Author Archives: bernardporter2013

The referendum result has shown up huge and possibly fatal flaws in our political system and culture. This is not just a Remainer’s sour grapes; I’ve written about it before. (https://bernardjporter.wordpress.com/2016/02/29/first-past-the-post/; https://bernardjporter.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/the-demonization-of-politics/) The referendum is billed as uniquely democratic, and … Continue reading →

The British Empire had no definite beginning. It just sort of emerged out of the gloom. Nor did it have a definite end – until yesterday. Up until then, writing books about the history of the Empire (which is what … Continue reading →

I’ve replaced Saturday’s ‘Fuck, What have we done?’ post with a longer and better one. There’s also a shorter version, with a more polite heading, on the LRB Blog (http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2016/06/27/bernard-porter/historic-failure/). The other thing I feared (https://bernardjporter.wordpress.com/2016/06/02/corbyns-fault/) is now happening. Corbyn … Continue reading →

I’ve not noticed much rejoicing on the winning side of the EU debate, such as you might expect on an ‘Independence Day’. Are they having second thoughts? Waking up thinking, ‘Fuck, what have we done?’ as the pound plummets, Cameron … Continue reading →

OK, the upside. David Cameron is gone (nearly), rightly hoist by his own petard  – to coin a cliché. Osborne must surely follow shortly. The ‘Establishment’ is discredited. The public school system is discredited. Utterly. Real, direct democracy has prevailed, albeit … Continue reading →

11.30 p.m. – Here we are then. The polls open in a few hours. No more time for Farage to mouth his obscenities, Johnson to crack his tasteless jokes, Gove to bring up the Nazis again, Cameron to wriggle, slug-like, … Continue reading →

If ‘Remain’ wins, what will really bug me is that David Cameron will take the credit for it. He will have been the saviour of Europe, a fitting successor to the great Ted Heath. Labour will get no credit, of … Continue reading →

By one way of looking at it, the vote on Thursday will be the latest in a long line of attempts by Britain to find the ‘role’ that she lost – as US Secretary of State Dean Acheson famously said … Continue reading →

Few of the world’s really awful events have been unexpected. For ten years before both the first and the second World Wars people were warning that something dreadful was about to happen. They might not have known what form exactly … Continue reading →

Yes, of course our democracy is in mortal danger. But not from the likes of Thomas Mair. Nor even from Brussels; or from the far Right or Left in politics; or from one of the foreign threats to it that … Continue reading →