Rightminds

The new year has started better than Britain’s vast army of doomsters predicted. True, it’s very early days and there are undoubtedly some grim times still to come. But already there are reasons to be cheerful — or at least less gloomy than the consensus of the commentariat. The best news of all is that wholesale gas prices have collapsed since their August peak and are heading for levels not seen since before Russia invaded Ukraine and sparked last year’s energy price spiral. President Putin is not only losing the ground war in Ukraine. He’s lost his bid to freeze Europe into submission this winter and weaken the West’s commitment to Ukraine by cutting off its Russian energy supplies. Far from that happening, the Nato allies are ramping up their support for Ukraine with more powerful and sophisticated weapons. President Putin has lost his bid to freeze Europe into submission this winter and weaken the West’s commitment to Ukraine by cutting off its Russian energy … [Read more...] about ANDREW NEIL: Rishi needs to raise spirits as well as cut taxes. It’s not yet clear he knows how to do either

You can hardly spend ten minutes in Britain these days without being told — by some defeatist police chief, or by some greedy lobbyist for legal drugs — that there is a 'war on drugs', and that it has 'failed'. If the British Ingrowing Toenail Support Association, or the Retired Lighthouse Keepers' League publishes a vague two-page document calling for cannabis legalisation, the BBC will call it a 'report' and shove it near the top of its bulletins. By contrast, if a serious academic study says that marijuana use is increasingly correlated with incurable mental illness, most British media will bury or ignore the story. The argument is always the same. Decades of severe and cruel prohibition have failed to stop the use of illegal drugs. So let's legalise them. Millions of people — I know some of them and they appear to be intelligent and awake — accept this tripe. Prince Harry exhales cigarette smoke at a friend's wedding in London in 2009 … [Read more...] about PETER HITCHENS: Am I the only one who fears the effect drug abuse may have had on Harry – and our society?

After withstanding three weeks of Harry napalming the Royal Family with his ‘truth bombs’, the Princess of Wales — whether unwittingly or not — dropped a little bomb of her own this week. On a visit with Prince William to the Open Door mental health charity in Liverpool — their first public engagement since the publication of Spare — she said, simply: ‘Talking therapies don’t work for some people, they’re not for everybody.’ The comment raised eyebrows in the light of Harry’s apparent obsession with therapy. Not least because of his revelation that, after William apparently broke his brother’s necklace and knocked him to the floor in a fight about Meghan, Harry immediately called his therapist to talk about it. Whether Kate dropped her bomb unwittingly or not, she’s absolutely right. While talking therapies certainly work for some, they don’t always solve the problem. And I should know. During low points in my life I’ve tried several of them; some worked, most didn’t. … [Read more...] about PLATELL’S PEOPLE: Kate’s truth bomb about therapy not working for everyone and why I know she is right

Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. So says Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III as he is dragged back into the family organised-crime business after trying to go straight. Well, that’s exactly how I feel about Prince Harry . Just when I thought I was out, he pulls me back in. Just when I felt free to write about other topical matters, perhaps Rishi’s oh-so exciting plan for more maths classes , or one of the former Marquess of Bath’s wifelets suing the estate for a share of his will — here’s a maths equation for that, darling: 0 + 0 = 0 — Harry barges into the narrative once more, tootling on his trumpet of ongoing anguish, simply impossible to ignore. Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in. So says Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part III as he is dragged back into the family organised-crime business after trying to go straight. Well, that’s exactly how I feel about Prince Harry This time the grudge-toting manbaby really has … [Read more...] about JAN MOIR: If Big Willy really did push Little Harold over (and break his necklace) one can understand why

Iran 's leaders have been hanging dissidents since the start of the year, as they battle to quell the wave of street protests against the country’s repressive system. But yesterday’s execution of the joint British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari is a brutal step beyond. And it raises the spectre of an international crisis pitting the Islamic republic’s hardliners against the West. Britain has been targeted as a threat by the Ayatollahs’ regime ever since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. We are the ‘Little Satan’ in their demonology. America is the ‘Great Satan’, said to be co-ordinating diabolic plots against Iran with its Paranoid they might well be, but such fantasies can have catastrophic consequences. Iranian-British dual citizen Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe spent more than five years in jail as a result of the flimsy claim that any Iranian who shows dissent from the regime is a Western spy. Yesterday’s execution of the joint British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbari … [Read more...] about MARK ALMOND: Ayatollahs who executed British-Iranian citizen Alireza Akbar are hell-bent on a confrontation with the West

A primary school in London , named after Sir Francis Drake , has changed its name to something so dull I cannot remember it. The original BBC report of this decision (now amended) described Sir Francis as a slave trader and failed to mention much else about him. Apparently the school has only just discovered this bad thing about the Elizabethan sailor, though I think it has been well known for years. The action is stupid. While I readily admit that Drake did some very wicked things, I think it idiotic to pretend that he was not a great Englishman. Pictured: Sir Francis Drake who had existed as a normal man, drinking, swearing, fighting and who knows what else. But a misty, magical idea of him still lingered in that deep green, rain-sodden peninsula, where the unresting sea is ever-present and our dependence on it for our safety is unforgettable The school (pictured) will now become Twin Oaks Primary School - a name originally suggested by pupils … [Read more...] about PETER HITCHENS: Yes, Drake did wicked things. But it’s idiotic to pretend he wasn’t a great Englishman

Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer found himself on tricky ground this week when asked about shadow foreign secretary David Lammy earning more than £240,000 since 2019 from speaking engagements and a radio show, in addition to his annual £84,000 salary as an MP. ‘I think David does a lot of media work, and I think media work and writing books is all part of the political process,’ said Starmer. ‘But there’s a discussion to be had,’ Starmer added. ‘I was urging the whole House of Commons to agree new rules because I do think we should get rid of second jobs, with some exceptions.’ However Sir Keir, a former director of public prosecutions, is in no position to criticise MPs’ outside earnings. He did legal work for blue-chip firms to supplement his income before becoming party leader, earning £115,000 the five years up to April 2020. Yes, it’s high time he clamped down on the likes of Lammy, but he certainly shouldn’t interfere with the doctors and nurses, on both sides of the … [Read more...] about ANDREW PIERCE: Quandary for Keir Starmer over MPs’ earnings

This investigation by the respected think tank Civitas demonstrates beyond doubt that Britain’s top universities have finally capitulated to the bullies and ideologues of the ‘radical progressive’ Left. They are now engaged in the wholesale indoctrination of the younger generation with pernicious notions such as ‘white privilege’, ‘unconscious bias’ and ‘decolonising the curriculum’. These professors of propaganda have lost sight of what higher education is for. Instead of helping young people to think for themselves, they are teaching them to parrot the jargon of political correctness. University – once seen (in the words of that great 19th century theologian John Henry Newman) as ‘a seat of wisdom, a light of the world’ – has degenerated into a kind of adult kindergarten, where knowledge is sanitised and students are infantilised. Daniel Johnson said: 'Britain’s top universities have finally capitulated to the bullies and ideologues of the ‘radical progressive’ Left' … [Read more...] about Ministers must end blight of right-on ideology in our universities, writes DANIEL JOHNSON

Next year, the tax burden as a proportion of GDP will reach a peacetime record of 37.5 per cent – a shameful betrayal of everything that Tories are supposed to believe in. Jeremy Hunt and his Prime Minister Rishi Sunak would no doubt argue that, in the wake of a pandemic and with a European war driving up energy prices, desperate times call for desperate measures. But what is missing from the Sunak-Hunt high-tax model is any serious attempt to tackle our ballooning public spending, now running at some £1.2trillion a year, or £42,000 per household. It has risen as a share of national income from 40 per cent in 2014-15 to more than 47 per cent in 2022-23. Mr Sunak’s insouciance in the face of such alarming figures is the opposite of Margaret Thatcher’s approach But what is missing from the Sunak-Hunt high-tax model is any serious attempt to tackle our ballooning public spending, now running at some £1.2trillion a year, or £42,000 per household … [Read more...] about We CAN cut tax – if we tackle our ballooning public spending like Mrs Thatcher did, writes DANIEL JOHNSON

One thing really struck me about Prince Harry ’s media blitz last week. Not so much the careless inaccuracies in his various accounts of events, from the death of the Queen Mother to recollections of his first date with Meghan. Nor even his petulance (bordering on naked aggression) towards the few hand-picked journalists enlisted to help sell his narrative whenever any of them dared ask him anything even vaguely approximating a searching question. No, the real question in my mind is this: where was Meghan? I don’t mean in terms of the book – after all, her fingerprints are all over that. I mean physically, where is she? We haven’t seen hide nor hair of her for days. Which, really, is most uncharacteristic. The real question in my mind is this: where was Meghan? Pictured: Meghan and Harry on their royal tour in Johannesburg, South Africa, October 2, 2019 RELATED ARTICLES Previous 1 Next 'Apologise!' Prince Harry demands that Royal Family … [Read more...] about SARAH VINE: So where is Meghan? She’s usually grafted to Harry’s side