Politics

Five years ago, following the murder of George Floyd, a ‘racial reckoning’ shook the West. For some it was a time for our part of the world to come to terms with the reality of racism and to address the legacy of white supremacy. For others the protests following Floyd’s death poured petrol on the fire of the culture wars; racial divisions became reified and Britain was intellectually colonised by our American overlords in a spectacle of futile kneeling, black squares, virtue signalling and gesture politics. What I saw during that period, however, was the ghost of Malcolm X, haunting our times like Banquo at the feast. He was born

Last week, a 75-year-old Christian grandmother was bundled into the back of a police van outside a Glasgow hospital. Her alleged crime? Conversation.  Rose Docherty wasn’t spray-painting walls or blocking doorways. She wasn’t shouting or shoving leaflets into anyone’s hands. She simply held a sign offering a listening ear: ‘Coercion is a crime. Here to talk, only if you want.’ In the eyes of the state, this made her a criminal.  Under Scotland’s new ‘buffer zone’ laws, even the possibility of ‘influencing’ a passerby outside an abortion facility is treated as criminal behaviour. Rose wasn’t standing with an influential message. She was giving people the choice: walk on or stop and chat. But choice, it seems, now belongs only to the abortion lobby. Rose, with two hip replacements, was

In Manchester, a vigil is taking place after Thursday’s horrific terror attack left two people killed and three seriously injured in hospital. Prime Minister Keir Starmer has vowed to do ‘everything’ in his power to protect Jewish people in Britain, condemning the ‘horrific’ terror attack on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also paid her respects to the victims and their families – before, this morning, turning on pro-Palestine protestors.  And while new Justice Secretary David Lammy has also urged pro-Gaza protestors to ‘stop and stand back’ instead of joining planned marches this weekend, he has not been well received in Manchester.

According to Theresa May, Kemi Badenoch’s promise to repeal the Climate Change Act is a ‘catastrophic mistake’. Writing for The Spectator today, Ed Shackle, who works for a market research firm called Public First, was adamant that the policy change won’t just degrade the planet or obliterate Lady May’s thin political legacy – it is a bad electoral error, too. Quoting one of his polls, he claims that 37 per cent of Conservative voters say they wouldn’t vote for a party which is not committed to reaching net zero. He also claimed: “The British public consistently backs energy infrastructure – even when it’s close to their homes.’ Not round my way, in Cambridgeshire. It

The terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue – on the morning of Yom Kippur – can be described as a lot of things. Horrific, shocking, vile, but it was a not a surprise. Britain has been heading in this direction for many years. Jews in Manchester already knew they were potential targets While the 7/10 attacks, the worst slaughter of Jews since the Second World War, brought antisemitic terrorism into global focus, Jews in Manchester already knew they were potential targets. In 2012 a husband and wife from Oldham were jailed for an Al-Qaeda inspired plot to bomb Jewish buildings in Greater Manchester. In May 2024, three men appeared in court charged