Prime Ministers Getting Paid

Shock and awe in Britain as it is announced that Boris Johnson’s extra-curricular earnings, since he left office in September, are approaching £5m. 

Britain’s Ceaseless Desire to Censor the Internet

You may not have heard, but the internet is an unacceptably dangerous place. A place full of terrorists, financial frauds, pedophiles and rudeness. 

Or at least it is according to the British government. 

We Can’t Use the Army for Everything

Politicians, especially Tory politicians, love the army. They love posing with soldiers; they love talking up its virtues; and they love drafting the army in to deal with pressing problems caused by failures of other parts of the public sector.  

Can the EU Recover from the Qatar Corruption Scandal?

Four people associated with the European parliament have been arrested in what seems to be the beginning of a major corruption scandal. The political career of Eva Kaili, a Greek politician and one of the vice presidents of the European parliament, has already been derailed. She has been suspended from office by the parliament’s president, Roberta Metsola – and thrown out from her previous parties and affiliations.  

The West Must Choose Representative Democracy — Not Sortation

The founder of National Review and godfather of the American conservative movement William F. Buckley once said that he would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard University. 

No Senate, Please

Since the publication of Gordon Brown’s doorstop constitutional report for Labour Keir Starmer has been backed into a corner. Not only has he now committed to abolishing the House of Lords, which the report recommends, but he has also promised that he will do so in the first term of a Labour government.  

Revenge of the Blob

All of Europe is haunted by a specter — or, more accurately, a Blob. 

The Blob gets its title from its namesake horror films, and was coined by perennial British cabinet minister Michael Gove, who used it to describe the vested interests in the field of education when he was the sector’s secretary of state. 

Britain’s Broken Economy Broke Liz Truss

Liz Truss has announced her resignation after only a few weeks as Britain’s prime minister. Truss’ premiership has been on life support since the announcement of her mini-budget last month spooked the currency and bond markets. Truss sacrificed her finance minister, the former chancellor of the exchequer Kwasi Kwarteng, in order to delay her own departure, but it barely slowed down the inevitable. Once her successor is selected and in office before the end of the month, Truss will be left as the equivalent of a political trivia question: the shortest-serving British prime minister who left office alive. 

Why Britain Is Broken

‘If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’  

That’s from George Orwell’s dystopian future Britain in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The words are spoken by the novel’s inner party inquisitor O’Brien, and they could be wryly altered to fit our times: ‘If you want a picture of Britain’s future, imagine waiting, unsuccessfully, for a doctor’s appointment— forever.’   

The Truss Challenge

 
Liz Truss has just become Britain’s prime minister after she was elected leader of the Conservative Party yesterday. In the end, it was not close.