What A Kerfuffle

For that matter, what a time to be alive. And Nvidia Scandal sounds like a character from Little Britain, while this, for all its extremely misleading methodology and indeed fundamental premise, could be described as a map of the country of that name.

Surrounded by cokeheads and pederasts while far from the ostensible naïveté of Jonathan Ross, Margaret Thatcher either knew that her policies would cause, were causing and had caused massively increased benefit dependency and general moral chaos, in which case she was too wicked to be Prime Minister, or she did not know, in which case she was too stupid to be Prime Minister, which she was not.

Likewise, Tony Blair either knew that his policies would take, were taking and had taken Thatcher’s Britain to its natural conclusion as Russell Brand’s, in which case he was too wicked to be Prime Minister, or he did not know, in which case he was too stupid to be Prime Minister, which it was perfectly possible that he was.

Brand moved effortlessly from the libertarian pseudo-Left to the MAGA coalition without any change in his specific political views, such as they were. Until recent days, David Walliams was a Labour Party member of the sort that wanted Jess Phillips to become Prime Minister. Neither of them was remotely “laddish”. Such is the interchangeability of centrists and of right-wing populists, this time without even so much as the pretence of a culture war.

Thatcherites rarely still defend the 1980s with much vigour, instead concentrating on their own authorised version of the 1970s. But the enormous 2024 intake of Labour MPs is packed with and surrounded by people to whom the Noughties were a Golden Age. Think on.

Weighted Entirely By Class

“With my hero @jessphillips who should be Prime Minister,” tweeted David Walliams on 9 November 2019. On Tuesday 2 September 2025, Phillips told the House of Commons that, “South Yorkshire police should never have been left to investigate themselves in this matter, and moving those investigations to the NCA is absolutely the right thing to do. I would be lying if I said that over the years I had not met girls who talked to me about how police were part of not just the cover-up but the perpetration.” Read again those words of the Minister who refused a statutory inquiry, an inquiry that had been, and still is, demanded by the Muslim candidate whom she had beaten by only 693 votes at Birmingham Yardley, which he intends to contest again, the wonderful investigative journalist Jody McIntyre. Then read the Epstein Files and worry about inferior cultures with no respect for women and with endemic predation on young girls. As Paul Knaggs writes:

There is a grim, reliable rhythm to English public life. When a famous name is accused, the state discovers its limbs. Police forces find resources that were supposedly extinct; detectives scour decades-old diaries; press conferences are summoned, the media springs to life and the machinery of the Crown Prosecution Service whirs into immaculate, high-profile motion. The law, we are invited to believe, is an eagle that strikes without fear or favour. That is how it should be. Justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done.

This week Britain has been shown what it can do when it decides that something matters. On Monday Russell Brand was jailed for ten and a half years for rape and sexual assault. The women he attacked were believed, and twelve jurors convicted him on their word. And as though this week were determined to drag the secrets of Britain’s celebrity establishment into the daylight, the High Court refused David Walliams’ attempt to prevent the publication of allegations of sexual misconduct involving young women and teenage girls. He denies them, and no court has ruled on them, but the box has been opened, and we all await what comes out before Pandora shuts it closed.

Meanwhile, outside Southwark Crown Court, a Metropolitan Police detective said the Brand verdict proved that no one is above the law, “no matter how famous or powerful they may be”. Yet travel north, through the hollowed-out post-industrial towns of Rotherham, Oldham, Rochdale and Telford, and that proud declaration begins to ring rather hollow. The same justice system that can reach decades into a celebrity’s past somehow spent years failing to see what was happening to working-class girls in plain sight. Police dismissed victims, authorities ignored warnings, and officials shuffled paper while children were groomed, raped and traded like chattel.

The public notices this disparity. They see it with the plain common sense that Westminster considers uncouth. The question ordinary people ask on factory floors, building sites and across kitchen tables is not complicated: if the criminal justice system can summon the forensic determination to investigate and prosecute celebrity figures like Russell Brand, why have so many men involved in the organised sexual exploitation of working-class girls escaped justice? And where is the reckoning for the police officers, council officials and institutions whose failures allowed these crimes to continue for years? 

The question is treated by the political establishment as an embarrassment, an unwelcome intrusion into managed decline. The standard defence, stated as fairly as possible, is that celebrity cases differ fundamentally from street grooming. Famous men leave paper trails, agent correspondence, hotel itineraries, and high-profile witnesses; organised grooming networks, by contrast, rely on coercive silence, unrecorded cash, destroyed phones, and the deliberate targeting of teenage girls whose testimony defence barristers can easily pull apart in court. Gathering evidence against gang networks, authorities insist, requires painstaking, multi-agency intelligence operations spanning years.

That defence would carry weight if the delays were purely operational. They were not. They were political, institutional, and rooted in a deep, rotting class contempt. As Baroness Casey’s audit and Alexis Jay’s landmark Rotherham report laid bare, children were not ignored because the police lacked detective talent. They were ignored because of who they were. They were working-class girls in broken mill towns, children in care, teenagers with chaotic lives whom respectable middle-class officials felt comfortable writing off as “lifestyle choices” or child prostitutes. The institutions of the British state did not fail these children by accident; they sacrificed them to protect institutional peace. Fear of racial tension, bureaucratic inertia, and a toxic cocktail of cowardice meant that civil servants, councillors, and senior police officers preferred quiet council offices to the messy reality of pursuing violent predatory networks.

Even now, after a succession of inquiries, reviews, and belated local trials, the accountability remains an insult. A handful of ringleaders have received hefty sentences, yet hundreds of abusers remain uncharged. Worse still, not a single senior official, chief constable, or council director who turned their back on those girls has ever stood in a criminal dock for malfeasance in office. In modern Britain, failure at the top of a public body is rewarded with an early pension or a quiet consultancies sideways move.

The comparison with celebrity trials cuts to the marrow of what is broken in our state. Celebrities are pursued because prosecuting them flatters the system. It proves the institutions are progressive, modern, and vigilant; it generates glowing headlines and demands minimal self-examination from statutory services. Pursuing the grooming networks of northern towns does the opposite. Every successful prosecution of an organised grooming ring is not a tribute to the state’s vigilance, but an indictment of its prior criminal neglect. It reminds the world that local authorities, social services, and constabularies were complicit in leaving children to the wolves for decades. This is the two-tier reality of British justice: energetic when there are headlines to be harvested, sluggish and evasive when institutional reputation is on the line. They have waited more than twenty years. Most are still waiting.

WHAT HAPPENED TO THEM

We have to say plainly what happened, because for more than two decades, official language has helped obscure the sheer horror of it. This is just one of the thousands of cases. An 11-year-old girl, already known to police as a victim of sexual abuse, was found in a derelict house with adult men. Who did the police arrest? The child, for being drunk and disorderly. Not one of the men. A police officer described the sexual abuse of a 12-year-old girl by up to five adult Asian men as “100% consensual”. Fathers who desperately tried to rescue their daughters from houses where they were being abused found themselves arrested instead.

These are not rumours or allegations plucked from social media. They are cases raised during a parliamentary hearing into the Rotherham child sexual exploitation scandal. The clip below is deeply disturbing. But it needs to be heard, because it exposes the horror inflicted on vulnerable children in our post-industrial heartlands, and the appalling failures of the very institutions entrusted with their protection. Children were treated as offenders while the adults exploiting them escaped arrest. Parents trying to protect their daughters found themselves on the wrong side of the law. And when Parliament demanded answers, senior police officers couldn’t even explain who had made some of these decisions. We owe those girls more than another carefully worded apology. We owe them the truth, accountability and the courage to name what happened without hiding behind the language of institutional failure. Those children weren’t failed by a lack of safeguarding terminology. They were failed by adults who had a duty to protect them.

In Rotherham, at least 1,400 children were sexually exploited between 1997 and 2013. In Telford, more than a thousand were abused over three decades. In Rochdale, girls as young as 13 were passed between men above takeaways and in taxis. In Oxford, a judge sentencing one man described how he prepared a 13-year-old girl for gang rape. In Telford in 2000, 16-year-old Lucy Lowe was killed with her mother and sister when the man who had abused her since she was 13, and who had fathered her child, set fire to their home. In Manchester, Victoria Agoglia told the people responsible for her what was happening. In July 2003 she told her social worker that she was using heroin every day and that an older man was injecting her in return for “favours”. A week later she told her drugs worker. No investigation followed. A man already identified as her pimp had been given permission to visit her where she lived three times a week. In September a 50-year-old man injected her with heroin, and she died five days later. She was fifteen. 

When these girls asked for help, the state sent them away, and often it went further. South Yorkshire officers treated them as “consenting” to their own abuse. One parent was told that having an older Asian boyfriend was a “fashion accessory” for girls in Rotherham. Baroness Casey has said that many victims were convicted as “child prostitutes”. When a father in Rotherham went to rescue his daughter from her abusers, South Yorkshire Police arrested him. Katie Lam told the House of Commons about it. These girls were let down once by the men who abused them and again by the institutions that ignored them. Since then they have been let down by every government that has handled their suffering as a problem to be managed rather than a crime to be punished.

A COVER-UP 

The public sees a cover-up, and so does this paper. The evidence for it is on the official record. Operation Augusta, set up after Victoria’s death, identified at least 57 children believed to be victims and up to 97 suspects. Greater Manchester Police closed it in July 2005, citing resources. Baroness Casey’s national audit found that the ethnicity of perpetrators had been “shied away from”, that two-thirds of offenders still had no ethnicity recorded, and that the word “Pakistani” had been removed from archived victim files. In 2020 the Home Office at first refused to publish its own research into grooming gangs, claiming publication was not in the public interest. Taken together, this is not a series of unconnected blunders. It was a choice, made again and again over twenty years by councils, police forces and the Home Office, to protect institutional peace at the expense of children. The authorities were afraid of being called racist and afraid of unrest in towns already divided and already poor. They decided the truth was more dangerous than the abuse. So they managed it quietly, and the girls were left to their abusers. They decided the truth was more dangerous than the abuse.

PROCESS INSTEAD OF JUSTICE

The betrayal did not end when the abuse came to light. The girls’ suffering became a political argument. In January 2025, Keir Starmer rejected a national inquiry and accused those demanding one of jumping on a “far-right bandwagon”. Six months later, after Casey’s audit, he reversed his position. Then it took most of another year to find a chair. During that time four survivors resigned from the victims’ panel, and two of them told this paper’s readers they feared a whitewash. The inquiry did not formally begin until April 2026. Operation Beaconport, the national review of closed cases, has received more than 1,200 investigations that police dropped, and by the summer it had sent eight back to be reopened. Operation Linden investigated 47 South Yorkshire officers, and not one lost their job. Four former Rotherham officers have since been arrested over allegations that they abused children themselves. One was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. None has been charged. The gangs are being prosecuted at last: Operation Stovewood has now jailed 52 men in Rotherham alone. But the state has never prosecuted itself. Victims keep getting reviews, apologies, panels and promises that lessons have been learned. What they keep being denied is consequences.

BURNHAM’S PROMISE 

No politician has made more promises about this than Andy Burnham, and no politician now has more power to keep them. Soon after he became Mayor of Greater Manchester in 2017, Burnham commissioned an independent review of how child sexual exploitation had been handled across the region. When its first report exposed Augusta in 2020, he promised that resources, race and the passage of time would never again stand in the way of justice. To his credit, that report led police to reopen Victoria’s case. What followed was slow and incomplete. The Oldham review, commissioned in 2019, did not appear until 2022. Survivors and campaigners attacked it as limited. The Rochdale report in 2024 found widespread organised abuse between 2004 and 2012 and concluded that many of the abusers had still not been caught. Then, in July 2024, the two reviewers who had led the work for seven years resigned before the final stage. A whistleblower told GB News that they had been blocked from accessing information. The review Burnham promised Greater Manchester ended with his own investigators walking out.

There is a further question that only he can answer. Augusta was shut down weeks after Burnham became a junior Home Office minister in 2005. No published evidence links him to that decision. But Maggie Oliver, the detective who resigned from Greater Manchester Police over Rochdale, says he turned away from victims, and she calls the Oldham review a cover-up. His office denies it. The man who promised Greater Manchester justice now leads the whole government. He should open every file from his own review, and he should give evidence under oath to Baroness Longfield’s inquiry without waiting to be asked.

THE QUESTIONS THAT MUST BE ANSWERED

So who was watching the watchers? These questions must be answered, plainly and publicly. Who decided to shut down or restrict investigations such as Operation Augusta, and why? Who set the limits of the reviews and inquiries that followed, and did any of them have a conflict of interest? Why were victims ignored, disbelieved or sidelined while the men abusing them carried on? If criminal thresholds were not met in the past, will obstruction, suppression or misconduct in public office now be examined. And above all: will victims ever see justice, or only process? Justice is not another review. It is not another apology. It is not another promise that lessons have been learned. Justice means consequences. Until those with power are held to account, survivors will keep turning up in Parliament, on television and in the newspapers with their own evidence, documents and names, because every institution that should have listened failed them.

THE COST OF SILENCE

Every day this stays in the dark, the government loses the argument by default. People are right to want justice. When they see a state that can jail a famous comedian and name a famous author, yet has never charged a single council director or police commander over grooming gangs, they draw the obvious conclusion. When mainstream politics will not tell them the truth, they go to people who claim they will. Reform has made Burnham’s record a campaign weapon. Rupert Lowe raised more than half a million pounds for his own grooming gangs inquiry, saying the political system would not act, and turned that campaign into a political party, Restore Britain. Every closed file and every unanswered question is a gift to both of them.

Sunlight is the only disinfectant. A government that wants to take the anger out of this issue has to tell the whole truth: name the people who failed these girls, open the records and bring the charges the evidence supports. Anything less leaves a stain across the country and lets a bitterness keep rising that will turn very sour. Justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Until the state shows the same relentless fury against the abusers of forgotten children as it does under the cameras of high-society scandals, ordinary people will rightly conclude that in twenty-first-century Britain, the scale of justice is weighted entirely by class.

Where Resistance Is Not Futile

There will be Arabs with ministerial portfolios in Israel before there was a Minister in Dublin who professed allegiance to the 32-County Republic of 1916. A Coloured and an Indian sat in the Cabinet of P.W. Botha before Sinn Féin contested elections to the Dáil. Sinn Féin has never been in government in the 26 Counties, and all the stops have already been pulled out once to ensure that it would not be. That will always be the case, probably successfully.

But in the Six Counties, Sinn Féin has been in government for 27 years and counting, already nearly a quarter of the entire existence of the two states in Ireland, and it always will be, probably always providing the First Minister now that it had assumed the office. Seen from either side, there may eventually come to be a United Ireland, and even a 32-County Republic, but the excuse of how long ago Partition had been will be used to prevent a unitary state both for the sake of the dominant force in Northern Ireland, Sinn Féin, and for the sake of its implacable enemies who dominated the present Republic.

Notice that Fine Gael, in particular, has resumed any interest in a United Ireland only now that there is a sizeable presence of Sinn Féiners in the Dáil. They are hardly competing for the same voters, so Fine Gael, or indeed Fianna Fáil, is not trying to see off competitors, but looking for more amenable potential partners. In a word, Unionists. Also notice that Sinn Féin voters in the 26 Counties rarely move to the part of Ireland where their party has been in government for a generation and always will be, not even now that Michelle O’Neill is First Minister. They would rather go all the way to Australia. Yet they would not have to leave Ireland to fulfil their apparent aspiration to become subjects of the King.

Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael could live and work with Unionists and ex-Unionists, but they regard Northern Nationalism with the same combination of horror, incredulity and indifference that almost everyone in Great Britain felt towards what the late Queen Elizabeth II called “that silly marching business”, bewildered and disgusted that anyone could think that that were anything to do with them, and in the Southern Irish case (it almost never applies in the Mainland British one) disinclined to dwell on any family connections, much as the denizens of Salt Lake City viewed their distant cousins in the polygamous compounds. Keep all of that in mind as you read Obelisk:

When the history of the reunification of our island comes to be written, the past few days will surely not pass without comment. What I would argue is the most trusted polling organisation in the north, Lucid Talking, continues to show support for reunification against the Union narrowing with a plurality of voters under 55 backing reunification…and that is before the southern state produces even the beginnings of a plan. On that point, both Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have moved at last to begin engaging with the practicalities of the unity question. Both parties have begun publicly exploring how they can engage with that debate, but obviously a single unified position will need to be synthesised as the approach of the Irish government. This will begin a process that should culminate with the collapse of the eight million or so united Irelands we deal with whenever the term is mentioned, the differing idea each individual has of what it would be, into a concrete singular proposal that can be contrasted with the failing status quo.

And the status quo is failing. Whilst there has been much talk of Fine Gael’s figure that it could cost up to 25 billion euros annually to fund reunification (in the worst-case scenario) few seem keen to point out that as our divided parties at Stormont unite to ask for more funding for our government on the grounds that we don’t get our fair share, the Secretary of State continually stonewalls them and says ‘there is no more money’. Whilst some would argue that our politicians are reluctant to engage in any revenue raising measures or to see if there are any efficiencies that could be made, that does not mean we are not being underfunded as the Executive parties insist. As Seán Óg put it, leaving aside the debate over whether the south can afford us in future, what about the fact that Great Britain can’t afford us in the here and now?

You would think that this would be an opportunity for the Unionist parties to step forward and make the case that when everything is considered, we are better off in the United Kingdom. Gordon Lyons made an attempt on the 5th November episode of The View when, in response to Chris Hazzard listing off various facts regarding the British economy, such as the fact it is currently the fifth largest in the world, Lyons argued that Hazzard was making a ‘strong case for Unionism. This of course sounds clever on the face of it but ignores the context of Hazzard’s point, which is that the British decision to underfund the north (something Lyons’ own party seems to agree with) is a deliberate choice. Hazzard’s point is that the relative strength of the British economy is immaterial, we are simply not a political priority for Westminster and never will be. Unionist citations of British wealth have all the force of an impoverished family bragging about their sound finances due to their fabulously wealthy miserly uncle who gives them enough to survive upon.

Lyons’ intervention was the only attempt I have heard recently to articulate those still mysterious ‘benefits of the union’ but that is unsurprising. Unionism cannot rise to the occasion right now as it is currently in crisis over the fallout from Drumcree. In his Culture Wars book, the Loyalist activist Jamie Bryson set out his reasoning for reactivating the Drumcree dispute and political Unionism rowed in behind him and the Orange Order. The problem was that Bryson’s book was and is framed around Nationalism being a curiously schizophrenic other…effective and insidious enough to manufacture the situation in which Bryson claims Unionism now finds itself yet passive enough to allow him to enact his plan to turn the tide and rectify the situation via a series of acts that would, from his perspective, restore balance. None of his proposals seemed to account for the possibility that nationalism would react…or that some nationalists would actually read his book (I have admitted I got halfway through before I gave up). Tipping everyone off it was intended as the first act of the Culture War he named his book after might just have stiffened resistance a tad though even if that were missing.

Things did not pan out the way he expected them to do so…or at least what he has claimed in public. If his goal was to instead create a situation that destabilised power-sharing he has succeeded but that is speculative, and so I shall proceed on the basis his goal was what he said, to get the march down the road as part of a plan to re-establish the pre-eminence of the right to march and to come back in future with a bigger parade. Everyone knew the residents would if it came down to it block the road. Everyone knew the choice would then fall to the Chief Constable on whether to clear the road to facilitate the march. And most folks who thought ahead wagered, correctly, that he would calculate it simply wasn’t worth it and refuse to do so. Jamie Bryson and the Order are therefore left with the hollow win of the Order’s legal right to march having been confirmed but the harsh reality that no march will ever go down the road again without the consent of the residents (which I will be surprised to see if it happens in my lifetime) also being confirmed. Unionism is therefore enduring the agony of the consequences everyone foresaw they would face should they go down this route.

I have no sympathy for the travails or frustration they face as a result. They had a choice not to relitigate Drumcree. Instead, they have gone all in and are now suffering the real ‘profound consequences’. For the second time in a decade (with the first being the outworkings of Brexit) Unionism attempts to process a self-inflicted defeat on a matter of enormous psychological importance and it is having tremendous difficulty doing so. As I have argued and will continue to argue, Unionism is not and never has been about the Union. It is about the maintenance of a homeland on the island of Ireland in which Ulster-British identity is privileged. It seems the Union itself is ultimately pointless if the substance of the state their forefathers built is sapped away to placate those outside of the ideology who maybe the arbiters of the north’s constitutional fate and thus when push comes to shove they will risk the future of the Union to preserve the identity of the state as much as they possibly can. Though of course, without the Union, there would be no state at all of course and hence whilst it is not the point of Unionism, it underpins Unionism.

The identitarian impulse is why they went all in on Drumcree even as some, such as the Alliance party or the signatories of the letter from within the Unionist community who begged them to bank the win of having the legal right affirmed whilst not provoking the political disaster that has now befallen Unionism at precisely the moment when the conversation regarding reunification moves onto surer footing. To have not attempted the march would have been at cross-purposes to their underlying philosophy in the first place; this is the Ulster-British homeland. There was simply no chance of them not to trying to proceed once the legal hurdles were cleared, any more than a moth will refuse to fly into a naked flame of its own volition. And now we face the aftermath. This is a self-inflicted defeat for Unionism and there are no upsides though there has been a feeble attempt to confect some kind of moral victory. Such excuses seem to have received scant attention from those in the middle ground. Bryson has tried to argue the legal determination that said the Order had a right to march is a victory in and of itself, something the Secretary of State attempted to affirm when he said he was leaving the original determination permitting the march in place when he ultimately banned the procession on public order grounds. To be blunt, that piece of paper is as much a victory for Unionism as Neville Chamberlain’s piece of paper from Munich was a victory for peace in our time.

Some Unionists have also attempted to argue that the idea of a new Ireland was shown to be a lie on the Garvaghy Road and then talked this up as some sort of silver lining, but the recent Lucid Talk polling discredits that assertion. The vast majority of the middle ground supported the residents in their action in blockading the road, and frankly I would argue the vast majority of folks aren’t going to judge the level of tolerance that can be expected in a united Ireland by Unionism collectively deciding to make the most totemic, ideologically loaded, controversial, tragedy-soaked route out of all of the contentious parading disputes the litmus test. You may genuinely want to live in peace with your neighbour but you may have an issue with them sleeping with your spouse in your bed…and if they called you an intolerant bigot for stopping them from doing so an unbiased observer would have to ask whether they were being serious.

Right now Unionism faces a whole host of options and none of them are good and all lead to different degrees of defeat (it really does feel like Brexit all over again). Many Unionists are screaming for the DUP to remove Michelle O’Neill from office by resigning Emma Little-Pengelly from the Deputy First Minister role, thus forcing the First Minister out as well. Gavin Robinson and Jon Burrows clearly feel this would be a terrible idea as it would play into the nationalist narrative that the north is a failed and unworkable entity. As someone who actually believes the north is a failed and unworkable entity, a further collapse is less something I can pervert to fit my predetermined narrative and more evidence of the fundamental correctness of the diagnosis in the first place. In spite of the patient explanations of both leaders as to why this is a bad idea, the pressure continues regardless.

That’s how bad a position Unionism is in currently. They are badly split over the question of whether to remove Michelle O’Neill from office because it is the one sanction open to them, the one lever they have to pull. The DUP lost an MP over it. Jamie Bryson has split Unionism into ‘O’Neill Must Go’ and ‘O’Neill Must Stay’ wings (employing deliberate terminology to remove nuance and frame those who fear the consequences of removal upon the standing of Unionism at this time as weak and lily-livered) over it. And the worst thing is, for all the torment and agony they are putting themselves through over it, does anyone really believe Michelle O’Neill would be even slightly phased by that action?

Removing O’Neill from office would martyr Michelle O’Neill and lead to even more support flowing to Sinn Féin within nationalism. Drumcree has rescued Sinn Féin from the electoral doldrums and enhanced Michelle O’Neill’s credibility among northern nationalists in a way few events could. The moment she was interviewed on the Garvaghy Road on that morning and said she would always support the residents, she effectively won the coming election within nationalism. Removing her would only feed Sinn Féin’s support and she would be back following the election. Unionism is tearing itself apart over whether to mildly irritate the First Minister.

Some say Gavin Robinson’s hand is being stayed because to remove her now would prevent the enactment of a budget, which would then lead to public sector workers not getting their promised pay rise and thus the blame for that falling on the DUP. The thinking here is that once – if – a budget is agreed the DUP can have Emma Little-Pengelly resign and thus limit the damage they will inevitably suffer for once again scuppering devolution. Though I have to question the efficacy of a strategy that is so blindingly obvious it is a topic of discussion in our local media, that Sinn Féin certainly knows of it and thus you have to ask why Sinn Féin would be minded to agree a budget if the DUP plan to flounce out the door immediately afterwards? Paralysed over the fate of the First Minister and only able so far to cancel photo opportunities as part of their promised punishment of the party, the DUP has turned its ire on another enemy of Ulster-British culture…school-children learning through the medium of Irish. As the BBC reports…

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) has tabled a petition of concern in a bid to block proposed legislation on Irish-medium education.

The private member’s bill, brought forward by Sinn Féin assembly member Pat Sheehan, would require Stormont’s Department of Education to prepare a workforce plan on schools in the sector.

And in case anyone thinks this is being opposed on its own merits rather than being petty revenge over Drumcree…

DUP leader Gavin Robinson said the petition was the latest outworking of their response to Sinn Féin’s “arrogance” over the Drumcree parading dispute.

Whilst the BBC cites Alliance deputy leader Eóin Tennyson as saying it was

“yet another petulant swipe and petty stunt intended to walk these institutions to the brink”.

The assembly member said it “punishes no one except the children and young people in Irish-medium schools”.

Everyone recognises this as an outcome of the Drumcree dispute with the exception of UUP leader Jon Burrows, whose party was required to sign on to the petition to enable it to proceed. Burrows as recently as Monday made a pitch for institutionally minded Unionists…the ‘O’Neill must stay’ grouping as Bryson would put it…to coalesce within the UUP. He is quoted in the Newsletter as saying

“This is a defining moment in unionism. I don’t think unionism has been particularly well led over the last two decades. There have been strategic gaffes and crocodile moments that have galvanised Sinn Féin, who I’m afraid are laughing at some of the errors unionism has made. We now need change.

“The Ulster Unionist Party is already showing what that change looks like in government. Robbie Butler is doing tremendous work as Health Minister. He is lowering the bowel cancer screening age towards 50, has delivered a 24/7 thrombectomy service for stroke patients and has invested £1.95 million in endometriosis services.

“I want to see more cooperation across unionism. But I believe a revitalised Ulster Unionist Party can provide the sure-footed leadership unionism needs: making Northern Ireland a success, outsmarting Sinn Féin and securing the Union for the long term. 

“I’m building a team to serve the people of Northern Ireland, and I would encourage anyone who shares that ambition to join us.”

At the time of writing though it appears Burrows plans to ‘outsmart’ Sinn Féin by having a hand in repeating the legendary Unionist ‘victory’ of Arlene Foster’s ‘crocodile’ comments (themselves delivered in the wake of Paul Givan’s decision to remove the Líofa bursary). That would be the election which saw Sinn Féin’s vote share and seat total leap upwards. Burrows has done this by signing the DUP’s petition of concern. His fig-leaf justification is that the bill will prioritise the Irish language sector over other educational sectors. As reported in the BBC…

Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Jon Burrows said Sinn Féin’s conduct over the Drumcree dispute was “reprehensible” but it was not the reason his party had supported the DUP’s petition of concern.

He expressed concern that the private member’s bill gives “preferential treatment to one sector over others”.

“It is an unnecessary bill – it duplicates work that is already taking place.

“It has administrative and financial costs that we don’t need to have,” he told the Nolan Show.

That excuse doesn’t really fly when everyone else is framing it in the context of the Drumcree dispute. I would wager electoral considerations (particularly in his hardline constituency of North Antrim) and the Unionist desire for some form of retribution over Drumcree is the real motive. After all, he publicly undermined his own health minister for electoral reasons a few short months ago, to the point that minister actually resigned.

To do so again would not only be unsurprising, but would also be in keeping with his expressed character if we judge him by his actions rather than his words. And by his actions I once again draw the conclusion that liberal unionism is an oxymoron, though I must admit I have never seen Burrows as a liberal unionist of any sort. In complete fairness to this man this is a term he has never used himself. This is more for the benefit of those who believe him to be such a thing as a ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate’ unionist in comparison to other Unionists. If I see him so described in future, I will be happy to bring up what he has done on this occasion. 

It is my belief that there are two forms of Unionism, those who wish to participate in the structures of the Good Friday Agreement to be as obstructive in the shared governance of the north as possible…and the TUV types who don’t wish to participate at all and would much prefer direct rule so as not to sully themselves with having to compromise with nationalists and ‘the others’. The crisis in Unionism is because the fault line between those two groups runs right through the DUP.

That is where we stand in the aftermath of Drumcree. The reunification discussions are picking up, the southern state is becoming engaged, the middle ground is increasingly curious, the young are looking towards the future of a new Ireland…and Unionism is once again mired in a mess of its own making and determined to make everyone else suffer as a result as it thrashes about, desperate to find a pain free off-ramp that doesn’t exist.

And Owen Polley:

Not very long ago, the DUP seemed an insurmountable force in Northern Ireland politics. The unionist party dominated Stormont for almost twenty years, before being overtaken by Sinn Fein at the 2022 Assembly election. And at Westminster, it won ten seats as recently as 2017, after which it propped up Theresa May’s Conservative government through a confidence and supply arrangement, clearly relishing its role as “kingmaker” and the opportunities it provided to demand more public money. Yet, last week Carla Lockhart’s resignation from the DUP left it with just four seats in the House of Commons. Then, on Saturday, a poll in the Belfast Telegraph suggested that the party’s support had fallen to just 14 per cent. This was half Sinn Fein’s figure. It was also the second survey since Jeffrey Donaldson’s conviction for child sex offences that put the DUP behind its unionist rival, the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP). And this time, it was level with the harder line Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). The DUP, in other words, could be heading towards third position among Northern Ireland’s pro-Union parties and fourth in Stormont overall. Ahead of next spring’s Assembly election, the party’s former health minister, Jim Wells, even suggested it could be finished as an electoral force.

Ms Lockhart’s defection was certainly not the average political resignation. She first joined the DUP as a teenager and, by the last election, commanded the party’s biggest Westminster majority by some margin. There were signs that her relationship with the leadership was becoming strained in 2024, after the party struck a deal with Rishi Sunak’s government over the Irish Sea border and restored power-sharing as a result. Lockhart finally resigned over the DUP’s refusal to remove Michelle O’Neill as first minister, due to her role in the Drumcree dispute. This parading flashpoint, Northern Ireland’s most fraught, is in the heart of the MP’s Upper Bann constituency. Sinn Fein ministers are accused of unlawfully blocking an Orange Order march on the Garvaghy Road in Portadown, by taking part in unnotified protests.

The DUP’s deputy first minister, Emma Little-Pengelly, could resign and force O’Neill out, as the first and deputy first ministers’ roles in Northern Ireland form a joint office and the two positions are legally equal. The party’s leader, Gavin Robinson, has so far argued that this would consign the province to months of a “ghost Assembly” and ultimately benefit Sinn Fein in the polls. Ministers in Northern Ireland would remain in post in a caretaker capacity until an election next year, but the executive would effectively be paralysed. This is not just an excuse but a serious concern. The DUP’s difficulty, though, is that it directly threatened “profound consequences” for Sinn Fein over its alleged deployment of “mob rule”. So far, this has amounted only to Little-Pengelly refusing to take part in joint engagements with O’Neill. The party has promised that it will “escalate” the repercussions for the first minister, but it has not explained what this action might comprise or what it might achieve.

The DUP is certainly not in an easy position. If it continues to operate power-sharing more or less as normal, it will be accused of effectively accepting that Sinn Fein is above the law. At the same time, the party has been involved in several sets of negotiations aimed at getting Northern Ireland’s government back, after previous crises. These have usually resulted in republicans making demands and gaining concessions. The executive at Stormont has provided ineffective government for decades, ducking difficult decisions and most recently failing to set a budget. However, on the occasions when it has collapsed completely, successive governments, including the Tories, refused to properly implement direct rule from Westminster. There is every reason to fear that this pattern would be repeated if Little-Pengelly resigned. A panicked decision to bring down the institutions, in response to the poll results, would further galvanise Sinn Fein supporters, while failing to repair the DUP’s credibility.

The party’s overarching problem is that it no longer commands voters’ trust. It invariably tries to appear tough but frequently does not follow through on its rhetoric. The deal over the Irish Sea border was the most flagrant example. The DUP boycotted Stormont for two years in protest at the Northern Ireland Protocol/Windsor Framework. This tactic failed, and there was a strong argument, in the last months of Jeffrey Donaldson’s leadership, that it needed to revive power-sharing to protect support for the Union. Rather than make this case honestly, the DUP claimed that it had effectively removed the Irish Sea border and stopped a ‘pipeline of European law’ to the province, as part of the Safeguarding the Union deal that restored devolution. This may at the time have seemed like a hard-headed sales pitch, but it was also manifestly nonsense. By the time Donaldson was arrested in March 2024, the party was already losing support to the UUP, which had always maintained that a Stormont boycott would damage unionism, and the TUV, which insisted that the DUP was effectively surrendering on the sea border by restoring power-sharing. When he became leader, Gavin Robinson was forced to admit that his party had ‘oversold’ its achievements.

The DUP will face an Assembly election and a council election next spring, while a general election could be coming too. Meanwhile, the Metropolitan Police have opened a new investigation into an allegation that Donaldson sexually assaulted a woman at the Palace of Westminster. The former leader has also lodged an appeal against his child sex abuse convictions. There seems little prospect of this grim saga fading from voters’ minds by next May. The DUP is unlikely to be decimated in the 2027 elections, in the way that some pundits are predicting. The party will maintain the advantage of incumbency in many seats, while its rivals in the UUP and TUV may struggle to field a deep enough pool of candidates to capitalise on their encouraging poll results. The most likely outcome is an exacerbated three way split in unionism in Northern Ireland which only benefits Sinn Fein and raises more questions about a potential realignment of parties. While many of its representatives are blameless, the DUP has brought plenty of its current problems on itself, through years of slippery messaging and failures to deal properly with allegations of sleaze. The party may not be finished but it is unlikely ever to be as powerful a force in Northern Ireland politics again.

And Belfast Glenariff:

Today, the 10th November 2026 marks the 40th Anniversary of the formation of Ulster Resistance. Very little is still known about this secretive Unionist/Loyalist quasi political/paramilitary group but what has been revealed is that the guns, ammunition and grenade launchers they received in a Loyalist arms importation in December 1987 were used in over 100 murders, mostly of innocent Catholics. These weapons were never recovered or have ever been decommissioned. Many of the relatives of those killed by them are now calling for a Public Inquiry into Ulster Resistance, it’s umbilical links to the DUP and the role British Security/Intelligence Services played in it all. The DUP says it adheres to “law and order” and is constantly lecturing others to do likewise. Indeed they are on the point of collapsing devolved government because they demand that others “upkeep and hold to the law”. They will surely then not object to the truth coming out and anyone with knowledge of Ulster Resistance, and it’s still hidden weapons, co-operating with the appropriate policing and judicial authorities.

I refer to two media articles published in recent days about Ulster Resistance and the DUP; the first by Brian Feeney in the Irish News on Saturday 07th November and the second by Hugh Jordan in The Sunday World on 08th November. I am quoting primarily from Brian Feeney’s article. Brian Feeney: “On November 10th 1986 about 3000 men, by invitation only, packed the Ulster Hall to be addressed by Ian Paisley and other leading lights including Peter Robinson and Sammy Wilson who chaired the rally…..Paisley told the crowd that Ulster Resistance, his name for the organisation, would take whatever steps necessary to destroy the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the ongoing Republican conspiracy. He then put on a red beret as did Peter Robinson.” Brian goes on to write: “In June 1985, the Irish Ambassador to London, Noel Dorr, reported to Dublin that the Israeli Ambassador to Britain, Yahuda Avner, told him that Paisley had been in touch with him to obtain arms for border protection…..as some of those vehemently opposed to Irish involvement in the North were determined to acquire weapons.”

The story of how these weapons were acquired has already been documented by journalists Peter Taylor, Martin Dillon and the Spotlight programme in various pieces, reports, books and programmes over the years. Brian continues: “The finance (for the weapons) was acquired by a UVF robbery of £300,000 from the Northern Bank in Portadown in July 1987. In December 1987 the weapons arrived in Belfast Docks: 206 Vz58 assault rifles; 94 Browning 9mm pistols; 4 rocket launchers & 62 warheads; 450 grenades and 30,000 rounds of ammunition. The weapons were divided into 3 lots: one for the UDA, one for the UVF and the other for Ulster Resistance.” The UDA’s share of the weapons were seized in January 1988 through an internal informer while most of the UVF’s were also seized, again through ‘leaks’ within. The remaining Ulster Resistance guns were never recovered and some of these were later given to the UDA and UVF. These weapons were used in the Sean Graham’s bookies murders, Michael Stone’s attack in Milltown Cemetery and many other killings.

To quote Brian again: “In a recent carefully researched book, Aaron Edwards, an expert on Loyalist terrorism, recounted how Johnny Adair met Ulster Resistance leaders at a farm in Loughgall in 1991 where Adair convinced them to support his UFF C Company…..Edwards said the Ulster Resistance men were a loose connection of people concentrated in Mid Ulster, North Down and North Derry. Adair and UFF C Company subsequently received a large supply of weapons, grenades and ammunition from Ulster Resistance and for the next decade this murder gang constantly attacked the Catholic community in North & West Belfast and also killed quite a few people within the Unionist/Loyalist community.” Brian says: “In 1996 it was reported that Britain’s Security Services believed that Ulster Resistance continued to act as a quartermaster for all Loyalist paramilitaries and it has never decommissioned it’s weapons….questions now arise.”

And Brian asks: “1. If Adair knew who the leaders of Ulster Resistance were and was able to meet them, why couldn’t the British Security Forces, MI5 and Military Intelligence (apprehend them)? 2. Where are these Ulster Resistance weapons now? 3. Why do the police not question people they suspect were Ulster Resistance leaders and also question those DUP figures who reportedly knew their identities? 4. Why was Ulster Resistance decommissioning never on the agenda? 5. Why the silence and inexplicable impunity?” Ulster Resistance is, and was, a thoroughly ruthless Unionist/Loyalist paramilitary killing machine linked to over 100 murders. It’s on record that senior Unionist politicians, particularly DUP ones, were deeply involved with it. The victims and their families deserve answers and most importantly, a thoroughly independent Public Inquiry must now be called for.

I have mainly quoted Brian Feeny’s article in his piece for the Irish News on November 07th. Hugh Jordan of The Sunday World also has a very revealing in depth interview on November 08th with the Rev. Ivan Foster who was a senior ally of Ian Paisley and who was also involved with Ulster Resistance. From the article: “Over the next 17 years, the VZ rifles were used by loyalists in the murder or attempted murder of 70 people. Ulster Resistance weapons were used the Sean Graham’s bookies shop massacre and the ‘Trick of Treat’ Halloween night killings in Greysteel, Co Derry, as well as the Loughinisland pub shootings in Co Down. In total in these three attacks alone, 19 people died and another 27 were wounded. However, Ulster Resistance kept the bulk of the weapons and stored them in purpose-built dumps that have never been found. And Ulster Resistance remains the only armed group not to engage with the decommissioning process headed by Canadian soldier General John de Chastelain. Loyalists based in Mid-Ulster – who still maintain the weapons – are reported to claim they are being stockpiled in the event of a ‘doomsday’ scenario should the British and Irish governments ever attempt to “bounce” Ulster Protestants into an all-Ireland state.”

And Brian Feeney:

Next Tuesday marks the 40th anniversary of what was the inauguration of Ulster Resistance. On November 10 1986 about 3,000 men, by invitation only, packed the Ulster Hall to be addressed by Ian Paisley and other leading lights of the DUP including Peter Robinson – shortly after his invasion of Clontibret, leading hundreds of loyalists – and Sammy Wilson, who chaired the rally. Paisley told the crowd that Ulster Resistance, his name for the new organisation, would “take whatever steps necessary to destroy the Anglo-Irish Agreement and the ongoing republican conspiracy”. He then put on a red beret, as did Peter Robinson.

Paisley had been planning this for some time, though it was just the latest in a series of attempts he’d made to develop an organisation he could control, unlike terrorist groups he’d associated with and kept contact with from the 1960s like the UVF. Now he sought to harness the unanimous unionist hostility to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. The DUP would later say it “immediately distanced itself from Ulster Resistance and severed all links with it once it became known that it was involved in unlawful activity”. However, Paisley and other DUP figures had been greatly perturbed when rumours of a deal between Dublin and London began to circulate in summer 1985. They didn’t know what the deal was, but the word was it involved some sort of Irish government involvement in the north.

In June 1985, the Irish ambassador to London, Noel Dorr, reported to Dublin that the Israeli ambassador to Britain, Yahuda Avner, told him Paisley had been in touch with him “to obtain arms” for “border protection”. He said Avner told Paisley that “these things could be dealt with only between governments”. Dublin couldn’t make sense of it and didn’t take it seriously. They should have. Some of those vehemently opposed to Irish government involvement in the north were determined to acquire weapons. The story of how they did is documented in many books written by Peter Taylor, Martin Dillon and others and TV programmes like Spotlight. The finance was acquired by a UVF robbery of £300,000 from the Northern Bank in Portadown in July 1987.

Noel Little (Emma Little-Pengelly’s father), ex-UDR and leading Ulster Resistance (UR) figure, had reportedly already supplied a shopping list of weaponry to a representative of South Africa’s Armscor at a meeting in Geneva in early 1987 and knew the sum required. Little denied any involvement in the 1987 arms importation. In 1991, however, he was convicted in Paris over a separate plot to exchange stolen British missile technology for weapons. The cash from the robbery was said to have been brought to Geneva in suitcases by ”respectable unionists”.

In December 1987, the weaponry arrived in Belfast docks: 206 Vz58 assault rifles, 94 Browning 9mm pistols, four rocket launchers and 62 warheads, 450 grenades and 30,000 rounds of ammunition. UR divided the haul into three lots for the UDA, UVF and UR. The RUC seized the UDA’s share in January 1988, most of the UVF’s in February, and a chunk of UR’s in November 1988 after searches in farms near Markethill, Hamiltonsbawn and Armagh. Nevertheless, the remaining weapons imported by UR, some of which later given to the UDA and UVF, were linked to over 70 murders including the Sean Graham bookies murders and Michael Stone’s grenade attack in Milltown cemetery.

In a recent, carefully researched book, Aaron Edwards, an expert on loyalist terrorism, recounts how the infamous loyalist killer Johnny Adair met UR leaders at a farm near Loughgall in 1991 and was able to convince them to supply his ‘C company’ with weapons. Since the RUC had captured the UDA share of UR’s consignment, Adair told Edwards the UDA had “f*** all”. Edwards says the UR men Adair met were “a loose network of people concentrated in places like Mid-Ulster, North Down”, and also north Derry. “They were mostly farmers, businessmen, and members of the UDR.” A few weeks after the meeting they delivered a lorry load of weapons to Adair: assault rifles, rocket launchers and grenades, which enabled Adair to launch his murderous terrorist campaign in Belfast. He described the UR weapons as “a godsend”. In 1996 it was reported that British security forces believed that UR “continued to act as a quartermaster” by organising an “arms pool” for loyalist paramilitaries. UR has never decommissioned its weapons.

All history? Well, yes and no. Questions arise. If Adair knew who the leaders of UR were and was able to meet them, why couldn’t the security forces, MI5, military intelligence? Where are the weapons that UR stores and has occasionally doled out to loyalist terrorists? More importantly, perhaps, when did the PSNI and MI5 stop searching for those weapons cache? Why did they?/ Why do they not question people they suspect are or were UR leaders, and DUP figures who reportedly asserted they knew their identities? Why was Ulster Resistance decommissioning never on the agenda and still isn’t? Why the inexplicable impunity?

Carla Lockhart now wants to ban convicted criminals from becoming or remaining First Minister, but that would have precluded the appointment of Ian Paisley or Peter Robinson. Paisley did time. From 2017 to 2019, the Conservative Government enjoyed an overall majority of one thanks to a deal with the DUP. DUP MPs at the time included, as Chief Whip, Jeffrey Donaldson. They included Sammy Wilson, who had been Press Officer for the DUP when he had chaired the founding rally of Ulster Resistance in his chain of office as Lord Mayor of Belfast. They included Noel Little’s daughter, Emma Little-Pengelly, who is now the Deputy First Minister with powers equal to those of the First Minister, and who had owed her election in 2017, for a somewhat improbable seat, to the concerted efforts of the local Loyalist paramilitary organisations, to whom she extended barely coded thanks in her acceptance speech.

They included Ian Paisley Jr, who like Little-Pengelly has been a company director with Donaldson and his brother, of two different companies in the case of Little-Pengelly, with the second existing mostly or entirely to send Donaldson around the world, at the expense of the Foreign Office, to promote peace deals such as he was opposing at home. And they included Jim Shannon, who in May 1989 had been expelled from the Territorial Army for having been involved in the theft of Blowpipe man-portable surface-to-air missile components from the TA base in Newtownards by Ulster Resistance, of which he had been a founder member and which to this day has never declared a ceasefire. Any one of those could have collapsed the Government. Countries are sanctioned for less. Yet to political Dublin, even such as those would be preferable to anyone from Sinn Féin. Think on.

A Liability Machine From The Start

Having abandoned Fairford, the USAF has fled Mildenhall. Next up, Lakenheath. And Croughton. And all of them. So much for Britain’s not being in the Iran War, but rather an innocent bystander to the massacre of the Minab schoolgirls, and an innocent victim of the wild inflation unleashed by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and of the Bab al-Mandab Strait. Even before mentioning our arming of Saudi Arabia in its devastation of Yemen, presumably because the Saudis shared our values, that has always been an outright lie, like the claim to have sanctioned the West Bank settlements, for which 13 of the United States are threatening to sanction Britain even though it had not really happened. No specific British sanction has been imposed.

Thomas Massie’s resolution to impeach Pete Hegseth was defeated by 211 votes to 204. 11 AIPAC Democrats did not turn up: Nancy Pelosi (CA-11), Haley Stevens (MI-11), Julia Brownley (CA-26), Lou Correa (CA-46), Laura Gillen (NY-4), Steven Horsford (NV-4), Jonathan Jackson (IL-1), Brittany Pettersen (CO-7), Melanie Stansbury (NM-1), Marilyn Strickland (WA-10) and Frederica Wilson (FL-24). The Israel Lobby has given them $17.681 million, with $15.9 million to Stevens alone. And Abdul El-Sayed still beat her. As Jade Russo writes:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Monday reintroduced articles of impeachment against Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth. Slippery Peter survived the Tuesday night vote in the House, which referred the impeachment to a committee and effectively killed it, but it is not inconceivable that the new, Democrat-heavy Congress will take another shot in the new year. The articles covered a fair bit of ground, but the nut of the argument was that Congress did not declare war against Iran or otherwise authorize the use of force, so Hegseth’s prosecution of the conflict has been unconstitutional and hence constitutes the “high crimes and misdemeanors” underpinning an impeachment case.

The conventional wisdom holds that this development does not look so good for the White House, politically. Having one of your cabinet officials impeached is embarrassing; even if the process ends in an acquittal by the Senate, it still gums up the works. It’s not a great way to recover from the hangover from last Tuesday’s midterm blowout.

But the conventional wisdom does not account for the art, science, and mystery of political judo. Consider that the administration has decided it doesn’t like the war very much—not just Vice President J.D. Vance, but also the principal, President Donald Trump, who sounds less than eager to return to the exertions of earlier rounds. Wrapping the thing up is the sticking point, though. A sudden, full-administration about-face would be damaging domestically, and the Iranians do not seem inclined publicly to take a generous line. (And no wonder—their calculus, after the 12-Day War and earlier episodes of kabuki-style proportional military responses, is that going ape is the only way to deter further attacks.)

Allow me to introduce into this unhappy broil our aggressively coiffed scapegoat, Peter B. Hegseth.

Let us remember that Hegseth has not been an optimally competent and PR-neutral official, even before he started howling for blood on live television. His Defense Department has been a staffing clown-show, largely self-inflicted; his high-profile reprisals against staffers, some of whom were his longtime friends and allies, in the end turned on entirely baseless accusations of leaking. He did not cover himself in glory during l’affaire Signalgate, although the preponderance of the responsibility fell (justly) on one of the administration’s other telegenic hominids, Mike Waltz, who was summarily exiled to the cocktail circuit in Turtle Bay. Hegseth has been subject to bimbo eruptions and weird TV appearances, and his signature efforts to bring the culture war to the Pentagon have received mixed reviews. And then he became the face of blowing up fishermen and schoolgirls, and posting hype videos about those activities. We’re not talking about hanging Doug Burgum out to dry here; Hegseth has been a liability machine from the start.

So why not pin this stupendously unpopular, difficult to resolve war on him? This is obviously an argument of expediency, not justice (mostly). The buck stops with the president, and there’s plenty of blame to go around among the other creatures of the camarilla, but that is for future historians to itemize. Here and now, there is an endangered official very publicly attached to a very unpopular policy. The president is no stranger to writing off distressed assets. Why not Hegseth? By his own admission, the war is why the GOP lost midterms. If he does not take the political credit for firing his stiff-haired pit bull, it will accrue to the members of the congressional party who break with him by voting for Hegseth’s ouster—something that is detrimental to party discipline, to say the least.

It should be underlined that this need not change policy; even a boring secretary of defense will do what he is told to do from on high. But if, behind closed doors, this is presented to the Iranians as a substantive change, that could be useful in brokering a deal. The Iranians have an idiosyncratic and, by my lights, often defective understanding of the American political system; getting rid of the fellow who blows up schoolgirls and crows about it on the television could conceivably cultivate a more reasonable attitude in Tehran.

The other option, of course, is standing by your man. This approach is often vindicated in American politics, at least as far back as the Clinton impeachments. But a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. There’s quite a lot of upside to getting rid of Hegseth; yes, the downside is giving away a hairgel-laden scalp, but it is a scalp of diminishing value while still attached to its unpopular skull. It is perhaps time to say goodbye.

Andrew Day writes:

President Donald Trump, after threatening for weeks to bring the “hammer” down on Iran, said Monday that a U.S. escalation is “unlikely” and the war is “effectively over” militarily. Antiwar voices breathed sighs of relief, and oil prices continued to plunge amid surging hopes of lasting peace.

But there’s a big problem.

Trump also says he’ll maintain America’s crushing economic pressure campaign against Tehran, including the naval blockade on Iranian ports. Not only is the blockade itself an act of war under international law, but the campaign makes a resumption of all-out hostilities more likely, regardless of the president’s intentions, experts told The American Conservative.

“While the American economic warfare against Iran is causing significant damage to the Iranian economy, there is little reason to believe that the Iranian leadership will surrender in an existential war when the population has rallied around the flag following multiple American atrocities against the Iranian people,” said Brett Erickson of Obsidian Risk Advisors.

The Islamic Republic, Erickson noted, has retained its military capability to escalate the regional war, and the Trump administration shouldn’t assume the Iranians will “stand idly by while the United States devastates their economy and citizens.”

Erickson’s comments align with expert analyses provided to TAC in early September, days after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent laid out the so-called “Economic D-Day” strategy to cripple and isolate Tehran economically. “Iran will keep fighting despite the economic pain,” said Rosemary Kelanic of Defense Priorities. “This is an existential conflict for them, and besides, capitulation isn’t a serious option when Trump’s demands are so erratic.”

“We’ve seen repeatedly that economic pressure can severely hurt ordinary people without producing the political outcome Washington expects,” added Sina Toossi, an Iran expert at the Center for International Policy. “Tehran is more likely to look for ways to withstand the pressure and impose costs of its own, including through its leverage over Hormuz and regional energy flows.”

Those pessimistic assessments proved prescient: October was the worst month of the war for Iranian strikes on vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz, a key chokepoint for the global energy trade. Iran successfully kept oil prices elevated to maximize the political costs for Trump and the Republican Party, using last week’s midterm elections as leverage. That’s evidence not only of Iran’s intact military capabilities, but of its strategic patience and willingness to escalate amid U.S. pressure.

Nevertheless, after the GOP’s midterm elections rout, the Trump administration raised the pressure. It stood up “Task Force Iron Gate,” which expands the blockade on weapons shipments to Iran by targeting land routes and shipping in the Caspian Sea.

The operation is led by Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command and reputedly one of the most hawkish military officials advising Trump. While the president may hope to save face without reigniting a deeply unpopular war, Cooper’s operation only intensifies low-grade fighting that already risked spiraling into major hostilities.

The loudest advocates of the operation—like Mark Dubowitz of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)— would welcome a return to major U.S.-Israel strikes. Before the war, groups like the FDD sabotaged U.S.–Iran diplomacy by pushing the White House to adopt hardline demands that Tehran plainly would not agree to, as TAC has reported. Now, they back a strategy of economic strangulation that could lead to the regime change war scenario they actually want.

Meanwhile, the U.S. continues to move an aircraft carrier—the USS Theodore Roosevelt—to the Middle East. In mid- to late-November, the U.S. is set to briefly have a rare three-carrier presence in the region. If Iran judges a big U.S. attack to be inevitable or nearly so, it could preemptively strike.

Moreover, political pressure on Trump to restart the war will rise in the coming weeks. December 11 marks a deadline for Congress to fund the federal government, and a growing number of Democrats want to use the occasion to cut funding for the Iran War. With Congress coming under Democratic control in January, the Washington War Party sees the next few weeks as a crucial window to “finish the job” against Iran. Israeli political developments only add to the sense of urgency: Opposition parties are trying to form a new government, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sought to provoke another round of war in a desperate bid to hold onto power.

Whatever Trump may say, the economic pressure campaign against Iran isn’t an alternative to war. Unless and until the president walks away from the conflict, opponents of this disastrous war should remain vigilant.

And Joel Kotkin writes:

The phrase ‘success has a thousand fathers, but failure is an orphan’ is a well-known proverb. And when it comes to the wipeout of Donald Trump last week, the blame game has as many padres as a medieval monastery.

US vice-president JD Vance – appealing to his preferred base of ‘heritage Americans’, those who can trace their roots to the early republic – essentially blamed the Iran war and America’s ties to Israel, much like his close buddy, Tucker Carlson. The mainstream libertarian Republican press has its own favourite explanations: Trump’s chaotic tariff policies, which certainly hurt voters in border states.

But the big enchilada was the loss of Latinos. In 2024, Republicans were polling close to parity among Latin American voters. In 2026, the Democrats are winning by two to one. The blame here is clear: Trump’s all-out assault on all undocumented immigrants, a policy somehow never mentioned by Vance, much as he fails to mention corruption. This disastrous policy could ramp up under the anti-immigrant zealot Stephen Miller, Trump’s unfortunate choice for his new chief of staff.

In 2024, Latino voters generally supported Trump’s initial policies of securing the border and arresting undocumented felons. What they were never going to support was taking out largely innocent, hard-working migrants, who are also their neighbours. The botched immigration crackdown has managed not only to alienate Latinos, but also most Americans, turning Trump’s best issue into one of his worst.

Last year, I directed a project at the Civitas Institute at the University of Texas and found opposition to the activities of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) was fairly universal, even among Republican-leaning participants. National poll data also show Latinos are far less in favour of the current ICE drive against non-criminal undocumented immigrants than most Americans. Some 65 per cent of Latinos think Trump has overreached on immigration.

In one particularly poignant focus group in the Californian city of Riverside, each of the panel’s 11 members described their concerns over the break-up of hard-working and law-abiding families. Yet for all their concern, at the end of the day, when we asked them if they were optimistic about the future, all 11 enthusiastically said ‘yes’.

The progressive attempt to paint Latinos and other immigrants as primarily loyal to la raza is simply wrong. The Civitas study polled Latinos nationwide and found a population that largely wants what most Americans desire: a good wage, a single-family house, good schools and public safety. The thing they care least about is living with people who look like them.

Critically, Latinos are more optimistic than white Americans. Latinos still believe in and cherish the American Dream, and a majority believe they can still achieve it. They are, if anything, more ‘American’ in work ethic and religious faith than Vance’s ‘heritage Americans’. And, unlike Minnesota’s Somali community, they do not seek to bring Islamism to America, as Latinos overwhelmingly reflect the essentially Christian values of most Americans.

Rather than Vance’s ‘heritage Americans’, Latinos, along with Asians, will define the post-racial American future. Their combined share of the US population is now a quarter, but should rise to one-third by 2050.

The growth of the Latino population will play a huge role in America’s economic future. In 2022, the US Latino GDP reached $3.7 trillion and is now the world’s fifth-largest. In 1990, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Latinos accounted for approximately 10.7million workers. By 2020, this had grown to 29 million, and is projected to reach nearly 35.9million by 2030. Between 2020 and 2030, Latinos will account for 78 per cent of new US workers. Overall, the Latino share of the workforce is expected to double to nearly 30 per cent by 2060.

Much of this growth comes from small businesses – ironically the traditional GOP bulwark. Latino business owners in 2019 employed 2.9million workers, and sales in Latino-owned businesses totalled more than $620 billion. Today, Latinos start more businesses per capita than any other US racial or ethnic group.

Even as they have deserted Republicans, Latinos share many values – notably on cultural issues – that align with mainstream Republican positions. But they tend to be further left of centre on economic issues.

Yet their overall goals are more typically American than the left might imagine. Latino households want to live in safe communities. They are also among the least likely ethnic groups to support cuts to police funding. Among self-described Latino liberals, nearly 60 per cent oppose defunding the police, far more than white liberals (27 per cent) and black liberals (44 per cent). Latinos also boast some of the highest rates of voluntary enlistment and military service. They represent the fastest-growing population in the military, making up about 20 per cent of all active-duty personnel. The number of police officers who are Latino increased from eight per cent in 1997 to 14 per cent in 2020.

In economic terms, the red-state model certainly retains some appeal. Our study found that Latinos generally do better in states – like Texas – that have grown in manufacturing, energy, construction and logistics – fields in which they are overrepresented. They also benefit from lower housing prices created by market-oriented zoning policies. Latino homeownership rates in Texas are 14 points higher than in the Golden State.

Overall, Latinos in Texas make $10,000 more per capita than their California counterparts. They also fare better in many Midwestern and Plains states, such as Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa and Nebraska.

Latino influence increasingly extends well beyond the south-west. In 2000, Latinos made up more than 20 per cent of the population in four states. Today, they account for more than 20 per cent in eight states. By 2030, the Census Bureau projects that Latinos will account for 22 per cent of the national population. They are transforming even the most iconic traditionally Anglo areas, including Nashville, America’s country-music capital. As recently as 2000, less than three per cent of metro Nashville’s population was Latino, but by 2020, that percentage had more than tripled.

All this suggests that the Vance strategy of focusing on ‘heritage Americans’ is doomed. The vast majority of Americans – apart from African and Native Americans – actually trace their roots to the two great immigration waves: one in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the other after 1965.

Vance’s nativism – the idea that ‘people whose ancestors fought in the Civil War have a hell of a lot more claim over America’ – has little appeal to those whose parents or grandparents crossed the border, entered at Ellis Island, like my family, or immigrated by jet more recently to LAX or JFK. It is an assured way to make the Democrats a permanent ruling party.

Attacking Latinos is also a losing political strategy. California already provides a cautionary tale. Proposition 187 in 1994 – which sought to ban illegal immigrants from accessing non-emergency healthcare and other state services – helped Republican Pete Wilson defeat Democrat Kathleen Brown. But the aftershocks have proven disastrous. The Latino vote increased by 184 per cent between 2000 and 2020, and a once highly competitive state has become a one-party one, where Democrats win with margins of victory regularly ranging from 10 to 30 points. By 2018, the California Latino vote had reached 3.3million, nearly doubling its election turnout from 2014, with the turnout rate of Latino voting-age citizens increasing from 25 per cent to 43 per cent over the same period.

Alienating Latinos bit Republicans hard last week. This was most evident in Texas, where Latinos constitute 40 per cent of the population. Texas’s economic growth may have benefited Latinos. But racist dog whistles from Republican candidates like Bo French, running for a state-railroad-commissioner post, in addition to ICE overreach and the awfulness of Senate nominee Ken Paxton, drove them into the arms of the Democrats. This phenomenon cost the Republicans numerous state and federal seats in Latino-dominated South Texas, reversing all their gains made in 2024.

Latino voters also helped turn Arizona, for the first time in 60 years, into an all-Democratic state, one where Republicans once did respectably. Latinos in the state shifted 25 points towards the Democrats compared with 2024, much as occurred throughout the country. Latino voters also increased Democratic margins in reliably blue states like California, New York, New Jersey and Illinois. What have long been difficult states for Republicans now seem to be on the verge of becoming impossible.

Right-wing commentators have often seen Latino cultural views as fundamentally conservative, making them natural allies of the fundamentalist cultural wing of the Republican Party. And, to be sure, Latinos, particularly immigrants, tend to be more conservative on such issues as abortion, family and religious adherence than Democrats.

But if Republicans want to compete for these winnable voters, they have to stop listening to the likes of Tucker Carlson, JD Vance and Stephen Miller. It starts with recognising that America, unlike Britain, Japan or much of Europe, does not base its national identity on ethnic identity, but on an embrace of constitutional principles such as free speech, the rule of law and the right to acquire property.

Latinos, apart from radical academics and woke media, see themselves simply as another face of America. They are part of that remarkable and evolving ‘race of races’, as Walt Whitman put it, that remains America’s existential reality. There is only one America; it is perhaps a little browner and less European than it used to be, but still capable of employing its diversity to make it ever more remarkable.

Latinos’ integration can also be seen in their move to the suburbs and exurbs rather than to core cities, where the far left now increasingly rules, or to the agricultural countryside. Between 1990 and 2010, the percentage of Latinos living in suburbs grew from 47 per cent to 59 per cent. This reflects, in part, their fundamental aspiration to purchase a single-family house, which came through so strongly in our polling.

To get back in the game, Republicans will need to go beyond their overwhelmingly white MAGA base, the group Vance and his acolytes focus on. Their appeal should be based on economic mobility, reindustrialisation and, in particular, opportunities for home ownership. In 2024, Republicans made this case, combining a more conservative cultural stance with an opportunity-driven economic agenda.

But this year, Donald Trump’s immigration excesses ‘trumped’ the Democrats’ unpopular cultural agenda, while corruption and renewed inflation did the rest. If the Republican Party sticks with its nativist agenda, it should prepare for a long stint in the dustbin of political history.