melvyn newell

Grey expectations thecritic.co.uk/grey-expectati…

This has been the most consequential State Visit for many years. The King’s status and experience enabled him in those brilliantly crafted speeches to get beyond differences on policy, mobilising history to show there is still much we share. For a moment, he changed the context.

100% agree! Shows the way a State Visit can produce a magic moment which transcends politics.

@TheFactCompiler @Madz_Grant @WilliamClouston A happy day spent

@Madz_Grant @WilliamClouston This how you do it!

It’s such a typical identikit post-religious, post-national sort of a message. Starmer genuinely has nothing positive to say about St George’s day so he throws in a load of generic diversity/tolerance stuff and then rounds it off with an attempt to kick those he disagrees with

“Rather than representing hope as an instrument of politics it should be seen as merely an attitude towards the future”

‘We in America have no interest in being polite and orderly caretakers of the West’s managed decline.’

“It wasn’t until the last two decades of the 20thcentury that this word acquired its current usage became humanised as the property of individuals and groups”

@Ol_One_Eye @BROKENBRITAIN0 Remember: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jameah_Is…

@BROKENBRITAIN0 Here is Billy Moore asking what they are about:

🚨 Muslim armies are mobilising in the UK 🇬🇧 Footage shows groups of muslims dressed in all black marching through the streets of Crewe ⚠️ Reports suggest the group is called "The religion of peace and light." Idk about you, but it seems ominous❗️

In this video, Margaret Thatcher argues that countries aren’t rich because of natural resources, but because of policies that reward creativity and initiative

@LordRickettsP @RSylvester1 Ricketts says. “And I don’t think Trump believes in the concept of allies. Those are fundamental shifts in the world that I’ve known in my 50 years in foreign affairs.”

Thanks ⁦@RSylvester1⁩ for quoting me on what makes Trump unlike any other post-war US President: he doesn’t accept that the US should be constrained by any form of international rules/norms, and doesn’t believe in the value of allies. ⁦Tough times! observer.co.uk/news/national/…

@LordRickettsP What an ideal choice as US Ambassador

If you’d like to know more about our next man in Washington, Sir Christian Turner, take a listen to this. A number of us chat about him - and it turns out that he has several hidden talents! bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m0…

Do not use the United Nations for something for which it was not founded. You have a hundred and seventy nations. They don't all agree that democracy is the best way to conduct affairs. They don't all have the same view of human rights that we have. You can't put executive decisions into their hands about war and peace.

Opening X it seems like Iran is by far the biggest story right now. Opening any media homepage and it seems to be a total non-story. Weird times we live in.

BBC News is deliberately ignoring the revolution in Iran. And why is that? My guess is, they don't want to broadcast the fact that an entire nation is REJECTING Islamism. The BBC doesn't want to "offend" Islamists in the UK & elsewhere.

Leaving the EU but joining a customs union is like throwing away the burger and eating the napkin, said the Conservative peer Lord Hannan. He’s right. Recent weeks have seen a bizarre push by some Labour and Lib Dem politicians – including in major newspaper interviews – to rejoin the EU’s customs union. Most of these MPs were not present during the political chaos of 2017–2019 that followed the Brexit referendum, during which many in Westminster fought to overturn the vote. And those Labour MPs who were there, and who now want to rejoin the customs union, clearly learned nothing. The only people advocating for such a policy – and here I include the trade union bosses who have also proposed it – do not understand what a customs union actually is. As a former Trade Secretary, I know that trade is about hard choices. You defend British interests. You say no to deals that are easy to sign but bad for the country. Yet Labour, despite all the dramatic changes to the global trade system this year, have still not grasped one simple lesson. Trade policy is power: lose control of it, and you lose the ability to govern yourself. This is why the renewed chatter about dragging Britain back into the EU’s customs union should worry us all. It is not a sign of pragmatism – it is a symptom of Labour’s weakness. It’s now painfully obvious to everyone that Keir Starmer entered government without a plan. The list of humiliating U-turns is so long that, I hear, Labour MPs now think twice before supporting a policy announcement in case the PM scraps it a week later. From winter fuel payments to freezing income tax thresholds and the Family Farm Tax, Labour haven’t just broken their pre-election promises, they’ve inflicted untold damage to the British economy while doing so. And now the government is weak and has no plan or new ideas, it has re-opened old Brexit wounds in the vain hope that doing so will make it more popular. It won’t. Going back into the customs union would make us all poorer and damage British business and British farming. Four major benefits of Brexit would be lost: we would no longer be able to set our own tariffs, negotiate our own trade deals, maintain the deals we’ve signed as an independent nation, or reject deals struck by others, even when they harmed our interests. Worse, the bloc would demand even more concessions from us to rejoin – and this hapless Labour government would no doubt surrender. Keir Starmer’s previous attempts at ‘negotiating’ with the EU have been one humiliation after another. The PM gave up our fishing rights to get into an EU ‘defence fund’ that we still don’t have access to, and then paid almost £600million to rejoin an Erasmus scheme we’d decided was too expensive at £100million and was mostly being used by EU students studying here, not young Brits going abroad. Starmer’s trade agreement with President Trump, though considerably worse than the deal the @Conservatives had ready to go with America, is nevertheless clearly better than anything the EU has managed to agree with the world’s most important economy. Why would we give up the trade deals we’ve negotiated, all structured to work for British businesses, to join a customs union designed to benefit firms in EU countries, with vastly different priorities? Britain is in a slump. Talk of a customs union is a distraction. I’m not here to make excuses for previous Conservative governments: we got things wrong, or we’d still be in government. However, we did leave Labour the fastest-growing economy in the G7, record levels of employment and inflation on target at 2 per cent.

“…what happens to “European” partners if, thanks to mass-migration and cultural cowardice, their countries are no longer European?”

@_F_B_G_ A joy to read - a happy and holy Christmas to you - (and I Googled “scandalous particularity”) - all this after listening to the latest “Quite right!” podcast.

Here for those who want a read: countrylife.co.uk

Delighted to have written the Christmas Leader for Country Life’s festive double issue this year: all about how Christianity’s hope that anywhere can become a Bethlehem, a place where we encounter the reality of God, makes sacred place so special at Christmas.

Disturbing: “Together, they construct a narrative—and in that neat, rehearsed chorus, your own story begins to fade from the record”

@Madz_Grant I’d be drawn to your literary style on any subject!

I'm thinking about starting a Substack in which I write about things that I wouldn't normally do articles about so often, like James Bond, pop culture, favourite books and films. Is this something people would be interested in reading about, and possibly subscribing to?

🚨 BREAKING: UK Supreme Court rules that teaching core Christian beliefs in Northern Ireland schools is now UNLAWFUL. The highest court in the land has just declared that the Christian religious education currently taught in NI schools (the same basic Bible teaching that’s been there for generations) violates human rights and must be changed. Let that sink in. In a country whose head of state is literally called “Defender of the Faith”, whose laws were built on Christian foundations, whose national anthem prays “God save the King”… teaching children what Christians actually believe is now deemed illegal. How the fk is this right? How is this even remotely just or sane in a historically Christian nation? This isn’t about “inclusivity” or “tolerance”. This is the state targeting Christians, yet again. Northern Ireland voted to keep traditional marriage, voted against liberal abortion laws, yet Westminster and the courts keep forcing progressive secular ideology on a population that repeatedly rejects it. Enough is enough. If you think children in a Christian country should still be allowed to learn Christian teachings in school without it being ruled “unlawful”, make your voices heard!