The United Kingdom doesn’t have nearly enough pageantry. This might be hard to believe on the eve of a Royal Jubilee which will likely see an awful lot of pageantry indeed, but it is true nonetheless. Yes, we can still put on a splendid show when we have the mind. The state opening of Parliament […]
The strongest argument for a hereditary constitutional monarchy in modern Britain is a democratic one. There is no barrier to establishing a republic, beyond those who want one securing democratic consent for that change. The Royals now embrace this principle across the Commonwealth – from Jamaica to Australia – and it applies to Britain too. […]
The classic definition of the Yiddish word chutzpah is the child who kills his parents and then pleads for mercy on the grounds that he is an orphan. But a new one emerged this morning. The news that Elon Musk has struck a deal to buy Twitter has, predictably, led to a frenzy of comment. […]
‘The strength of our institutions cannot endure a PM undermining them for long.’ This was the dire warning issued by Charlie Falconer, formerly Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice under Tony Blair. I suppose there may be circumstances in which one might seek the professional opinion of an arsonist on a house fire. […]
The hugely successful children’s author and illustrator David McKee died last week. He will be best remembered for his Elmer the Patchwork Elephant and Mr Benn characters, the latter featuring last year on a set of 50p coins. Elmer championed a subtle anti-racist message to toddlers – that one should not pick on someone for […]
Channel 4 is rather unlucky in its champions. Claims that independent artists in the regions would no longer get commissions if the broadcaster was privatised, for example, are deeply unconvincing. Meanwhile, arguments that an end to public ownership is the first step on the road to fascism are plainly ludicrous. But that doesn’t mean that […]
Channel 4 has been an immensely successful enterprise. It regularly commissions popular programmes that attract substantial audiences funded by advertising revenue. In recent years shows like It’s A Sin, Russell T Davies’ heart-rending tale about five friends growing up in the shadow of the AIDS epidemic, earned plaudits from critics. News that the Government is going […]
When women said they were concerned about the danger of allowing males into single sex spaces in places like prisons and hospitals, they were demonised by the holier-than-thou crowd as ‘bigots’ and ‘transphobes’. When women said that allowing males into female sport would be unfair, some laughed and said they needed be ‘kinder’. When women […]
Russian culture is being cancelled everywhere. The Royal Opera House called off a residency of the Bolshoi. The BBC scrapped performances of Tchaikovsky. In Canada, Alexander Malofeev, the piano prodigy, was cancelled even after he denounced Putin’s war. The same thing happened to filmmaker Kirill Sokolov at the Glasgow Film festival — whose film was […]
‘Russophobia’ has long been an empty propaganda term, flung out reflexively by the Kremlin to distract from its sordid record of murderous repression. The reaction of some in the West to the invasion of Ukraine, however, threatens to give those same propagandists some entirely unnecessary ammunition. Sticking it to Putin’s ghastly regime is one thing, […]
The unravelling of the social compact continues apace, with a Labour peer the latest figure to take an axe to the ties that bind the generations together. The industry and regulators committee of the House of Lords recently published a report relating to net zero. Its main recommendation – that the upfront costs should be […]
This year’s International Women’s Day comes at a time when what it means to be a woman in Britain is in flux. While the House of Lords has voted to make misogyny a hate crime, Scottish proposals to enable self-identification will make womanhood the only protected characteristic that you can opt in to. There is […]
Culture Secretary Nadine Dorries is the latest to come forth with her department’s plans for putting meat on the bones of levelling up by announcing a major pivot in arts funding outside of London. On top of a new £43m from the Treasury ear-marked for spending beyond the capital, DCMS is also asking Arts Council […]
As the woeful decision to peg reform of parliamentary standards to Owen Paterson’s case showed, the Conservatives have developed a habit of shooting themselves in the foot on the rare occasions they actually try to overhaul our institutions. More often than not, neither ministers nor activists sound as if they have a coherent, positive vision of […]
A few days ago in Parliament, Prisons Minister Victoria Atkins gave a response to a written question on prisoner safety so suffused with doublethink I almost feel proud of my former colleagues in the Ministry of Justice who inevitably crafted it. Atkins was asked if the standard sexual re-offending risk predictor was being used to […]
BBC bashing is something of a national pastime (just ask Nadine Dorries), but it found new expression last week when a protester scaled Broadcasting House to knock chunks off a statue with a hammer. The perpetrator apparently objected to the depiction of Shakespeare’s Prospero and Ariel because the artist who created it, Eric Gill, was […]
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