MY THREE PICKS OF THE WEEK
Why England matters more than ever (theme of my next essay)
I’ve just returned from a week in England, with stops in Nottingham, Oxford and London. During my stay there I met up with former colleagues and lifelong friends, and I got a taste of life in the age of Starmer & Co.. I had my first Negroni at a lunch with an eminent historian of early-modern warfare, and I liked both the drink and our debate. The English capital was almost unbearably hot, too hot at any rate to give much thought to the fact that England may have reached a critical juncture in its history. Sink or swim.
But now that I’m back in my own neck of the woods, I’m even more convinced that if we want to understand where we may well be headed in Europe (and even in Switzerland, where things still look deceptively “healthy”), then we need to take a much greater interest in, and a much closer look at, England. For good or bad, England has long been the avant-garde: from the Magna Carta and Shakespeare to the steam engine and the railways. And now, I think, England is ahead of the game when it comes to getting things wrong. But I hope it will be able to get its act together soon, once again becoming the indispensable nation she has been for so long. To the benefit of us all.
But more on this in my next essay. For now, just three brief pieces of information for you to digest without me adding any further comments. I didn’t select these pieces because I think their content to be particularly wise (except for the comments by Sumption, who is so quick on his feet that he can define democracy in three sentences), or because I agree with everything that is being said, but because they are rather different to what we are used to in good old Europe. Without trying hard to be raw and maverick, that’s what they are: raw and maverick and with the edges still noticeable, but not in the Maga sense of raw and maverick. They won’t please everybody. But then who wants to read texts, or know people, who please everybody?! I, for one, have more trust in sharp edges than I have in crowd pleasers.
But I hope you will enjoy them all the same.
And do ENJOY your time, wherever you are!!
Lord Sumption on Democracy
David Betz on why (he thinks) civil war is coming to the UK
Dominic Cummings on the state of British politics
And, for good measure, Lord Frost’s take on Great Britain: