Boris Britain Coronavirus Europe Israel 

The ghastly mirror-image of lethal group-think

In Britain, there are now insistent calls for the government to lay out its strategy for exiting the Covid-19 lockdown. Treat the public as adults, goes the cry; tell us the truth. Well, the truth which ministers are not telling is pretty unpalatable. For as in other countries, the government faces two brutal and appalling alternatives: destroying the economy or ending people’s lives. Yes, the lockdown is doing terrible damage to the economy and if it goes on for much longer some of that damage at least may well be…

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Frost Britain Europe 

David Frost’s reflections on the revolution in Britain

Wow. The speech delivered yesterday evening at Brussels university by David Frost, who is now leading the UK’s negotiations with the EU over the post-Brexit trade deal, was a belter. Straightening his country’s spine from its five-decade scoliosis as a demoralised supplicant at the European table, Frost reclaimed, on behalf of the British government, the moral and intellectual high ground for Britain’s departure from the EU – and for doing so entirely on the UK’s terms. This magnificent speech, which deserves to be read in full (as you can mostly…

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speaking Britain Europe 

Goodbye to the demoralised past. Hello, world

At 11 pm this evening, the United Kingdom will have left the European Union. These are words that, throughout the nightmare of the past three and a half years, those of us who were solid Brexiteers feared we might never be able to say. From the moment in 2016 that Britain voted by 52-48 per cent to leave the EU, the political, intellectual and media Remainer establishment threw everything they had into stopping Brexit and reversing that people’s vote. The issue itself bitterly divided families and sundered friendships. The unprecedented…

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UK Britain Europe 

Glad, confident morning for Britain’s battling Brexiteers? Er, not quite

Suddenly Brexit has become possible, coo the newspapers this morning; and suddenly, this Brexiteer’s heart stops for the umpteenth time during this national crisis. For what they are saying has now suddenly  become possible is not Brexit — which, after all, Britain’s new prime minister, Boris Johnson, has been intoning like a stuck record will happen on October 31 even with no deal – but Brexit with a withdrawal deal with the EU. And that’s because the German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has given Boris Johnson thirty days to come up…

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Europeans lose minds and moral compass Britain Culture wars Europe 

Europe starts to fray at the seams

The European parliament elections last week have provided further graphic evidence that Britain and Europe are in the throes of a profound political and cultural upheaval. In Britain, Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party pulverized both Labour and the Conservatives by winning many more seats than either to become the largest single party in the European parliament— within just five weeks of being created. Since Farage’s party stands for Britain leaving the European Union with no withdrawal deal, many Conservatives rightly believe that whoever they elect as their new leader (and therefore…

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Europe Israel 

Is Netanyahu making deals with the devil?

Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has been severely criticized for cozying up to sundry dictators, autocrats or governments that downplay or deny their country’s role in the Holocaust. Among those he has either visited or hosted are Russia’s president Vladimir Putin, Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán who boasts of creating an “illiberal democracy” and President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines who once compared himself to Hitler. The next summit of the Visegrád group, an alliance of Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia, will be held this month in Jerusalem.…

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Irish Britain Europe 

The obvious, ahem, solution to the Irish border problem

By all accounts, the penny has finally dropped in the brain of the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar. It has apparently now dawned on him that, in order to stuff the British over Brexit, the EU has played him for a sucker. It seems he has now finally grasped that if the UK leaves the EU with no deal, it is Ireland that will be stuffed. Big time. This is apparently causing panic not just in Dublin but in Brussels. Paul Goodman writes a good summary here. Earlier this week, Margaritis…

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UK Britain Europe 

Why it’s imperative that Britain shows itself to be firmly behind no-deal

We all know the problem over Theresa May’s Brexit deal, don’t we. The EU insisted on its red lines, offering nothing that would allow Britain to trade outside the customs union or single market. Hence her deal was botched because she was under the EU cosh. But what if this analysis were 180 degrees out? What if the opposite were the case? What if the EU had in fact offered the UK a comprehensive free trade agreement for the whole of the UK with zero tariffs and no quantitative restrictions,…

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Boris Britain Europe 

“No risks are greater than Mrs May’s terms of surrender” – including no deal

Three days ago, a letter of great importance about Mrs May’s faux-Brexit deal was sent to MPs. The importance lay not just in what it said but who was saying it. The authors were the former head of MI6, Sir Richard Dearlove, and the officer who commanded the British forces in the Falklands War, Major-General Julian Thompson. Both men are committed to Britain leaving the EU. Both are horrified by the way the Prime Minister is betraying not just the 2016 referendum vote but the interests of the United Kingdom.…

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Boris Britain Culture wars Europe 

Convulsions over Brexit and the struggle for the western nation

The West is convulsing as a new world order struggles to be born. Nowhere is that convulsion currently proving more agonizing and potentially catastrophic than in the United Kingdom. The fundamental division is between, on the one hand, nationalists who want to defend the nation and its core values and, on the other, those who believe these must be superseded by trans-national institutions and laws. In the first camp are millions of ordinary people throughout the West in revolt against the steady undermining of their countries and cultures, alongside the…

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