In the people’s interests

The Transport Secretary Chris Grayling may be quite right (not words one often reads) to warn that failure to deliver Brexit may end the culture of a broadly moderate politics in the UK and usher in an era of ugly extremism. The Roman republic was destroyed by a similar crisis.

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Theodore Dalrymple

The real problem with mental health benefits

In 137 bc, it became clear to Tiberius Gracchus — a grandson of the great Scipio Africanus who defeated Hannibal in 202 bc — that the men who had fought Rome’s overseas wars ‘are called masters of the world but have not a patch of earth to call their own’. So in 133 bc this aristocrat stood for office as a tribune of the plebs in order to bring about a land redistribution in favour of the poor. He did so for two reasons: first, the senate, populated by the rich who owned most of the land, would never agree to such a move; secondly, laws passed by the plebeian assembly were binding.