guardian Angel. Then we talked about the journey I describe in that memoir, “from leftism to sanity” as it’s put on the cover or, as I prefer to style it, from fantasy to realism. We also talked about the…

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leftward Britain Israel USA Videos 

The leftward movement of diaspora Jews

Is there a leftward movement of diaspora Jews? I took part in a webinar organised by EMET, the Endowment for Middle East Truth, which does sterling work defending Israel against the calumnies that distressingly pass for received wisdom in so much of the west. At this webinar, which was attended by more than 430 people, Caroline Glick and I were talking about the state of the Jewish community in the US and Britain. We discussed the scourge of antisemitism, the contribution to this of left-wing politics and whether or not…

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Coronavirus Audio Global conflict USA Videos 

Moral responsibility in the time of pandemic

I was very struck by observations about the coronavirus pandemic made this week by the former Chief Rabbi, Lord Sacks, on both BBC Radio’s Moral Maze and BBC TV’s Newsnight. What was so arresting was his optimism about the long-term effects of this global emergency on people’s behaviour. He repeated more than once that the crisis was encouraging the best out of people, that it was bringing us together, that it was eliciting innumerable acts of kindness which would continue to multiply, and that when it was all over we…

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burning Videos 

The burning question of fantasists and realists

Back in a different world, when we were all still going out and about and living normally, I did a long interview with Steven Edginton for “Burning Questions” on The Sun‘s video channel. We discussed the political journey I have made commonly described as “from left to right” (personally, I prefer “from fantasists to realists”), what’s happened to the west over the past half-century (small question!), antisemitism and being a Jew in Britain. You can watch the interview here.

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appearance Videos 

My appearance on BBC TV Politics Live

I made an appearance on BBC TV’s Politics Live, discussing among other things the coronavirus outbreak, the Labour party leadership election and the collapse of the Flybe airline. My fellow guests were Conservative MP Damian Green, Labour’s shadow housing minister, Sarah Jones, and Sienna Rodgers, editor of the LabourList website. If you can access BBC iPlayer, you can watch the show here. You can also see a tweeted clip here where I suggest that even the decent Sir Keir Starmer won’t be able to get on top of Labour party…

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Sky Britain Videos 

Holocaust memorial and BoJo on The View

I took part this week on Sky TV’s The View, the politics show hosted by Adam Boulton. Because of Boris Johnson’s government reshuffle that morning, the show was broadcast from outside 10 Downing Street to capture all the comings and goings. That would have been great, except for the small fact that it was raining and freezing cold! We were also plagued by a man in the street who, during the Brexit agony, had constantly interfered with outside broadcasts by bellowing through a megaphone about stopping Brexit and now seemed…

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USA Videos 

Politics Live – and the Biden scandal

I appeared on BBC TV’s Politics Live, which those with access to BBC iPlayer can view here. Among the issues we discussed was the impeachment hearings in the US Congress, concerning allegations that President Trump pressured the Ukrainian government to investigate the commercial dealings of the former US Vice-President and potential Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son, Hunter. I observed how odd it was that there was no similar concern over the report that, when he was Vice-President, Biden pressured the Ukrainian government to fire the prosecutor who…

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Conversations with John Anderso Culture wars Videos 

Our cultural crisis: conversation with John Anderson

I recently sat down for a second video discussion with John Anderson, the former deputy prime minister of Australia, over the crisis in western culture and society. We discussed my own political journey, described in my memoir Guardian Angel, in which I came to understand that the great battles over the traditional family or education involved a wholesale repudiation of objectivity, evidence and truth itself. The result is our current era of cultural totalitarianism. We also talked about the war to the political death between on the one hand, national…

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