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Showing posts from September, 2024

On English Identity

After Kemi Badenoch's McFarce earlier this week, Conservative leadership hopeful Robert Jenrick is emerging as the champion of the party's right-wing, and the outright frontrunner in the four-way contest. In an opinion piece for the Daily Mail, that megaphone of Middle England, Jenrick claimed that left-liberal policies on immigration and the culture had "put the very idea of England at risk." Without detailing the minutiae of what constitutes Englishness, Jenrick awoke the dormant conversation surrounding the identity of the largest nation in the Union. What was once the preserve of irrelevant, eschewed political parties, such as the English Democrats, is now contested on Sky News, and in that sense, Jenrick has already won the day by bringing the issue to the attention of the public. In addition to his predictable commitments to having Britain leave the ECHR, the Tory candidate has reminded us that England matters too, advertising himself as the man to revive the C

Obstructions to Freedom in Britain

Britain finally took sentencing seriously this summer. Despite previous announcements that prisons were incapable of absorbing more convicts, courts stood firmly on the side of order. The use of televised sentencing only heightened perceptions that the crimes committed in the aftermath of the Southport stabbing were particularly egregious. The decision to broadcast sentencing statements to every TV screen in the country was not a ploy to fill up TV programming schedules, but evidence that even TV executives were fully devoted to the mission of His Majesty's Government.  While most Britons supported the crackdown on violent conduct, efforts to police speech surrounding the riots spurred on debate regarding appropriate limits to speech in general. That "grossly offensive" speech is criminalised under the 2003 Communications Act drew the derision of many international observers, including Elon Musk. Whether motivated by genuine support for our speech laws or merely a reflexi