The anti-Brexit hysteria never went away. “How Brexit damaged Britain’s democracy” was the headline of the regular political columnist “Bagehot” in The Economist (March 30). One can hold different views on the value of Brexit—but a referendum is a “threat to democracy”? All subsequent events have pointed to ever-growing economic success. George Osborne’s doom-laden forecasts...
Author: Ralph Berry (Ralph Berry)
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Conspiring With Terror in the West
The liberal paradigm is dying before our eyes. At twelve midday on March 22, Theresa May announced at Prime Minister’s Questions that she had sent her condolences to the family of Martin McGuinness, who had been the capo di capi of the IRA. She had been preceded at the BBC by a high priest of...
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Reading Huxley Between the Headlines
“Is it time to reread Brave New World?” asks the distinguished historian Anthony Beevor, in a recent article on Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 presidential election. I think it is. Of the two great fictional casts into the future, George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), Huxley’s imaginative prophecies...
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Trump Versus the Feminizers
With Donald Trump soon to be inaugurated President of the United States, I can put forward what I see as the central factor in his victory. It is masculinity. Trump is a condottiere, a soldier of fortune like Bartolomeo Colleoni whose statue by Verrocchio still stands in the Venetian square bearing his name. It is...
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Honeymoon
They are now sweeping up the confetti from the drive, whence Theresa May departed on her honeymoon. It is over. The Prime Minister is now encountering some of the more recalcitrant facts of life, which start with Heathrow. The Government has now announced its green light for Heathrow expansion, which will incur huge opposition from...
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Finito
The Fates are even-handed. Eight years ago, John McCain slipped on his way to the podium, and his tongue protruded involuntarily. The cameras caught the moment, and he looked like an old man. That finished his candidacy. He is still going strong, but that moment froze into a general perception. And now Hillary Clinton, for...
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Regime Change
Speculation is mounting that Theresa May, emulating Richard Nixon’s epoch-making visit to China, may be planning a visit to Washington with a view to laying the foundations for a trade deal between the UK and US. She has already been to China for the G20 meeting in Hangzhou, where Xi Linping has told her that...
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The Empire Strikes Back
This is a brilliant and disturbing book. Its opening sentence is “Europe is doomed.” If you think that this is simply colorful rhetoric, read on. Hasta la Vista Europe is not alarmist; it is alarming, making its case in great detail ranging over many issues and countries. The pseudonymous author represents a number of researchers...
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Post-Brexit
The Remainers, having lost the war, have now entered the franc-tireur phase and have taken to the hills where they continue the clamor for the lost provinces. Their current spokesman is Owen Smith, pretender to the Labour throne. He wants a second referendum, as does that Ozymandias of Left-wing power Tony Blair. But Smith has...
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Lords
The Lords are pawing the ground. You might think that after the recent referendum the Peers v. People issue had been settled, for a time. And it is true that a heavy majority of Remainers wore ermine on parade. But no: the Resistance movement is headed by Baroness Wheatcroft (nee Patience Wheatcroft, a financial journalist)...
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Media
Groupthink is the grand code of political commentary, together with its corollary; groupthink is wrong, nearly all the time. Last year saw a spectacular instance in British politics. Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats party, accepted a challenge from Nigel Farage to debate the EU on TV. “He’s mad!” we said. “Nobody comes alive...
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Nigel Farage, a Different Direction
“All political lives, unless they are cut off in midstream at a happy juncture, end in failure, because that is the nature of politics and of human affairs.” Enoch Powell’s majestic generalization has few exceptions. Nigel Farage’s is outstanding. He has just stood down from the leadership of the United Kingdom Independence Party, having led...
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Orwell in Chains
George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” remains a lighthouse, the beam sweeping past the scene for a moment of blinding illumination before passing on to darkness. Though Orwell enjoined us against cliché, Hamlet’s “More honoured in the breach than the observance” applies: Everybody lauds Orwell, but few appear to have read him. And of...
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Referendum Campaign
“Peers v. People”: the EU referendum campaign appeared as a remake of the great debate a century ago, and like most remakes it was not up to the original. The recast Peers certainly filled their roles, and robes. “The captains, merchant bankers, eminent men of letters, / The generous patrons of art, the statesmen and...
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Britain in the Mediterranean
A visit to Cyprus helps to dispel the myth that the British Empire died of natural causes half a century ago. It did nothing of the sort. The empire rebranded itself as the Commonwealth of Nations, and carried on much as before. The Commonwealth countries—53 in all, including two, Rwanda and Mozambique, that were never...