The rest of the blog
Robert Jenrick’s Union Jack pantomime isn’t patriotism; it’s a confession of weakness. A dying political class turns to flags and ladders because it has nothing left to offer but theatre.
By sanctioning International Criminal Court judges and prosecutors, Trump’s America has openly declared that empire stands above the law. Europe and Britain now face a stark choice: defend the court’s independence, or accept a world where justice stops at Washington’s door.
The Alaska talks were not a breakthrough but a trap. A “peace deal” that rewards Russian aggression is appeasement by another name. Ukraine’s fight is for survival, and any settlement must be on its terms—not Moscow’s.
The High Court’s ruling in Epping shows how Britain has turned planning law into a border regime, feeding jealous politics of scarcity and erasing the very category of the refugee. Now with Labour councils as willing collaborators.
The High Court’s ruling on the Bell Hotel in Epping is not a local quarrel but a turning point: councils asserting veto power, judges dismissing statutory duties as time-wasting, Farage and the Tories cheering, and Labour keeping silent. What began as a far-right protest has been laundered into national policy.
At the Alaska summit, Alexander Dugin saw triumph in mere recognition. But sovereignty today (whether in Moscow, Washington, or Westminster) exists only as theatre, feeding on crisis and rendering peace impossible.
Jake Wallis Simons’s fantasy of faith, flag and family is less tradition than imported culture-war kitsch.
Robert Jenrick’s photo-op at an anti-asylum protest was more than poor judgement. By posing alongside the milieu of Eddy Butler and the BNP, he signalled how far the Conservative Party has travelled towards convergence with the far right.
While Trump governs and the Democratic Party fragments, Sanders and AOC offer mass therapy disguised as mobilisation, nostalgia in place of a plan.