Britain Archives | Page 41 of 46 | MelaniePhillips.com

Brexit? For national self-determination, look back to Jexit

March 31, 2017March 31, 2017 Melanie

The die is now cast. On Wednesday of this week the British prime minister, Theresa May, triggered Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union, the start of the process by which the UK will exit the EU. Britain and the EU now enter stormy and uncharted waters. A geopolitical divorce on this scale is unprecedented and much remains contestable and unknown. Underlying the specifics remains the big issue dividing those who wanted to remain in the EU – and who still hope the referendum result can somehow be reversed…

Britain Videos

Question Time Brexit special

March 28, 2017March 28, 2017 Melanie

I took part last night in a marathon 90-minute BBC1 Question Time Brexit special. My fellow panellists were the Brexit Secretary David Davis, former LibDem leader Nick Clegg, Labour’s Brexit spokesman Keir Starmer, former Scottish National Party leader Alex Salmond and UKIP’s Suzanne Evans. Watch me here cause some excitement when I said there was no such thing as “hard” or “soft” Brexit, only Brexit. To watch the whole show, click here.

Britain USA Videos

The west still wanders in Wonderland

March 28, 2017March 28, 2017 Melanie

Join me as I discuss with Avi Abelow of Israel Video Network Britain’s continued failure to acknowledge the religious nature of Islamist terrorism and why Donald Trump’s critics owe him an apology.

Britain Videos

The Westminster terror attack

March 28, 2017March 28, 2017 Melanie

Watch me here on the Israel TV show Ro’im Olam (Looking at the World) talking to presenter Ya’akov Ahimeir about the significance of last week’s Islamist terror atrocity in London at the Palace of Westminster. The interview is in English after a few seconds’ introduction.

Britain

In the midst of grief, still confusion

March 23, 2017March 23, 2017 Melanie

In the aftermath of yesterday’s dreadful terror attack on the Palace of Westminster, which has so far left four victims dead and around 40 people injured, many of them seriously, the Prime Minister Theresa May today addressed the House of Commons. Among other remarks by Mrs May which struck the right tone of steely calm, there was however this exchange. A Conservative MP, Michael Tomlinson, said: “It is reported that what happened yesterday was an act of Islamic terror. Does the Prime Minister agree that what happened was not Islamic,…

Britain

Mrs May’s political cross-dressing

March 21, 2017 Melanie

Theresa May isn’t a socialist. Her approach reflects a particular tradition in conservative thought which has much in common with European Christian democracy. As she has said, she explicitly rejects both “the socialist left and the libertarian right”. She is instead a statist, wedded to top-down paternalism (or perhaps more appropriately here, maternalism) and the beneficent role of activist government intervention. The rival “libertarian” or neo-liberal right makes a fetish of individual liberty and the free market, disdains tradition and devalues the importance of preserving social and cultural bonds. What…

Britain

Hate crime through the Looking Glass

March 20, 2017March 20, 2017 Melanie

We’ve repeatedly been told that Britain is in the grip of a huge rise in Islamophobic attacks. According to Tell Mama, the group that monitors hate crime against Muslims, anti-Muslim attacks reportedly shot up by 326 per cent in 2015 and spiked again after the Brexit vote last year. All such hateful crimes and incidents are utterly to be deplored. These statistics, though, have come in for criticism about their methodology and should be treated accordingly with caution. The principal caveats concern the subjectivity of these reports, exacerbated by the…

Britain Europe USA

The alt-right smear

March 17, 2017March 17, 2017 Melanie

The neologism “alt-right” has now become part of the political lexicon. It is thought to be merely a term describing a new political movement. This is wrong. It is being used to spread confusion and hatred. The term was invented by a white supremacist called Richard Spencer. It is an obvious piece of manipulative linguistic legerdemain. For there’s nothing remotely “alt” – standing for alternative – about what Spencer does or says, nor other white supremacists or racists or fascists or neo-Nazis who also style themselves as “alt-right”. They are…

Britain USA

Trump is no antisemite

March 17, 2017March 20, 2017 Melanie

President Donald Trump seems to be a man who thinks (and tweets) from his gut. He appears emotional, self-absorbed and impulsive. His language is careless and inaccurate. He shoots his mouth off repeating something he’s seen or heard on Fox News or talk radio which as often as not turns out to be false. All these things are alarming and indefensible. Nevertheless the unprecedented distortion, fabrication, selective reporting, double standards, wrenching out of context and character assassination by association in the mainstream media’s general approach to Trump has created a…

Britain Videos

May and Sturgeon go to war

March 14, 2017March 15, 2017 Melanie

British politics is entering very turbulent waters. Join me here as I discuss whether Prime Minister Theresa May can simultaneously fight EU bureaucrats, Scottish nationalists, Irish republicans and Remainers at Westminster, variously intent on seizing the moment for their agenda, scuppering Brexit or both. A transcript of my remarks follows beneath the video. The starting gun has been fired for independence in the United Kingdom. No, not independence FOR the UK from the European Union, or Brexit. Although the parliamentary bill enabling the government to start that process cleared its…