You've got to love being right wing in Britain – why here it verges on being a semi-respectable position. We don't have a New York Times to make us feel emotionally insecure about our belief system, and indeed, unlike both America and Canada for example, we even...
Question: what is the modern Tory definition of leadership? Answer: asking a question. This at least was how William Hague told it over the Euro. And I say this as someone who came to see a lot of merit in him by the end – this certainly was a man you could...
It's the double standards that gets me – no, cancel that, it's the spineless me-tooism that's really so revolting. I don't 'blame' the United States for being the number one nation, still less for doing number one nation stuff, but what does get to me each time...
Through stupidity, forgetfulness, poor geography and bad luck as much as anything, I found myself caught up in the 'great' anti-war march in London last week. Can't say the crowd was anywhere near as congenial as the pro-Palestine lot earlier in the year, nor was the...
Like all sensible Tories there’s only one result I really wanted to see from the German federal election, and that, of course, was an SPD/Communist coalition. As of the time of writing, it looks as if Chancellor Schröder’s just going to scrap back in...
Tony Blair has let it be known that he's willing to bear, quote (as they say), 'the blood sacrifice' the special relationship entails. Now we're above the sort of knee-jerk pacifist liberal jerkwaddery that cries out, 'hey, dude, it's not you man who'll do the...
In response, no doubt, to my instruction in this place last week to shape up, the advocates of starting a war with Iraq have been busy. In Britain, the charge was led by Sir John Keegan, who (to the point of parody) perorated with the conclusion that, were Churchill...
Despite having the money, the think tanks, and the media outlets, does it ever strike you what a pitiful 'case' the smack Iraq lot make for it? And add to that the small, but useful thing they have going for them – the fact that these somewhat tuneless...
In 1998 the UK government did perhaps the best thing it has done to date: it conducted a Strategic Defence Review (SDR) which was foreign policy, not resource led. Instead of defence policy being cobbled together in response to whatever scraps the Treasury affords the...
This agreeably short book received much uncritical praise from varieties of conservatives when first it was published in the United States. Its principal merit lay in the fact that it was taken to be another weapon with which the perpetrators of the 11th of September...
