Ed West writes the Wrong Side of History substack
From our UK edition
I’ve always thought of the Daily Mail as catering to a sort of Roundhead English tradition, the inheritors of low Protestantism, the solid middle class, high in conscientiousness and below average in openness. That’s not my tradition, personally; I identify with the Cavalier inheritance, more Catholic, more reactionary-but-in-a-jokey-way (or is it?), represented by the Daily Telegraph,
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Q: How many Remainers does it take to fix a light bulb? A: Why should we fix it? It’s Russia’s fault it’s broken An old joke; I think the original concerned Arabs and Israel, but then there are numerous parts of the world where all manner of events are attributed to historic enemies. I remember a
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Giles of Rome, the great 13th century author, once noted: ‘Considered in absolute terms it would be preferable that the King be elected; but the corrupt desires of men and their manner of acting must make heredity preferable to election.’ There’s little that would dissuade him of that view today. Britain’s politics are in a worse
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One of the strange things I keep on hearing about this feeble government is that it has been spurred by Brexit to launch a culture war and reverse the Cameron-era detoxification of the party. They’re taking us back to the 50s, or the Victorian era, or maybe 1065. It’s one of those things one sees being
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Here’s an uplifting story from the vanguard of the culture war. As the New York Times reports: ‘At the Advent School in Boston, Erina Spiegelman, who is an instructional coordinator, recalled that a teacher last year asked a group of students the big question: ‘What is gender?’. The first answer came from a second-grader: ‘It’s a
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Remember when Keith Vaz got himself down to Luton Airport a few years back to greet new Romanian arrivals getting off the plane, declaring in his rather pompous way that: ‘We’ve seen no evidence of people who have rushed out and bought tickets in order to arrive because it’s the 1st of January’. This was
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I think it’s fair to say that Theresa May did not have a cracking conference, but the sympathy vote might even help her. I certainly felt sorry for the Prime Minister, and instinctively don’t like the nasty playground teasing from the Men of Twitter. (She does have diabetes, too, which can’t help.) But she has
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There’s a scene in the touching Richard Linklater film Boyhood where the young Mason goes to visit the rural family of his estranged father and is given a Bible and shotgun for the first time. I felt a niggling terror watching it, remembering Chekhov’s maxim, that the film would end with the boy taking the
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However stressful and bad things get for a parent of young children, there is always one thought that puts it all in perspective – just wait until they’re teenagers and they’re calling you up at 3am asking for a lift from a nightclub in New Cross. So reports like this one, showing that one in
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Never mind the terrorists, chaps, London will just keep calm and carry on. We’ll put the kettle on or defy them by going out and getting pissed, because life will just continue as normal. That’s the fitting response to terrorism, and it won’t affect our lives. Except it will. It will affect your life when
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At my nearest library recently there was an art exhibition featuring the works of local school children on the subject of ‘unity’, with lots of drawings (many of them outstandingly good) emphasising how we’re all the same (and yet diverse) and that what we have in common is far more important than anything that divides
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The Tory party has a new youth wing called Activate to try to win over the kids with ‘memes’ – I believe they’re called – similar to the way that Momentum has built a sort of cult around Jeremy Corbyn. This is in response to the dismal recent Conservative youth vote, which bodes ill for the
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It seems a long time ago that Jeremy Corbyn made an impassioned defence of immigration from both within and outside the EU, telling his party that: ‘Migrants that have come to this country make an enormous contribution to it. Our conference understands that and Tom Watson put that case very well about the work that
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To everyone’s huge surprise, Jeremy Corbyn has come out as being quite a hard-line Eurosceptic, despite his tireless campaigning last year during the referendum. He has also further cemented his party’s newfound respect for immigration restriction, attacking the importing of cheap labour from abroad. Whether any of this makes any impact on his legion of
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Who would want be a member of Generation Z? Having your every youthful screw-up tracked and recorded on social media, facing the robot job apocalypse and without a lolly’s chance in hell of ever owning a home in London – even if medical advancements allow them to work until they’re 200. To top things off,
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With all the awfulness in Britain this year, it’s been easy to forget about what’s happening across the pond, which is some small comfort. Donald Trump’s travel ban came into effect last night. It is a more nuanced and reasonable version of the order he issued in March. Will it make much difference to security
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Back in the 90s and even early noughties, it was a cliché that middle-class English people used to talk about house prices at dinner parties. That hasn’t been the case for a good decade, if my social circles are any indicators; it would be like bringing up interesting anecdotes of people we know discovering they
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Happy Independence Day everyone (groan). One year on from that momentous day, here are 13 things we’ve learnt from the Brexit vote. Most people will take any argument that suits them. They will swap ideological clothing if needs be – note how many on the Left suddenly care deeply about the pound and the City,
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I’m not sure I’ve ever been so pessimistic about this country’s future, and I’m not usually a barrel of laughs to start with. Aside from the terrorism, and the recent tragedy in North Kensington, there are real black clouds in the distance. Investors are being put off Britain, a problem that pre-dates Brexit but is
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When I was in my early 20s and quite conservative I assumed I was just an anomaly, someone who develops these traits earlier than normal, and conservatism was like baldness or impotence or the other bad things that get you in middle age; most of my friends and contemporaries would catch up at some point,
