Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Anyone who is alarmed by Trump’s recently-expressed expansionist ambitions – Greenland, Canada, Panama, and even Britain – and is curious about the place of US ‘imperialism’ in modern history, might like to take a look at my Empire and Superempire: … Continue reading →

I’m sure this has occurred to many others; but what’s the chance of Johnson defecting to Reform UK to become its leader – and then possibly a second-term  prime minister – after Musk’s ditching of Farage?

Musk’s interventions in British politics recently – and also in German, Canadian and (of course) American affairs – are clearly worrying. In the first place many of them are misinformed, especially the ones blaming Starmer and his ‘Safeguarding’ Minister Jess … Continue reading →

One of the appeals of free-market capitalist theory when it first arrived on the (British) scene in the late 18th and early 19th centuries was that it appeared to be natural, and so consonant with many of the new scientific … Continue reading →

Bored with simply surviving into old age, without much work to do, apart from posting this inconsequential blog, I’m now thinking – only thinking, as yet – of turning the academic expertise I’ve gained over the past sixty years into … Continue reading →

Further to my post of 20 Nov… From Dagens Nyheter, via the Guardian.

MP for Hull, and Blair’s Deputy PM. Probably the last of ‘Old’ Labour. Working-class origins, worked on the Hull ferries, came up via the Trade Union movement and Ruskin College. Much mocked by his social ‘superiors’, but a good and … Continue reading →

Who in Britain remembers those ‘Protect and Survive’ pamphlets sent to every home during (I think) the Cuban missile crisis, advising people what to do if an H-bomb hit them? (I only remember ‘hide under the stairs’.) Well, the Swedish … Continue reading →

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, is under fire today for not taking sufficient action against a sex offender, John Smyth, who worked for the Church of England in a number capacities, most of them involving the care of adolescent … Continue reading →

Before the election – the election – there were predictions that a Harris win, disputed as it would inevitably be by the Republicans, would spark a new American ‘civil war’. That danger has obviously receded with Trump’s victory, for the … Continue reading →