As he alighted from a boat recently on the island of Kos in Greece, an out of breath Syrian refugee was met by a journalist’s microphone and said simply  – ‘I want to be a person. Here I can be a person’. Yet another man nearby said in  broken EnglishRead More

Parliament voted against legalising assisted suicide yesterday by an overwhelming majority of 330 to 118. Of the 448 MPs voting, 73% opposed Labour MP Rob Marris’s proposed legislation with 210 Conservatives, 91 Labour MPs  and 11 Scottish National Party MPs rejecting the Bill. Although it is generally thought there isRead More

It is difficult for western Europeans to understand the nature of deception in Russia’s current regime. Not that there is anything new about it – decades of refinement in dissembling, disinformation and projection  – beyond the comprehension of most ordinary people – is entrenched in Russian political life. Using psychologicalRead More

Ukraine’s western friends can’t help until the blinkers come off. “Save Ukraine!” went up the cry from the columns of a most respected newspaper. On 20 July The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed piece entitled “Crucial Weapon in the Defense of Ukraine.” Its authors were Stephen J. Hadley, a former nationalRead More

Photos of Dave grinning pretty for the camera, his arm around Sam, are emetic. But not, one has to admit, as much as photos of Ed indulging in public foreplay with Nicola Sturgeon would be. (They’re probably not involved, but you can forgive me for getting the wrong impression.) TheRead More

In today’s upside down world, Russia, which for seventy years had aggressively exported atheist materialism, both overtly and covertly, is becoming the defender of the principles that used to be the badge of the Christian West, while a composite swathe of authorities in the West are now openly promoting theRead More

As millions of Christians around the world were celebrating Easter Sunday, the Christians of the Muslim world were again under attack.  The April 2 Islamic jihad attack on a Kenyan school—where the Islamic murderers made sure to slaughter only Christian students, sparing fellow Muslims—was only the most spectacular attack. OnRead More

“O liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!” cried Marie-Antoinette on her way to the guillotine. Indeed the Enlightenment shifted liberty to the fore of political desiderata. Since that shift, and largely because of it, the world has suffered the most oppressive tyrannies in history. This brings us toRead More

“Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one,” wrote Benjamin Franklin. In common with most pronouncements by Enlightenment thinkers, this is a pithy, epigrammatic phrase. There’s only one problem. It’s not true. Moreover, it’s rather the opposite of truth, and was so evenRead More

I, along no doubt with Peter Hitchens, have heaved a sigh of relief. For a while there I was genuinely concerned about Vlad’s continued good health, what with his having taken 10 days out of his public life. That disappearance act gave rise to all sorts of rumours, ranging fromRead More