The Critic

A gross dereliction of duty

In 1900, socialist pamphleteers and “national efficiency” enthusiasts deemed it a sorry indictment of late-Victorian capitalism that more than a fifth of those volunteering to fight against the Boers were rejected for failing the physical fitness...

Who can heal sick Britain?

“I came to office with one deliberate intent,” Margaret Thatcher claimed in 1984. “To change Britain from a dependent to a self-reliant society: from a give-it-to-me, to a do-it-yourself nation.” This October’s commemorations marking the centenary of...

WRONG PEOPLE, WRONG POLICY

“Brexit didn’t work” is now close to being a consensus. It suits the people who failed to do it and Brexit’s unreconciled critics equally. The former have their excuses for squandering their chance: Covid, the courts, Remainers, even their colleagues...

THE NIGEL PRINCIPLE

Nigel Farage: ist er der Mann? This is the only question in British politics. One need not admire him to admit that this is so. All turns on Nigel. But as we have asked before, is Reform bigger than Farage? For if what’s held to be driving the party’s...

NOT UNIVERSITY MATERIAL

“Since it is difficult for a university to agree by common consent and unanimous will, we enact that all regents or a majority of them shall appoint a Chancellor of their own choosing who has the knowledge, will and power to be, as it were, the...

THE CHURCH’S NEW SHEPHERDS

A FORK IN THE ROAD

The last time this magazine called on a Tory leader to go was in July 2022 [“THE FAILURES OF BORIS”]. “The country deserves better,” we said. It didn’t get it, but we were right to say that time was up for Mr Johnson. He announced his resignation on 7...

IN DEFENCE OF EXCELLENCE

What a difference a year makes, unless it doesn’t. Twelve months ago, when we published our last spring Music special, the classical music world had rarely looked bleaker. A decade of funding squeezes, rising costs and Lockdown’s destruction of...

THE END OF THE NEWS

We are a print magazine founded late in the first quarter of the twenty-first century. So, when it comes to discussing the state of the press we need to show some self-awareness. But whatever our own notions of self-worth, what does the fourth estate...

WHO NEEDS NATO?

At the Tehran Conference in 1943 Churchill presented Stalin with George VI’s gift of the Mech Stalingráda. Acid-etched, the inscription on it reads: to the steel-hearted citizens of stalingrad • the gift of king george vi • in token of the homage of...

MEETING OF MINDS: THE INTELLECTUAL MAKING OF THE NEW RIGHT

BLACKOUT BRITAIN

When the grid runs out of wind

WHAT IS TORYISM FOR?

A century ago Tory party conferences reliably had motions deploring the “unbalanced” constitution. Even two decades after the 1911 Parliament Act the complaint was still this: what matters about the House of Lords is not its composition but its...

DO THE RIGHT THING

The worst result in its history. It’s something to roll round the mouth. Maybe it’s like Rex Mottram’s glass of proper brandy: The cognac was not to Rex’s taste. It was clear and pale and it came to us in a bottle free from grime and Napoleonic...

Bonfire of the Tory vanities