United Kingdom
March 28, 2020 — John Hinderaker
In Great Britain, extraordinary measures are being taken to ensure compliance with a nationwide shutdown order. From Breitbart: Humberside Police in northern England has built a website for citizens to inform on their neighbours for violating the government’s rules on daily exercise and social distancing. You can only go for one walk a day. If you go out twice, you can be reported to the police. People’s worst instincts are
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February 16, 2020 — John Hinderaker
Current cultural and political developments in the U.S. are so weird that I tend to assume we must be unique. But not so: in the United Kingdom, too, “wokeness” operates as an explicit threat to freedom. The situation is even worse there than here, in fact. The London Times reports: Police have been urged to rewrite the rules on hate crime after a judge likened a force to the Gestapo
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February 1, 2020 — Scott Johnson
Hail Brittania! As of midnight, out of the European Union and free at last. Nigel Farage made himself a key player in the uprising against Britain’s membership in the European Union as a member of the European Parliament since 1999 and past leader of the United Kingdom Independence Party. In the video below he takes us on an entertaining tour of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on his last there
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January 18, 2020 — John Hinderaker
You probably remember the Rotherham child sex abuse scandal that came to light several years ago. Investigations have been ongoing since then, and one just-completed inquiry has made headlines in Great Britain. This is from the London Times: “Rotherham police chief: we ignored sex abuse of children.” A senior police officer admitted that his force ignored the sexual abuse of girls by Pakistani grooming gangs for decades because it was
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January 14, 2020 — Paul Mirengoff
My thoughts about Prince Harry and his wife apparently abandoning the royal family aren’t as insightful or as nuanced as those expressed by John in his outstanding post about the matter. As I see it, no one should feel obligated to participate in the British monarchy, and certainly not in a non-starring role. My argument isn’t that one’s desire for happiness trumps one’s obligations. Few doctrines are more dangerous. My
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January 12, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The number one story in the news in Great Britain (and a major story around the world) is the apparent abandonment of the Royal Family by the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, better known as Prince Harry and Meghan Markle. The story obviously has a strong personal element, but it also strikes me as emblematic of our time. The British monarchy is not just ancient, but profoundly old-fashioned. It is
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January 11, 2020 — John Hinderaker
The London Times has an interview with Ben Wallace, Great Britain’s Defense Secretary, that offers a good perspective on American foreign policy under the Trump administration. It is interesting, in particular, to contrast the reporter’s editorializing with what Wallace actually says: Britain must prepare to fight wars without America, the defence secretary has warned, amid concerns that President Donald Trump will pursue an ever more isolationist foreign policy. Isolationist? I’m
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December 26, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Britain’s Sun newspaper comments on a new report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research. The Sun’s focus is Britain, but the report is highly relevant to the U.S. as well: BRITAIN’s economy has defied forecasts predicting it would be overtaken by France as a new report reveals we have cemented sixth place in the world. And by 2034 the UK’s economy is now predicted to be a quarter
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December 13, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Tonight there was a rather large demonstration against Boris Johnson and the Tories in central London, I believe near Downing Street. Of course, Johnson hasn’t done anything since yesterday to justify the angry demonstration. Basically, the leftists were protesting the fact that they lost the election. Any outcome other than a left-wing victory is, to them, unacceptable. It looked very much like a similar demonstration in the U.S. of the
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December 13, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Boris Johnson has won a smashing victory in the British parliamentary elections. As of this morning, the Tories have secured some 364 seats and, based on that number, a parliamentary majority of 78. The Tories picked up 47 seats in the election. The vile Jeremy Corbyn led the Labour Party to an ignominious defeat. Labour has come away with 203 seats. Two hundred three seats is 203 too many for
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December 12, 2019 — John Hinderaker
Election results are still coming in, but it is clear that Britain’s Conservatives have won a great victory, enough to give them a working majority in the House of Commons that will will allow them to proceed, at long last, with Brexit. Late this afternoon, after exit polls indicated a Tory victory, two of my policy fellows at Center of the American Experiment sat down to discuss the election and
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December 12, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Brits go to the polls today in their lost shot at Brexit. The brilliant Douglas Murray memorably sketches one of the other notable choices confronting voters in the Spectator column “Labour’s anti-Semitism shame must never be forgiven.” The transformation of the Labour Party looks like a harbinger of trends in the Democratic Party. Attention must paid. Murray writes: A huge amount has been written about Corbyn’s anti-Semitism and links to
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December 8, 2019 — John Hinderaker
That’s what the London Times calls the explosive Labour Party files on anti-Semitism that, having been leaked, have now been reviewed by the newspaper. The rank instances of anti-Semitism exhibited by Labour members of Parliament, and the party’s weak response thereto, are shocking: The secret files, seen by this paper, reveal the party is still overwhelmed with complaints about anti-Jewish racism that have been left unresolved for months or years.
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November 28, 2019 — Paul Mirengoff
Yesterday, John wrote about the upcoming election in Britain. Having just returned from England, I thought I might add the following observations: John is right that the polls favor the Tories. Indeed, the poll by YouGov he cites predicts a big victory for that party. And, as John notes, YouGov’s poll of the last election was just about spot on. The YouGov poll seems reasonably in line with other surveys.
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November 27, 2019 — John Hinderaker
The London Times headlines: “MRP election poll: Boris Johnson heads for big majority.” Boris Johnson is on course for a comfortable majority, according to a polling model that accurately predicted the election outcome two years ago. The Conservatives would win 359 seats, Labour 211, the SNP 43 and the Liberal Democrats 13 if the election were held today, according to a seat-by-seat analysis based on current polling by YouGov for
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September 24, 2019 — Scott Johnson
Today comes word that the United Kingdom’s Supreme Court has ruled Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s proroguing of Parliament unconstitutional. I thought only our Supreme Court was able to act in such a blatantly high-handed fashion. Here at the Spectator and here at Spectator USA, however, Richard Ekins anticipated this result a few days ago: Who runs Britain? When Boris Johnson’s lawyers made their case in front of the Supreme Court
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September 22, 2019 — John Hinderaker
If, like me, you have wondered how a left-wing loony like Jeremy Corbyn can remain in control of the Labour Party, this poll, reported in the Sun, suggests the answer: Labour is a party of left-wing loonies. Marxist zealots have seized control at every level since Jeremy Corbyn became leader — and are poisoning the debate with their hardline views. For example: only a small minority of Labourites believe that
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