Lexit: the Disaster Utopia
- March 21, 2019
- by
- Matt
There is in every society , and at every historical period, a yearning for collapse and calamity – or at least a fascination with these possibilities. Our fascination with things falling apart is sometimes based on a vague awareness that the prospect of disaster is never as far away as we think. But there is also a political tradition – to which both right and left are prone – which sees the complete unraveling of the established order as an essential prerequisite for creating the conditions through which something better or merely different can...
One Nation Under a Gove
- March 14, 2019
- by
- Matt
Whenever I hear politicians invoke ‘ the national interest’ I tend to reach for the metaphorical salt cellar. It’s not that I don’t believer there is such a thing, but ‘the national interest’ is one of those empty box phrases, like ‘national security’ or ‘the public interest’ that politicians can fill with whatever they want,...
England Kaputt
- March 09, 2019
- by
- Matt
As I write it’s now exactly 20 days, 8 hours and 32 minutes until the UK leaves the European Union. At 11 pm GMT on 29 March, unless parliament somehow finds a unity of purpose next week that it has not shown for nearly three years, all EU rules and regulations will instantly cease to...
Nigel’s March for Freedom
- March 02, 2019
- by
- Matt
As an instrument of protest and civil disobedience, the protest march has a long and illustrious historical pedigree. Think of Gandhi’s 24-day ‘Salt March’ in 1930. Or the 1936 Jarrow march. Or the 1963 Long March for Jobs and Freedom in the US, where Martin Luther King delivered his ‘ I have a dream speech’...
We Could Be Heroes: from Brexit to the Blitz
- February 26, 2019
- by
- Matt
History has played a big part in the national torment that we’ve been going through for the last two and half years. Social media and more mainstream political discourse alike are awash with facile historical references and comparisons, between Dunkirk and WTO rules, between the EU and Hitler, Napoleon, or the Soviet Union.
At times it...
Our Man in Slovenia
- February 24, 2019
- by
- Matt
If the behaviour of British diplomats these last two and a half years is anything to go by, the UK may not be taking the giant strides across the world stage that Brexit visionaries seem to think it should. Take foreign secretary Jeremy Hunt’s visit to Slovenia last week. Showing all the intellectual gravitas of...
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