Society

Laikipia, Kenya ‘The End,’ I typed. The book had taken me 14 years to write. I rose from my desk and stretched; outside, go-away birds glowered down from the fever trees and a dust devil coiled across the valley. ‘A walk at last!’ I grabbed my cattle stick — and up leapt the labrador, the collie and Potatoes, the mongrel. In a riot of tails, the dogs rushed out of the open front door with me striding in pursuit and there, on the front porch, I came face to face with an eight-foot long spitting cobra. ‘Look, and be afraid!’ the cobra Nag hisses at Rikki-Tikki-Tavi. But unlike Kipling’s mongoose,

Even before the result of the Tory no confidence vote was announced, the mood in Committee Room 14 was rather jovial. Chief Whip Julian Smith appeared minutes before the result, looking both exhausted and happy. Nerves were sufficiently calm for someone to crack a joke in the pause between Sir Graham Brady arriving and him starting to speak. ‘Let us pray!’ they quipped, sending the room into fits of giggles. In fact, the mood was almost eerily cheery, a bit like someone who has spent all night awake drinking coffee. When Brady announced that the Conservative party does indeed have confidence in Theresa May, the Tory MPs present broke into

The talk in Tory circles this evening is that the 48 letters are in. Two putative leadership campaigns are saying they are. But, perhaps more significantly, so is one close ally of the Prime Minister. There has, though, been no word from Sir Graham Brady, the chairman of the 1922 Committee. However, we wouldn’t expect him to say anything until he has spoken to Theresa May directly. If the letters are in, expect a quick vote. Tory MPs are on a three-line whip for Thursday and that would be the obvious time to have it. I think there is very little chance of Theresa May resigning before any vote. One long-time

JUDGMENT OF THE COURT (Full Court) 10 December 2018 (*) (Reference for a preliminary ruling — Article 50 TEU — Notification by a Member State of its intention to withdraw from the European Union — Consequences of the notification — Right of unilateral revocation of the notification — Conditions) In Case C‑621/18, REQUEST for a preliminary ruling under Article 267 TFEU from the Court of Session, Inner House, First Division (Scotland, United Kingdom), made by decision of 3 October 2018, received at the Court on the same day, in the proceedings Andy Wightman, Ross Greer, Alyn Smith, David Martin, Catherine Stihler, Jolyon Maugham, Joanna Cherry v Secretary of State for

The Guardian journalist George Monbiot has written a typically powerful piece explaining how a British blogsite, Spiked, once got some money off an institution which had connections to some moderately right-wing people. As George rightly points out, this is an example of “dark money”, which is an occult form of currency designed by Satan and some of his financially astute Infernal Imps. It can lead to the destruction of democracy and the spread of disease across the planet. Yes, all this just from reading a short article by Brendan O Neill or Mick Hume. But is George Monbiot himself also a creation of right wing dark money, something he likes

Alex Younger, the head of MI6, made his second public appearance after four years in the job, on Monday. He spoke to students at St Andrews. Presumably because of his young audience, and because he was promoting officialdom’s orthodoxy that ‘diversity’ in recruitment trumps everything else, Mr Younger did not wear a tie. This was a mistake for two reasons. The first is that able young people will wish to join MI6 not because it offers a comfy, reassuring version of their existing easy-going lives, but because it doesn’t. The idea of challenge is what attracts, and of exclusivity not inclusivity. It is, after all, called the Secret Intelligence Service.

RIP Pete Shelley. I would suggest three minutes silence, but Buzzcocks would have said it all in 2 minutes and 59 seconds. When I spoke to Shelley a few days ago for my podcast ‘The Green Room’, he was in good spirits, looking forward to another busy year, and especially looking forward to performing the entirety of the Singles Going Steady collection at the Albert Hall in London. He died suddenly on Thursday of a heart attack at the age of 63. He was a hero of mine and of many others. They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes, but I found Shelley patient and witty when I accosted him at a

After 12 games of classical chess, the world championship between the incumbent, Magnus Carlsen of Norway, and his American challenger, Fabiano Caruana, ended in a record-breaking twelve draws. My initial impression was that both contestants were willing to wound, yet somehow afraid to strike at the climactic moment. The more Machiavellian explanation for such overt lack of ambition was that Carlsen was so confident of his superiority at speed chess that he was content to keep things level and just wait for the speed chess tie-breaks. In fact, this turned out to be the case. Carlsen was lying in wait like a crocodile. When the rapidplay games started, the jaws snapped