Leo McKinstry is a British journalist, author and historian.
The brothers are back. Few political groups have been more exhilarated by Jeremy Corbyn’s landslide victory than the trade unions. For years they have been regarded as the difficult relations of the Labour movement, useful mainly for their financial and organisational muscle but not much else. Blairite New Labour was openly hostile towards them, Ed
The People’s Assembly, the self-appointed left-wing pressure group behind the recent anti-austerity demonstrations, portrays itself as the voice of the masses struggling under oppressive Tory rule. It claims that no fewer than 250,000 demonstrators went to its rally in central London in June (a figure dutifully regurgitated by broadcasters). But photographs of the event in London indicate
As a nation, we are learning to accept that our firemen are more and more redundant. The Fire Brigades Union fights austerity at every turn; its spokesmen say that every reduction in station numbers or jobs is a threat to public safety. One of their campaign posters even showed David Cameron and George Osborne alongside
The People’s Assembly, the self-appointed left-wing pressure group behind the recent anti-austerity demonstrations, portrays itself as the voice of the masses struggling under oppressive Tory rule. It claims that no fewer than 250,000 demonstrators went to its rally in central London last month (a figure dutifully regurgitated by broadcasters). But photographs of the event in
[audioplayer src=”http://traffic.libsyn.com/spectator/TheViewFrom22_14_August_2014_v4.mp3″ title=”Ed West and Ryan Bourne discuss the moaning middle class” startat=1402] Listen [/audioplayer]Almost from the moment the coalition came to power four years ago, a mood of deepening grievance has gripped parts of the middle class, fuelled by a sense that they have been the biggest losers from the government’s austerity programme. They
Where are the threats of a boycott, the calls for isolation, the outraged letters to the Prime Minister? Where are the rainbow logos, the delegations of human rights activists, the declarations of solidarity? On 16 March Bangladesh is to host the T20 World Cup, one of the top limited overs tournaments in international cricket. All
In this week’s issue of the Spectator, Leo McKinstry argues that Britain is dropping all its most harmful habits. Here is an excerpt: ‘According to the pessimistic narrative of national decline, Britain is now drowning in the effluence of moral collapse. We inhabit a country supposedly awash with vice and decadence. If we aren’t playing poker or
Gripped by his habitual despair, the French novelist Gustave Flaubert wrote to a friend in 1872, ‘I am appalled at the state of society. I’m filled with the sadness that must have affected the Romans of the 4th century. I feel irredeemable barbarism rising from the bowels of the earth.’ Warming to his bleak scatological
Siobhan Benita’s sanctimonious and mystifying bid to run London Ken Livingstone wept last week at the launch of his election broadcast, but when it comes to narcissistic self-pity, he’s been outdone by Siobhan Benita. Benita’s the other candidate in the London mayoral contest, the one who isn’t Boris or Ken or Brian or that Green
Here we go again. Like a macabre version of Groundhog Day, mass murderer Jeremy Bamber is making yet another bid for freedom. This nasty legal saga has been dragging on for almost 26 years, ever since Bamber was first found guilty of the savage massacre at his family’s farmhouse in rural Essex. By a majority
Carlsberg Special Brew is the beer of Churchill, Kingsley Amis – and me. They can’t ban it I have a confession to make: I am writing this article under the influence. As I tap away at my laptop, a can of lovely Carlsberg Special Brew sits on the table beside me, acting on my brain
The Prime Minister today introduces plans for minimum pricing on alcohol. In this week’s Spectator, Leo McKinstry mounts a defence of Special Brew, the tipple of Kingsley Amis and Churchill. I have a confession to make: I am writing this article under the influence. As I tap away at my laptop, a can of lovely
Outside London, at least, there are still officers who have their priorities right – as I discovered when my home was burgled The moment we stepped through the front door we knew that something was wrong. There was a bitter coldness in the hallway, accompanied by a faint sighing of the wind. On walking into
Seventy years after the RAF repelled the Luftwaffe, the Battle of Britain continues to have a powerful resonance. The conflict not only decided Britain’s very survival as an independent nation, but was also imbued with an epic moral purpose. The epochal months of 1940 represented the classic fight between good and evil, between freedom and
Britain’s firefighters are under-worked and inflexible, says Leo McKinstry. It’s time we created a unified emergency service A cooling breeze wafted through the plane trees under the inky-black Provence sky. In the distance, the band played as couples danced. The rural village’s annual summer celebration presented the gentlest of scenes. But suddenly there was a
When Leo McKinstry objected to his neighbours’ plan to build two blocks of flats, he quickly discovered the limits of ‘community empowerment’ under New Labour There is an increasingly Orwellian tone about the language of the Labour government. The Ministry of Truth, the state propaganda machine in Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, would have been only too
The Battle of Britain and the campaign by the French Resistance make ideal settings for fiction, since they are full of potential for conflict, romance, adventure, heroism and moral dilemmas. In this first novel, Patrick Bishop has exploited these rich possibilities to produce a gripping story. He has already proved himself a fine military historian,
When I visited the National Archives at Kew last week the place was full of them, scurrying about with their plastic wallets in hand, a look of eager concentration on their faces. It was impossible to escape their busy presence as they whispered noisily to relatives or whooped over the discovery of some new piece
Leo McKinstry on Andrew Hosken’s biography of Ken Livingstone One of Margaret Thatcher’s more bizarre achievements during her premiership was to have transformed Ken Livingstone from municipal hate figure into popular folk hero. When she embarked on her campaign in the mid-Eighties to abolish the Greater London Council because of its perceived inefficiencies, Ken Livingtone, the
In these times of green awareness, waste management has become an increasingly fashionable issue for the public sector, always keen to find new excuses for bureaucratic intervention. The South East England Development Agency (Seeda), one of the many quangos created by Labour over the past decade, has certainly latched on to this cause in a
