Iain Macwhirter
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I wish Remainers would stop saying nothing changes tonight. We lose European citizenship for a start.
Much of the Brexit commentary, especially from Remainers, is that nothing changes tonight. Trade talks have yet to begin. Nothing resolved. It’s all just symbolic. No it isn’t. Tonight we lose citizenship of the European Union, and the protections and privileges that went with it. That is much more than a symbolic act; more … Continue reading
Next week the SNP’s slogan “Independence in Europe” becomes redundant. How do they remake the case?
The SNP may appear to be at the very zenith of its political power. Nicola Sturgeon’s dominance of Scottish politics was cemented in the December general election when it reduced Labour to one solitary seat in Scotland. It was almost a repeat of the 2015 Tsunami. Yet the SNP face the biggest crisis in their … Continue reading
The Left made fools of themselves endorsing the Sussexes as paragons of progressive virtue. They’re a brand, not a cause.
Since the French Revolution, the default position of the left has been rejection of hereditary monarchy and contempt for the flummery and waste of royal families. Spend the money on food banks, was the line. Tony Benn, the patron saint of Corbynism, regarded royals, rightly, as a “feudal anachronism, the apex of privilege”. He thought the … Continue reading
I must kick the Twitter habit before it turns me Tory. It’s becoming aversion therapy for the left.
Before Christmas, the Times columnist Alex Massie tweeted that refusing to have friends who have different opinions to your own is “small-minded not principled”. This provoked an tiny-minded torrent of hostile posts from twitterites insisting that they couldn’t possibly be friends with “Tory racists”. Said one: “I’m not hanging around with people who would … Continue reading
How the left saves capitalism from itself (review).
Aaron Bastani: “Fully Automated Luxury Communism: A Manifesto”, Verso Donald Sassoon: “The Anxious Triumph: A global history of capitalism”, Allen Lane Following the Great Recession, trade wars and the longest period of wage stagnation since the Napoleonic Wars, people are wondering, not for the first time, if capitalism has a future. Is the system collapsing under its … Continue reading
Word of the year: “woke”. Destroying the cis-heteronormative white male fascist patriarchy one tweet at a time.
At the start of 2019, few but the politically committed used the term “woke”. If they’d heard it at all, most people would’ve assumed it had something to do with insomnia. “Woke” only entered the Oxford English dictionary last year as meaning: “alert to racial or social discrimination and injustice”. Like it’s parent “politically correct”, woke … Continue reading
In 2019, everyone was a Nazi for fifteen minutes.
During an anti-Trump march in London in June an angry young woman confronted an elderly-looking Brexit supporter, repeatedly calling him “Nazi scum!”. She then laughed hysterically as the man was pelted with milkshakes. The video of Soibhan Prigent went viral and became one of the abiding images of 2019. It was a sad case, not … Continue reading
1983 and me. Thought’s on Labour’s greatest defeat.
When Labour unveiled its radical and ambitious manifesto four weeks ago, it looked as if anything was possible. A green revolution, nationalisation of the utilities, redistribution of wealth. In the end it turned out to be the second longest suicide note in history as the dream died in Labour’s greatest electoral defeat since1983.. In Scotland, … Continue reading
“On the Record”, by David Cameron. A study in privilege (review)
HOW do you review a book that has already been filleted by extracts in the press, every morsel of news extracted? We all know about David Cameron’s pot smoking at Eton. We know how he felt about the treachery of Michael Gove, the many faces of Boris Johnson, his adoration of Tony Blair. The former … Continue reading
Want to know what real fascism looks like? Take a look at Spain’s repression of Catalan nationalists.
The SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has landed in Dublin seeking political asylum, along with her deputy, John Swinney, and the party’s constitutional affairs minister, Mike Russell. Their hasty departure follows the conviction of 13 Scottish “separatists” who helped organise the illegal 2022 independence referendum. Prominent nationalist politicians including the Scottish Justice Secretary, Humza Yousaf, the … Continue reading
