Today, the cultural warfare is nothing if not asymmetric. History and culture are important enough to merit a lively debate, but the one-sided onslaught on everything from Western art to our national heroes, thunders Murray, should not be indulged for a moment longer.
The resonant echoes of our island story in public rituals, though a little pantomime-ish, reconnect us to our past. They help us feel the burden of our role as custodians of a national inheritance, so that Britain’s most precious features, while subject to repair and improvement where possible, are carried to future generations. In this sense, a country’s rituals are a sign of respect for the past, not blind deference to its every jot and tittle.
The general figures for inflation—which take into account everything from luxuries to essentials—inevitably downplay the harsh reality lived by the poorest who suffer its consequences.
While the #Partygate saga is by no means over, Johnson will be breathing a sigh of relief—perhaps even chortling—now that the attention has shifted to a new scandal involving his opposite number.
Rising inflation is a miserable prospect for a country which, at this point, should be bouncing back from the artificially induced economic coma caused by lockdowns.
Francis Bacon was the talisman of Renaissance science, producing an inductive philosophy which he advanced with all the zeal of a religious convert. But as far as he was concerned, promoting such methods required no actual conversion from the Christian beliefs which prevailed in his day.
Matt Hancock’s performance as Britain’s Health Secretary exhibited all the wisdom of a man trying to prevent a burglary by welding the cat flap shut, but leaving the front door open.
The prospect of an internal parliamentary probe could be more damaging to the prime minister’s survival than the ongoing police investigation.
Liberals like to claim that their political worldview is not even ideological, but simply what happens when kindness and common sense are allowed to prevail over dogmatism, tyranny, and impractical forms of political romance. But is liberalism, the ruling philosophy of our modern world, really so immune from the utopian temptation?
Particularly in Britain, the New Culture Forum’s film is likely to evoke plaintive sentiments, if not downright fury. Indeed, the UK Conservative government has altogether less to show for itself than the Hungarians do after an equivalent period of now twelve years in Downing Street.
After an MP had just been murdered in cold blood, and without evidence that social media played any role in causing the heinous act, the spectacle of MPs wasting parliamentary time with irrelevant distractions was a shameful scandal. For how much longer will the political class flee from reality rather than face unpleasant facts?
History buffs will struggle to recall when the two most senior government ministers were last caught on the wrong side of the law. That is because this is the first time in history that a serving prime minister has been punished for breaking it.
