BY CHARLOTTE GILL Last week, in The Daily Mail, television presenter Carol Vorderman argued that ageism is rife in our society, and must be treated with the same seriousness as racism and casual sexism. “In another 20 years… language to denigrate older people will, I’m certain, have been banished from Read more…
BY JIM BARRINGTON When Jeremy Hunt said, during the Conservative leadership contest, that he would vote in favour of repealing the Hunting Act, no doubt there was a collective sigh of despair from some Tory MPs and activists. It wasn’t so much that they had changed their minds about hunting, Read more…
BY TOBY YOUNG In 1937 the Nazi Party organized an art exhibition in Munich that consisted of 650 works of “degenerate art”. That is, art that embodied such characteristics as “decadence”, “weakness of character”, “mental disease” and “racial impurity”. Most of the works were by German artists like George Grosz, Read more…
BY CHARLOTTE GILL Here we go again. In a speech yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn deployed the Left’s favourite two words whenever it wants to harm the opposition: “hard right”. Addressing a crowd in Corby, he proclaimed: “The Tories have lurched to the hard right under Boris Johnson, Britain’s Trump, the fake Read more…
BY SUSAN HALL Sometimes over the last few years it has seemed as if the central thought of British politicians has been “What should we ban next?” Well I’ve got lots of ideas. We should ban socialists – their theories have damaged the world for long enough. I’d ban people Read more…
BY BEN PILE This week, Greta Thunberg set sail for the USA. Her much-hyped crossing across the Atlantic has produced a gush of media coverage, almost all of which has been entirely uncritical. Not one single TV news editor seems to have wondered, ‘why is this news?’. A failure, surely. Read more…
BY JIM BARRINGTON Listening to Luke Pollard, MP for Plymouth Sutton & Devonport, announcing Labour’s call for a review of grouse shooting was, if it wasn’t so serious, somewhat laughable. The claim that grouse shooting could be having detrimental effects on the climate and wildlife was obviously a cover for Read more…
BY CHARLOTTE GILL As if there weren’t enough dire news stories about universities already, this week it was revealed that Russell Group universities are accepting applicants with grades as low as CCD. The policy is aimed at attracting disadvantaged students, meaning those who have gone to a below average school, Read more…
BY IAIN DUNCAN-SMITH I know it has become all but impossible to think about Conservatism in the UK once we have left the EU but with the 31st October bearing down on us we need to lift our heads to a time beyond Brexit and what the post Brexit Conservative Read more…
BY REBECCA RYAN A Government of National Unity. A government of all the talents. God help us. Just the candidates tipped for leading this government are enough to make the blood run cold. Caroline Lucas. Heidi Allen. Jeremy Corbyn. They may as well go the whole hog and stick Greta Read more…
BY LISA GRAVES I recently took two online Political Compass tests, and both found me to be very much on the liberal Left side of the chart. I don’t for one moment think these tests are the most accurate way of finding out people’s specific political leanings, but I do Read more…
BY TOBY YOUNG As a thought experiment, let’s imagine that Labour wins the next General Election. In fairly short order, many British companies start going out of business, including Hovis Ltd. So Jeremy Corbyn decides to take it into public ownership. But the Labour apparatchiks in Whitehall know nothing about Read more…
BY TIM DAWSON The Duke of Sussex has jumped the shark. Earlier this week, Prince Harry removed his shoes and socks, took to the podium in front of an audience of tech billionaires and multi-millionaire c’lebs at a Google event in Sicily nicknamed “Davos-on-sea”, and opined about climate change. He, Read more…
BY REBECCA RYAN It’s the latest absurd measure. At Theresa May’s initiative, it was announced that all police officers would need to have a degree, or to study for one during their first years of training. The move will add a new set of academic requirements to police training, and Read more…
BY BEN PILE The thuggish intolerance and dark, infantile fantasising of people still grieving over the UK’s 2016 referendum result and Donald Trump’s election that same year are now well-understood. Brexit Derangement Syndrome (BDS) and Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) are real things, expressed routinely, without shame, in real life and Read more…
BY CALVIN ROBINSON Boris Johnson has pledged increased spending in Education of £4.6 billion per year by 2022. That’s incredibly close to the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ findings of the boost to funding that schools will likely need to reverse so-called ‘cuts’. Think tank Onward projected that schools need £3.5 Read more…
BY TIM DAWSON They’ve done it. They have. They’ve finally flipped. The Remainer-Left has been teetering on the brink of a collective breakdown for some time. Slowly but surely, all the “influencers” have been degenerating into hysteria – Gary Lineker, AC Grayling, the pathological David Lammy. But since Boris arrived Read more…
BY SURAJ SHARMA Positivity. Energy. Optimism. Dare I even say, humour. Words which haven’t featured in British politics much – if at all – in the last three years. But! In the past 24 hours, all four have washed through the Tory Party as we look forward to a new Read more…
BY GARETH ROBERTS Praxis. Oppression. Lived experience. The equity doctrine. Systemic power structures. Hegemonic hierarchies. Yes, that’s the gibberish of the contemporary social justice left, which having successfully colonised academia has seeped into public institutions and corporates. But here’s a thing. These nonsensical neologisms are already grimly familiar to me Read more…
BY TIM DAWSON Boris Johnson. The new leader of the Conservative Party and the next Prime Minister of this country. It was, in truth, inevitable. The momentum behind the classically-educated blonde bombshell has felt unstoppable since the leadership election was announced – indeed, since Mrs. May’s leadership was announced. These Read more…