Category: Britain

Is Theresa May trying to lose the general election? Her proposal to require people to pay for the long-term domestic care they receive at home by asset-stripping their own house, with a floor of £100,000 below which its value would not fall, could do for the Conservative party what student loans did for the LibDems: turn thousands of hitherto loyal voters against it. At present, people with property worth more than £23,250 are required to pay for long-term residential care. This causes widespread resentment, since people believe they are being…

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The antisemitism crisis rolls on. Ken Livingstone has doubled down on his remarks about Hitler and Zionism. Members of the National Union of Students have been outed for sending offensive tweets about Jews. Campus meetings regularly spout hideous lies and libels about Israel. Many of us are horrified that these things are being allowed to be said at all. They are racist, prejudiced, bigoted, offensive and hurtful. Views like these should be utterly beyond the pale. Really? At the same time, many of us are horrified at the way points…

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The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, appears to be a genuine supporter of Israel. In which case she needs to address the fact that her Foreign Office is not. The Palestinians have been demanding that the British government apologise for the 1917 Balfour Declaration which supported “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”. This declaration was embodied in the 1922 Mandate under which Britain accepted the administration of Palestine and the obligation to settle the Jews there. The demand for an apology led to a…

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For years, stop and search has been intensely controversial as the policy that disproportionately targeted black boys. It was therefore brandished as proof positive that the British police were institutionally racist. Of the 27 teenagers who died as a result of knife attacks in London over the past two years, most were black or from an ethnic minority background. In other words, rather than stop and search disproportionately targeting black boys, reducing the use of this power means black boys become disproportionately targeted as the victims of violent crime. Isn’t…

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The legendary spy George Smiley is to return this autumn in a new John le Carre novel. This finest of all le Carre’s characters confronts what is still the great question of our time: how to fight great evil without losing our moral compass. The problem is that the moral ambiguity at the heart of Smiley’s circle has paralysed the west in real life too. To read my whole column in The Times, please click here (subscription only).

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