United Kingdom
August 29, 2025 — John Hinderaker
You probably have seen this video, which seems to be a sort of Rorschach test. The video starts in medias res: A 14-year-old girl in Scotland has been charged with possession of a knife after viral footage showed her and another minor being approached and filmed by at least one foreign man. The girl brandishes a knife and an axe before walking away from the scene. The incident occurred… pic.twitter.com/pC8A1YwCFU
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August 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Britain is being roiled by protests against its government’s feckless immigration policies. Enormous numbers of “asylum seekers” have been welcomed into that country, fed and housed. A disproportionate number of those migrants are single men, and many native Britons understandably see their presence as an invasion that is being abetted by their own government. The commission of many sex crimes by these migrants has been the chief source of unrest.
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August 24, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Across the United Kingdom this weekend, people turned out to protest against the government’s immigration policies. But it goes beyond that: British elites, like those in America, hate their own country and its citizens, and have tried to make patriotism unacceptable. In Britain, you can get into trouble by displaying a Union Jack or, worse, St. George’s Cross, the symbol of England. Because England oppressed Scotland and Ireland, don’t you
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August 11, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Last night I was on the Rita Panahi show on Sky News, with guest host Danica De Giorgio filling in for Rita. Our segment covered the Ukraine peace talks, the Armenia/Azerbaijan agreement, President Trump’s takeover of the D.C. police, Bernie Sanders complaining about Kamala Harris’s campaign, the border wall and free speech in the U.K. There is lots to enjoy, I think:
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August 3, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Across the Western world, governments have opened the floodgates to mass third-world immigration. It is questionable whether such policies have been popular anywhere, and it is hard to identify a country where citizens have ever voted for them. Thus, unrest has been inevitable. The international political class has usually responded to popular discontent over immigration by shutting down speech and criminalizing dissent. Meanwhile, a number of European countries are rapidly
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August 1, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Mark Steyn thinks that a civil war in Great Britain is inevitable. If that seems outré, read his post. And also consider this. For a while now, Muhammad has been the most popular boys’ name in the UK. But this year, another name is rising in the rankings: Imagine if in 1945 hundreds of Brits christened their newborn sons Adolf. That might have rattled us as a nation, right? I
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July 21, 2025 — John Hinderaker
You can’t avoid them. In London, opera lovers who attended a performance of Il Trovatore at the Royal Opera House were exposed to pro-“Palestinian” propaganda: A privately educated “queer dance artist” unfurled a Palestinian flag while on stage at the Royal Opera House before tussling with a stagehand who tried to wrest it from him. During the curtain call on the closing night of the production of Verdi’s Il Trovatore
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July 3, 2025 — John Hinderaker
It is a global phenomenon: more and more people are dependent, in one way or another, on government. In many cases, that dependency arises from disability, or alleged disability. Despite spending astronomical sums on health care, we have, it seems, more disabled people than at any time in history. This London Times story is about the U.K., but it could apply to most Western countries: “UK spends more on disability
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June 20, 2025 — Bill Glahn
Metaphors. From the BBC, In an historic vote, MPs have approved a bill which would pave the way for huge social change by giving terminally ill adults in England and Wales the right to end their own lives. The Terminally Ill Adults Bill, which was backed by 314 votes to 291, will now go to the House of Lords for further scrutiny. The bill was approved with a majority of
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June 10, 2025 — John Hinderaker
We wrote here about Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s seminal speech to NATO leaders in Brussels, where he warned that Europeans must be primarily responsible for dealing with the Russian threat. Russia is not, for the U.S., a peer rival, Hegseth said. But China is. America’s focus will be on its rivalry with China and the need to protect our borders. As to Russia, we can help, but Europeans must take
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June 3, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Is the United Kingdom turning into a theocracy, centuries after the Church of England was secularized? Is blasphemy now a criminal offense? Well, yes. Although it depends, naturally, on which religion you blaspheme against. See the case of Hamit Coskun, who is being fined for burning a Koran and criticizing Islam: Hamit Coskun shouted “f— Islam” and “Islam is religion of terrorism” while holding the religious text above his head
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May 24, 2025 — John Hinderaker
It was from England that we got our tradition of free speech, but across the pond, those days are gone. There has been a succession of horrific cases in which Britons–always, conservative or pro-Israel Britons–have been arrested for controversial social media posts or supposedly inappropriate demonstrations. The most recent case is that of a Jewish protester who is not being named in the press, for his own safety. The background
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May 17, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The National Education Union is the largest teachers’ union in the United Kingdom, and in Europe. The NEU has now set out to teach British children to side with the Palestinians in their efforts to extinguish Israel: The National Education Union (NEU) is holding a workshop next month to train members in how to “advocate for Palestine in our schools”. At the same time, the union encouraged teachers to hold
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May 8, 2025 — John Hinderaker
The administration has agreed on a trade deal with the United Kingdom: President Trump confirmed early Thursday that the US has reached a major trade deal with Britain, saying the agreement marked a “very big and exciting day” for the key allies. “The agreement with the United Kingdom is a full and comprehensive one that will cement the relationship between the United States and the United Kingdom for many years
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April 28, 2025 — John Hinderaker
This story comes from the Telegraph and relates to the U.K. under its new Labour government, which has raised taxes, but you could write the same thing about pretty much any time and place. Capital was mobile 600 years ago, and it is still mobile today: Fresh figures this week showed that the British Government is having to borrow more than expected, as tax income typically paid by the wealthiest
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April 16, 2025 — John Hinderaker
Certain U.S. Supreme Court justices may be unable to answer that question, but the Supreme Court of the U.K. has concluded that a woman is–well, you know–a woman. The London Times reports: Every organisation in Britain has been told to revisit their equality policies after the country’s highest court ruled that trans women were not legally women. Women’s rights campaigners celebrated as the Supreme Court declared on Wednesday that the
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April 13, 2025 — John Hinderaker
We have been writing about the Rotherham scandal since 2014, more than a decade ago. At that time, I summarized the scandal this way: Rotherham is a city of around 250,000 in Yorkshire, where at least 1,400 girls were raped, and in many instances prostituted, by gangs consisting mostly or entirely of Pakistani men. It seems to be generally acknowledged that the local authorities had a good idea what was
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