- “Two dead, almost 70 injured in German Christmas market terror attack” – Check the Telegraph’s home page for the latest developments in this horrific breaking story.
- “Saudi Arabian doctor, 50, who killed at least two is ‘an ex-Muslim who ranted against Germany for Islamising Europe’” – The man who drove his car into people at the German Christmas market, killing at least two and injuring dozens, was an ex-Muslim, according to the Mail, not a Jihadist.
- “Elon Musk backs AfD to ‘save Germany’” – Musk has upset Leftie Twitter by endorsing the AfD, but Alice Weidel, one of the party’s leaders, is delighted, reports the Telegraph.
- “In latest threat to German democracy, dangerous fascist Elon Musk tweets six words about Alternative für Deutschland” – On his Substack, Eugyppius gives short shrift to all those self-styled defenders of democracy wringing their hands in alarm about Musk’s endorsement of AfD.
- “My appointments to the Lords are true radicals, the smart and the very brave” – Kemi Badenoch explains why she nominated me and five others for peerages yesterday in an op ed for ConservativeHome.
- “Starmer is on the brink of erasing Brexit – but Kemi can still rescue it” – Labour has a huge majority and can ram through any deal it likes. But the Tories can still make life difficult for the Government if it tries to undo Brexit, says David Frost in the Telegraph.
- “Things must be bad for Starmer if he’s losing to Diane Abbott” – The pair clearly despise each other, but Sir Keir’s tendency to break promises has only divided them further, reports the Telegraph.
- “Banning the Granny Harmers song will backfire on the foolish BBC” – The BBC’s refusal to play ‘Freezing This Christmas’ by Sir Starmer and the Granny Haters will make it even more popular, writes George Chesterton in the Telegraph.
- “Anti-Starmer song tops sales and downloads charts but falls short of Christmas No. 1” – ‘Freezing This Christmas’ has racked up just over 14,000 sales in a few weeks but is pipped to top slot by Wham!’s ‘Last Christmas’, according to the Telegraph. Shame.
- “Wham again? How Spotify and Apple killed the Christmas Number One” – Sorry, Sir Starmer and the Granny Harmers – a very familiar song has topped the festive charts, says the Telegraph. And algorithms are to blame.
- “Lord Mandelson picked as ambassador to US to win over Trump” – The New Labour grandee will take up the Washington role with sights set on wooing the incoming president and securing a trade deal, which may prove difficult, given some of the rude things he’s said about the President-elect, says the Telegraph.
- “Mandelson described Trump as a danger to the world and ‘little short of a white nationalist’” – The Telegraph produces some examples of the silly things Mandelson has said about Trump.
- “Lord Mandelson called an ‘absolute moron’ by Trump campaign chief” – Chris LaCivita, who masterminded Trump’s presidential bid, took to X yesterday to say what he thinks about Keir Starmer’s choice for U.S. ambassador, according to the Telegraph.
- “Almost nobody in Washington knows who Lord Mandelson is, says U.S. congressman” – Republican Glenn Grothman estimates that only 15 of the 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives would be able to name the new British Ambassador, says the Telegraph.
- “When Trump wants to talk to Britain, he’ll call Farage – not Mandelson” – For a political genius, Mandelson has been on the losing side an awful lot of times, writes Dominic Green in the Telegraph.
- “The climate scaremongers: Mad Ed’s lies come back to haunt him” – Ed Miliband’s misleading promises are coming back to bite him on the bum, says Paul Homewood in the Conservative Woman.
- “Labour has walked into a Net Zero trap of its own making” – Britain does not have sufficient gas-powered generating capacity to meet demand when there’s not enough wind, points out Rupert Darwall in the Spectator.
- “Rachel Reeves has shattered economic confidence” – As the economy deteriorates, the pressure is only going to increase on the Chancellor to make savings in Government spending, writes Matthew Lynn in the Spectator.
- “Britain is living beyond its means” – The longer term-picture is that retail sales volumes remain 1.6% down on what they were on the eve of the pandemic in February 2020, says Ross Clark in the Spectator.
- “Scrapping Latin in state schools will impoverish us all” – Labour says it is opposed to elitism. But its decision to scrap a state school Latin programme will make classics the exclusive preserve of the rich, writes Lola Salem in the Telegraph.
- “‘How is a convicted terrorist trying to sue me over my pub’s name?’” – Landlords across the country are defending the Saracen’s Head name after one establishment was taken to court for its “deeply offensive” sign, reports the Telegraph.
- “Stephen Fry criticises Stonewall’s ‘nonsensical’ stance on trans issues” – Stephen Fry hit out against Stonewall during an interview on Triggernometry, according to the Telegraph.
- “The Pill turned me gay: Woman blames sexuality change on contraceptive” – Amy Parker ditched the Pill in February after ending her seven-year relationship. By May the thought of dating men filled her with “disgust”, says the Mail.
- “Lib Dems barred domestic abuse survivor from standing as MP over gender-critical views” – A former parliamentary candidate is taking legal action against the Liberal Democrats, seeking £90,000 in damages after she was branded a “bigot” for wearing a T-shirt with a feminist slogan on it, reports the Free Speech Union’s blog.
- “Teacher jailed after row over transgender pupils is released” – The Evangelical Christian who was jailed for contempt in September after defying a High Court injunction banning him from the grounds of the school he taught at in Ireland has been released in time for Christmas, says the Mail.
- “Eight convicted of involvement of the 2020 beheading of teacher Samuel Paty” – Eight people have been convicted for being involved in the death of Samuel Paty, the teacher who was beheaded outside his school near Paris four years ago, reports the Mail.
- “Sara Sharif judge who made anonymity order claims ‘media could not be trusted to report fairly’” – The identities of those involved in the family court ruling remain unknown over fears of a social media ‘lynch mob’, according to the Telegraph.
- “Gary Lineker gives Sports Personality parting shot: ‘I never enjoyed presenting it’” – The former footballer cited the restrictions placed on what presenters can say as a reason for his indifference to hosting the BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards, says the Telegraph.
- “‘Doctors are facing anti-Semitism from their colleagues – will the NHS protect them?’” – Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas conflict, Jewish medical staff have faced increasingly frequent – and brazen – discrimination, writes Miranda Levy in the Telegraph.
- “Owen Jones’s obsession with Israel shows why it’s so hard to be a Jew at the BBC” – What is it about the Jewish state that so agitates the digital doofus? asks Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph.
- “On the crossroads at the edge of empire” – It’s time the British conservative movement thought hard about what an authentic domestic form of conservatism really looks like, writes David McGrogan on his News From Uncibal Substack.
- “Oligarchy dies in the light” – Have the plutocrats of the internet age finally realised that all Donald Trump wanted was their love? asks Freddy Gray in the Spectator.
- “Trump to demand Nato nations spend 5% of GDP on defence” – The President-elect will tell European countries told to bolster their defence budgets and shoulder the burden of defending Ukraine from Russia, according to the Telegraph.
- “An honourable peace is within Ukraine’s grasp” – With the Democrats out of the way, the new President will surely not want to lose the geopolitical advantages of thwarting Putin, writes Charles Moore in the Telegraph.
- “What’s the truth about the New Jersey drone sightings?” – It’s increasingly hard these days to get a grip on some news stories in the modern media landscape, according to Gareth Roberts in the Spectator.
- “The free world has abandoned Hong Kong” – The heads of our intelligence agencies have highlighted the security threat China poses for several years, but Sir Keir and others have ignored their warnings, reports the Spectator.
- “Macron and the ‘Mamadous’: French president accused of racist, sexist and homophobic remarks” – Critics of Macron claim to be stunned at a string of “politically incorrect” remarks he’s made recently, says the Telegraph.
- “France says bird flu-free after month without outbreaks” – France has declared itself to be free of avian influenza in the absence of any new outbreaks for more than a month, says Reuters.
- “If I was to make a parody of a woke Hollywood trailer that checks every conceivable PC box in 2 minutes, I would make exactly this trailer” – Matt Walsh has found a trailer for what could be the most woke film ever made.
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Good article, although I still think the author finds it hard to cut himself loose from the past. The fact he always felt good to be part of the ‘centre left’ is also strange. What good has any left wing Government done anywhere?
Glad he made it to Texas and found sanity. Hopefully he will never vote Dumb again.
Finally did the author mix up log and splinter in 3rd para?
It is a start. You (we) can’t expect everything in one step. Nobody can cast off long-held views overnight.
Peter Hitchens would agree!
Come on you smug Rightists.. Whilst it is true that relatively less on the Right have fallen for the Virtuous Covid Hoax than the naive Leftists, that still doesn’t include most of the Conservative Party!
This is far more than shallow point scoring between Left and Right, this is about seeing through a scam/hoax, as promoted by the Establishment. Some of us can see it, but sadly most not.
Like the author, I would have regarded myself as Centrist or possibly slightly Leftist in terms of economy, but we can likewise see horse faeces for what it is!
Orwell observed that the real divide is not between Left and Right, but between authoritarians and libertarians.
Yes but most of today’s conservative party are not right of centre. It was Tories that gave us Net Zero after all in 2019. It is Tories who speak of things like “Social Justice”. It is Tories that have allowed people to roam about with knives and gangs of people with rucksacks to walk into stores and fill up. It is Tories who have allowed 750,000 people to enter the country with 100,000 of them just arriving uninvited. All these people will have to live somewhere and presumably that will be in a house, but where are all these houses? So no we don’t have a conservative party now, we have Labour and we have Labour Lite.
Which just shows the absurdity of the whole left-right paradigm when not discussing France circa 1790.
The laughably misnamed ‘Conservative’ Party is dominated by Blue Blairites (if you don;t believe me, look at the tax rates & observe what happened to Truss when she dared suggest a meaningful change of approach). People will be shocked when the soon-to-be-in-power Red Blairites just dial all the idiocy of the last 14 years up to 11, resulting in more of the same but faster.
I found solace with Left Lockdown Sceptics that now call themselves Real Left.
https://real-left.com/
Off topic but the DS boffins have fixed notifications
I’ve encouraged them to give those features a plug as I feel they enhance the experience, but if they don’t I’ll post about it tomorrow
Good article by Dr Bell. I hadn’t been a “lefty” since my youth but I realised my London “liberal” tribe abandoned me over Trump and Brexit so by the time “Covid” came I was not surprised.
Both David & Bell arose from The America™ and their total cluelessness of European history of the first half of the 20th century is only shadowed by their apparently indomitable desire to keep making stupid remarks about it both David & Bell from The America™ certainly believe to be profound.
As I’m not in the mute of trying to explain this history to boneheads again, what about a question instead: Is the reason that you always write fascism when you mean totalitarianism that the idea that Stalin really wasn’t a nice guy offends your communist sympathies?
David, you should ask these “superior” specimens whether they believe that epidemics grow exponentially. If they say yes you can tell them that are bad at both “Math” and basic literature reviews.
It certainly has been very interesting – if not very pleasant – seeing ill-liberalism take centre stage in the attitudes of quite intelligent friends and acquaintances. It suddenly became a real clear dividing line, though no doubt it was always there under the surface, in less ‘clarifying’ times.
Excellent article.
Comparing far-left and far-right (the actual far-right, not someone who thinks Bearded Bill perhaps shouldn’t be donning a frock, slapping on the makeup, and reading stories to schoolchildren) is like comparing a red apple to a green apple – peel away the skin and what you’ll find beneath is always an apple. Communism is bold, brash totalitarianism, fascism is quiet, shy totalitarianism. The green and red skins of your totalitarian apple. The reason why so many more on the left succumbed is, quite simply, because so many more on the left – particularly the modern left, which is now the party of the middle-class ‘educated’ – consider themselves superior. And if you ‘know’ you’re superior then you have a duty to control the inferior – for their own good of course. Superior opinion isn’t opinion, it’s fact. Fact, because all superior people hold the same opinion, and all superior people can’t be wrong. And, because it’s fact, any inferior people holding a contradictory opinion must be forced in line. Because, fact.
The last few years has laid bare how many people enjoy the idea of total authority; either enforcing it or being subjected to it. The biggest social experiment in history and the results are not only bloody depressing, but a clear window into what comes next. We, on this site, are in a minority. Buckle down the hatches.
Thank you for this article.
Overnight, the British Establishment turned into Tyrants and the vast majority of the population demonstrated that they are gullible idiots who have no common-sense, ability or willingness to think or take responsibility for themselves.
It was the most depressing revelation of my life.
Yes, but I believe even Texas is covering the place in thousands of turbines. I suppose no one is perfect.