Author Archives: bernardporter2013

British politics has been moving further and further to the Right over the past ten years or so – forty years, if we date it from the advent of Thatcher – and at a crazily accelerating speed over the last … Continue reading →

When she beatles her brow like this … … doesn’t she remind you of … …. ‘Chucky’ (from the horror films)? I’ll have more to say about the current ludicrous state of politics in Britain when – if – I … Continue reading →

Returning to the UK from my period of quarantine in Sweden a few months ago, I suddenly learned that I didn’t have a doctor there any more. I’d been deleted from my surgery’s list without notice or permission, by a … Continue reading →

I watched the party Leader’s speech to the Tory Party Conference this morning. The protest was fun – Greenpeace interlopers unfurling a large yellow banner that read ‘Who voted for this?’ – which was greatly to the point; although it … Continue reading →

I’ve just come from watching our new Home Secretary Cruella  – sorry, Suella – Braverman’s speech to the Conservative Conference in Birmingham on TV this afternoon. I was pleased originally when the job was taken away from the evil Priti … Continue reading →

So Marx was right all along. (To an extent.) Capitalism has an intrinsic and inevitable self-destructive tendency, which he thought – and hoped – would culminate in its ultimate replacement, via revolution, by a ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’, and then … Continue reading →

This is not, of course a new idea; even in Thatcher’s and Reagan’s time. Reading some of the rationales offered for it after Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent non-budget, reminded me of a lecture I gave to my university History students fifty … Continue reading →

I timed my return to the UK to be able to vote in my first national Swedish election since becoming a citizen. I did that yesterday. As yet we can’t be certain of the result, but it looks as though … Continue reading →

‘Britain is the great country it is today because of her’ – Liz Truss. No it isn’t: neither ‘great’ – however you like to define that – nor ‘because of her’. (She’s never had that kind of influence.) Why does … Continue reading →

I suppose it could be regarded as proof of the success of the ‘civilizing mission’ aspect of British imperialism that so many of Britain’s ex-subjects and their progeny have become so civilised as to have risen, in the space of … Continue reading →