The year 2021 was the year in which a network of brave gender-critical feminists said: enough. They did so in the face of vilification, attempts (sometimes successful) to drive them from their jobs, and threats of violence. 1/.
They not only defended hard-won women’s rights. They stood guard over precious principles: the right to free expression; the need for true pluralism; the primacy of fact over feeling, science over secular religion. They fought magical thinking 2./
May 30, 2020 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
One of the lessons of the #CummingsAffair - not yet over - is that there is always a sufficiency of journalists whose reflex is to support entitlement but pretend that they are doing so in the name of calm impartiality.
2. Yesterday evening, I interviewed @RBReich for @howtoacademy about his new book ‘The System’ which argues that the real battle of our times is not between Left and Right but between democracy and oligarchy. How bleakly true that is...
May 8, 2020 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
1/ It’s seriously depressing to see how many people seem to regard the marking of 75 years since VE Day as jingoistic or naff or uncool or unworthy of their attention. More than 75 million died in that conflict, including six million Jews...
2./..slaughtered by industrial massacre in the death camps of Eastern Europe. We all have stories of lost relatives or family members who fought or were killed or maimed. The world had been saved from the worst tyranny in history....
Jan 31, 2020 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Dear Boris and Dom: Well, I guess congratulations are in order. Less than an hour ago the UK left the European Union, and became a foreign country in the eyes of the EU. I’m guessing that you’re feeling good, and, honestly, who can blame you? 1/
So enjoy it while it lasts. Because - unless you are both seriously deluded - you’ll wake up tomorrow and realise, with a metallic, sour taste in the mouth, that you are two loneliest people on the planet. 2/
Oct 17, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
1. Today’s deal marks a huge change in the priorities of the Conservative Party. In the early Nineties, when Euroscepticism was born, such treatment of Northern Ireland would have been unthinkable.
2. Tory memories of the Brighton bomb and the assassination of Airey Neave and Ian Gow were still personal and vivid. All MPs had seen the horrific cost of sectarian conflict. Making NI a diplomatic chip would have been unthinkable.
Sep 29, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
1. KLAXON ELEPHANT TRAP WARNING: if the SNP tables a vote of no confidence this week - as Johnson has allowed minority Opposition parties to do - it will be doing exactly, to the letter, what he is hoping for...
2. As Johnson hinted heavily to Andrew Marr, he could easily whip his own party - tactically - to vote against the government in such a vote. The bizarre coalition of Tory, DUP and SNP votes would get the total over 323: a simple majority.
Sep 1, 2019 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
1. Democracy is not a free ride. Remember Franklin, asked by a woman: ‘What manner of government have you bequeathed us?’ And Franklin replied: ‘A Republic, Madame - if you can keep it’.
2. Can we keep our democracy safe? We have a government misusing prorogation to limit debate on a potential no-deal Brexit. We have Michael Gove - a former Lord Chancellor - declining to commit the government to abiding by a law passed this week.
Aug 30, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
1. Language is the key weapon being used by the government: Johnson is ‘showing leadership’, ‘stepping up the tempo’, unveiling a ‘beautiful’ cash bonanza, ‘getting part Brexit’.
2. Those who oppose no-deal and prorogation to thwart sufficient parliamentary debate of Brexit are entitled to speak of ‘constitutional outrage’. Better, though, to complain of ‘rule-rigging’ and the Leave elite ‘denying the people’s representatives a voice’.
Aug 26, 2019 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
1. So here’s where we are: Johnson’s authority is made of balsa. He depends upon the taxpayer-purchased votes of the DUP and the support of his own parliamentary party, many of whom want much more than the backstop excised from May’s deal....
2. He is only in office at all because of the decision taken by the tiny selectorate of Tory members. His mandate is constitutionally sound but politically frangible. BUT...
Jun 18, 2019 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Today is decision-day for the single issue group formerly known as the Conservative Party. I hope Rory Stewart gets the chance to face Johnson on the BBC tonight. He’s the only candidate who doesn’t seem to be applying for a job in the Johnson regime 1/
The extent to which Johnson is now playing the Trump play-book is unashamed - especially the evasion of the media, coupled with the framing of the press as the enemy. Disregard for the constitution in readiness to suspend Parliament 2/
Jun 15, 2019 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Message for Boris: I’m mostly off-radar right now, supporting a relative in the High Dependency Unit of my (brilliant) local hospital. He’s had a rough ride but is on the mend. And I know it’s very un-English and impolite to mix the personal..1./
...and the political. But I think we’re past that, don’t you? Because, watching the incredible staff here, and the patients, some of them recently-returned from the very border between life and death, and the fretful relatives, I’m reminded of a bus 2/
Jun 12, 2019 • 10 tweets • 2 min read
Here’s what’s happening, then. Pretty much everyone has decided that Boris Johnson is going to win, and the numbers so far certainly support that conclusion. However, this is leading to some pretty shabby and/or intellectually lazy stuff. 1/
First up, it isn’t really that persuasive to refer exclusively to Johnson’s mayoral record as his credentials - as if his subsequent conduct during the Leave campaign, as Foreign Secretary and a Bannonite polemicist were all incidental. 2/
May 31, 2019 • 9 tweets • 2 min read
The #PeteWillsman suspension: we know what's coming, don't we? We've known since Corbyn first lamented the erasure of the anti-semitic mural in March 2018 /1.
So, first, there'll be a few hours of straightforward recognition that Willsman has done an allegedly terrible thing and must be investigated fully. Second, there'll be interventions by Watson and/or McDonnell saying it really is time this was sorted. 2/
May 24, 2019 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
On May and her record: it is too easily forgotten that she presented herself, as party chair in opposition, as an uber-moderniser: willing to speak honestly about the Tories' 'nasty party' image and the shocking lack of diversity in its ranks. (1)
But she came to believe that the modernisation agenda was shot through with a liberalism that was blind to the concerns of millions of voters. And at the Home Office she become positively fixated by immigration - a fixation that spread through....(2)
Dec 12, 2018 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
I know we're not meant to question the magical thoughts of the Socialist Santa but - since it's Christmas - could someone please explain how this is all meant to work. 1/
As I understand it, it is extremely bad form to suggest that Jeremy Corbyn might call a confidence vote. He's not ready. The numbers don't work. We're all foolish and impatient. 2/
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