Douglas Murray is associate editor of The Spectator and author of The War on the West: How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason, among other books.
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Regarding the pig’s ear of a story currently circulating thanks to Lord Ashcroft’s vendetta against David Cameron, perhaps I could add a codicil. As many readers will know, the allegation is that at a Piers Gaveston event attended by David Cameron while a student at Oxford, our present Prime Minister went through an initiation ritual
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Well that all got quite ugly quite fast. Last week Donald Trump, a contender for US Republican party’s Presidential nominee, was asked by a supporter at a rally: ‘We have a problem in this country – it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one… But anyway, we have training camps growing where they
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John McDonnell’s Question Time ‘apology’ was no such thing and I am amazed to see anybody for fall for it. It was obviously insisted upon by Labour party spin-doctors. But as the words themselves show, it was not an apology. Sure, he apologised for causing any offence or upset, but not for the fact that he
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Earlier this week I asked where the celebrated ‘Ummah’ is when it comes to Muslim refugees. I think we now have an answer. Here is a video of one Kuwaiti official’s response to the question of why none of the Gulf countries seem willing to take any Syrian refugees. ‘Kuwait and the other Gulf Cooperation
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I have just returned from a trip abroad to find Britain and Europe in a state of madness. I will not reflect on any connections between these events. But perhaps a reader could enlighten me as to why in recent days Britain and Europe appear to have decided that Syria’s refugees are entirely ‘our’ responsibility.
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The news that Jeremy Corbyn thought the death of Osama bin Laden ‘a tragedy‘ because he was never put on trial is not very surprising. Nor is it as far-out-there as most of his comments.I did a BBC Question Time immediately after bin Laden’s death where I got the impression I was the only person in
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I had a piece in the Sunday Times yesterday about Jeremy Corbyn and the dodgy excuse he and his spokespeople use whenever he is caught with another IRA terrorist, Holocaust-denier, Islamist or random anti-Semite. In general the claim is that he was only involved in the meeting as part of a ‘peace process.’ Occasionally he/they
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[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/thereturnofassisteddying/media.mp3″ title=”Lord Falconer and Douglas Murray debate ‘assisted dying'” startat=42] Listen [/audioplayer]A couple of years ago I contacted Holland’s top pro-euthanasia organisation. Our House of Lords looks likely to approve a bill legalising euthanasia here, I told them. ‘Very exciting!’ came the reply. Next month Parliament will again be discussing ‘assisted dying’, and although
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On Monday, Jeremy Corbyn was questioned by Channel 4 News about yet another Holocaust denier and anti-Semite of his acquaintance. And now the BBC’s World at One has asked Corbyn about another. There are plenty more, and this will be able to go on for quite some time. But Corbyn’s defence was interesting in that it went
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The Labour party includes many sensible and intelligent people who want what is best for our country. But all of them are currently gnawing their hands and weeping into their sleeves as they watch their party prepare to take this great leap backwards. I know of Labour politicians who hoped that putting Jeremy Corbyn up
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The Times today reports that leading Muslim clerics in the UK are warning that ‘religious sectarianism is on the rise in Britain’s Muslim community and threatens to spill over into violent crime and terrorism’. An investigation by the paper ‘found a sharp but largely hidden rise in sectarian tensions between the minority Shia community and
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I didn’t have very high hopes for ‘Life In Squares’ (the BBC three-parter about the Bloomsbury circle which concluded this week). But the first episode stuck me as promising. The second faltered, and the third was rushed and anti-climactic. Nevertheless it was all much better than expected, with some strong performances. The main reason for
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Every age has people protected by a certain ‘halo effect’? At points in the past members of the clergy might have been said to enjoy the advantage. More recently it would appear that celebrities were the ones who could get away with anything. We like to think we are beyond all this now – and
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Friends of mine who still call themselves ‘liberals’ or ‘leftists’ occasionally confide in me that they think the left might be screwed. Depending on how I feel on that particular day I tend to reply either that (a) they must stay and fight their political corner and make the left decent again or (b) one
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The literary emissions of the left are hardly ever enjoyable, but they can be instructive. Last year Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the 21st Century became one of the biggest-selling political books of the year. Like a thousand-page Soviet report on tractor production, it hardly seemed intended to be read. The point of its success was
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Thanks to Guido Fawkes, I learn that the left-wing author Owen Jones has just appeared at the Sinn Fein summer school in Ireland. According to Sinn Fein’s own newspaper, Owen used the opportunity to praise Sinn Fein’s ‘progressive’ politics, suggest that people take inspiration from the 1916 Easter Rising and announce what a ‘passionate believer’ he
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Bad news from the continent. In an interview with the German weekly Stern, Laurent ‘Riss’ Sourisseau, the editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo, announced that he would no longer draw cartoons of any historical figure called Mohammed. This follows his former colleague Renald ‘Luz’ Luzier saying a couple of months back that he would no longer draw
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The British have always been in love with Florence. First visits cannot disappoint. One friend recalls being herded around as a schoolgirl, unexpectedly coming face to face with the replica of Michelangelo’s David in the Piazza della Signoria and fainting right there in the street. Return visits can be just as stunning. You can fly
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The Prime Minister’s Birmingham speech on radicalisation and Muslim communities in the UK given earlier today is a rather important one. Regular readers will know that I’m not easy to please in this area, but it seems to me that David Cameron has come to understand the real problem of Islamic extremism and has been
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It is often said that British ambition and influence in the world are on the wane. But there can be few greater demonstrations of this than our country’s lack of attention to one of the biggest issues of our time. I am in Washington at the moment, and have been admiring how intensely the Vienna
