There is enough uncertainty over the next year to give him a decent chance When Ian Paisley said “No!”, people believed that he meant what he said. The Big Man may be gone but his party lives on and it would be extremely unwise for anyone to assume that when Arlene Foster says “no”, she means any different from her predecessor. The DUP do not bluff. Ever. They might occasionally change their minds but when they do, they do so…
Republican Senators fear Trump and his voters more than anything Brett Kavanaugh will almost certainly be confirmed today as the newest member of the US Supreme Court. His behaviour in front of the Senate Committee – aggressive, threatening, overly emotional, highly partisan, evasive – would have been surprising for a nominee to an Executive branch position; as a candidate for the country’s highest court, where you might think that cool minds, sober judgement and lofty impartiality would be called for,…
The Thatcherite consensus is dead; the case for choice, freedom and opportunity is not In full, the United States’ Declaration of Independence is not a very good document. It bears the classic mark of the composite motion, being too long overall and unbalanced in its structure: very nearly half of it is a list of twenty-seven grievances. Fortunately, for history and for the revolutionaries, it was drafted by someone who knew not only how to turn a phrase but where…
Indeed, Labour best hope is to push for one – but to fail Brexit is not unlike Hurricane Florence. A huge amount of energy is being expended, mostly to destructive effect, dumping a load of output which is flooding out a great deal else, while not going anywhere fast. And just as Florence attracts storm-chasers, Brexit attracts any number of other eccentrics, on all sides, either to participate in the main thing or to chase rainbows. One such rainbow is…
But the NYT article will drive him deeper into the bunker Dysfunctional doesn’t begin to describe the White House. The high level of turnover among staff, the erratic decision-making, the presidential public streams-of-consciousness made with zero empathy for their subjects, the failure to actually deliver on key policies like The Wall: we knew all this and have done pretty much since Day 1, if not before. What we didn’t know before the sensational New York Times article[1] was the extent…
When does he bring the next generation through? Stalin liked a good purge. Leaving aside his sadistic and psychopathic tendencies, and the fact that they kept population, politicians, military and everyone else in greater or lesser states of constant fear, they also raised him closer to the god-like status he presumably aspired to. Not just because he was ultimately directing events, nor the pseudo-religious worship but the fact that by the late 1930s, he alone remained of the revered revolutionary…
FPTP is not an insuperable barrier in the right conditions Anyone remember the Pro Euro Conservatives? The Party was formed by two former Tory MEPs opposed to the direction that William Hague was taking the party on Europe. After a good deal more media interest than was due for a tiny splinter party – mainly, presumably, because it allowed a new angle on the never-ending internal Tory conflict on Europe – they polled 1.3% at the 1999 European elections, lost…
At the heart of modern anti-Zionism is the traditional envy of Jewish success If Jeremy Corbyn had been politically active seventy years ago, there’s no doubt that he would have been a vocal champion of Zionism. Few things animate him like support for a people he regards as oppressed, who are fighting against a state like Britain or the US. If that struggle involves terrorism, no big deal for him. The creation of a Jewish Israel out of Britain’s League…