And On It Runs

From the New Statesman, where John Merrick writes:

Let’s get this out of the way early: Matt Goodwin’s new self-published book, Suicide of a Nation, is bad. Very bad. In fact, even for the increasingly gimcrack world of the British right, it is a shockingly poor piece of research and writing, made worse by the fact that Goodwin was until recently a fairly well-respected academic.

As the writer Andy Twelves and others have catalogued, the book is filled with falsely attributed quotes (all of which, oddly enough, have the same flattened style as Goodwin himself), misinterpreted data, and dubious, out of context or just plain made-up statistics. Of the only 12 footnotes in the book – the vast majority of which are in the first chapter, as if he gave up with references after the first few pages – two contain links that still have their ChatGPT source code embedded in them. Of the rest, five are to Goodwin’s own blog, while another is to a Telegraph article about something Goodwin himself wrote.

All of which is to say that you will almost certainly not read this book. But, in an attempt to move beyond its most obviously egregious aspects, which I imagine will continue to be aired on social media, and to discover what little thought animates it, the task comes to me to summarise the worldview of Matthew Goodwin, aspiring tub-thumper.

Britain, Goodwin tells us, is declining fast. Our borders have been eroded and our public services run down, while our living standards deteriorate and the welfare bill skyrockets. In fact, such is the state of the nation that it if it continues on its current path it will soon cease to be. “Within just one generation,” he writes, “Britain will no longer be Britain. England will no longer be England. The country that we still just about know and recognise, the country our ancestors built, will be no more.”

If Britain is dying, then it is not the result of murder. It is death by suicide at the hands of a mendacious class of government and corporate mandarins, people he dubs the “New Elite”, who have taken over the country since the Blairite victory in 1997, the annus horribilis for the new right. Before then, Goodwin says, Britain was dominated by an “Old Elite”, a kindly and patrician group “comprised of aristocrats, politicians, clergy and intellectuals”. They were patriotic, valued duty and felt a deep kinship and obligation to the nation. The New Elite, on the other hand, are driven by something else entirely, an insidious ideology that Goodwin following the right-wing Canadian marketing psychologist Gad Saad calls “suicidal empathy”: “a one-way, unconditional compassion that always favours outsiders over your own people”.

This new ideology means that our governing class are now more concerned about being “on the right side of history” and protecting the vulnerable and needy (particularly if they are not white and native British) than promoting a strong and virile indigenous national culture. What’s worse is that they openly disdain ordinary people “as not only hopelessly provincial but morally inferior”. Such is the rot at the heart of the establishment that “their loyalties lie not with Britain but with a global class of other elites” – rootless cosmopolitans, you might say.

This New Elite of politicians, bureaucrats, NGO workers and other assorted do-gooders who make up the “global managerial class” have stuck their needle deep into the arm of Britain, infecting it with a “new moral virus”, “a moral and institutional sickness”. Such aggressive, near masochistic rhetoric reappears on almost every page of Suicide of a Nation, a clear symptom of how far along the pipeline of the hard right Goodwin now is. He even drags out the old far-right canard about cultural Marxism to scare his readers, claiming that “the New Elite followed the exact playbook outlined by the Marxist thinker Antonio Gramsci”.

Yet, despite the suicide of the title, the book isn’t really about the New Elite at all. It is really about immigration, and the dire threat that Muslims pose to the country. Britain, Goodwin says, is now replete with “segregated Muslim areas, blasphemy laws, the rise of Islamic sectarianism in politics, the Pakistani Muslim rape gangs… anti-Semitism”. The people we have been “importing” have come from cultures that are “inferior, primitive”, “stuck in cultural codes, behaviours and lifestyles that Western nations abandoned centuries ago”. He even doubles down on his controversial claim that being British “requires more than a passport”: “they might be administratively British”, he writes, “but they are not one of us in a true sense”.

After only a few pages you’re left with the distinct impression that the talk of “suicidal empathy” was in reality a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card, allowing him to rail against “incompatible” foreign cultures and the “demographic replacement” of the “White British” by a “foreign tide” of nefarious “invaders” who “terrorise, murder, rape and assault” – all while offering some plausible deniability for any racist intent. “Immigrants pursuing their own interests are not to blame for any of this,” he writes, after castigating them in the harshest possible terms for several chapters. “The people I blame are those in Westminster who rule over us.” Yeah, right.

If this is a bleak picture, Goodwin predicts that it will only get worse as the demographic collapse continues, with Muslim birth rates outpacing those of white Brits, and immigration rates continuing to accelerate. In the process, British culture itself will soon be erased. Yet, quite what the culture that Goodwin strides forth to defend reads as both almost entirely empty and almost unbelievably, fragile. “As mass immigration continues to import into Britain radically different cultures from outside Europe,” he writes, “the core of the nation is being gradually weakened and will, eventually, give way altogether.” To this end Goodwin marshals Roger Scruton who apparently once called Britain’s national culture our “delicate spirit” (I haven’t checked this one, so who knows). Such a precious spirit is no match for the brutish foreign hordes, with their hostile ways of life. Which rather raises the question, if British culture really is this delicate then how has it managed to survive this long?

Scruton, whatever his politics, was nothing if not a cultured and erudite writer. Not so Goodwin, whose artless prose and deadened style reads more like the transcribed mumblings of the very worst pub boor than a spirited defence of Britishness. Britain, he writes, “gave the world liberty, reason, science, the Industrial Revolution, the English language, Shakespeare”; now, you’re tempted to respond, the best it can generate is vapid and platitudinous screeds with all the poetry of a “LIVE LAUGH LOVE” sign. On every page are passages that clang so hard they set your teeth on edge; sentences like “if shared language is the glue, then a shared national identity is the anchor” and patronising asides asking you to “think about that for a minute”.

And on it runs. There are apparently never-ending lists, all within a couple of paragraphs: “The ruling class and their cheerleaders – Keir Starmer, Sadiq Khan, Tony Blair, Emily Maitlis, Alastair Campbell, James O’Brien”; “places like Newham, Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Leicester, Slough, Tower Hamlets or Westminster”; “Enfield, Luton, Barnet, Camden, Boston and Cambridge”; “Peterborough, Watford, Reading, Coventry, Nottingham and Southampton”. There is an assembly of clichés and cheap rhetorical tricks: “the hard-working, law-abiding majority”; “The hour is late, but not too late”; hundreds of sentences saying that it’s not X, it’s Y. And throughout, the same, hollering, maddening, dum-di-dum-di-dum-di-dum rhythm, with one thing following painfully, agonisingly after another, all without depth or range or style or tone. “Winston Churchill would have laughed. Margaret Thatcher would have kicked the table over.” Well, quite.

If this were AI-generated it would almost be a relief. The sad truth, however, is that even ChatGPT couldn’t come up with anything this dead. This is not the language of AI. It’s another digital phenomenon – the language of Elon Musk’s X. Log on to social media and you’ll find essay-length posts by blue-checked right-wingers all composed in the same style: short, clipped phrases and paragraphs of only one or two sentences, larded with dodgy data and spiced unverifiable conjecture. That same social media also seems to have provided Goodwin with much of the book’s content, which will be familiar to anyone who has had even a cursory scan of right-wing Twitter over the past year or two.

Perhaps even worse, however, is the ever-looming spectre of the “Censorship Industrial Complex” that is nestled in amongst all the flaccid attempts at demagogy. This, Goodwin says, is responsible for silencing all of us in the right-thinking majority. “The ruling class will not dwell on any of this. They will dismiss it as paranoia, exaggeration, or scaremongering.” Even more, “the elites will attack me because I wrote this for you”, he writes: “they will call me every name under the sun because I dare to tell you the truth”. (It must be nice, if not depressing, to have a ready excuse for the bad reviews you know your book will elicit.)

The political right, who have hosted Goodwin’s writing for years, are, we must conclude, a thoroughly post-literate bunch. They may be buying the book, if its rush up the Amazon bestseller charts is any indication. But it’s hard to see them reading, much less enjoying, it. Perhaps we knew this already: after all, it is not from literature or art that the modern British right gets its insight and its influence, but from AI, and the gassy brain-farts of social media. From this, Suicide of a Nation is perfectly cast: all surface and no depth, a grab-bag of decontextualised data and empty provocations.

According to the preface, the book was written in December 2025. Perhaps Goodwin wrote it with the idea that its release would coincide with his accession to the mother of parliaments as a Reform MP. Suicide of a Nation would then be a triumphant volley fired from the Palace of Westminster to the nation at large, announcing Matt Goodwin as major political figure. That’d certainly have shown the New Elite.

It wasn’t to be. On 26 February, Goodwin was decisively defeated in the Gorton and Denton by-election by Hannah Spencer of the Greens. There is a lesson in this, about mistaking short-term popularity for perspicacity, inflated self-regard for mass appeal. And that he still published this book in its aftermath helps demonstrate the utter vapidity of much of the British right. Goodwin, it can no longer be doubted, is a major figure in Reform, one of their house intellectuals and a prominent member of the party’s inner circle, chosen to be their candidate in what they hoped would be a set-piece byelection campaign. That, when he came to set down his ideas, all he could do was to produce trash like this is surely a poor sign indeed.

Since he left academia, Goodwin has made a lucrative career for himself peddling the same sort of sensationalist pap on TV and online, claiming to speak for the forgotten white majority and wilfully misinterpreting Britain’s social forces for his own gain. If the experience of the past month means anything, then it should lead to even a small moment of critical self-reflection. Britain is telling him something. But Goodwin, we can be sure, won’t hear it.

Even unto The Spectator, where Michael Gove solemnly excommunicates Matt Goodwin from the British Right by publishing Andy Twelves himself:

After losing the Gorton and Denton parliamentary by-election to a leftwing plumber, Reform’s Matthew Goodwin has published a new book: Suicide of a Nation: Immigration, Islam, Identity.

It’s clear that Goodwin was trying to emulate Douglas Murray’s The Strange Death of Europe: Immigration, Identity, Islam, which was published in 2017. It has almost the same tagline and rough thesis. But while we can be sure that Murray did not use AI to write his book, I cannot extend the same confidence to Goodwin’s attempt, which opens with:

‘There are moments in the life of a nation when everything changes – not with a bang, not even with a conscious decision, but with a quiet, creeping loss of confidence so profound that a people start to forget who they are.’

Anybody who has used ChatGPT will recognise the telltale signs of possible AI writing, such as the ‘it’s not X, it’s Y’ comparisons and the strange obsession with things being quiet or silent.

Coincidence? Perhaps. Goodwin has responded to my criticisms saying that they are ‘spurious and false’. He has also said, elsewhere, that his critics on the left have clearly not read his book, and that he has not used as many references as an academic book would have as he is seeking to reach a mass audience. But we can see, at the very least, that ChatGPT helped with parts of his book, because he left the ChatGPT URL in some of the few references used to justify his arguments. Goodwin says that he only used AI to obtain datasets and cross-checked them.

Much of his analysis appears to refer to events, places and people which do not exist – another indication that a writer has relied on large-language models (LLMs), which frequently ‘hallucinate’ facts.

Take Goodwin’s claims about British schools. He cites reports that in one Bradford classroom, only four out of 28 pupils spoke English as a first language, with teachers reduced to mediating ‘dozens of languages.’ I can find no reporting that backs up this claim and Goodwin provides no source for it in his book. The case sounds suspiciously like the response when you type, ‘find me an alarming case of no English in a primary school’ into ChatGPT and hit enter.

Goodwin also cites a ‘BBC West Midlands’ report from 2019 about a school where 30 languages are spoken by its pupils. I also cannot find any record of this report. What’s strange is that there are plenty of stories, including in Birmingham, which Goodwin could have cited. In 2021, the Metro and Birmingham Mail wrote about Water Mill primary school in Selly Oak, for example, where 31 languages were spoken. But if Goodwin had read these reports he would have found that Water Mill was at the time one of the top two per cent rated schools in the country.

Instead, Goodwin quotes an ‘inspection report’ which says: ‘Many pupils join the school with extremely limited English.’ Again, I cannot find any reference to this quote after reading multiple Ofsted reports about schools where multiple languages are spoken. What the Ofsted reports do say, repeatedly, is that these schools are generally good at their jobs, that their pupils make strong progress, and that support for English as an additional language is effective. But perhaps this doesn’t fit into Goodwin’s narrative.

The sloppiness does not end here. Goodwin seems to have created quotes by Cicero, Hayek, Roger Scruton, Livy, Noah Webster, James Burnham and Walker Connor – an impressive feat, in a sense. ‘The most dangerous experiments are those conducted on entire societies’, is a quote that Goodwin attributes to Hayek, despite there being no record of it elsewhere. It seems the most dangerous experiment is publishing a book without any fact-checking.

Reading the book at some point you have to ask: did Goodwin verify any of his claims? Did he open a single book writing his own? Or did he just accept whatever an AI chatbot spat out because it would make him sound vaguely informed? After I posted about the errors in his book, Goodwin suggested I was a ‘left-wing troll’ and thanked me for boosting sales. He did not address his use of the seemingly fake quotes or produce a source for them. He has, in fairness, invited me to debate him about the veracity of his book on GB News next week, something I am greatly looking forward to.

Goodwin has no real excuse for inaccuracies in his book. In the past he was a well-regarded academic at the University of Kent. If one of his students had handed in a dissertation with hallucinated quotes and references that don’t exist, he would obviously have failed them. Unfortunately, it appears that any academic rigour Goodwin once had has long since dissipated.

Goodwin is perhaps very slightly too young to realise how laughable it is to suggest that Britain was still being run by his Old Elite until as late as 1997, although he ought to know that that absurdity was fundamental to New Labour and thus to his New Elite. It is no less risible to suggest that the Old Elite was as Goodwin described. The recently uncovered image of Jeffrey Epstein, Peter Mandelson and the then Prince Andrew said everything about both Elites, including that they were both in a state of undress. As, after this, is Reform UK.

Intercontinental Range

Donald Trump calls Reza Pahlavi "the Loser Prince", but Pahlavi briefs that Trump had meant him when he had boasted of controlling the Strait of Hormuz jointly with "whoever the next ayatollah is". Bless.

A fatwa ordering support for Iran has been issued by Grand Mufti Sheikh Sadiq al-Ghariani, who was installed by David Cameron and an ungrateful Nicolas Sarkozy when they delivered Libya to the people who ungratefully went on to perpetrate the Manchester Arena attack.

As their first act in the new Libya was to legalise polygamy since there could be no law contrary to the Quran, so the Western-installed regime in the new Syria is trying to ban alcohol, initially by restricting its sale to Christian areas the more to make them targets for terrorist attack. President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who is otherwise Abu Mohammad al-Julani in the manner of "Tommy Robinson", is a sometime second-in-command both of Al-Qaeda and of the so-called Islamic State.

But at least the expressions of outrage on the streets of Damascus constitute any kind of popular uprising. There has been no such thing in Iran. Nor in Cuba, which mirrors Iran in being blockaded on the orders of well-connected "exiles" in the United States. The Cuban economic model can be held up as a failure because Trump has cut off its oil supply. Well, Trump has now cut off a lot of countries' oil supplies. What will the effects of that prove?

It is never about political rights in the narrower sense. There has been no regime change in Venezuela. There looks unlikely to be any in Iran. We are at war, and Britain has been in this war from the start, for one of the two most repressive regimes in the world, with only North Korea equalling Saudi Arabia, and for several more that are scarcely any better. And look up the relations between Nick Candy, Treasurer of Reform UK, and the Nicaragua of Rosario Murillo and Daniel Ortega, winner of the 2009 Al-Gaddafi International Prize for Human Rights.

Centre Forward?

Philip Collins’s idea of a “left bloc” includes the more pro-austerity and pro-war party to the Coalition, and he remains devoted to the only British member of Donald Trump’s Board of Peace. Instead of such dangerous extremism, we need to strengthen families and communities by securing economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, including national and parliamentary sovereignty. In the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence, namely the working class, while in the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to those who suffer most from its absence, namely the working class and the youth.

Social solidarity is an expression of personal responsibility, personal responsibility is protected by social solidarity, international solidarity is an expression of national sovereignty, and national sovereignty is protected by international solidarity. Equality and diversity must include economic equality and class diversity, regional equality and regional diversity, the equal sovereignty of diverse states, and equal respect for diverse opinions within a framework of free speech and other civil liberties, including due process of law with the presumption of innocence, requiring that conviction be beyond reasonable doubt.

All of this is opposed by and to the European Union, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, the World Trade Organisation, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the anti-industrial Malthusianism and misanthropy of the Green agenda, the treatment of identity politics as equal or superior to class politics, the treatment of gender identity as equal or superior to biological sex, the cancel culture of which our people have always been the principal victims, the erosion of civil liberties, the stupefaction of the workers or the youth, the indulgence of separatist tendencies in any of the three parts of Great Britain, the consideration of any all-Ireland settlement that failed to preserve the NHS and other such achievements, or the failure to recognise that a sovereign state with its own free-floating, fiat currency had as much of that currency as it chose to issue to itself, with readily available fiscal and monetary means of controlling any inflationary effect, means that therefore needed to be under democratic political control.

Create? Content?

Leonid Radvinsky and Kermit Gosnell both died today. May God have mercy on their souls. The line is obvious from each to the other.

Ever since the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990, it would have been practically impossible to have convicted Gosnell of anything in Great Britain, where he would therefore never have been charged. When the Crime and Policing Bill became law, then that state of affairs would become even more secure than it already was.

As for Radvinsky, between his donation of $11 million to AIPAC, and the consequent strikes and boycotts on either side of the OnlyFans exchange, what a time for us all to have been alive.

Of course Gosnell was also a drug dealer. Of course we all know what habit is being fed by any number of those who displayed themselves on Radvinsky's site. And of course there can be no "free" market without all of it. So of course there must not be a "free" market at all.

That Is The Standard

As we rebuild our civilisation from scratch after what has been exemplified by the Epstein Files, we need to re-learn structured daily prayer, setting aside one day in seven, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, the global community of faith as the primary focus of personal allegiance and locus of personal identity, the lesser outward and greater inward struggle, the need for a comprehensive and coherent critique of both capitalism and Marxism, the coherence between faith and reason, and a consequent integrated view of art and science. The answer to the challenge of the Sunna is Sacred Tradition. The answer to the challenge of the Imamate is the Petrine Office. The answer to the challenge of Sufism is our own tradition of mysticism and monasticism. Liberal Catholics will be the last to see the point. Although, like everyone else, they may buy the book here. And like everyone else, they should read Fraser Nelson:

Larry’s Bar, under the National Portrait Gallery, is London’s best-kept secret. I was on my way there with a friend last week when we heard the Muslim call to prayer. “What on earth is that?” she asked. The answer: an open iftar, where non-Muslims are invited to join Muslims for a meal to mark the end of Ramadan. It’s intended as a cohesive national event. They’ve done it at Lord’s, Windsor Castle, Shakespeare’s Globe, King’s College Cambridge. Jews, Christians and atheists all attend. But to someone passing by at that exact moment, seeing all these people praying, it would look like Muslims taking over Trafalgar Square. 

It was Nick Timothy, a Tory MP, who beat Reform to the punch by saying the prayer - provocatively next to a church, he said - was an act of “domination”. A row followed. But I didn’t hear anyone make the fundamental point: this was an event open to all, where Muslims invite their non-Muslim neighbours to demystify the occasion and extend a hand of friendship. That hand was being scorched, and cast as that of the would-be oppressor.

Growing up in the Highlands, I once celebrated Passover with Jews. At the military where I lived in Cyprus, Catholics shared half a church service with Protestants - each half of the congregation seeing how alike they are. These occasions are rare and powerful: gestures of cohabitation, of neighbourliness, of friendship. My own church opens up to ‘Catholicism for the Curious’, carol services, soup kitchens and more. The idea is not to hide away but to actively serve the community - and in so doing, create the architecture for a pluralistic, multi-faith society.

The hard right has recently started to use the cross as a cudgel. Tommy Robinson converted and held a carol concert protest, with a group of nutty preachers - one of whom announced he used to be a witch. New flags have emerged showing the Cross of St George alongside a crucifix. You’d struggle to find a hard-right commentator who has not converted in recent months. Christianity is being enlisted in politics to advance a new narrative: that Christian civilisation is under attack by the woke left and the Muslims. This is how you build political movements: sell victim vs oppressor narrative.

Robert Jenrick barely said a word about religion in most of his parliamentary career but now pops up to demand that Keir Starmer celebrates what he calls “Psalm Sunday”. He means Palm Sunday, and the fact that he can get the two confused shows the level of cynicism here. Faith is a new tool he has picked up only recently. And yes, Christians can point to the aspect of Islamic worship we find jarring: the gender segregation during prayer (which was a short-yet-filmed part of the otherwise-mixed event). How regressive, we say. But where do you stop with this? What about the mechitza, the curtain or partition separating men and women in Orthodox Jewish synagogues? Or about the Catholic church’s refusal to ordain women or marry gay couples?

If we are to rub along together in these islands - Catholics, Jews, Unitarians, Humanists, Atheists, Anglicans, Evangelicals - we have to recognise what Jonathan Sacks, the former chief Rabbi, described as the “dignity of difference”. That is: to live, and let live.

The Jewish defence

Jews know better than anyone what happens when the ‘dignity of difference’ approach - the bedrock of a civilised society - is replaced by ‘this is a Christian country, you are a problem’ logic now being seeded into the UK public debate. Sectarian hatred is a glitch hardcoded into human nature, there to be activated in times of economic distress. A ‘our nation is under threat’ narrative can be easily promoted, to recruit supporters to your cause. New digital techniques mean such psychological buttons can be pushed by algorithms.

Stephan Zweig’s World of Yesterday describes what it feels like to live through a vibe shift. How cultured, cohabiting Europe descended into sectarian chaos; how his own friends started suddenly seeing their world through the newly-minted prism of sectarian (that is, anti-Jewish) conflict. And how it was enabled most of all due to those who didn’t resist or speak out when the (Nazi) crazies emerged, thinking they were a lesser evil than the other (Communist) crazies. No one spoke out for sane. Civilised Europe was torn apart for want of people to defend its values.

To be Jewish is to understand this mechanism: the cynical cultivation of moral panic, followed by pogrom. In our own way, Catholics - at least those of us who have lived through sectarianism and been cast as an enemy within - recognise it too. As the famous poem goes: first, they came for the Communists.

In this way, it is perhaps no surprise that the Jewish News was the first to defend the open iftar in a thundering editorial. It didn’t take much imagination to work out what follows when the ‘this is a Christian country’ brigade get their boots on.

There are times when Jews in this country wish to openly and publicly display our faith, whether that is through dozens of public Menorah lightings around the country, Purim parades through neighbourhoods with large numbers of Jews, road closures for a Hachnasat Sefer Torah, visiting streams or lakes on Rosh Hashana for Tashlich or large throngs of Charedim protesting education bills outside Westminster while reading Psalms and then davening Minchah. We are fortunate to live in a liberal, democratic society where such things are open to us - for many centuries such things would have been unthinkable.

Are there Islamists in this country who wish to assert their way of life over others? Of course. But it is hard to think of a more counterproductive way of combating such a thought process than by telling the many moderate Muslims that they - and they alone - should be unable to celebrate their faith in a public venue which they have booked for an event. In fact, there are few things more likely to help Islamists in their portrayal of British society as irretrievably hostile towards Muslims.

There are those in our community who will respond to this by telling us that the situation with Muslims is ‘different’. To that we would encourage them to look across the Atlantic. A number of the most influential right-wing voices in the United States were railing against Muslims a few years ago. Now they have switched their sights to target Jews.

Enter the Anglicans

And then the Christian bishops rallied to the defence. Here is the Anglican Bishop of Willesden:

The public iftar in Trafalgar Square was not an act of cultural imposition, nor a signal of division. It was, rather, a moment of hospitality: an invitation to share in the breaking of the fast during Ramadan, extended by one community to the wider public. It was open, generous and peaceful. It reflected something profoundly British - the instinct to gather, to mark significant moments together, and to make space in our common life for the traditions that shape our neighbours. 

To suggest that such an event is somehow threatening risks misunderstanding both the nature of religious expression and the character of our national life. Religious freedom in this country has never meant the privatisation of belief. It has meant the opposite: the right of individuals and communities to live out their faith openly, visibly and without fear. That principle applies as much to Muslims observing Ramadan as it does to Christians celebrating Easter, Jews marking Passover, Hindus celebrating Diwali, or Sikhs observing Vaisakhi.

The Bishop of Kirkstall came on to BBC Newsnight.

This is new. But I can see why people stay quiet. What you might call civilisationalism - a theme beloved of MAGA and Elon Musk - is a new creed, and like Brexit it divides old tribes. I’m not neutral. I loathe identity politics and religious sectarianism. Our model - call it Britishness - is precious but delicate. If attacked, as it is being attacked now, it needs defending. But the language of attack is new. What’s the language of defence?

I used to work as a barman in Cleo’s in Rosyth, for dockyard workers. The rule was no talk about football or religion, lest fights break out. The fights then would have been about Catholic vs Protestant - sectarianism that, in some cases, led to deaths. It has now almost died out. Those of us who welcome its death should be alarmed at attempts to revive it now, with Muslims as the new target.

This was the Jewish News’s point (after Niemöller). Those going after the Muslims would come after the Jews next - and in some quarters, already are. The Muslims at the Open Iftar wanted to break bread with Jews and Christians. Do their leaders stay quiet when they are slated by the online right for doing so? Or is it time to show some solidarity?

I write this as a member of a religious minority, so I declare my vested interest. When I started journalism I was advised “no good can ever come of anyone knowing you’re Catholic”. When I recently told a friend in Westminster how I was beaten for being Catholic (hardly an unusual experience in 1980s central Scotland) she was astonished. “You should write about this,” she said: as if sectarianism is a revelation. It made me wonder how many SW1 types playing this new game of religious identity politics are genuinely ignorant of where this path has always led.

The last two or three decades saw the extinction of sectarianism and its recognition as bigotry. Its retreat, and the emergence of a British model - space for people of all faiths and none to rub along together - is something precious. As the Jewish News recognises, worth defending.

The King’s gambit: Britishness as a remedy to sectarianism

This means speaking plainly about major integration failings, but without falling into the trap of tainting a whole community with the actions of the nutters. Jonathan Sacks’s answer is a British national identity so strong that it brings different ethnic and religious communities together in pursuit of the common good - not just the good for ‘my’ group, but the good for all of us together. A nation should respect its faiths, he said, and faiths should respect the nation. There are all too many examples of segregated,, closed communities, making no effort to reach out, no effort to respect the nation. The Muslims in Trafalgar Square were explicitly reaching out. Gathering in homage to both their faith and their country.

It sometimes feels as if Muslims can never catch a break - portrayed as dominating even when they invite outsiders as guests. That’s a depressing trend. But seeing Jews and Christians rally to their defence this week is a more hopeful one. There was, to me, something profoundly British in that response. And here, the King is more than just a national figurehead. In his first speech after his coronation, he said he had a duty as sovereign:- 

“…to protect the diversity of our country, including by protecting the space for Faith itself and its practise through the religions, cultures, traditions and beliefs to which our hearts and minds direct us as individuals. This diversity is not just enshrined in the laws of our country; it is enjoined by my own faith. As a member of the Church of England, my Christian beliefs have love at their very heart. By my most profound convictions, therefore – as well as by my position as Sovereign – I hold myself bound to respect those who follow other spiritual paths, as well as those who seek to live their lives in accordance with secular ideals.” 

That is the standard. A country that protects “the space for Faith itself and its practice” cannot then recoil when that faith is visible in the public square. The open iftar was not a challenge to Britain, but a test of it. And the answer came quickly: Jews and Christians defending it, because in doing so they were defending their own freedoms - and the country that makes them possible.

Can You See Where This Is Going?

Robert Clarke writes:

Last week, Scotland resolutely rejected assisted suicide. Alberta announced major new legislation to protect individuals from the practice. And the clock is ticking in the United Kingdom’s House of Lords on a bill that would legalize the practice in England and Wales.

Debates over assisted suicide are intensifying worldwide. The Scottish vote was striking as its parliament is dominated by parties on the left and center-left, and yet opposition to the bill prevailed, cutting across party lines. Leaders from Scotland’s three major parties (the Scottish National Party, Labour, and the Conservatives), along with the country’s last two first ministers, came together to reject the bill in a rare show of unity. The result was a 69-to-57 decision against legalizing assisted suicide for terminally ill adults.

The following day, Canada’s province of Alberta announced new legislation to significantly restrict assisted suicide, including a requirement the person be likely to die within the next 12 months and a prohibition on allowing it for those solely suffering from mental illness. This move too signals growing recognition of the immense individual and societal dangers of state-backed death.

Over the last four years, deaths in Alberta from Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID) regime increased by 109 percent. In her announcement, Alberta’s premier, Danielle Smith, was clear that the proposed law is “about protecting vulnerable Albertans.” As the federal government seeks to expand MAID across the country, including by moving to allow assisted suicide solely on the basis of mental health concerns, Alberta is drawing a line to protect its most vulnerable. If passed, the Safeguards for Last Resort Termination of Life Act would prohibit MAID for minors and when the sole condition is mental illness, in addition to introducing other key protections and delineating a right to conscientious objection.

Let us be clear: “safeguards” can never render assisted suicide safe. As long as this abhorrent practice is legal, precious human lives are under threat. But Alberta’s proposed law is a welcome step in the right direction toward protecting the most vulnerable in light of the country’s draconian MAID apparatus.

Losing Support in Scotland

Every jurisdiction that has legalized assisted suicide shows the same trajectory. Once death laws are introduced, the push to expand them further is unceasing. This is the reality now confronting the UK parliament.

At first, assisted-suicide proposals attract support in principle, only to lose it once the catastrophic real-life consequences are understood. In Scotland, when Liam McArthur’s Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults Bill first advanced last year, it appeared to have real momentum. Over time, as lawmakers worked through the details, that support began to fade. By the final vote, many who had once been open to the proposal had turned against it. The closer they looked, the harder it became to defend.

One of the most compelling speeches before the Scottish Parliament came from Jeremy Balfour, a member of the parliament and a longtime disability-rights advocate, himself disabled. Drawing on his own experience, he asked fellow lawmakers to consider what it means to live in a society where dependence is framed as a burden. He told the chamber that disabled people across Scotland were watching in fear. “We cannot legislate against the feeling of being a burden,” he said.

Experience elsewhere bears that out. In Oregon, where assisted suicide has been legal for nearly 30 years, the share of patients citing concern about burdening others has grown markedly over time. Further, shifts in the patient profile are eerily telling. In the first decade, up to 65 percent of those seeking assisted suicide were privately insured. By 2021, 79 percent were on government insurance. What this shows is vulnerability to difficult circumstances driving life-and-death decisions.

In Scotland, organizations representing general practitioners, psychiatrists, and palliative-care specialists all raised serious concerns about the bill. Several moved from neutral positions to opposition as the debate progressed. Their conclusion was consistent: The safeguards did not resolve the bill’s risks.

Canada’s Expansion of MAID

Canada’s experience shows how quickly those concerns can become reality. What began there as a limited policy for those near the end of life has developed into one of the most permissive assisted suicide systems in the world. Activists have consistently pushed for and achieved broadening of eligibility criteria.

Prudently, Alberta is looking ahead to the likelihood that 2027 will bring the next round of major changes with the expansion of MAID to mental illness.

Let the UK Bill Die

Now, the hope is that Britain will stop short of this madness. The Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life) Bill, passed in the House of Commons last year, looks set to fall in the Lords, undone by the weight of its own unresolved questions and the close of the parliamentary session. Westminster should not mourn its passing.

Unfortunately, last week ushered in a tragic new reality for the UK with parliament’s vote to decriminalize abortion up to birth. Fully developed babies can now be killed without limits, even at nine months. A second amendment to reinstate doctor’s consultations in place of abortion “pills by post” was also rejected. The disregard for the value of human life is profound. The consequences for both mothers and their unborn children will be grave, and the toll on all of British society will be immense.

The same legislative body now faces the end-of-life question too, and if the bill expires without passing, as now seems likely, that will be cause for relief rather than regret. Scotland has shown that the closer legislators look at assisted suicide, the harder it becomes to defend. Alberta has shown where the alternative path leads. There is no safe version of this law. Westminster should let this bill die, and keep it that way.

As James Moore writes:

“I could be wrong, James, but I thought the bill only applied to terminally ill people? What’s the connection with disabled people?” A telling tweet, that. It was written in response to my hailing the decision by the Scottish Parliament to decisively reject MSP Liam McArthur’s assisted dying bill. The initial vote went 70-56 in favour. However, after an emotional debate, the final tally was 69 votes against to just 57 saying “aye.”

The significance of the contributions made by disabled MSPs such as Jeremy Balfour and Pam Duncan-Glancy should not be understated. “I want you to imagine that you’ve heard on numerous occasions the words: ‘I’d rather die than live like you,’” said Balfour. “How do you think you would feel watching this debate? I think you would rightly feel terrified…For many in our country who are not that fortunate, the protections in this bill are not good enough. They could never be good enough.”

Disabled people have long feared that a bill like this is the thin end of the wedge, and that the inevitable result of it passing would be for supporters to shift focus to campaigning to remove safeguards and expand eligibility beyond the terminally ill with six months to live. It is when the implications of that are set against Balfour’s point that they start to become frightening. To my correspondent: that, right there, is the connection to disabled people.

Nor is it just MSPs’ worries about overt coercion that played a key role in the Scottish debate, or the inadequacy of the safeguards that need to be addressed. It is the more subtle pressure that people may feel. Here, the contribution of the SNP’s Ruth Maguire, stepping down as a result of a cancer diagnosis, should be heard. “I find it really hard to put into words the impact that the language of dignity and compassion being used to talk about ending life has had on me – as if somehow wishing to carry on but with help is undignified and burdensome, unfair to people who love me,” she said. “My blood runs cold thinking about sitting in a room in a hospital and having a doctor raise that with me as we weigh up treatment options.”

Consider that these MSPs are successful, influential and relatively well remunerated people. If they feel fear, what does that say about the implications for those of more limited means, without power, influence, or agency, for whom accessing the necessary support to live can be extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible. Take it from me, as a user of the NHS in England, it isn’t easy for anyone. To secure the treatments I need to be able to survive with a level of pain I can more or less handle, my family and I have been pitched into a series of bitter bureaucratic battles. I have sometimes been driven to the depths of despair, and from there into some very dark places. Can you see where this is going? And those battles are far from over.

When it comes to the “help to live” Balfour referenced, governments north and south of the border are failing – badly. Attempts to distract from this by portraying disabled people as “burdens”, “costs”, even “scroungers” are deeply troubling. Bills like this open a very grim door to these people. Cynical? Call me so. But when responsibilities are so routinely shirked, do you blame me? A particularly ugly example of this in practice was the treatment meted out to Lucinda Ritchie, a master's student and charity ambassador, while these debates raged. Against her will, she was discharged from hospital to a nursing home – she repeatedly stated her denial of consent – instead of the adapted bungalow where she had lived. “Life will not be worth living if I cannot go home,” she said.

This is the backdrop against which the Labour peer Lord Falconer has suggested the use of the Parliament Act to force the southern bill on England and Wales. It would be a first for what is notionally, like its Scottish equivalent, a private members’ bill, albeit one that has received significant government input. The more than 1,100 amendments that have been tabled have led to accusations of filibustering. But these would not have been necessary had the bill not been profoundly flawed. As the Paralympic gold medallist Baroness Grey-Thompson stated, it has “many loopholes” and is “vaguely written”. Far from flouting democracy and filibustering, as critics have charged, the amendments are an example of the Lords doing its job and paying heed to a vulnerable group in a way that the House of Commons did not.

Like many people with disabilities, I support the principle of bodily autonomy: the right of a person to decide what to do with his or her body and to steer its treatment. The danger in these bills is that they would lead to the opposite of that, to situations in which the sick and disabled feel forced into a terrible choice. They have floundered because they do not stand up to scrutiny. If that debate also serves to draw attention to the daily struggles people like me face as we battle to live, then maybe that purpose goes further still.

Lack of Inhibition

Ralph Leonard writes:

Millions have now watched the viral exchange between Tucker Carlson and the Editor-in-Chief of The Economist, Zanny Minton Beddoes, over what constitutes Israel’s “right to exist”. The consensus is that Carlson emerged from the clash better than Minton Beddoes, who stumbled when asked to define her terms. Worse, commentators across the political spectrum have taken the interview as evidence that the establishment media is tone-deaf about the conflict in the Middle East.

The reaction from those on the Left, such Mehdi Hasan, has been one of incredulity that Carlson, as a Right-winger, is more adept than liberal centrists at questioning pro-Israel talking points. Much of this anger is directed at the establishment media allegedly failing to question pro-Israel propaganda with the firmness and lack of inhibition that Carlson does.

So why does Carlson seem comparatively sensible and “principled” on the subject? For one thing, he couches many of his points in the language of universalism and Christian morality, and argues that the mass killing of innocent people is always wrong, regardless of which side is responsible. Either you have universally applicable standards or, as he put it, “you don’t have standards — just preferences.” This came after the US Ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, endured a car-crash interview with Carlson last month, in which he declared that Israel had the right to seize more Arab land because of the Bible.

Much of the resentment against the “right to exist” argument is a convenient tactic of deflection, just when the latest outrage by the Israeli state is in the news. This argument has been used to the point where we have normalised the idea of an annexed West Bank spearheaded by a zealous government. Those who invoke this argument therefore do so at their own risk when they’re not clear about what is meant by Israel — not in the abstract, but in the concrete reality of the present day.

Ironically, Minton Beddoes justified the premise of her question by citing the world order of nation-states built after the Second World War, based on respected territorial borders. When Carlson responded by asking whether Lebanon and Gaza also have a right to exist, in light of Israeli attacks over the past two years, she struggled to answer. Anyone can spot the double standards at play here. It confirms a common criticism of liberals: that they talk a good game about universal rights, but fold when it’s time to back up this position.

Carlson further suggested that Israel’s levelling of Gaza was not in tune with the virtues of “Western civilisation”. Instead, it resembles a vice of “Eastern civilisation” — that of collective punishment. This is intriguing in the context of the war within the American Right over Israel. Many of Carlson’s foes believe in the idea that Israel’s war on Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran is a war for “Western civilisation”. He and his allies, meanwhile, believe the problem is that Israel is not “Western” and that the West’s support for it is part of its moral and political corruption.

Liberal-centrist criticism of Israel tends to be tactical and mostly concerned with the effects on Israel’s “image”. Already, this cedes the classical-liberal ground to the likes of Carlson, who can claim to stand for “principles” in highlighting obvious crimes.

Thus, the presenter seems “reasonable” because he isn’t straitjacketed into morally condemning Israel and isn’t cowed by the usual “propaganda” questions. He isn’t a college Leftist jacked up on misreadings of Frantz Fanon, but instead a prominent conservative media personality speaking the language of universal human rights. All the while, liberal centrists are still tiptoeing over which politically correct language should be used in talking about Israel. As war spreads across the region, another round of the “right to exist” argument can only ring hollow. If liberals won’t take a principled stance more vociferously, then Carlson and his allies will. Minton Beddoes shouldn’t be surprised when more people now listen to him.

Although David M. Halbfinger and Fatima AbdulKarim can still write:

Israeli settlers beat a Palestinian man in the occupied West Bank, stripped him naked, tied his arms and legs and then zip-tied his penis, he, his family members and another witness said on Wednesday. “I thought I was going to die,” the man, Suhaib Abualkebash, a 29-year-old shepherd, told The New York Times. “I thought this was the end.”

Several family members and an American woman corroborated details of Mr. Abualkebash’s account, saying they witnessed the sexual assault on Friday by several men among a group of more than 20 settlers who marauded through a Bedouin encampment. The relatives and the American said they had been beaten, too, adding that the assailants had kicked and slapped children during the attack. Family members also shared copies of reports they had filed to the Israeli police.

Israeli settlers have been waging an escalating campaign of violence and land theft against Palestinians across much of the West Bank. It has intensified as Israeli attitudes toward Palestinians have hardened since the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war that ensued. The attacks have increased while international attention has been focused on the U.S.-Israel war with Iran. Settlers have killed seven West Bank Palestinians so far this year, six of them since the war began on Feb. 28.

The Israeli police, who are responsible for looking into crimes committed by Israelis in the West Bank, opened an investigation into the attack in Khirbet Humsa but did not respond immediately to requests for comment. They say they act against any violence, but have largely failed to bring violent settlers to justice. A police record showed that the episode was being investigated as a sexual assault, an attack on a helpless person and a crime motivated by racism, among other potential charges.

Mr. Abualkebash said the assault capped a night of terror for him, his wife, their three daughters, his brother Muhammad, Muhammad’s wife, their seven children, his father and his uncle. All were beaten, the adults said, except a sleeping 4-month-old baby. The settlers also stole the family’s 400 sheep — its entire livelihood — along with wedding rings and other jewelry, cellphones, cash and identification papers, the family members said. Ava Lang, a 24-year-old American human rights activist who witnessed the attack, said she had been beaten and robbed of her cellphone, rings, wallet and passport. Mr. Abualkebash, his brother and their father and uncle were hospitalized for their injuries, as was Ms. Lang.

The attack took place in a patch of fertile land known as Khirbet Humsa, in the northern Jordan Valley. Once the home of hundreds of Bedouin, it has been reduced to a few small encampments in hollows between low-rising hills opposite the Israeli settlements of Beka’ot and Roi. Generally speaking, Palestinians and human rights activists say, much settler violence in recent years has followed a pattern that can take months to play out. It begins with intimidation or restrictions — official or unofficial — on movement, then escalates with beatings or harsher violence targeting men.

Many Palestinians who have abandoned their villages recently have said that the last straw was threats or attacks against women and children. In Khirbet Humsa, the escalation appears to have been more abrupt. One afternoon a few weeks ago, according to the Abualkebash family, a settler herding cattle led his animals to within a few steps of the family’s tents. Family members interpreted this as a threat. About a week later, after midnight, the shepherds saw a drone fly over their compound and then saw settlers approaching from the direction of Beka’ot, Mr. Abualkebash said. “Our dogs followed them, and they shot one of our dogs,” he said. The attack on Friday began sometime after 1 a.m. and lasted about an hour. Mr. Abualkebash said he was taking a turn on guard duty in a small tent near where a rocky dirt road enters the compound. His father and Ms. Lang, the activist, were sleeping beside him, he said. “I heard voices, so I got up and saw more than 20 of them outside the tent,” he said of the settlers.

In an interview, Ms. Lang — who independently corroborated Mr. Abualkebash’s account — said she had been volunteering in solidarity with Palestinians for about a month and a half. The attack came on her first night in Khirbet Humsa. Israeli and foreign activists often stay with Palestinians seen as at risk of settler attacks on the theory that their presence can offer a measure of deterrence. Ms. Lang said that she was awakened by the screams of a Portuguese activist outside the tent, but that the attackers began beating them before any of them could react. “They were asking our names, where we’re from, saying, ‘We’re going to kill you,’ and ‘This is our land; we’re Jewish,’” she said.

Masked and wielding clubs, Mr. Abualkebash said, the settlers beat and kicked him, his father and the two female activists. Once they had used zip ties to bind the others by their wrists and feet, he said, they also did the same to him. One assailant used a hunting knife to cut Mr. Abualkebash’s pants and then his underwear, he said. His left eye still black and bloodied, he described the attack at the exact site where it happened. On Wednesday, five days after the attack, discarded zip ties were still strewed on the ground. Mr. Abualkebash picked up the briefs he had been wearing from the floor of the tent. They had been sliced cleanly.

As the beating went on, he said, one attacker cinched a zip tie tightly around his penis. He showed a reporter the mark that remained from the injury. He said the assault had rendered him speechless, unable to believe what was happening to him. Israeli police officers, he added, appeared shocked when he described it. The attackers then dragged Mr. Abualkebash to a large communal tent nearby where he found his wife, children and his brother’s family. The adults were all bound and cowering as they were intermittently beaten. It turned out that the settlers had first destroyed two security cameras that the family had installed, hoping at least to have evidence in case of an attack, Muhammad Abualkebash, 40, said.

The settlers had then burst into the family members’ tents while they slept, dragging the women by their hair. They beat the women and slapped or kicked the children, the adults said. Mr. Abualkebash’s wife, Niama Abualkebash, 28, said that when she grabbed a head covering, a settler tore it from her hands, shouted, “No,” and threw it to the ground. “He hit me, kicked me in the mouth and said, ‘Die, die,’” she said. Her 3-year-old daughter, Lamar, was pulled from the tent by her pajamas and thrown to the ground, she said. Her infant daughter. Manar, who was hidden behind blankets, was not harmed.

“Thank God she didn’t scream,” Ms. Abualkebash said, “because every child that was crying, they were beating.” Ms. Abualkebash and her sister-in-law, Nihaya, 35, said that some of the settlers had amused themselves by passing gas in the faces of the Palestinians tied up on the ground. The settlers left only after threatening the Abualkebash family in Arabic, the adults said. “They said: ‘If you don’t leave, we will burn you. We’ll hit you. We’ll take your children, and we will rape your women,’” according to Muhammad Abualkebash. “‘Go to America, go to Jordan or anywhere else, but go.’”

The settlers eventually cut the zip ties — but not the one on Mr. Abualkebash’s genitalia. He said he needed his brother’s help to remove that. Niama Abualkebash said she could not believe what had been done to her husband. “This is slow death,” she said. “Doing this to a man is to kill him.” As they left, the Abualkebash family said, some of the settlers mockingly sang a few bars of an old Palestinian folk song: “Come and support one another, people of Palestine — Palestine is gone and it didn’t bid you farewell.”

False allegations of sexual violence are fundamental to the demonisation of working-class and nonwhite males, which leads to violence that is not restricted to, but which undoubtedly includes, sexual humiliation such as at Medomsley Detention Centre, and such as the United Nations Human Rights Council, in a June 2024 report that was also highly critical of Hamas, found to be inflicted on Palestinian men and boys by the Israeli Defence Forces. A month later, the unrepentant Sde Teiman rapists held a defiant press conference, and their supporters rioted, among them Members of the Knesset and men in the uniforms of the IDF’s Force 100. Fear of the black male is fundamental to the capitalist system that was founded on the transatlantic slave trade, and the slave trade financed enclosure. There has always been One Struggle.