Topping The Pizza

My life was quite complete without my ever having heard of Andrew Tate, but then it would have been quite complete if I had never heard of Greta Thunberg, either. And I do have a good record of rat-smelling where this sort of thing is concerned. I doubt that Ched Evans and I would find much to talk about, and I know that Freya Heath's victims and I would have more than enough for a very heated discussion indeed, but I was right from the start about both of those cases, as it is increasingly obvious that I have been about Prince Andrew. When is anyone to whom Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of pimping going to be arrested at all, never mind with the fanfare that has attended the arrest of Tate? When is Heath going to be prosecuted for the criminal offence that it is for a British citizen or resident to have sex with anyone under the age of 16 anywhere in the world?

It would not surprise me in the least if Tate turned out to be innocent. Or to have been running something in Romania with impunity by greasing the right palms, as would also happen here or anywhere else, until he had failed to show due deference to Thunberg. She has undeniably pulled class and racial rank by sending round the rozzers, as she personally would no doubt be able to do in any European country other than Russia or Belarus, as well as in any of the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, if not also elsewhere.

This intercontinental superpower is 19 years old, but it is apparently Tate's followers of the same generation who are too big for their boots. Nothing terrifies the ruling class of State-funded bourgeois women more than anyone with a young male following. There is no length to which that class will not go in order to destroy such a figure. Ask Ron Paul, or Bernie Sanders, or Jeremy Corbyn. Or Julian Assange, whom its branch in Thunberg's country treated in a manner that would have caused an international sanctions regime to have been imposed if it had been done to almost anyone else by almost any other state.

The Western elite tends not to like school refusers, but those do not tend to be upper-class white girls who bang on about anthropogenic global warming. As we have seen in recent days, that is supposed to be cause of any and every sort of weather, even when Hell freezes over. Nothing else justifies the predetermined policy prescriptions, which are indisputably anti-male in the extreme, all the way back to Margaret Thatcher's passionate addresses to the Royal Society and then to the United Nations General Assembly, the speeches that brought anti-industrial Malthusianism into the political mainstream.

Still, the late Dame Vivienne Westwood was also a staunch Green, but that did not stop her from being valiant in the cause of Assange, even to the extent of making the then Stella Morris's wedding dress. In what would otherwise be just another battle between the Azov Battalion and the Wagner Group, between the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the People's Mojahedin Organisation of Iran, then whichever of Tate and Thunberg came out to bat for Assange would be relatively more sympathetic. Both of them would still be awful, though.

All political parties of any size are abysmal on all of this, but we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Devolution Deal

Stunned though I am both at the number and at the calibre of the people who have been in touch to ask me to reconsider and to stand for Mayor of the North East, the answer is still no. I am going to be busy enough in 2023 and 2024.

We need a basically sound candidate who would identify a number of projects in every ward of Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, North Tyneside and South Tyneside, equal to the number of City or Borough Councillors, and in every former District ward of Northumberland and Durham, equal to the number of former District Councillors.

As that candidate, undertake that if by the end of your term of office any of those projects were not running as specified, then you simply would not stand again. I would vote for you. As far as possible, I would campaign for you. Let's be having you.

In A Twist?

Carrie Johnson's husband's reliable outrider, Michael Fabricant, has called for the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill to be extended to England. Nothing could be more Thatcherite than a literally self-made woman or a literally self-made man, as many a once Marxist, still basically dialectical materialist feminist now argues in right-wing papers and on right-wing websites, thereby demonstrating that those outlets could find no one in their own tribe to make the heavyweight case against gender self-identification. Catholic orthodoxy could and does make that case, and it makes it better than Marxism does, but neither the relativistic antinomianism of the public school Church of England, nor its Brideshead Catholic imitation on and around the Daily Telegraph, has anything approaching the necessary resources.

The line is being held valiantly in the Morning Star, on Counterfire, and on a Spiked that the strikes have driven back to its roots. It is fundamental to the Alba Party, which has two MPs and which is well to the left of the SNP on economic and foreign policy. Soundness on it is so central to George Galloway's continuation in public life that it is also fundamental to the Workers Party of Britain, which has already taken 22 per cent of the vote and come third at a by-election to the House of Commons; no party to the right of the Conservatives has done anything comparable to that in quite some time.

Since Chris Williamson joined the Socialist Labour Party, then it and the Workers Party have been cooperating more and more closely, since they both reject the pursuit of identity politics over class politics, and the denial of material reality. That is also the view of the exponentially increasing membership of the Communist Party of Britain, which is mostly among working-class youth, and for whom the rejection of gender ideology is, with the embrace of Brexit, one of the two key wedge issues, although the strikes are rapidly becoming a third one. We may well be coming to the end of the CPB's long history of advocating a vote for the Labour Party under almost all circumstances. And so on.

Even the SDP is economically far more left-wing than either main party in England, or than any main party in Scotland. Rod Liddle, who flies the flag for biological sex across three Fleet Street titles, is an active member of the SDP. For all its faults, The Observer proves that it really is different from The Guardian by taking an editorial line against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, and by publishing something gender critical at least every other week or so, usually, though by no means exclusively, by Sonia Sodha. Gender critical feminists who sought berths beyond the Guardian Media Group were not doing anything wrong in escaping personal grievances and in accepting the offer of more money, but that was what they were doing. While the Morning Star, Counterfire, Spiked, the Alba Party, the Workers Party, the SLP, the CPB and the SDP all have their decided imperfections, they are all much more reliable on Brexit than any main party is, and they are almost all either broadly or completely sound on energy policy.

By contrast, the Government is still angling to re-join the Single Market and the Customs Union, and it remains devoted to net zero. The Prime Minister whose wife gave us that latter may well be back in office very soon, and one of his most reliable outriders has called for the Scottish Gender Recognition Reform Bill to be extended to England, which no one currently in office has ruled out. They are "taking a look at it" in Scotland, or something. They are going to do nothing against it, or they would have done it by now. They are far more likely to enact the same thing in England, as only the DUP stopped them from doing half a decade ago. Who needs Keir Starmer?

Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Chain Reaction

You all really are too kind, but as much as anything else, I shall be standing for Parliament later that year or very early in 2025. I hope that Alex Watson does not tell me to vote for anyone other than Jamie Driscoll, because then I would have a very difficult decision to make. That said, Labour is unlikely in the extreme to allow Jamie to be its candidate, while Alex is going to endorse someone, and the chances are vanishingly remote that that would not be good enough for me.

More broadly, though, while someone does have to be these things if they are there, directly elected mayors belong to the political cultures of presidential republics. We ought not to have them in Britain. And a quarter of a century of devolution has only ever further enriched and empowered the people who were already rich and powerful in the areas in question. Still, this is happening. Be on the bus, or be under it. Be at the table, or be on the menu.

There will be no referendum this time, but the Labour Party in County Durham is making exactly the arguments that I made 18 and more years ago against the regional assembly, sometimes against those very individuals. Hey, ho. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

A Meal To Be Made

How on earth are the children of Universal Credit claimants not on free school meals? Talk about a lack of joined-up thinking. But pupils on free school meals are not allowed certain items on the menu. Free school meals for all. Why would that be unaffordable? Unaffordable compared to what?

Charging for school meals would boggle the minds and turn the stomachs of many other developed countries. Like free prescriptions, free eye and dental checkups, free hospital parking, and so much else besides, free school meals for all will soon be "unaffordable" in England only, with abolition in Scotland or Wales advocated no more by the Conservatives than by anyone else. Why?

Of course, Keir Starmer's, never mind Wes Streeting's, Labour Party would spit with hatred at this policy. That would be half the fun of it. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

No More Nonce Sense

It was splendid to see the Duke of York at Sandringham on Christmas Day. As Virginia Giuffre grows ever less credible, Prince Andrew should demand the late Queen's money back. People who did not happen to think that they were somehow advancing their republican principles by joining in the vilification of him would be fighting his corner just as tenaciously if he were anyone else.

Giuffre had to file a civil suit because she would have stood no chance of winning a criminal case in a jurisdiction that still had a proper burden of proof, unlike England and Wales, where, in my direct personal experience, the concept of conviction beyond reasonable doubt has been unilaterally abolished by the judiciary.

We are expected to believe that Ghislaine Maxwell trafficked all those women and girls to nobody. Even from his cell, Jeffrey Epstein was still making donations to "Petie" Mandelson. Hey ho, like Epstein before her, Maxwell is now on suicide watch.

Prince Andrew is an utterly unimportant person. Epstein's British connection that matters is to Mandelson, who pretty much ran the Labour Party when it was last in government, and who is back running it now, having solicited a large donation from Epstein's cell as a convicted and incarcerated paedophile.

In the meantime, Mandelson has been European Commissioner for Trade, President of the Board of Trade, Lord President of the Council, and First Secretary of State. In all but name, he was Deputy Prime Minister under Gordon Brown, and arguably under Tony Blair as well. Prince Andrew has never even run his own bath.

Mandelson, however, is now running Keir Starmer, who is the most inexperienced politician ever to have become the Leader of the Opposition. Starmer was the Director of Public Prosecutions when the decision was made not to prosecute Jimmy Savile. Due to Savile's fame and connections, of course it is inconceivable that that decision was made by anyone other than Starmer, just as of course he was sly enough not to have left a paper trail.

And there are the Royal Family and the political elite again. The rest of us live our entire lives without ever encountering a paedophile, yet our betters have the misfortune to trip over them every time that they go out. As with illegal drug use, they extrapolate from their own experience and present such behaviour as normal, not even so much because they want it to be, as because they sincerely believe that it is.

Although every specific allegation that Jeremy Corbyn was an anti-Semite has been easily refuted, the idea lingers in the air. It never made any electoral difference. Starmer's change to Labour's Brexit policy caused both the 2019 General Election and its outcome, or else an Election this spring would have delivered a hung Parliament with Labour as the largest party. But it was there, and it still is.

The lingering idea of Starmer and "oh, something to do with paedophilia" would, however, have a great deal of electoral cut-through if anyone were prepared to push and twist the knife hard enough. Between Savile and Mandelson, that ought not to be difficult to do.

Why did Starmer let Savile off? Why is Starmer so dependent on Epstein's closest associate in Britain, indeed one of Epstein's closest associates in the world? What sort of person therefore wants Starmer to become Prime Minister?

The age of consent in London was and is 16. In New York, it was and is 17. And how prepubescent does the then Virginia Roberts look in that photograph? In relation to Alan Dershowitz, she has effectively admitted her own incredibility. Prince Andrew should sue everyone who had called him a paedophile, a paedo, a nonce, or anything in that vein. And he should demand the late Queen's money back.

In A Boy's Spirit?

Nothing could be more Thatcherite than a literally self-made woman or a literally self-made man. The gender critical philosophers who are making this point are not the joking kind. This is Philosophy of the highest seriousness.

Therefore, the Conservatives had been all ready to legislate for gender self-identification. Only the DUP stopped them. In October 2021, watched by her husband, Carrie Johnson addressed a specifically LGBT+ fringe meeting. Does either of them believe that only a woman has a cervix? Funny how he was never asked, when the whole thing was happening on his watch.

As for her, Stonewall, whose rally that was, would not have invited her if she had been any friend of biological reality. Do not bet against their return to 10 Downing Street in 2023, which, were it to happen, would be the last change of Prime Minister in this Parliament.

Yet hope springs eternal. The Johnsons insisted on being married in the Catholic Church, and I have always suspected that the strict secrecy of the ceremony was to avoid publicity of the then Prime Minister's Communion. At some level, he and his wife want to be good Catholics.

Most of the theoretical critique of gender ideology has its roots in Marxism, including in that tradition's internal feminist critique. The work being done remains invaluable, but most of the Left has succumbed to gender self-identification, which is a flat denial of even the most blatantly obvious material reality. 

Demonstrably, then, dialectical materialism has failed to provide the robust material realism without which there can be no pursuit of economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, led by those who suffered most as a result of economic inequality, namely the working class, and led by those who suffered most as a result of international conflict, namely the working class and the youth.

What is needed is Thomism, which by definition exists within the wider Augustinian tradition. Fundamental to both is absolute fidelity to the Roman Magisterium, which is itself irrevocably committed to the Thomist metaphysical system, within which its own indispensable role precludes any degeneration comparable to that of the ancestrally Marxian Left into gender self-identification. Philosophy needs the Rock of the Petrine Office no less than Theology does.

Just as there can be no meaningful claim to be pro-life without an active commitment to economic equality and to international peace, so there can be no such commitment without material realism. There can be no secure material realism, nor, therefore, any science, without Thomism. And there can be no Thomism without the Roman Obedience, which one adopts either entirely and at whatever cost, or not at all.

Applied to the present situation, this has implications that are vastly more egalitarian economically, vastly more pacific internationally, and vastly more democratic politically, than anything that Marxism could ever devise, much less deliver. This is not to build the house from the roof down. Fidelity to the Magisterium requires Thomism, which entails material realism, which compels a critique of the present economic and geopolitical order such as leads inexorably to the pursuit of equality and peace through democracy.

What would you have instead? Nothing could be more Thatcherite than a literally self-made woman or a literally self-made man. Therefore, the Conservatives had been all ready to legislate for gender self-identification. Only the DUP stopped them. Ultimately, though, Protestantism is an inadequate as dialectical materialism to this task.

Stark and timely warnings of the perils of hyper-Augustinianism, unmoored from the Magisterium, include the rise of Unitarianism among the English Presbyterians, the Dutch Remonstrant Brotherhood, the Non-Subscribing Presbyterian Church of Ireland, the Socinian 'New Licht' within the early Free Church of Scotland, and the descent of New England Puritanism into "the Fatherhood of God, the Brotherhood of Man, and the Neighborhood of Boston".

From that last sprang the Transcendentalism of Louisa May Alcott. Very much pursuant to that way of thinking, she would indeed have been classified as transgender if she had been growing up today. Nothing could be more Thatcherite, and there is only one protection against it. That in turn provides further protection from anything that was remotely Thatcherite, which it compels to be destroyed.

All main political parties are Thatcherite, and therefore away with gender ideology. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

The Impact It Would Have On People

Theresa May has usefully reminded us that gender self-identification would have become the law in England during her Premiership if she had not been dependent on the DUP, although that party regards England as a lost cause morally and might well have abstained if the cash tap to its own supporters had been kept on at full blast. The ultimate Thatcherite measure, literally a self-made woman or a self-made man, would now breeze through, and no doubt it very soon will.

Neither in Iran, nor even in Afghanistan, would a mother who took her small daughter into the women's showers or changing rooms be confronted, at the little girl's eye level, with postpubescent male genitalia. That may not be the worst form of sexual assault, but it is a form. As is being made to imagine other people's genitals, a mental image that transgender activists insist on inflicting upon the rest of us.

Only the DUP prevented the Conservatives from legislating for this half a decade ago. Despite Keir Starmer's promise when he stood for Leader, Labour is now signed up to it. As are the Liberal Democrats, the Greens, Plaid Cymru, and of course the SNP. Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Hunt Balls

I can only salute the 838 people who read my blog yesterday. And I do have to admire posh people. It is hardly as if they deny themselves on Christmas Day, yet they are still up for the Boxing Day hunt. It is no wonder that we have never had a revolution.

Neither Tony Blair nor Hilary Armstrong voted for the hunting ban in the end. They used it to buy support for the Iraq War. Blair bet the then Prince Charles a tenner that 10 years after the ban, hunting would be continuing unimpeded. In due season, that debt was honoured. It is a pity that they never had a bet on whether or not the weapons of mass destruction were ever going to turn up. As G.K. Chesterton said, "Wherever there is animal worship, there is human sacrifice."

Yet almost as far on again, here in the hunting areas, an entire generation would be forgiven for having no idea that any ban had ever been enacted. If there are "loopholes" in that legislation, then they were put there on purpose so that the itch could still be scratched as and when necessary. The Conservatives have a similar approach. They could repeal the hunting ban if they wanted to, but then how would they rally the troops when the need arose?

Happy Christmas

See you on Monday.

Reaping The Harvest

Keir Starmer, Rachel Reeves and Wes Streeting may think that they are on the cusp of greatness, but a wise man once told me always to read the Financial Times and The Economist because they were where the Establishment talked to itself on the assumption that no one else was listening, and it is in the FT, with useful accompanying graphs, that John Burn-Murdoch writes:

When Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s infamous “mini” Budget sent Britain’s finances into turmoil in September, it was pilloried as an egregious example of putting ideology over evidence. Both of its architects were gone within a matter of weeks, and a chastened Conservative party announced a series of U-turns. The damage was done, but it was relatively shortlived.

This makes it all the more tragic that a previous catastrophic policy did not meet the same timely fate. The effects of the Conservative austerity programme during the Cameron-Osborne years have been steadily accumulating over the past decade, but this winter that trickle has become a torrent.

If you’re lucky, you can get away with cutting investment for a few years. Everything gets a bit more fragile, but as long as there are no nasty external shocks, you might be able to avoid disaster. The effects of slashing public services are a little harder to hide, but you might get away with gradual deterioration.

The problem is, when you’re hit by a pandemic, an energy crisis and an act of gross economic self-sabotage in short order, your now brittle and exhausted public services will buckle where a healthy system would have taken the strain.

Twelve years on from the start of austerity, the data paint a damning picture, from stagnant wages and frozen productivity to rising chronic illness and a health service on its knees.

Real wages in the UK are below where they were 18 years ago. Life expectancy has stagnated, with Britain arcing away below most other developed countries, and avoidable mortality — premature deaths that should not occur with timely and effective healthcare — rising to the highest level among its peers, other than the US whose opioid crisis renders it peerless.

Yes, the NHS budget was protected throughout, but the ringfencing of health spending masked disastrous missteps beneath the surface.

With a rapidly ageing and ailing population, merely maintaining spending was insufficient. In the last decade Britain has dropped away from its peers on overall health spend, while investment in healthcare infrastructure halved between 2010 and 2013.

This left the NHS with less spare capacity than any other developed country when the pandemic hit. This proved a huge drag on productivity, leaving UK health workers hamstrung by shortages of beds and equipment.

The implicit assumption that the only spending that protects and promotes population health sits within the NHS budget has also proved a false economy. Cuts to housing and communities budgets have left Britain’s dwellings in such a dire state that they are now causing deaths among children.

Lives lost, earnings lost, years lost. Unlike Trussonomics, austerity is a slow and silent killer. For the best part of twelve years, the Conservatives sowed the seeds. This year they’re reaping the harvest.

Its Integral Christian Component

Majdi Khaldi writes:

I was born into a Palestinian Muslim family where celebrating Christmas was always a natural practice for us. From an early age, I was often told "Jesus is Palestinian, just like you" - a fact that would give me tremendous pride.

This ecumenical outlook was something my Palestinian refugee parents had instilled in me. Before the Nakba, they were living in Jerusalem and its surrounding towns. According to the Christian tradition, that is also the place where the resurrection took place. Not far from their home was the Church of Holy Sepulchre, Al-Aqsa Mosque, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem.

To this day, as a faithful Muslim, I have passed on what I learned from my family to my children. It is impossible to understand Palestinian national identity without recognising its integral Christian component that exists side by side with the Muslim component.

Palestinians suffer equally

Palestinian Christians have not just been an integral part of our nation but also our liberation movement. Israel knows that well: under Israeli colonial-settlement policies, racist legislation and daily attacks, Palestinians of all faiths are subjected to the same human rights violations. This goes for the land and the people.

On one end, Israel continues its racist policy of preventing Palestinian family reunification while making it almost impossible for thousands of Palestinians and foreign passport holders to even visit Palestine, let alone invest, study, teach, or volunteer. On the other, it has pushed for the expansion of its colonial-settlement projects including in East Jerusalem in an attempt to change its Palestinian identity.

Additionally, settlement projects such as the construction of "Giv'at Hamatos" around Mar Elias Monastery between Bethlehem and Jerusalem, the transformation of church property in Jaffa Gate into new colonial settlements, as well as the attempts at turning the Mount of Olives into an Israeli national park, among others.

Such acts of aggression are part of an ongoing process of annexation that, in light of the Jewish supremacist ideology of some of those leading Israel, will not stop until their "Greater Israel" is consolidated, with full annexation over the occupied West Bank. Under this perspective, there will be continued attempts to change the status quo of the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound, a move that is rejected by Palestinians, Arabs and the international community.

Such attempts have been understood by the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem as an attack against the concept of the status quo that has provided some of the most important Christian and Muslim religious sites in Palestine with clear regulations for centuries - way before the State of Israel was even established.

Despite violations committed against our people, we shall not surrender or give up on the message of hope delivered from a humble grotto in Bethlehem over 2,000 years ago. We also cannot be blind to the realities of the ongoing violations of Palestinians' rights since the Nakba 75 years ago.

Keeping hope alive

Changing course is possible. However, it would need a significant change in how things have been dealt with up to this point. The Israeli government must halt all unilateral actions and recognise and implement its obligations under signed agreements and international law.

The European countries, the US and others that believe in the importance of protecting the two-state solution must immediately recognise the State of Palestine on the 1967 borders, with East Jerusalem as its capital and accept its full membership in the United Nations.

It is worrying to see how certain parties that claim to care about Christianity worldwide have chosen to remain silent on the steps that Israel is taking on the ground; steps which are directly affecting the present and future of Christianity in Palestine, particularly in and around occupied Jerusalem.

Those same "friends of Israel" that celebrate their "pilgrimages" should think a bit about the millions of Palestinians, including hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Christians that are banned by the occupying power, Israel, from celebrating Christmas at their holy sites.

We will continue to celebrate Christmas in Palestine, the birthplace of Christianity. It is part of our identity and our responsibility to preserve our traditions that certainly include celebrating Christmas, which I love to consider a Palestinian gift to the world.

Part of our resilience is to keep our cultural heritage alive, to feel proud of our traditions, and to make sure, no matter the years of exile, oppression and occupation, that our people protect their right to live in freedom and independence, peace and prosperity, like all peoples worldwide.

Coronation Chickens Home To Roost

Since most of the cost of the Coronation will be that of the security, there could have been no such thing as a cut price Coronation, only a less impressive one, a republican ceremony without a republic. What would have been the point of that?

The republican and the monarchist cases are both rubbish. We know who wins elections in this country, and we know who does not. We would not want any of the former as our Head of State. Abolishing the monarchy would not make Britain less class-bound or less corrupt, unless we were to aspire to the classless cleanliness of Ireland, France, Germany, Italy or the United States. The obscene political power that the Royal Family enjoys because of its extreme wealth is the obscene political power of extreme wealth. Other people also have it, and the problem is hardly confined to Britain or to monarchies.

Nor does the monarchy guarantee stability or liberty in a country that had three General Elections in the four years from 2015, that has had three Prime Ministers in this year alone, and that is blessed with the Covert Human Intelligence Sources (Criminal Conduct) Act, the Overseas Operations (Service Personnel and Veterans) Act, the Nationality and Borders Act, the Elections Act, and the staggering Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Act, soon to be joined by the even more stunning Public Order Bill and by the Online Safety Bill. Were the liberties of the Canadian truckers guaranteed by the Crown? On the contrary, it was precisely the Crown that empowered Justin Trudeau.

But the monarchy is what we have. Merely keeping it would not involve spending legislative time on something that would not make matters any better. In any case, the moment has gone. It was always supposed to have been "when the Queen died", but that made no sense either in principle, since the monarchy is either right or it is wrong, or in practice, since succession is instantaneous, as we have seen. As for the Royal Prerogative, we should be seeking, not to abolish it, but to exercise it in the cause of economic equality and of international peace. The whole of the Royal Prerogative, that is. The Deep State would fight us to the death. That death must be its own.

A Plague On All Our Houses?

I recently discovered from an old co-conspirator, who was now employed by the DWP, that signing on was still a thing, or at least that it was still called that. Although they knew everything that they needed to know from your online account, and although you no longer signed anything even electronically, once a fortnight you were still expected to present yourself in person, giving up half a working day to the public transport and the queues, at the risk of sanction if you were five minutes late, and paying the exorbitant bus fares out of your benefits. This was suspended during and between the lockdowns. Yet it has been brought back, for no reason that even the staff can divine.

But half a dozen pestilences are sweeping the land. There is going to be a lockdown. Between that, and the doubling of unemployment as only the beginning of the very long legacy of the mini-Budget to almost all of which the Labour Party was still committed, it is difficult to see how this nasty little relic of the Blair years could possibly survive to the end of next year. The Blairite fondness for big technology projects never did trump humiliating the poor, although saying that does raise the possibility that they may not be so lucky as for common sense and compassion to break out in this instance.

As I predicted here, this lockdown will be used to end the strikes. There is always some sort of public health crisis in winter, and this winter's, the worst in a very long time, will be used as the pretext to lock down. Under that cover, the disputes will be settled by a Government that, for all the knockabout at Prime Minister's Questions, was far more open to negotiation than the Opposition was. The cost will hardly be noticed against that of a lockdown. Keir Starmer and Wes Streeting will be left bellowing, "Get back to work, peasants!", only for the peasants to reply, "We already have, because we won. We beat you."

Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Right To Consider?

The Government has no intention of doing anything about the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, which it could have written. In the middle of next year, there might be an announcement of nothing, if it even bothered with that. Anything else would have happened yesterday.

Across the public sector and its contractors, fanning out through everyone who followed any course of education or training, gender self-identification is already the law in England for most or all practical purposes. That situation has arisen entirely under the Conservatives.

Impact On The Functioning

If Kemi Badenoch had intended to do anything at all about the Gender Recognition Reform Bill, then she would have had a specific statement of intent ready for issue immediately upon that Bill's predictable approval. She is doing nothing about de facto gender self-identification in England, and she will do nothing about de jure gender self-identification in Scotland.

What should happen, but will not, would be a refusal of Royal Assent, which the King could not possibly grant to anything against the advice of the Prime Minister, until there had been a referendum between two options, the acceptance both of this Bill and of independence, or the rejection of this Bill and the repeal of devolution.

The legislation for that referendum would prohibit another one on Scottish independence for 30 years. Parliament cannot bind its successors, but this would make the point. If your position would not be on that ballot paper, then welcome to our world.

Recognition, Reform

Those of you in Scotland who will insist on voting for a party that supported independence, please make it Alba. As much as anything else, that party shows signs of recognising that if Greens were peddling junk science about sex and gender, then they might be peddling junk science about other things, too.

But in the struggle for economic equality, the leading role belongs to the working class, and in the struggle for international peace, the leading role belongs to the working class and the youth. Unity must therefore be maintained within and between the working class and the youth, including against any separatist tendency in England, Scotland or Wales. If you must vote for Scottish independence, then vote for Alba. Much better, though, not to vote for Scottish independence at all.

The two Labour MSPs who voted against the Gender Recognition Reform Bill broke the whip to do so, but that may or may not be a sign of things to come at Westminster, because there is no indication that the Government intended to introduce legislation to override this. For monitoring and other purposes, the whole of the public sector and its contractors are already practising gender self-identification every day, a situation that has arisen entirely since the end of the Coalition, so that at least in England, the Conservative Party is solely to blame for it.

Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Glorious and Groundbreaking

Imran Mulla and Peter Oborne write:

In the run-up to the 2022 World Cup, the western media subjected its host, Qatar, to a campaign of ferocious and disproportionate criticism. Journalists painted the country as a cartoonishly barbaric dystopia. So did politicians. UK’s Labour leader Keir Starmer said the party will not be sending any member to attend the tournament in Qatar.

Condemnation went far beyond reasonable criticisms of human rights issues. Often it was ignorant and orientalist. There was rampant and sometimes gleeful speculation that Qatar wasn’t ready to host the tournament and outrage at the last-minute ban on alcohol being sold in stadiums.

There were false stories about South Asian migrants being bribed to support football teams. The BBC decided not to broadcast the opening ceremony, despite having done so for the 2018 World Cup in Russia. 

Now that the tournament is over. Defying all predictions of disaster and doom, it has been a magnificent success. There were no riots in Doha, no significant disruptions and no big organisational disasters. The whole event, in fact, proceeded smoothly: it was the first World Cup in history at which no England fan was arrested.

No gloom and doom

Now that the tournament has finished, Qatar should of course continue to face scrutiny over human rights issues like the treatment of migrant workers and minority rights. Yet, many commentators seem intent on castigating the country’s cultural traditions to an absurd degree.

They did so on Sunday when Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, bestowed the bisht, a traditional Arab ceremonial robe, on Argentina’s Lionel Messi for his lifting of the World Cup trophy. This was a gesture of respect and hospitality, intended to honour Messi and display Middle Eastern culture in the final moments of a hugely successful global event. 

Not everyone saw it that way. The Daily Telegraph described it as a “bizarre act that ruined the greatest moment in World Cup history”. The BBC presenter Gary Lineker, who had subjected TV viewers to an anti-Qatari rant at the start of the World Cup, sneeringly disapproved, calling the bisht, worn as a mark of honour in Qatar, a “little robe”. Laurie Whitwell, star football writer for The Athletic, described Messi wearing it as a “weird, unnecessary look".

Mark Ogden, senior writer at ESPN, was disgusted: “all the pics are ruined by somebody making [Messi] wear a cape that looks like he’s about to have a haircut,” he remarked in a now deleted tweet. “I bet Mbappe is delighted he managed to swerve the weird mesh cloak with gold trim,” wrote Channel 5’s Dan Walker in a tweet that’s also been deleted.

It’s not just the British media. On France’s BFM TV, pundits reacted in horror to Messi donning the bisht. They mocked it as a “local tawdry rag” and a “bathrobe”. As French Muslims know to their cost, the French media regard any form of Islamic clothing as outrageous and simply wrong.

Rank bigotry

Let’s call all this out for what it is: rank bigotry. Many in the Arab world could be forgiven for assuming that some European journalists, far from being motivated by outrage at Qatar’s human rights record, simply despise Islam and Arab culture.

Western coverage of the World Cup has laid bare the cultural arrogance of many journalists. They treat European norms as neutral and the gold standard. Any celebration of another culture - like the Qatari emir draping a bisht around Messi’s shoulders - gets attacked as a barbarous intrusion. This aggressive chauvinism has been a feature of much western coverage of this World Cup.

Consider the common complaint that the tournament shouldn’t have been held in the winter, which was the case because the summer heat in Qatar is so intense. The implication of this western grievance was that Europeans shouldn’t be inconvenienced and the rest of the world should bow to Europe’s preferences.

Then there was the reaction to the alcohol ban in stadiums. Some in the British media depicted it as a selfish genuflection to Islamic culture that would ruin the experience for ticket-holders. But many fans from across the world, including not just teetotal Muslims but also women who felt safer and more at home, were delighted by the new rules. The western media and political class has long insisted that the rest of the world adopt its sensibilities and values. This may explain why they are outraged by Qatar’s confident assertion of its own culture.

A glorious World Cup

Indeed, for the Arab world, this has been a glorious and groundbreaking World Cup, the first to be held in the Middle East. In Doha, visible displays of solidarity with Palestine have been a constant feature of the tournament. For many Muslims, it was profoundly moving to see and hear the Quran recited at the opening ceremony.

There were also the unexpected victories, like Saudi Arabia’s defeat of Argentina early in the tournament, which triggered celebrations that transcended national boundaries and political divisions. Most significant of all was Morocco’s near-miraculous success as the first team from the Arab world to make it into the final four of a World Cup. Many have experienced the tournament as an historic milestone.

Scores of fans from European countries, meanwhile, embraced their stay in Qatar as an opportunity to learn about Islam and Qatari culture, visiting mosques, making new friends and dressing up in traditional clothes. On the ground, there has been a heartening level of cultural exchange, and a spirit of cosmopolitanism which is badly needed in an increasingly divided world.

The BBC, and in particular Lineker, the notoriously bigoted French media, and much of the British press owe a giant apology to Qatar. It’s time they acknowledged they got it wrong and that Qatar has played host to one of the most magnificent football World Cups in history.

Yet In Thy Dark Streets Shineth

I have never lived either in Pelton or in Pelton Fell, yet Google is regularly adamant that one or other of them is my location. "Based on your IP address," apparently. I state that as context for the observation that, as Benjamin Netanyahu returns to office, I remain under sentence of death from the last time, and his new coalition makes no pretence to be distinct from the people who impose such sentences.

The Thatcher Government banned the late Rabbi Meir Kahane from the United Kingdom, and this Conservative Government should honour that legacy by expelling the personally Kahanist Ambassador of what is now a Kahanist regime. Headed as that regime is by Netanyahu, who at least pretends to think that Hitler had only ever planned to deport the Jews until the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem had persuaded him to gas them instead. Netanyahu depends for his parliamentary majority on people who believe that there is a religious obligation to burn down churches everywhere, and who enthusiastically seek to do that duty in Israel and on the West Bank. 

While there are now fourth generation Israelis who could not possibly be told to "go home", the State of Israel having been founded in the same year that the Empire Windrush docked at Tilbury, it is clear from the Bible that the pre-Israelite population, the founders of Jerusalem, never went away. They never have yet. They became Christians when or before the Roman Empire did so, and they adopted the use of Arabic at the time of a Muslim Conquest contemporaneous with the Saxon Conquest of what is now England. Those ancient indigenous Christians are still there. The founders of modern Palestinian identity, they are the people of Shireen Abu Akleh.

Parties that burn down their churches as a matter of religious obligation are now entering government in Israel, having already provided the Israeli Ambassador to London, who in turn appeared in Liz Truss's Conservative Leadership campaign video. Having backed the wrong horse, let that Ambassador be expelled, taking with her a Labour Leader who has repeatedly paid obsequious court to her as he has made Labour Party membership conditional upon approval by an agent, who is not even a British citizen, of what is now a Kahanist regime, a church-burning and anti-miscegenation regime any criticism of which, as a breach of the IHRA Definition, would be expulsionable from the Labour Party.

Thankfully, we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Vicious, Brutal and Cruel

Damien Bendall was a heavy user of cannabis and cocaine, because of course he was. Not only does cannabis cause one third of psychosis cases in London, but what authority does Sadiq Khan have to decriminalise it? There have only ever been three Mayors of London. If the office were vested with this much power, then imagine what the two previous holders might have done with it.

I have been both to university and to prison, and I have still never taken an illegal drug in my life. The treatment of such behaviour as normal is based on extrapolation from the wildly untypical experience of the people who decide these things. Drugs-based blackmail is fundamental to political power in this country.

Michael Gove was described in edited Fleet Street copy as having been on “ a cocaine binge” this May. He and Boris Johnson, who is no longer an American citizen, have lied on their United States visa applications. They are not the only ones, although presumably no one will bother in future. As Chancellor of the Exchequer, Kwasi Kwarteng was obviously off his face at the funeral of the late Queen. The Truss Government was so awash with cocaine that it scandalised the servants.

Intentionally or otherwise, and for all his faults, Jeremy Corbyn threatened to destroy that Blairite lifestyle by creating an economic order in which no one would have felt the need to become a drug mule or, say, a rent boy. Therefore terrified of economic equality, the lifestyle liberals turned on him as they had not turned on any other politician in living memory. And here we are.

Any economic arrangement is a political choice, and there cannot be a “ free” market in general but not in, among other things, drugs. Radical change would be impossible if the workers, the youth and the poor were in a state of stupefaction, and that baleful situation, which has been contrived in the past, is being contrived again today.

We need a single category of illegal drug, including cannabis, with a crackdown on possession, including a mandatory sentence of two years for a first offence, three years for a second offence, four years for a third offence, and so on. (I no longer believe in prison sentences that include the possibility of release in less than 12 months; in that case, then your crime was not bad enough to warrant imprisonment, which the possession of drugs is.) We need to restore the specific criminal offence of allowing one’s premises to be used for illegal drug purposes. And Peter Hitchens’s The War We Never Fought should be taught in schools, as pro-drugs propaganda is routinely.

Is This Winning?

For my occasional employer, The American Conservative, George D. O’Neill Jr. writes:

Recently, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen carelessly revealed the devastating cost of the Ukraine war. “It is estimated that more than 20,000 civilians and 100,000 Ukrainian military personnel have died to date,” she said.

The comment drew sharp backlash and the E.C. later deleted the comments from video recordings of the address. The censorship was left unexplained and demonstrated the confusion of the purveyors of the approved narrative.

If Von der Leyen’s estimate is true, that is nearly ten times the number of dead Ukrainian soldiers reported by the Ukrainian government. The E.C. president’s remark shows that even the strongest backers of this bloody and unnecessary war can no longer hide the truth: Ukraine is at risk of losing. The mainstream media and the Biden administration insist ad nauseam that Ukraine is winning against Russia.

But the facts on the ground do not fit the narrative and the administration and media know it. The war hawks know their cynical Ukraine policy has not succeeded in driving Russia out of Ukraine.  Tragically, the Ukrainians are the ones who suffer the immense cost of this foreign policy failure. Their nation is ruined for the sake and at the instigation of the globalist American empire.

As Ukraine loses its grip on heavily defended and important crossroads around the city of Bakhmut, the Western press has commenced a campaign to downplay the importance of the loss. Defense Express reports: “UK Defense Intelligence States [t]hat Bakhmut's capture becomes primarily a symbolic, political objective for Russia.”

Last week, the Financial Times published an article entitled: “Hell Just Hell: Ukraine and Russia's war of attrition over Bakhmut.” As the subtitle of the piece reads, “Soldiers say fighting in and around eastern Donetsk city is reminiscent of first world war-style trench conflict.”

The following information is an indication of the nature of the Ukrainian “victory” over the previous six months.

Ukraine has lost an estimated 20 percent of its territory. At least 22 percent of Ukrainian farmland is under Russian control. These areas are a large part of the territory identified in the Minsk II agreement that were to be governed as autonomous districts.

Due to the failure of the Minsk II agreement, Russia declared its Special Military Operations to free these areas from the grip of the Ukrainian government. As of today, it appears Russia has come close to achieving some of its initial goals.

In May 2022, the United Nations Refugee Agency reported that nearly eight million Ukrainians have been internally displaced, with another six million registered as refugees. That number is likely to rise even higher this winter.

As a result of the recent Russian missile attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, even more people are fleeing Ukraine. Europe expects hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees this winter due to the nation’s ruined cities.

Kiev Mayor Vitali Klitschko may urge an evacuation of his city due to its failures to provide basic services to its population. CNN reported a month ago that at least 30 percent of Ukrainian power stations are destroyed. BBC reports that six million Ukrainians are without power. EuroNews recently reported that two-thirds of Kiev is without power.

An estimated 80 percent of Kiev is without water. News reports declare that Kiev is getting ready to survive without power, water and heating. Ukraine has evacuated cities that have become uninhabitable without heating or power. The World Health Organization warns millions of lives are “under threat” this winter.

Forbes Magazine reports that nearly half of Ukraine is without power. Newsweek reports that Ukraine's energy giant is running out of equipment to fix power outages. How long is the Ukrainian capital going to function without power?

The Ukrainian Central Bank estimates the nation’s 2022 GDP will decline by 32 percent, inflation will hit 30 percent, and unemployment will reach 30 percent. The New York Times reported Ukraine's agriculture industry has lost an estimated $23 billion from the war.

The International Monetary Fund reports the Ukraine war has led to the worst food shortage since 2008. CNN reports that Ukraine's communications are entirely dependent on Elon Musk's Starlink system. If there are troubles with the system, the country goes dark.

Brookings reports: “The war has destroyed at least $127 billion of the nation’s buildings and other infrastructure, according to the Kyiv School of Economics.”

The Washington Post reports the Ukrainians are asking for $700 billion in addition to the over $100 billion we have sent.

On the ground, Ukraine has had difficulty taking any territory actively defended by Russia. The recent “victory” of Ukraine capturing Kherson has evaporated. Ukraine is evacuating Kherson due to Russian shelling. The Ukrainian military machine is unable to maintain control of a city their opponent had evacuated. 

All the September and October Ukrainian offensives have stalled, and the Russians appear to be solidifying their lines of defense and dramatically increasing their forces in the field while Ukraine is drafting sixty-year-old men.

Ukraine is also losing its access to the resources it needs to continue the war. The U.S. and Europe are running out of weapons to send Ukraine. In addition, CNN reports weapons supplies for Ukraine are running low. Ukraine’s military equipment, especially its artillery, is crumbling and the West can’t replace much of what is breaking down.

Foreign Policy reports that NATO officials are very worried by the shortages. Even neocon Frederick Kagan admits NATO isn’t prepared for a conflict like Ukraine. “NATO doesn’t really plan to fight wars like this, and by that I mean wars with a super intensive use of artillery systems and lots of tank and gun rounds,” Kagan told Foreign Policy. “We were never stocked for this kind of war to begin with.” According to the CEO of Raytheon, Ukraine has used thirteen years of Javelin production in ten months.

It didn’t have to be this way. Ukraine and Russia could have made a lasting peace deal if it weren’t for the meddling of the Globalist American Empire. In March of 2022, the two sides appeared to be close to agreeing on terms to settle the conflict. It appeared that the agreement would assure Ukraine would never join NATO.

The NATO issue is the biggest in this whole affair. The United States and United Kingdom thwarted this deal and the war has continued since, killing tens of thousands of Ukrainians, Russians, and others. Their blood is on the hands of U.S. and U.K. leaders.

U.S. defense contractors, politicians, and think tanks are profiting at the expense of Ukraine and its unfortunate citizens. The rest of Europe is suffering from the “maximum sanctions” aimed at Russia while Ukrainians continue to flee their own country.

None of this suffering appears to concern the people in charge of American foreign policy. They don’t care about Ukraine’s ruin–they only care about sticking it to Russia. This is the inevitable product of a D.C. worldview that sees humans as cattle.

No doubt, the cost of the war to Russia has been high as well. They have miscalculated and made errors throughout this whole tragedy. But the narrative purveyed to the American people has not been honest or accurate. What does Ukraine gain by losing tens of thousands of lives and significant portions of its infrastructure?

Many Ukrainians have lost their loved ones and face a brutal winter all for the sake of people like Ursula von der Leyen, Joe Biden, and their neocon handlers. It’s time for Western leaders face the truth, and pursue negotiations to save the Ukrainians from this human tragedy.

Pre-Settled Status

Of course the EU settlement scheme is unlawful. That is what it is for. Like the Rwanda deportation scheme, it is designed to provoke a fight about tofu or something. It is not supposed to happen.

The Government is going to have to come up with another excuse for not sending anyone to Rwanda, which there is absolutely no practical plan to do. But on abrogating the right of permanent residence, the High Court has spared it the trouble.

Why does no one ever ask how all these obstacles could still exist after 12 years of Conservative Government, with Home Secretaries this year alone including, but not restricted to, Priti Patel and, twice, Suella Braverman? Why not, indeed?

Keeping It Real

Three months of old-fashioned communal showers gave me a particular perspective on gender self-identification. One never looks down, of course, and in any case what would one see? Nothing is more uninteresting than another man's penis. 

We old timers would indeed have seen it all before. But if it is not already happening, then teenage boys the length and breadth of the land will very soon be confronted with something else entirely. In Scotland, that could be as soon as they returned to school after Christmas. Again, if it is not already happening. Anyone who thinks that that would be "every boy's dream" has obviously never been one. There is a time and a place for everything, and that would be neither the time nor the place for a vagina.

Feelings are real, but they are not facts. As poverty of aspiration is a real feeling, but it is economic inequality that is a fact, so gender identity is a real feeling, but it is biological sex that is a fact. Those who failed to hold the first line, but who instead followed Marxism Today in whoring after Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair, are now unable to hold the second line, either. And those who are failing to hold the second line will be unable to hold the first, no matter how devoted they might have been to the person or cause of Jeremy Corbyn.

Without a robust material realism, there can be no pursuit of economic equality and international peace through the democratic political control of the means to those ends, led by those who suffered most as a result of economic inequality, namely the working class, and led by those who suffered most as a result of international conflict, namely the working class and the youth.

Yet most of the Left has succumbed to gender self-identification, which is a flat denial of even the most blatantly obvious material reality. Demonstrably, then, dialectical materialism has failed to provide that robust basis. Nor, in itself, can natural science, which cannot prove the ontological existence of material reality, but rather presupposes it and works from there.

What is needed is Thomism, which by definition exists within the wider Augustinian tradition. Fundamental to both is absolute fidelity to the Roman Magisterium, which is itself irrevocably committed to the Thomist metaphysical system, within which its own indispensable role precludes any degeneration comparable to that of the ancestrally Marxian Left into gender self-identification. Philosophy needs the Rock of the Petrine Office no less than Theology does.

Just as there can be no meaningful claim to be pro-life without an active commitment to economic equality and to international peace, so there can be no such commitment without material realism. There can be no secure material realism, nor, therefore, any science, without Thomism. And there can be no Thomism without the Roman Obedience, which one adopts either entirely and at whatever cost, or not at all.

Applied to the present situation, this has implications that are vastly more egalitarian economically, vastly more pacific internationally, and vastly more democratic politically, than anything that Marxism could ever devise, much less deliver. This is not to build the house from the roof down. Fidelity to the Magisterium requires Thomism, which entails material realism, which compels a critique of the present economic and geopolitical order such as leads inexorably to the pursuit of equality and peace through democracy.

Adult Human Female

Watch it on Vimeo here, or on YouTube here.

By this time tomorrow, Scotland could have become a magnet for creeps who wanted to take their penises into women's changing rooms, and for rapists who wanted to be sent to women's prisons.

There is no room for compromise here. Resist.

Striking The Right Cord

Another wonderful development.

Hailed throughout this century, and earlier, as the miracle cure for any and everything, embryonic stem cell "research" has failed to deliver anything. Seriously. Nothing has ever come of it.

Yet starved of funding and publicity, ethically unproblematic adult and cord blood stem cell research continues to deliver the goods. How much more could it deliver, with the resources and the attention?

Adult and cord blood stem cell research works. Embryonic stem cell "research" does not work. And science is what works. As a matter of the utmost urgency, funds need to be diverted from that which does not work, to that which does.

30p Too Much

Until 2018, when he was 49 and Jeremy Corbyn had been Labour Leader for three years, Lee Anderson was a Labour Councillor whose day job was as the office manager for a Labour MP. He held that position, in a marginal seat, through the 2017 General Election.

Yet look at him now, because of a dispute with local Labour activists over the use of boulders to block a Traveller encampment. Across the political spectrum, no one should take him remotely seriously.

On A Cellular Level

As women are banned from going to university in Afghanistan, remember that Prince Harry was deployed there. It is no wonder that we lost. Like his namesake and cousin Heinrich XIII Prince Reuss, Harry has aspirations, or at least his wife has them for him. But he is not as clever as Heinrich. Or as well-dressed.

The Reichsbürger want to replace the present order, but Harry and Meghan do not wish to overthrow woke capitalism. On the contrary, they personify it. No one would be surprised if, like Birgit Malsack-Winkemann, Meghan were consulting astrological charts in order to direct this whole project, but the similarity ends there.

Still, the continued social, cultural and, when they happened to fancy it, political prominence of German-speaking Europe's long-deposed Royal Houses does serve as a warning to those who thought that a British republic might make these people go away. If I thought that, then I might be more sympathetic towards it. But it is demonstrably not the case. Very far from it, in fact.

The Plane Truth

There has never been the slightest attempt to implement the Rwanda deportation policy, but so what that it is legal? It is still morally wrong. We could make it illegal. They could never make it morally right.

They include all political parties, but we are heading for a hung Parliament. 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, we need to hold the balance of power. Owing nothing to either main party, we must be open to the better offer. There does, however, need to be a better offer. Not a lesser evil, which in any case the Labour Party is not.

Bring Back The Beast

The Labour candidate at Bolsover has had to stand aside.

Dennis Skinner has contested that seat seven times since he turned 65, winning six times and not losing by much in 2019.

Skinner long ago transcended any concept of being "too old". So why not? Bring Back The Beast.

Born of a Virgin

The New Testament begins with the genealogy of Saint Joseph, Our Lord’s stepfather. Why include that? It has always been recognised as clearly stylised. Three kings are omitted, and Jechoniah is counted twice, in order to give fourteen generations from Abraham to David, fourteen from David to the Babylonian Captivity, and fourteen from Babylon to the Nativity of Our Lord, fourteen being the numerical value of the three Hebrew consonants for David. Truly, the Messiah promised to and from the House of David is here, says the most Jewish of the Four Evangelists.

Sacred Tradition has of course always affirmed that Mary was also of Davidic descent, as indeed do her Talmudic defamers in their denunciations of her. Be that as it may, it is notable that only four other women are mentioned in these sixteen verses, and all produced sons who then took their place in the line despite not being the progeny of their mothers’ husbands. Either illegitimate, or legitimised by the levirate law, they become sons of Abraham and, in the last case, a prince of the House of David, his natural father whom he succeeds and arguably even surpasses.

Our Lady is the new Tamar, preventing the extinction of her people. Our Lady is the new Rahab, rescuing her people by her faith in the limitless power of God. Our Lady is the new Ruth, her Magnificat echoing Ruth’s expression of gratitude to Boaz. Our Lady is the new Bathsheba, bringing forth the new Solomon, Whose wisdom is as infinite as His judgement is universal. And in order to be so, she and her Child are placed under the protection of, as Saint Matthew calls him in the concluding verses, the “just man” who stands at the conclusion of those forty-two generations of personally imperfect, but nevertheless continuous and strictly legal, patriarchy and monarchy.

Long before anyone knew anything about X and Y chromosomes, the Church Fathers held that God had made up whatever had been lacking in order to make it possible for a woman to bear a male child without any male human involvement. The view that miracles are absolutely impossible is not compatible with agnosticism. Nor with science, which is purely descriptive. What if a miracle did occur?

Forget the assertion that until the nineteenth century, people thought that heredity was purely on the paternal side. The Greek urban, homosocial leisure class thought that. But the Hebrew writers seem to have been unaware that any such fantasy even existed. Well, of course they were. They were working farmers who spent their time with their wives and children. Accordingly, their purity and incest laws presuppose a biological relationship with both parents. I employ the present tense because those laws are still in daily use, and may be read in the best-selling book in the world.

There is an old standby of middlebrow, pub bore professional atheism, that the Virginal Conception has numerous mythological parallels. Nothing could be further from the case. What occurs over and over again in mythology is the impregnation, by otherwise normal sexual means, of a woman by a god; a god, therefore, with a physical body. Exactly that does not happen in the Gospels.

However, it is held in Mormonism that this was how Jesus was conceived, one among many reasons why the enormous popularity of the Mormons within American religion – numerically third only to the Catholics and to the Southern Baptists, and the clear direct or indirect originators of numerous ideas such as “Manifest Destiny” – raises very serious questions about whether the American Republic, as such, is any sort of bulwark of Christianity. Not unanswerable questions. But very serious ones.

Both Jews and pagans made all sorts of contrary claims, but one was completely unknown to either, namely that Jesus had been the natural child of Mary and Joseph. No such suggestion was ever made by anyone in the first eighteen centuries of Christianity’s existence. Even the Qur’an has the “Prophet Isa” born of the “Virgin Mariam”. Apart from that partial retelling in the Qur’an, the Biblical account is unique, and could not be less like any of the parallels that are routinely alleged. 

That Islam – a Semitic reaction against the recapitulation in Christ and His Church of all three of the Old Israel, Hellenism, and the Roman Empire – depicts Jesus as both virgin-born, and the Messiah foretold by the Hebrew prophets, is an important insight into the debate as to whether or not the circumstances of His conception described in the New Testament really are the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy.

Of course, had there been no expectation that the Messiah would be virgin-born, then there would have been no reason for the Evangelists to have invented it. And that would have been just as strong an argument in the doctrine’s favour. But the Islamic view, staunchly Semitic and anti-Hellenistic as it is, adds considerable weight to the belief that the Virgin Birth is, as the New Testament writers maintain entirely matter-of-factly that it is, the fulfilment of the words of the Old Testament prophets.

It is often contended that it is not clear that the prophecy in Isaiah actually refers to a virgin. Well, it certainly does in the Septuagint, the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, and, contrary to what used to be asserted, first century Palestine is now acknowledged to have been profoundly Hellenised. So either the Septuagint prophecy is indeed being fulfilled explicitly, or else there was no expectation that the Messiah would be virgin-born, and thus no reason to make up that Jesus had been. The doctrine works either way.

Happy Holidays?

Hanukkah is a strange one. After the emergence of Judaism, set out below, Hanukkah was historically a very minor festival until almost into living memory, and in much of the Jewish world it still is. But it does provide an opportunity to preempt this year’s round of lazy claims that Christmas is a taking over of some pagan winter festival. 

There is of course a universal need for winter festivals. But the dating of Christmas derives from Hanukkah, not from the pagan Saturnalia or anything else. No British or Irish Christmas custom derives from paganism. There is little, if any, fokloric pagan continuation in these islands, and little, if anything, is known about pre-Christian religion here. Most, if not all, allegations to the contrary derive from Protestant polemic against practices originating in the Middle Ages, and usually the Late Middle Ages at that. The modern religion known as Paganism is an invention from scratch, the very earliest roots of which are in the late nineteenth century. 

Furthermore, the dating of Christmas from that of Hanukkah raises serious questions for Protestants, who mistakenly exclude the two Books of Maccabees from the Canon because, along with various other works, they were allegedly not considered canonical at the time of Jesus and the Apostles.

But in fact, the rabbis only excluded those books specifically because they were likely to lead people into Christianity, and they are repeatedly quoted or cited in the New Testament, as they were by Jewish writers up to their rabbinical exclusion. Even thereafter, a point is made by the continued celebration of Hanukkah, a celebration thanks to books to which Jews only really had access because Christians had preserved them, since the rabbis had wanted them destroyed.

Indeed, far from being the mother-religion that it is often assumed to be, a very great deal of Judaism is actually a reaction against Christianity, although this is by no means the entirety of the relationship, with key aspects of kabbalah in fact deriving from Christianity, with numerous other examples set out in Rabbi Michael Hilton’s The Christian Effect on Jewish Life (London: SCM Press, 1994), and so on.

Hanukkah bushes, and the giving and receiving of presents at Hanukkah, stand in a tradition of two-way interaction both as old as Christianity and about as old as anything that could reasonably be described as Judaism. As Rabbi Hilton puts it, “It is hardly surprising that Jewish communities living for centuries in Christian society should be influenced by the surrounding culture.” There are many, many, many other examples that could be cited.

These range from the Medieval adoption for Jewish funeral use of the Psalm numbered 23 in Jewish and Protestant editions; to the new centrality within Judaism that the rise of Christianity gave to Messianic expectations (the Sadducees, for example, had not believed in the Messiah at all) or to the purification of women after childbirth; to the identification in later parts of the Zohar of four senses of Scripture technically different from, but effectively very similar to, those of Catholicism; to Medieval rabbis’ explicit and unembarrassed use of Christian stories in their sermons.

Many a midrash – such as “to you the Sabbath is handed over, but you are not handed over to the Sabbath” – is easily late enough to be an example of the direct influence of Christianity, yet Jewish and Christian scholars alike tend to announce an unidentified common, usually Pharisaic, root, although they rarely go off on any wild goose chase to find that root. I think that we all know why not. 

But the real point is something far deeper, arising from the definition of the Jewish Canon in explicitly anti-Christian terms, and from the anti-Christian polemic in the Talmud. Judaism hardly uses the Hebrew Bible directly, rather than its own, defining and anti-Christian, commentaries on it and on each other. Jews doubting this should ask themselves when they last heard of an animal sacrifice, or which of their relatives was a polygamist. 

Judaism, I say again, is not some sort of mother-religion. Rather, I say again that it is a reaction against Christianity, and specifically, like Islam, a Semitic reaction against the recapitulation in Christ and His Church of all three of the Old Israel, Hellenism and the Roman Empire; there are also, of course, culturally European reactions against that recapitulation by reference to Classical sources, as there always have been, although they are increasingly allied to Islam.

Thus constructed, Judaism became, and remains, an organising principle, again like Classically-based reactions, for all sorts of people discontented for whatever reason with the rise of Christianity in general and with the Christianisation of the Roman Empire in particular, including all the historical consequences of that up to the present day, without any realistic suggestion of a common ethnic background.

Above all, Judaism’s unresolved Messianic hope and expectation has issued in all sorts of earthly utopianisms: Freudian, Marxist (and then Trotskyist, and then Shachtmanite), monetarist, Zionist, Straussian, neoconservative by reference to all of these, and so forth. They are all expressions of Judaism’s repudiation of Original Sin, Christianity’s great bulwark against the rationally and empirically falsifiable notions of inevitable historical progress and of the perfectibility of human nature in this life alone and by human efforts alone.

It is Christianity that refers constantly to the Biblical text. It is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, that has a Temple, Jesus Christ, Who prophesied both the destruction of the Temple and its replacement in His own Person. It is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, that has a Priesthood. It is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, that has a Sacrifice, the Mass.

And it is Christianity in general, and Catholicism in particular, that is the religion of the Hebrew Scriptures. Including the two Books of Maccabees, the origin of Hanukkah. The true form of which, as of so much else, is Christmas.

The Man Who Was Thursday, On The Man Who Invented Christmas

It is almost impossible to overstate the cultural impact of A Christmas Carol. All adaptations, even by the Muppets, stick closely to the plot, and usually even to the dialogue. A green Bob Cratchit is not contrary to the book, in which no colour is specified.

In The Catholic Revival in English Literature, 1845-1961, the late Fr Ian Ker proposed “a new way of looking at Chesterton’s literary achievement which has gone by default.” He sees the author of the Father Brown stories, and even of The Man Who Was Thursday, as “a fairly slight figure”. But Chesterton the non-fiction writer is “a successor of the great Victorian “sages” or “prophets”, who was indeed compared to Dr Johnson in his own lifetime, and who can be mentioned without exaggeration in the same breath as Carlyle, Ruskin, Arnold and especially, of course, Newman.”

Fr Ker identified Charles Dickens (1906) both as Chesterton’s best work and as the key to understanding his Catholicism. “It is a typically Chestertonian paradox that while Dickens was nothing if not ignorant of and prejudiced against Catholicism as well as the Middle Ages, it is his unconsciously Catholic and Mediaeval ethos that is the heart of Chesterton’s critical study.”

First, Chesterton’s Dickens celebrated the ordinary, and rejoiced in sheer living and even sheer being. He was originally a “higher optimist” whose “joy is in inverse proportion to the grounds for so rejoicing,” because he simply “falls in love with” the universe, and “those love her with most intensity who love her with least cause.” Hence the exaggeration of Dickens’s caricatures, expressing both the heights of the highs and the depths of the lows in the life of one who looks at the world in this way.

For, secondly, Dickens created “holy fools”: Toots in Dombey and Son, Miss Podsnap in Our Mutual Friend, the Misses Pecksniff in Martin Chuzzlewit, to name but a few. Dickens also “created a personal devil in every one of his books,” figures with the “atrocious hilarity" of gargoyles. In either case, since the everyday world is so utterly extraordinary and extraordinary things so much a part of the everyday, so the absurd is utterly real and the real is utterly absurd. Postmodern, or what? Read Dickens, then read Chesterton on Dickens, and then re-read Dickens: who needs wilful French obscurantism in the name of ‘irony’?

And thirdly, then, Dickens was the true successor of Merry England, unlike his “pallid” contemporaries, the Pre-Raphaelites and “Gothicists”, whose “subtlety and sadness” was in fact “the spirit of the present day” after all. It was Dickens who “had the things of Chaucer”: “the love of large jokes and long stories and brown ale and all the white roads of England”; “story within story, every man telling a tale”; and “something openly comic in men’s motley trades”.

Dickens’s defence of Christmas was therefore a fight “for the old European festival, Pagan and Christian”, i.e., for “that trinity of eating, drinking and praying that to moderns appears irreverent”, unused as the modern mind is to “the holy day which is really a holiday.” Dear reader, I trust that you are you will eat, drink and pray most merrily. As, indeed, will I.