Category: Britain

For the left, bashing Israel and supporting the Palestinians is a noble cause. So there’s no reason to suspect that anyone associated with it will be anything other than decent. This is to ignore the symbiotic connection between Israel-bashing and antisemitism. No, that does not mean criticism of Israel is antisemitic. It is as legitimate as criticism of any other country. The way in which Israel is treated, however, is totally unlike the treatment of any other country. We’re talking here about demonisation: a unique campaign based entirely on malicious…

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There was only one thing worse than the remarkable revelation of institutionalised antisemitism on the left revealed by David Collier on his website last week. It was the reaction. Collier is an indefatigable blogger who spends much of his life immersed in the cesspools of anti-Jewish and Israel-bashing bigotry in British institutions. His aim is to bring the epidemic of open antisemitism to the attention of the wider public. He is positively heroic in subjecting himself to the traumatic effects of wading through all this filth. But last week he…

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At Michaela, which hasn’t been going long enough for pupils to get to GCSE, the children read classic literature including Shakespeare, Homer and Sophocles. I saw a class being taught to analyse Bach’s musical notation. Chronological and cumulative knowledge of history and literature, along with daily quizzes and other regular tests, ensures pupils know, understand and remember. Birbalsingh also grasps that for education to happen something else needs to be in place. When the bell goes, the whole school files between classes in total silence, or chanting in unison Kipling’s…

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Day after day, the Remainer media hammer away at the apparently insoluble problem of the border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland after Brexit. Day after day, the BBC et al tell us that if there is a “hard” border the Northern Ireland Good Friday peace settlement will collapse; and so there is no alternative to Northern Ireland remaining within the EU single market/customs union to enable uninterrupted passage of goods from south to north. Which of course would mean no Brexit for the rest of the UK either.…

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The mouse has roared. In his new book Reimagining Britain the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has said that Sharia should never become part of the British legal system because it is incompatible with our laws. High levels of Muslim immigration, he says, have led many to challenge majority values, especially in family life. He wants Britain instead to uphold the values founded upon its own principles and Christian inheritance. The Church of England upholding Christian values as preferable to those of another faith? There will surely be amazement in…

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The Labour leadership clearly thinks it’s been very clever in saying it would keep Britain in a customs union with the EU. This raises the possibility that Theresa May might be defeated in the Commons over Anna Soubry’s amendment proposing that Britain stays in “a” customs union after Brexit, if enough Remainer Tories vote with Labour against the Prime Minister. Maybe this will happen; there’s talk that Mrs May is so concerned about this she’s thinking of turning the thing into a confidence motion, daring the Tory Remainer rebels to vote…

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The Daily Telegraph recently published a story headlined “George Soros, the man who ‘broke the Bank of England’ backing secret plot to thwart Brexit”. It revealed that a campaign group backed by Soros and prominent Remainers proposed mass rallies and concerts to “pressure” MPs in 100 Leave-supporting constituencies, as well as a range of “guerrilla marketing tactics”, to defeat Theresa May’s Brexit deal and trigger a general election. The source of this story was Nick Timothy, Mrs May’s former adviser who wrote a companion piece explaining his concerns. Timothy was…

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Bodies like Oxfam have long since moved on from the traditional idea of charity to become huge non-governmental organisations. The NGOs have become an enormously powerful fifth estate which uses the bully pulpit of conscience and emotional manipulation to lobby national governments and dominate the cultural climate. Yet because of their charitable aura they are not held fully accountable. The Oxfam scandal has exposed this culture of impunity. As Priti Patel observes, however, this is but the tip of a sanctimonious and morally compromised iceberg which now needs to be…

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