I have been doing some online dating recently which gives you a lot of practice both in presenting yourself and in noticing tribal politics in other people.

I was having a friendly online chat with one woman and she asked me what I thought of Boris Johnson. As this was the Guardian’s online dating site and she had described herself as a socialist I assumed there was likely to be a correct and an incorrect answer here. But as I was quite interested in her I tried to be truthful in the least off-putting manner.

I said I had voted Remain but think we should respect the Brexit vote and I would certainly consider voting Tory if Boris Johnson stood the best chance of bringing the country together around a One Nation programme, perhaps not that different from the 2017 Tory election programme (shorn of the silly bits on adult care).  ...  Continue reading

One old assumption that has died a death this decade is that America is exceptional among western countries in resisting secularisation. While Britain and France are way ahead on the path of godlessness, the recent drop in Christian religious identification in the US is pretty staggering.

The rather inappropriately named Bonnie Kristian laments this coming end of Christian America in The Week, and strikes a warning that Ross Douthat and Lyman Stone have signalled before: namely, that if you don’t like the Religious Right, you’re really not going to like the Irreligious Right.

Culture wars are always about religion in a sense, and since the 18^th century in France and later in England the Left has been more secular, or even anti-religious. It’s obviously true in the US, where conservatives are more religious and many flashpoint issues are over faith; today just 16 per cent of American liberals think religious faith gives them a “great deal” of meaning in life, compared to 62 per cent of “very conservative” Americans. ...  Continue reading

One of the little recognised consequences of the Brexit deal currently before Parliament is that Northern Ireland could end up with a bigger say in Europe than the rest of the UK. That’s because its citizens may well have the option to petition The European Courts to have representation in the European Parliament through the continued election of MEPs.

This would be on the basis of a legal principle enshrined in EU law as a result of a petition by a UK citizen living in another British dominion — Gibraltar.

Back in 1994, Denise Matthews, a UK citizen then resident in Gibraltar, requested that she be allowed to vote in the EU elections that were coming up, this was denied as it was held that this right only applied to the UK. But in 1999 in Matthews v United Kingdom The European Court of Human Rights overturned the decision and (in what became known as the Matthews principle) it was held that any citizen being subject to a large degree of European law requires that that citizen has democratic representation i.e. the right to vote for an MEP in the European parliament. ...  Continue reading

Whatever your politics, Ross Douthat has to be the most interesting columnist at the New York Times.

Inspired by reading the famous 1972 novel out loud to his daughters, he devotes today’s column to the political lessons of Watership Down.

His reading rests on the idea that the rabbits, in escaping their doomed warren and seeking to found a new one, are trying to create a new political order. On the journey there, they come across two alternative warrens, each flawed in its own way.  The first seems oddly reminiscent of liberal modernity:

It turns out that this decadent pleasure-world is sustained by a dark secret: the farmer keeps them fed and safe in exchange for a number of sacrifices which he takes for their pelts and meats. ...  Continue reading

Yesterday, the BBC’s John Simpson relieved himself of a tweet:

Our problem with Brexit isn’t that a group of sullen Remainers are blocking the will of the people; it’s that we are divided almost exactly 50-50 over it. Organisations tend to require a 2/3rds majority to change their rules. Surely our nation should have done the same?

— John Simpson (@JohnSimpsonNews) October 21, 2019

OK, let’s think this one through. First of all, what does he mean by a change to the rules? Presumably not just any change to any law or regulation. It would have to be something big and more-or-less permanent. A second referendum on Britain’s membership of the EU would certainly count. But what would be the change to which the two-thirds threshold applied to? Would the super-majority be required to over-turn the result of the first referendum or would it be to approve the deal to take Britain out of the UK? That decision, whether taken by the Government, Parliament or our judicial masters, would most likely pre-determine the outcome of the referendum. ...  Continue reading

More than a third of households in some countries now consist of someone living alone, as shown in this chart from Branko Milanovic’s new book Capitalism Alone:

One of the points of "C,A" (Ch 5) is that greater commodification of many activities that were done w/in family tends to result in more people living alone. In Nordic countries, ~40% of HHs are single-person. (@lisdata; @nishant_yonzan) pic.twitter.com/qXLLHudDzp

— Branko Milanovic (@BrankoMilan) October 21, 2019

This has lots of implications but one of the least talked about is our political system. How we live has a huge impact on our politics; for example, how long a country has been Roman Catholic affects its ability to have a functioning democracy. Why? Partly because the Church’s ancient ban on cousin marriage led to the decline of clans and the rise of nuclear families. As Nottingham University’s Jonathan F Schulz explained a couple of years back: ...  Continue reading

Within a few short years, Sweden has moved from being the pin-up example of liberals and social democrats to being a favourite example of Right-wing nationalists of the dangers of immigration.

So what’s the truth?

I sat down with activist Siavosh Derakhti, a campaigner against antisemitism within his own muslim community in Malmö, the southern Swedish city with by far the largest refugee and immigrant communities, to get a first-hand view. In the interview he

How does one identify a tax haven — specifically, a corporate tax haven?

One thing to look out for is when subsidiaries in a low tax country appear to be generating revenues out of proportion to the wages they pay in that county. Unless those local employees are freakishly productive, it would suggest that revenues earned elsewhere are being reclassified through the various tricks known to cunning tax lawyers.

Take a look at the charts tweeted the other day by Jonathan Tepper. This one, for instance, focuses on the “affiliates” of US multinationals — showing their pre-tax profit as a percentage of employee compensation: ...  Continue reading