Go Down Brexit
- March 25, 2019
- by
- Matt
‘Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one,’ wrote Charles Mackay in his classic nineteenth century compendium of human folly Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds.
Despite the two-week postponement of our formal withdrawal from the European Union, there is very little indication that those who inspired the greatest folly in our national history have begun to recover their senses, either collectively or individually.
In the last three days a petition...
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...
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...
Are You or Have You Ever Been an Antisemite?
- March 06, 2019
- by
- Matt
I’m not a Labour party member, but it’s impossible to ignore the ‘antisemitism crisis’ that has ground its dismal way through British politics for the last three and a half years.
Since Jeremy Corbyn was elected Labour leader in 2015, this crisis has grown and grown, acquiring new dimensions and components along the way. Where Corbyn was...
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’...
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