I Intend To Escape ......................And Come Back

Keir Starmer and the Camden Cadre?

How to understand Sir Keir Starmer and the Labour party he has created?

In this article in The Spectator I argue that the London borough of Camden, part of which Sir Keir represents as an MP, is a lens through which Labour's beliefs and policies are best viewed. Its not the Islington of Tony Blair that is running the country, but the Camden of Sir Keir Satrmer!

You can read the article online here, or a as a pdf below:

Download Keir Starmer and the truth about the Camden cadre spectator 07 06 2024

What no Culture Wars? "Which Way? Thirteen dialogues on choices facing Britain"

I recently purchased a golden oldie in the form of "Which Way? Thirteen dialogues on choices facing Britain". Edited by Michael Ivens and Clive Bradley, it was published in London by Michael Joseph Limited way back in 1970.

The format is simple - take a writer or politician from left and right, and invite them to write a short essay on issues such as nationalisation, tax, housing, education through to international issues. Each writer is also allowed a brief reply to their opponents text. The format works beautifully and there are some big names - Enoch Powell and Ian Mikardo being the most obvious. Some of those 1970 debates continue - most notbaly there is a chapter headed "Common market or NAFTA?" particularly apt as Keir Starmer appears set to drag the UK as close to the European Union as he feels he can get us. Others - such as the Cold War "East versus west" have been dated for a generation, although it is stimulating to be reminded of a time when Moscow and Beijing were on poor terms.

Most of the authors of course are no longer with us, although Michael Wynn Jones (better known now as Mr Delia Smith) enjoyed a high public profile until 2024 as one of the owners of Norwich City. One of the best-written commentaries is by T Dan Smith described as "Chairman of the Northern Economic Planning Council" who writes on government, parliament and technology. In 1970 Smith was just a few years from being brought down in a corruption scandal that led to his imprisonment. There is enough here in his cogent arguments on the importance of planning and development to suggest that this was an outcome that was far more than a personal tragedy.

What is notably missing from "Which Way?" is anything resembling the type of culture wars which so dominate contemporary debate. Perhaps we were more serious then, as a people? Arguments about transexuals, statues, renaming roads or decolonising school curriculums were peripheral in the early 1970s, if they existed at all. Identity politics in that era primarily meant one thing - class - the subject, naturally of a chapter all to itself.

The final section - "What kind of future?" features the late Conservative journalist T E Utley. Here I think we find some structure for the debates of 2025 and beyond. Utley writes:

"In Britain the nation does not exist by virtue of the State; the state exists and is capable of activity by reason of the fact that it presides over a nation." (p.261)

When even a north London leftie lawyer like Sir Keir Starmer begins to realise that this country has been changed too much, too fast, by immigration, Utley's words carry weight. Until we work out how to be a nation again, we are some years away from producing an update to the type of debates in the pages of "Which Way?" They can only really feature in societies with a degree of commonality.

The Tragedy of Striving

"A tragedy cannot be written about creatures of the jungle, only about those who try to get out of it - or those who succumb to it knowing that it is possible to transform it".

The writer Alan Sillitoe, in his introduction to Robert Tressell's "The Ragged Trousered Philantropists." (Panther: St Albans, 1983), p. 9 - 10. The beauty of this quote is that it applies so aptly to our greatest comedies, most notably Steptoe & Son.

There's no such thing as Starmerism - and that's the problem

As Labour gets a hammering in the polls, what is the problem with Sir Keir Starmer?

The most simple answer is that it is obvious what Starmer is against, but unclear what he is actually for.

Having won the Labour leadership as the continuity candidate, he quickly decided he was opposed to Corbynism. As the Conservatives vote collapsed, he won the 2024 general election by being opposed to Rishi Sunak, but standing on a largely empty mainfesto. Nearly a year on, and not much has changed, and now it is Labour tanking votes.

As Michael Gove wrote in The Spectator of 5 April: "The reason Labour finds itself in this abject and indefensible position is because it failed to develop a coherent political economy in opposition. It had no theory of change for the state, no industrial strategy worth the name, no philosophy of public service reform, and no account of why the Conservatives failed other than that they were, well Tories."

Hence today's results. It is also why Blue Labour is now having a degree of influence and public recognition. They at least have a programme and some thinkers, while Starmer has power, but no idea what he actually wants it for.

It's nonsense, but its nonsense of its time

Browsing the website of the charity Global Justice Now, I happened to land on the list of its council, and the pen portraits of those who govern this campaign group.

Global Justice Now is one of the groups campaigning against a trade deal between the United States and the United Kingdom. If you want to begin to understand these bizarre times, look at what our well-meaning campaigners do, not what they say. The trajectory of Global Justice Now's Mohammed Elnaiem speaks volumes. We are told:

Mohammed is the founding director of the Decolonial Centre, a political education project of the Pluto Educational Trust. He has been involved in the struggle for democracy in Sudan, and is now based in St Albans.

We don't need to ask how the struggle for democracy turned out in Sudan. Or that it is far easier, and far nicer, to live, work and campaign in St Albans rather than there. What we need to ask however, is this. Whether that 'lived experience' should lead anyone to think that the values of St Albans needs to be challenged and dismantled, which is what'de-colonised' means in practice.

I can well understand why Mr Elnaiem, and many other campaigners of similar stripe, wish to be here. But what do we gain in return?

Happy St George's Day

For Englishmen and women, and lovers of England everywhere:

The Rotherham Grooming Scandal and the Creators of the Islamophobia Definition

This is a report I worked on back in February, with the writer and journalist Andrew Gilligan.

The text can be viewed online here, or read as a pdf below.

Download The-Rotherham-Grooming-Scandal-and-The-Creators-of-the-Islamophobia-Definition 2025

Extremely Confused? The Government's Counter-Extremism Strategy

Back in January I co-authored a report with Andrew Gilligan, entitled "Extremely Confused: The Government’s new counter-extremism review revealed."

This revealed that the Counter-Extremism sprint, under the direction of Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, was heading very much in the wrong direction, moving away from a focus on Islamist terrorism to a much wider set of issues.

You can read our report online here, and download a pdf below.

Download Extremely-Confused-The-Governments-new-counter-extremism-review-revealed 2025

The Salisbury Review - Worth A Look

Coming up with the daffodils this Spring is the new issue of The Salisbury Review, which I recommend to any visitors of this blog.

It had looked as if this venerable magazine was to move to internet only, but for old fuddy-duddies like myself it has managed to maintain itself in print, and produces four issues per year.

The Spring 2025 issue has an examination of "Reverse Imperialism" by Driss Ghali, which details how countries in the developing world are dependent on the monies being sent back by their diasporas in the west "Each year, immigrants send over $600 billion to their home countries." This transfer of money from north to south has a huge impact on both, as bad governance profits elites in Africa and Asia. "Why reform institutions, why improve productivity, why improve the quality of leadership, when bad governance delivers vast and unconditional money transfers, free of auditing by the IMF or the World Bank?". Ghalli is a man to watch.

SDP leader William Clouston (a chief without sufficient Indians?) points out that anti-colonial ideology within our elites is driving the Chagos fiasco, while social historian Bill Hartley reminds us how poor our regional governance has been since at least the 1970s. Our town centres display that failure right in front of our eyes.

The magazine closes with a long piece from the late Roger Scruton, written in 2002, covering his own intellectual journey. While this would be familiar to anyone who has read Scruton's "Gentle Regrets" it remains a delight.

More please!

Mankind No Longer Travels to the Moon

Reading footnotes is a good habit to get into. The following quote is from Tariq Ali's 1970 book "Pakistan: Military rule or People's Power?"

"The debate on what exactly an Islamic state is continues to this very day and all the bourgeois parties in Pakistan take part. We shall touch on this debate in later chapters - but only briefly: we are nearing the twenty-first century,and man has reached the moon." p. 33, fn 14.

Mankind has not been on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972. Islam meanwhile is thriving. Indeed, so important is it in the UK that there is now a working group, under the former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, to establish a definition of Islamophobia.

I am not sure anyone, writing in 1970 or 1972, thought that was the future.....

Scruton on faith

Over the holiday season I enjoyed Roger Scuton's book "Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life".

Less a memoir than a series of essays on particular chunks of his life or matters of importance, Scruton grasps faith perfectly here:

"Faith is not simply an addition to our repetoire of ordinary opinions. It is a transforming state of mind, a stance towards the world, rooted in our social nature and altering all our perceptions, emotions and beliefs."

Gentle Regrets: Thoughts from a Life (London: Continuum, 2005), p. 220

Margaret Thatcher and Islam

Back in 2021 I attended a Thatcher Network conference at Newcastle University.

The city was just emerging from the Covid lockdown, and staying in the left-leaning area of Jesmond, it was remarkable how impacted it was compared to small town Northamptonshire. New cycle lines and card only payment in coffee shops demonstrated a certain marking of territory that we had simply not gone through.

My paper at the conference was on Margaret Thatcher and Islam, and that has now been published as an article by the Conservative History Journal. Its fair to say modern day Conservatives may be surprised at some of the nuances and ambiguities of Mrs Thatcher's position - and not just when it comes to Cold War alliances.

A pdf of the article can be viewed below:

Download More questions than answers Thatcher Islam Con History Journal 2024

The Balkanisation of the UK's Police Forces

I had neglected to post here a short article I wrote for the Daily Telegraph last month, on what might be called the Balkanisation of the police. We sometimes forget how rapid these changes have been - it is not that long ago the authorities in forces like West Yorkshire would struggle to recruit ethnic minority officers - now they see officers prosecuted for supporting Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas!

You can read my thoughts on the Telegraph website here, or as a pdf below.

Download The police must reckon with their extremism problem Telegraph 14 11 2024

The Importance of Confidence

The biggest single difference between working class people and middle or upper class people? At an individual level - confidence. I look at some of the interns I have met in Westminster, and they have more confidence in their late teens or early twenties, than I had in my late thirties.

"I truly believe that confidence is learned. No one is born confident. I think confidence is dependent on how your brain functions and what you have experienced in your life. I have not read or studied anything to back this up. This is just what I think from my experiences. If you want references and scientific evidence you need another book. I think people are born with different levels of chemicals in their brain which affect levels of anxiety and stress and depression. The levels of these chemicals will make it easier or harder to learn to become confident, but you still have to learn. I totally reject the idea that some people are born confident."

The comedian Rob Beckett in his book "A class act: Life as a working class man in a middle class world" (London: Harper Collins), p. 221

The end of the world is nigh? Environmentalists, Fascism and Eco-Collapse

If the earth is going to die screaming, as UB40 prophesised, what political forms will emerge before it dies?

For many in the environmental movement, fascism is not just a future threat, but is encapsulated in today's campaigns to save fossil fuels. Worse, those fuels themselves have always been brown - that is fascist, and never green.

I think much of that world view is nonsense, and have set out a three page argument in the current Notes From the Borderland magazine, making that very point. There is also room along the way for comment on political figures as diverse as Paul Mason, Boris Johnson, Roger Hallam, Tommy Robinson, and the National Union of Mineworkers campaign against apartheid.

You can order a copy of NFB here, and can find a pdf of my article below.

Download Eco-Fascism Stott NFB 12 2024

The Joy of Old Books - What's Tucked Inside The Greatest Treason: The Bizarre Story of Hollis, Liddell and Mountbatten?

My current reading is this 1990 title, by the late espionage writer Richard Deacon.

I am only 60 pages in, but it does seem this is an apologia for MI5 and a rebuttal of the view that the Service's Director General from 1956-65, Roger Hollis, was a Soviet spy. How else to take a book which claims one of Hollis' greatest rivals and chief inquisitor, Peter Wright "served in MI5 for a relatively short period" (p.6) Wright actually served for 21 years, being recruited as the organisation's principal scientist, going on to specialise in counter-intelligence.

One joy of buying and reading second hand books from thirty plus years ago, is that they so often come with news cuttings and other bits and pieces tucked away inside them. In this case it is not a news clipping or an obituary, but a series of comments written on the previous owners bookmark.

No one using a kindle will ever know the pleasures of such random discoveries. May they be preserved for ever!

The Decline and Fall of Brother Tariq

For a time, Tariq Ramadan was the epitome of what western elites felt they needed - the Muslim theologian they could do business with.

You can read The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan here, or view it as a pdf below.

Download The decline and fall of Tariq Ramadan The Spectator.pdf 12 09 2024

On Hanging About In Men's Toilets

I am not the sort of man who spends his time hanging about, Tom Driberg style, in public toilets (honest). And I do not, normally, take pictures in them.

I make an exception though for the beautifully preserved and maintained convenience at Rothesay on the Isle of Bute. Three pictures below should suffice:

Anyone who remembers the toilets in Carry on Screaming, where Dan Dan The Lavatory Man meets a watery end, will understand the style here. All roads, and ferries, should lead to Bute!

To read more about the history of what is described as a "jewel in the santiarian's crown" there is an excellent little article on a website called The Coracle.

On the dangers of Iran (again)

I had a short article - just 600 words in the Telegraph over the weekend, concerning Iranian influence in the UK.

This really ought to be addressed in Yvette Cooper's 'extremism review' currently being conducted somewhere inside the Home Office. You can read the article online here, and download a pdf below.

Download Iran promotes UK extremism – it must be stopped 31 08 2024

More in Common?

I have just finished Douglas Murray's "The War on the West: How to prevail in the age of unreason" and was struck by these lines, towards the end of the book:

"In the absence of anything else, the only public ethic in the West that people are encouraged to unite around is opposition toward itself." (p.265-66).

It raises a very pertinent question - if Britain is divided, on what can it unite?

The Islamic Republic of ...............Torsa?

There's not much to laugh about at the moment, but there was some light relief last week at the suggestion Shia cleric Sheikh Yasser al-Habib wished to buy the Scottish Island of Morsa, currently home to two holiday lettings and not a lot else.

I was quoted in the Daily Telegraph article on 30 July, which called the whole idea absurd:

"Paul Stott, head of security and extremism at Policy Exchange, added to the chorus of concern sparked by the reports."

“It’s bizarre, but not totally bizarre, in that religious communities have bought up land in rural parts of Britain before,” he told The Telegraph.

“But I can’t remember a Muslim group doing so before. If you look at al-Habib, he is a contentious figure. This would involve a part of UK territory becoming the land of a contentious religious grouping. I think that requires public debate before it can go ahead.”