The abuse of the Poppy goes back over a century, to the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of the eleventh month, November 11th 1918. Derry City’s Sunday, Bloody Sunday. Acting on direct orders from the British Cabinet, members of Her Majesty’s 1st Battalion, Parachute Regiment deliberately murdered 14 unarmed protesters and injured scores more;…
While the levels of schadenfreude will be going through the roof given the unfolding farce in British politics, the resignation of Liz Truss as UK Prime Minister was troubling in one vital respect. True, her juvenile salad understanding of economics, which involved spending billions on tax cuts and energy subsidies, was lamentable. To cope with…
One of the biggest problems for the left, as it confronts what seems like humanity’s ever-more precarious relationship with the planet – from the climate emergency to a potential nuclear exchange – is that siren voices keeping luring it towards the rocks of political confusion and self-harm. And one of the loudest sirens on the…
Much mirth is expressed over President Joe Biden mispronouncing the new Prime Minister’s name as “Rashee Sanook”. Many see this as showing how the merry-go-round of British leaders has confused the rest of the world. Some take up the opportunity to sideswipe Biden, saying that he was pretty confused to begin with. I doubt if…
Rishi Sunak’s career reminds me of another spoiled child of fortune who became UK Prime Minister without having to fight an election, Archibald Primrose, the only previous PM almost as rich as Rishi. Primrose, Lord Rosebery, became Prime Minister in 1894 when William Ewart Gladstone, old and now blind, retired after his fourth (non-consecutive) term…
Never underestimate the power of failure. As the Liz Truss Disaster Show demonstrates, the next pitfall is probably just around the corner. The UK Prime Minister has shown, along with her distinctly oblivious Chancellor of the Exchequer, how to ballsup the economy in the shortest timeframe imaginable. Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng’s “mini-Budget” delivered on September 30, designed…
