Actors, thought Samuel Johnson, were “no better than creatures set upon tables and joint-stools to make faces and produce laughter, like dancing dogs”. The dyspeptic doctor liked to say things for effect but, on this occasion, he was drawing on a lengthy classical tradition that saw acting as a form of professionalised deceit or moral […]
I’ve realised that there is a gargantuan misunderstanding at the heart of the referendum debate – a misunderstanding to which commentators and MPs are as prone as anyone else. It concerns the phrase “single market”. Whether by accident or by design, the authors of the EU’s single market gave it a misleading title. What most […]
‘I have not a shadow of a doubt that William Shakespeare would have voted to remain,’ writes Chris Bryant, in a piece of sustained click-bait. The Euro-fanatical Labour MP was aiming to needle, and he succeeded magnificently. As the poet himself said, ‘he did provoke me with language that would make me spurn the sea, […]
How dismal the Remain-mongers sound, how timorous. ‘Yeah, we know that the EU is a bit rubbish, but it’s safer to stick with what you’ve got.’ It’s not just that they say nothing positive about Britain. They don’t even say anything positive about the EU. All their talk of ‘staying in a reformed Europe’ dried […]
Have you ever bought an ISA? Or held premium bonds? Then, my friend, you are a tax avoider. Sensible tax planning doesn’t make you a bad person. If you have money to give away, give it to a well-chosen charity; don’t hand it to the government to spend on subsidies to wealthy landowners/mandatory racism awareness […]
There is something faintly distasteful about using children as political agents. One thinks of the Spies, the youth organisation in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, or of the revolting Pavel Morozov, who was murdered by vengeful kulaks after shopping his own parents for hoarding grain. (Stalin decreed a full Soviet state funeral for the boy but, […]
If you thought that there was no longer such a thing as the British Establishment, think again. The Remain side is campaigning chiefly through letters signed by grandees: FTSE chairmen, directors of mega-charities and NGOs, former ambassadors and the like. The sorts of people, as the saying used to go, who “live in Who’s Who and die […]
The UK government is to publish a report on what Britain’s post-EU options would look like. Here are few problems with the dodgy dossier. 1. Until three weeks ago, David Cameron was threatening to leave the EU over a trivial tweak to our welfare rules. Now we’re supposed to believe that it’s the gamble of the century? He […]
Back in August, one of the Prime Minister’s aides told the Sunday Times, ‘If the referendum campaign is fought around what is actually renegotiated we are f****d.’ Yup. Far from boosting the Remain campaign, as originally intended, the renegotiation process served only to raise and then dash expectations. The Guardian and the BBC were as […]
By the time we get to vote on leaving the EU, you’ll be sick and tired of figures. Unless you’re very unusual, you’ll be subject to the human tendency to confirmation bias. When you see claims that sustain your pre-existing assumptions, you’ll vaguely believe them; when you see claims that challenge your prejudices, you’ll barely […]
Let’s start with the basics. The reciprocal stationing of UK and French immigration officials on both sides of the Channel has nothing whatever to do with the EU. It rests on two bilateral deals between London and Paris: the 1993 Sangatte Protocol and the 2003 Le Touquet Treaty. This is the key point to remember […]
The idea of an ‘emergency brake’ that can be applied ‘the day after the referendum’ is false. It is, moreover, clearly, palpably, demonstrably false. Let me explain why. For a long time, it was understood that social security was one of the few areas of government policy where there was no EU competence. It’s true […]
Shakespeare’s women, like his men, are as vivid to us as flesh-and-blood people. More vivid, indeed, because living people tend not to soliloquise their innermost thoughts. Consider Cleopatra, one of the four characters whom A.C. Bradley found ‘inexhaustible’ (along with Hamlet, Falstaff and Iago). The queen dominates her play utterly, and yet remains as unfathomable […]
Iain Martin closed the old year with 15 reasons to be cheerful about 2015. Let me open the new one with 16 reasons to be cheerful about 2016. 1. The world will be richer. According to the IMF, global GDP will increase by 3.8 per cent in 2016, up from 3.3 per cent in 2015. […]
Euro-integrationists are barely going through the motions. They’re not trying to pretend that anything important is being negotiated. As David Cameron’s initial discussions in Brussels came to an end, I took part in a couple of broadcast debates. One was with a German Europhile called Daniel Gros, who was admirably frank. “The EU cannot change […]
David Cameron must be wishing he had never gone down the road of trying to negotiate a different deal with the EU. The tactic was originally designed to make a “Remain” vote more likely; instead, it is serving to show how utterly resistant to reform the Brussels institutions are. Britain’s demands have been diluted and […]
David Cameron must be wishing he had never gone down the road of trying to negotiate a different deal with the EU. The tactic was originally designed to make a “Remain” vote more likely; instead, it is serving to show how utterly resistant to reform the Brussels institutions are. Britain’s demands have been diluted and […]
The House of Commons does these debates well. The cases for and against intervention in Syria have been ably rehearsed, and I have learned things that I didn’t previously know. With a handful of exceptions, the speeches on both sides were measured, judicious and informative. I have wavered back and forth on Syrian intervention, envying […]
It was a quintessentially Belgian reaction. As army vehicles patrolled their streets, giving Brussels the aspect of a city under foreign occupation, the good burghers of that grey, rainy capital were asked to say nothing about what they might see from their windows. How did they respond? By Tweeting pictures of their cats. Ah, mais […]
The aftershock of an atrocity rarely brings out the best in us. It is difficult to focus on the horror of what has happened, so we engage in forms of displacement activity by considering the indirect implications. Insurance brokers reacted to the 9/11 enormity by calculating the effect on premiums; traders sold shares; Palestinians pressed […]
