Author Archives: bernardporter2013

Encouraging news at last. (1) Students – intelligent young people most affected by the Brexit catastrophe – are planning a great new anti-Brexit campaign in the summer: https://leftfootforward.org/2018/03/students-union-throws-weight-behind-brexit-second-ref/. 75% of under-25s (those who voted) voted ‘Remain’ in the referendum. (2) … Continue reading →

There’s another demand this morning, by the new President of the Board of Deputies for British Jews, for Ken Livingstone to be expelled from the Labour Party for making a valid historical point: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2018/may/14/labour-ken-livingstone-jackie-walker-antisemitism-row. Shouldn’t this alarm all of us professional … Continue reading →

It’s difficult for a democrat to defend the House of Lords, of course, except by casting doubt on the institution of democracy itself. But this headline from the Daily Mail makes one want to, together with the Mail’s inclusion of the … Continue reading →

Anyone in any doubt about the true nature and credibility of the campaign currently being waged against Corbyn and the Labour Party, on the grounds of their alleged ‘anti-semitism’, should read these two pieces, published recently. https://orientxxi.info/magazine/anti-semitism-orchestrated-offensive-against-jeremy-corbyn-in-the-uk,2446; and https://www.opendemocracy.net/uk/jamie-stern-weiner-norman-finkelstein/american-jewish-scholar-behind-labour-s-antisemitism-scanda. I’ve … Continue reading →

Written in my diary for 19 May are the words: ‘Royal Wedding. Be out of country.’ ‘Out of country’, of course, meant Stockholm. But now I find I won’t be able to avoid it even there: https://www.facebook.com/events/813022998888560/. So I’ll probably … Continue reading →

I must buy Robert Harris’s new novel, Munich. A review of it on Swedish Radio this morning suggests it goes along with the view I’ve had for many years, that Chamberlain and ‘appeasement’ have had a bum deal at the … Continue reading →

‘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 →