Monthly Archives: April 2018

‘You know what some people call us? The nasty party’. That was Theresa May at the Conservative Party Conference of 2002. It didn’t seem at the time as if she were taking it as a compliment. The impression given was … Continue reading →

The 2018 ‘World Press Freedom Index’, compiled by an organisation called ‘Reporters without Borders’, has just been published (https://rsf.org/en/ranking), with Britain once again coming far down the list – at number 40, to be precise. That’s out of 180, with … Continue reading →

We’d probably have a Labour government now if it wasn’t for Corbyn. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not saying that Corbyn is holding the party back – quite the reverse. He’s been immensely influential in reinvigorating Labour, and returning it … Continue reading →

I’ve just had my British passport returned to me by Migrationsverket, which means, I hope, that I’m being seriously considered for the dual Swedish-British nationality I applied for after the Brexit vote. One of the advantages of that will be … Continue reading →

Gladstone was probably Britain’s last manifestly honest Prime Minister, though he had to wriggle a bit in order to maintain that reputation. (It was I who discovered that he deliberately absented himself from one of his own cabinet meetings, called … Continue reading →

Oh please don’t let it be a Jewish conspiracy! It would undermine my whole historical world view, built up over the last 70-odd years, if it were. As a historian I’m fully aware of the conspiracies attributed to the Jews … Continue reading →

I don’t want to defend the British Empire – though I might want to excuse it in some small ways – but one of its more admirable traits at its peak was its inclusion of all its subjects as British … Continue reading →

If you intend to vote Conservative in the next General Election because of Corbyn’s critical attitude towards the present government of Israel, and if that is the most important issue in the world for you, then go ahead. It’s a … Continue reading →

Anyone who doubts how unhinged some of our leading Brexiteers are should take a look at this clip of UKIP’s Nigel Farage, on American TV, freed from the constraints of rational British debate. He’s obviously pandering to a Fox (?) audience. … Continue reading →

The late Tony Benn used to deplore the emphasis placed on ‘personality’ in modern democratic politics, to the detriment of what he called ‘the ishoos’. (It came out like the end of a sneeze.) Of course he was right, although … Continue reading →