“We need to talk about Lionel Shriver” is the desperate cry among Times subscribers after the once-great paper published a bizarre and apocalyptic column by the author of the proto-Adolescence novel We Need To Talk About Kevin. Though several critical comments under the online version have been deleted because they “violated our policies”, those that remain include the pithy and accurate “What unadulterated bilge”.
Shriver, who migrated from the US to Britain in the late 1980s and then migrated to Portugal two years ago, is concerned about her new home, where she struggles to learn the language, moans about taxes and is shocked that “supermarkets don’t even carry cumin”. This will be news to the millions of Portuguese who use cominhos (whole or ground) in their stews and sausages on a daily basis.
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But this serial migrant is mostly deeply worried about (other people’s) migration to Britain – perfect fodder for the increasingly Reformy Times. She told readers: “This change is permanent. Millions of immigrants from clashing traditions will bring only more of their friends and families. None of these people are going home.” The fact that many of them are – 440,000 non-British nationals left the UK in 2024 – seems to have escaped both Shriver and those who commissioned her nonsense.
Apart from basic untruths, the rest of Shriver’s column paints a picture of a UK that is completely falling apart, with a “forbiddingly high likelihood of a British civil war”. Or, as one Times commenter put it: “Britain increasingly full of foreigners who refuse to integrate… meanwhile, I’m off to Portugal and can’t speak the language. Go figure.” Another wrote: “Immigrant to the UK and prominent Brexiteer gets fed up of immigrants and high taxes in the UK and so emigrates to an EU country with even higher taxes than the UK. I assume this is satire?”
But now Shriver lives outside Lisbon, how is she getting such a grossly distorted view of what is going on in the country she called home for 36 years? As she reveals in the article: “I still read The Times and The Telegraph. I watch Spectator TV, Spiked Online podcasts, and YouTube appearances by Matt Goodwin, David Starkey and Brendan O’Neill.” Ah, that might explain it!
