Murder in Farageland
- June 19, 2016
- by
- Matt
The brutal murder of Jo Cox has added a seemingly random note of tragedy and horror to this appalling, dispiriting and utterly venal Referendum campaign. And the brave and dignified words of Cox’s husband and sister have only shown us how low we have allowed ourselves to sink during this wretched process.
Anti-intellectualism; complete disregard for evidence; hyperbolic denunciations of the EU coupled with an almost nihilistic indifference to the consequences of leaving; lies, prejudice; whining ‘ We want our country back narratives’ of national victimhood; the most rancid xenophobia, fear and racism –...
In the gutter with Boris and Nigel
- June 12, 2016
- by
- Matt
I don’t know if you’re enjoying the referendum readers, but I can tell you that I’m not. I can’t think of any national political process that has taken place in my lifetime that I’ve found so constantly dispiriting and depressing on an almost daily level. It now looks at least possible that Brexit...
Tony Blair Says Sorry (again)
- May 25, 2016
- by
- Matt
The Chilcot Inquiry report really does look as though it’s only weeks away from publication, and Blair already out apologising for Iraq once again. Blair last did this back in October last year, when it also looked as though Chilcot was coming, and he told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria:
‘I apologise for the fact...
Interview with Jackie Walker
- May 22, 2016
- by
- Matt
Few people who pay attention to such things will have failed to notice the stridently McCarthyite atmosphere that has descended on British politics since the election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party last year. Needless to say, these developments did not originate from Corbyn himself. A spectrum of opinion that includes...
Son of Saul
- May 19, 2016
- by
- Matt
In these dismal times, when the issue of ‘left antisemitism’ are being ruthlessly and cynically instrumentalised within British politics in an attempt to neutralize opposition to the Israeli state, and destroy the leftist surge within the Labour Party, it’s salutary experience to see the Hungarian director László Nemes’s shattering Son of Saul. If...
Truth, Lies, and Politics
- May 14, 2016
- by
- Matt
In Werner Herzog’s The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, a pompous eighteenth-century professor asks the idiot-savant Kaspar Hauser a variant of the classic logical puzzle: You are traveling down a path and come to a fork in the road. One fork leads to a village where everyone tells the truth and the other to a...
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