“Globalisation, as we once knew it, is dead,” Shadow Chancellor Rachel Reeves said in a major speech in Washington D.C. today. Speaking at the Peterson Institute think tank, the Labour politician set out her party’s vision for Britain’s economy, as well as declaring that “the old model is failing.” 

In the speech, titled “Securonomics”, Reeves argued that “supply chains that prioritise only what is cheapest and fastest struggle when a crisis strikes, be that PPE during Covid or energy following the war in Ukraine”. Talking about the limitations of globalisation, the Shadow Chancellor pointed to “a globalised system [that] can be gamed by countries like China who have undercut and ignored the international trading rules, and made it impossible for our own to compete.” ...  Continue reading

“If the voice doesn’t work,” Martin Amis told the Paris Review in 1998, “you’re screwed.” It’s just as well for the novelist, who has died at the age of 73, that his literary voice did work, so much so that plot, characterisation and moral instruction were all subsumed by the irony and wordplay which guided the reader through his novels.

The obituaries so far have focused on his status as the flagbearer of a dying breed of literary personality. He was an enfant terrible; he was a literary rock star; he was the book world’s answer to Mick Jagger. And so on. Yet the disproportionate fascination with Amis’s love life and famous friendships obscures his satirical gift: he was the Evelyn Waugh of his own consumerist age, and his brand of literary cynicism is at risk of dying with him.   ...  Continue reading

China’s ascendancy in the last half-century, as well as its alleged cover-up of the origins of Covid-19, has been aided by “useful idiots” in Britain and Western Europe, former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove claimed today. Speaking at the National Conservatism conference in central London, Dearlove said that “eminent members of our own elite are doing the work of our enemies for them,” and gave as examples “advocating for Huawei” and “refusing to publish serious scientific study that questions the Chinese narrative on the origins of SARS-CoV-2”. 

Dearlove has previously spoken out about the possibility of the Covid-19 pandemic having a man-made cause, arguing as early as June 2020 that the coronavirus began life “as an accident” in a Chinese lab. A year later, he stated that CCP officials would have destroyed any evidence of a leak, making the theory more difficult to prove.  ...  Continue reading

“The public is fed up with being scared of saying what is widely accepted as fact,” Kate Forbes, the runner-up in the recent SNP leadership election, said today. Forbes was speaking as part of an online event for the think tank Reform Scotland, titled “No-platforming versus Freedom of Speech”. The panel also featured the SNP MP Joanna Cherry, whose gender-critical views resulted in an Edinburgh Fringe venue de-platforming her at the end of April. 

On launching her campaign in February, Forbes was quickly targeted for her attitudes, inspired by her faith, towards same-sex marriage and gender self-identification. Speaking today, the former finance secretary claimed, “I should be subject to scrutiny, but you can’t have scrutiny if you use different tactics to shut down somebody.” She went on, “It is not about disputing someone’s views: it’s about boycotts and sacking people from jobs.”  ...  Continue reading

The UK is one of the least racist countries in the world, according to a massive new global study, with just 2% of Britons feeling uncomfortable about the idea of living next door to somebody of a different race. Asking whether someone would be happy living next to someone of a different race is one of the traditional ways that researchers measure racism. The data also shows that the British are amongst the most accepting countries in the world. In addition, the nation is among the highest-ranking for tolerance of gay people and immigrants.

The analysis from the Policy Institute at King’s College London, forming part of the World Values Survey (WVS), compared two dozen countries to judge global standards of trust and “acceptance of the people who live alongside us”. The proportion of Britons uncomfortable about living next door to somebody of a different ethnic background has gone down by eight percentage points from 10% in 1981 to 2% today, and now only Brazil and Sweden score lower (both 1%, essentially tied within the margin of error). Meanwhile, developed European countries like Italy and Spain score noticeably higher (12% and 13% respectively), with the least tolerant country on the continent being Greece, where almost a quarter (24%) of respondents would not want a neighbour of a different race. ...  Continue reading

Evidence is “insufficient” to support the use of hormone treatment on children with gender dysphoria, according to a report published on Wednesday by a Swedish government agency. SBU (Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services) worked alongside researchers from the Karolinska Institute to produce a comprehensive review of hormone therapy in under-18s, concluding that the practice should only be administered during clinical trials. 

SBU evaluates methods in use in healthcare and social services. Its report aimed to “assess the effects on psychosocial and mental health, cognition and body composition” of the hormone treatment on minors, and analysed two dozen previous studies of hormone therapy in children with gender dysphoria.  ...  Continue reading

Former prime minister Liz Truss was known for being a committed libertarian and free-marketeer, but in a speech today to the Heritage Foundation in Washington she offered a new emphasis: as a campaigner against ‘woke’ politics.

“The woke Left has succeeded where people are silent. They’ve managed to infiltrate huge parts of the public sector, huge numbers of institutions, a large swathe of the media; and what they rely on is people being too afraid to take them on,” she said. 

While much of Truss’s speech was given over to criticising China, she also attacked targets such as ESG, gender self-ID and critical race theory. “We find ourselves on the back foot,” she told the D.C. crowd, asking “the idea that it’s your individual characteristics that are important — your hard work and your talent — not what sex you are or what race you are: how is it that those ideas have fallen by the wayside? […] Our sense of self-belief seems to be dissipating.” She went on: ...  Continue reading

Public confidence in national institutions like the Government and Parliament has markedly declined since 2018, a new report has found. In the period, which includes the Covid-19 pandemic and resulting lockdowns — as well the political instability which has seen four prime ministers in No.10 Downing Street — trust in the police, media and main political parties has also decreased. 

The study, published today by the Policy Institute at King’s College London, polled 24 countries on their attitudes to various national institutions. Just 22% of Britons now say they have confidence in Parliament, down from 32% in 2018 and a historic low since the survey began in 1981. The current figure for the belief in the Government is 24%, down from 29% five years ago.  ...  Continue reading