The Irish Republic has always been something of a political outlier — the historian Norman Davies once remarked that it is in some ways an Eastern European country marooned in the Atlantic — but in the 2020s, its greatest single divergence from the rest of Europe is its total absence of a viable Right-wing populist movement. But is this changing?

Certainly, if we accept the analysis that Europe’s drift towards Right-wing politics is less a product of Russian plots or nefarious misinformation but instead the expected response to the transformative demographic effects of mass immigration, then Ireland is remarkable as the dog that hasn’t yet barked. Other European nations like Sweden, Spain and Portugal, all theorised back in the 2010s to be politically immune from the first populist surge, now possess Right-wing movements either in or on the brink of assuming some degree of political power. But Ireland adopted a more or less open borders immigration policy later than other European nations, just as the rest of Europe began abandoning it, to a degree that even Europe’s most migration-friendly parties would now shy away from as electoral poison. ...  Continue reading

Former New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo, at one point considered a hero for leading that state’s Covid response, has predicted that he would struggle to implement similar pandemic restrictions if another virus swept through the country.

In a recent episode of his podcast “As A Matter of Fact”, Cuomo discussed the Covid-19 pandemic with Dr Leana Wen, a Public Health Professor at George Washington University. The former governor said that, in a future pandemic, “the amount of compliance…would be much, much lower than it was in the beginning of Covid because people do not trust the government — especially on this issue.” ...  Continue reading

What’s the best way to do well at the next election? With Labour ahead in the polls and the Lib Dems achieving highs not seen since Cleggmania, perhaps the most simple strategy might be to shut up and say nothing. 

This is most definitely the best advice for the Lib Dems. Success in by-elections and council elections rests largely on being the protest vote of the sensible middle class. But as this week’s conference in Bournemouth shows, the party has been struggling to reconcile its Nimbyist campaigning at a local level with a national message. The conference has already been divided by Ed Davey’s suggestion that they roll back on housing targets to favour a “community-led approach” instead. Such was the level of animosity caused by this debate that ex-leader Tim Farron described the youth wing of the party’s commitment to a 380,000 housing target as “pure Thatcherism”. ...  Continue reading

Justin Trudeau’s government has been forced to apologise to Canadian Jewish organisations, after House Speaker Anthony Rota honoured a 98-year-old war veteran — who then turned out to have fought under the Nazis.

The incident occurred following a visit to the Canadian government by Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Rota called out Yaroslav Hunka, a veteran sitting in the gallery, prompting a round of applause. Then someone dug up a blog post Hunka wrote in 2011 describing his wartime service — under Hitler.

It’s easy enough to laugh and point at a politician making such a gaffe. But perhaps the lesson is that the Manichean moral lens we’ve inherited from the Second World War sheds very little light even on how people at that time understood what was afoot — let alone on contemporary conflicts. ...  Continue reading

The Office for National Statistics may have “hugely overestimated” the size of the trans population in the UK. It’s a claim that has significant implications for public policy, but it’s also a warning about what happens when the language of gender ideology is allowed to skew data collection. Reliable statistics about trans people are close to non-existent, leading to implausible claims about such matters as levels of suicide among trans-identified youth. So the failure of the ONS to get it right is particularly egregious.

The question of how many people are transgender or non-binary has long been controversial. Organisations like Stonewall have a vested interest in suggesting it’s as large as possible, once claiming it might be as high as 1% of the population. That could be 670,000 people, but data released earlier this year by the ONS, based on the 2021 census, put it at 260,000. Even that figure is now in doubt. ...  Continue reading

Climate scientist Patrick Brown recently published a paper in the prestigious Nature magazine which highlighted the critical role global temperature increases have played in the prevalence and severity of forest fires.

The article won plaudits from all the right circles, but then something surprising happened. Shortly after Nature published Patrick’s paper, he chose to write an explosive article in The Free Press, revealing how he deliberately designed his research to fit a narrative he knew Nature ascribed to — but that he in fact did not. 

Brown joined Freddie Sayers on UnHerd TV talk through his decision: ...  Continue reading

Late on Friday evening, California Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would have required affirmation of a child’s gender self-identification to be considered in custody and visitation disputes. In his veto message, Newsom praised the “passion and values that led the author to introduce this bill” and expressed his “deep” — and, somehow, “many decades-long” — “commitment to advancing the rights of transgender Californians”. 

Newsom packaged his veto in the warning that “[o]ther-minded elected officials, in California and other states, could very well use this strategy to diminish the civil rights of vulnerable communities”— suggesting that other states may retaliate by favouring non-affirming parents in custody disputes.  ...  Continue reading

The Government has yet to decide on the future of HS2, but it’s not looking good for the northern leg to Manchester. Chancellor Jeremy Hunt said that the costs are “totally out of control”. It would be “crazy” not to review the situation, added Defence Secretary Grant Shapps.

The link to Leeds has already been cancelled, so if Manchester is also cut loose then HS2 will become the Birmingham Express. National humiliation beckons, not to mention the final collapse of the levelling-up agenda. However, there is one political upside for Rishi Sunak: another chance to portray himself as a taker of tough decisions. Fraser Nelson, one of the more Sunak-friendly commentators, puts it thus: ...  Continue reading