Opinion

August is known as the silly season. It should come as no surprise that the term came into being in reference to the Conservative Party. Not quite the Tory Party we know today, but its beginnings in the tumultuous time of Queen Victoria’s reign in the 1850s and 1860s. This was the era of the […]

Fashion can be considered frivolous and in some ways it is. Fashion can be considered frivolous and in some ways it is. It is ephemeral, lasting for a season, gone. Real people wear clothes, always have, but fashion is the art of the self. Of course Vogue Magazine is part of the Big Business of […]

I don’t blame the Scots if Brexit leads them to want another shot at independence I have a bit of a confession to make; I very nearly didn’t get this article in on time. I’d like to pretend that this was because I was engaged on urgent business; swept away on some vital errand of […]

Manufactured nostalgia always has a political end. Its aim is to create new foot soldiers for The New Vision. Nostalgia. If you stand as close to the summit of the Acropolis as you can, you may be able to understand the deep meaning of this word. Its etymology is murky and ancient, but the root […]

I’m banging the drum for the people being allowed to make an informed choice One can scarcely even begin to wonder at the thoughts which passed through the mind of young Lieutenant Commander John McCain during his long years of imprisonment and torture in Vietnam, but I’m going to go out on a limb here […]

An idea for a movie that once upon a time no one would buy – because it was too improbable. The Pitch: imagine that the President of the United States, the most powerful person on earth, relies on a breakfast television show for his news and opinions. He interacts with it, sending out into the […]

The democratic principle merely holds that the wishes of the majority should, where practicable, be upheld. It says absolutely NOTHING about whether the majority is RIGHT You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I began my column by making the declaration that Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person (just one who believes, and […]

‘The Will Of The People … Once upon a time, I would have thought the phrase absurdly un-British’ In a brilliant essay entitled The Reichstag Fire Next Time, the Russian American writer, Masha Gessen, argues that totalitarianism has already arrived in the United States. It merely takes an event – one real or created – […]

I find I’m just as uncomfortable with sneering schadenfreude when it’s our ‘side’ doing it as when it comes from the opposition. Young Christian Americans sometimes wear a bracelet around one wrist inscribed with the letters ‘WWJD?’ This of course stands for ‘What Would Jesus Do?’ and is intended to help them clarify their thoughts […]

Robert Miller, the Brexiteer who keeps writing to us without being published finally gets his say in The New European A selection of the many emails received by The New European from Robert Miller – Credit: Archant THE NEW EUROPEAN: Who is Robert Miller? ROBERT MILLER: Well, I’m 49 and am currently in Liverpool. And […]

That the entire Brexit Project may now lie in the domain of Elmer Fudd would be what Bugs would make us question. The Trump administration is being compared to a Bugs Bunny movie; a Cheech and Chong film, or a ‘dumb-ass comedy’ (Robert de Niro). As with Star Wars, I got the point of Cheech […]

The zealots who allow the Brexit fiasco to happen are diminishing the UK inch by inch, day by day. More than twenty years ago, when I became a citizen, there was no citizenship test. That means that there was no official notion of what being ‘British’ was. Not in the sense of what being American […]

Really Theresa May? Consensus? With the ‘saboteurs’, the ‘enemies of the people’? Say what you like about George Orwell, but the man was even-handed in his scorn for political thuggery: having been shot in the throat while fighting as a volunteer against Franco’s fascists in the Spanish Civil War, he then came home and wrote […]

Prime Minister Theresa May has become a much diminished figure on the world stage Whether you care for Theresa May or not, the sight right now of the PM of Great Britain on the world stage should give none of us pleasure. She has become a diminished figure. Next to the Queen she represents the […]

Both will be as bad as the other. Julia Hartley-Brewer is a nice person. There, I said it. No, really; I’ve worked with her a few times over the years on various radio things (although last time we actually conversed on Twitter she insisted she had no idea who I was, which is entirely possible) […]

Everyone is buying Europe just when Britain is selling La construction européenne est ‘fragilisée par la prolifération bureaucratique’ et ‘le scepticisme croissant qui en découle’. The European construction is ‘weakened by bureaucratic proliferation’ and ‘the growing scepticism that ensues’, Emmanuel Macron announced at his gathering of legislators at Versailles. Summoning what could only be described […]

A poignant review of artist Khadija Saye who was among the victims of the Grenfell tragedy Khadija Saye, Sothiou 2017 – Credit: Archant The photographic prints of Khadija Saye have what can best be described as a kind of powerfully transgressive, tumultuous quiet. This is mixed with something spiritual, almost ritualistic. The Crowned explores the […]

Trump is the person with no credentials who talks back to the PhDs, and the big journalists, and the pollsters who just don’t get it. He’s Mr Tell-It-Like-It-Is. Forget about ‘Left’ and ‘Right’. It’s all about ‘Kaboom!’ Take the last US Presidential election . How could Donald Trump, born a millionaire who then became a […]

Less than two weeks after blowing £130 million on an election which served nobody’s interest but theirs, the Tories somehow laid hands on another BILLION. When you’ve been in the entertainment business since your early 20s (and your early 20s are a dim memory receding even more quickly than your hairline) you never know what […]

Communities must not become havens for the international super-rich who pay next to no tax In the US, housing estates are known as housing projects. ‘Projects’ for short. If you lived in the ‘projects’, you were considered to be one of the losers of the American Dream; the one who somehow (and it had to […]

You can’t have a negotiation when you have literally nothing the other side wants It’s become clear over the course of the last twelve months (has it really only been a year? The pre-Brexit era seems like some dimly remembered Halcyon Age these days) that much as there are people who have no idea how […]

The Conservatives have been exposed as the opportunistic self-serving incompetents that they are. Like many Corbyn-sceptics I’ve been bombarded with messages this last week demanding I issue some sort of grovelling apology for having said Jeremy Corbyn would lose the election. There’s one thing I feel I should point out in my defence: Jeremy Corbyn […]

None of us want this great nation to be laughed at … But that is what is happening Let’s be clear: The Conservative and Unionist Party lost the 2017 snap General Election. You’d have to be a corpse – and a certified one – not to win for the Conservatives in the constituency where I […]

What better persons to aid and abet that than the Alpha and the Omega of British populism on US television: Nigel Farage and Katie Hopkins. One day I happened to stumble on Fox & Friends, Fox News’ breakfast show, where the President of the United States gets most of his information. The show has three […]

If the Vice President and a majority of either Congress or the Senate decide that the President is no longer fit for duty, he’s out. I sometimes feel a little semi-detached from my own emotions. Like I’m observing everything which happens to me – and moreover, how I feel about it – at a remove. […]

The thing that has made the Conservative Party the most formidable election-winning machine in political history is also its fatal weakness; its blithe assumption of authority. It may come as a surprise to those of you who only know me from this column to be told that politics is not the abiding obsession in my […]

Starve of attention those who can’t keep their mouths shut This article originally appeared in The New European on May 26 As the aftermath of the atrocity in Manchester is being picked through both literally and figuratively, I don’t have anything useful, insightful or helpful to say on the subject. I could join in with […]

How the indomitable spirit of our city dwellers renders terror pointless Two ladies walked out of the shopping centre in Manchester and straight up to the reporter. They were of what the French call ‘a certain age’ and they were arm-in-arm. One of the ladies flicked her long black hair back, then turned to look […]

Embracing political identity on a tribal level can lead to disastrous decisions A staunchly left-wing friend of mine tweeted earlier this week that they were clinging to the vague (but still existent) hope that Labour could turn things around in the short time remaining before the election, that, in her words, ‘we might win’. I […]

The dangers of the presidential-style government Theresa May and her ‘team’ are seeking for the UK One of the advantageous of being an immigrant is that you can observe your new country in ways the native-born can’t. Or won’t. You can see things differently. If you choose to. And what I can see is the […]

Those of us who support Remain or Soft Brexit are stored away in the ‘women’ category. HARDCORE MASCULINITY A TEMPLATE FOR POWER WHICH DOES NOT ALLOW NUANCE BONNIE GREER Early in the morning a few days ago, a thread came through on Twitter. There are times when you have to be cautious and read things […]

When you think about it, Theresa May’s decision to call a snap election should come as no surprise. We were once on Question Time together. Before the show, she paced the waiting area like many of the politicians do. You have to be careful on QT if you’re an elected official. One slip, and you […]