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  Julian Jessop

• 3 Oct 2017
• In Politics
•    Brexit, Economist

Why this economist is also a Brexiteer

My name is Julian and I voted ‘Leave’. There, I’ve said it. For a professional economist in today’s Britain, this is close to heresy. Those of us who think that the UK is likely to be better off outside the EU have been compared (and not in a good way) to climate change deniers. It’s even been suggested that it is impossible to be both a proper economist and a Brexiteer.

Admittedly, the main reasons why I voted to leave the EU might be described as ‘political’ rather than ‘economic’. I saw the 2016 referendum as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to escape the slide towards a European super-state. The President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, has at least been refreshingly honest about his desire to create an ever-closer union. Indeed, he would like a Banking Union, a Capital Markets Union, a Defence Union, an Energy Union, a Security Union… extending the reach of the EU into every aspect of our lives. No thank you. I am happy to think of myself as European, but Europe and the EU are not the same thing.

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  Michael Burleigh

• 3 Oct 2017
• In Politics
•    North Korea, Kim Jon Un, Donald Trump

Rocket Man and the Orange Comet

‘Rocket Man’ Kim Jong-un has responded to the US president by calling him ‘a mentally deranged dotard’, though the Korean word means ‘lunatic’. This is par for the course from a regime that dubbed Obama ‘a black monkey’.

This exchange follows Trump’s threats to bring ‘fire and fury’ to Pyongyang, which Kim has compared with the ‘a dog barking at a marching army’. In his UN General Assembly address, Trump warned he would ‘destroy North Korea’ prompting the latest retaliatory threats to detonate a fusion hydrogen bomb over the Pacific.

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  Roger Scruton

• 3 Oct 2017
• In Politics
•    Philosophy, Conservative

How to be a Conservative in 2017

When I first became conscious of my own political leanings, conservatism defined itself in terms of the worldwide confrontation between freedom and totalitarianism. Of course there were nuances, disputes and alliances. Traditional conservatives and free-market libertarians were often at loggerheads, and there was and remains a deep dispute on the conservative side as to whether the sphere of culture is or is not a concern of government. Still, it was undeniable to anyone who had experience of both sides that this worldwide conflict existed, and that conservatism ended with the defence of free societies against the totalitarian project, even if it did not begin there. Seeing things that way had the advantage of presenting conservatism as an international cause, something grander and more intimately connected with the future of mankind than the local attachments from which ordinary conservative sentiments tend to grow.

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  Lucullus

• 3 Oct 2017
• In Food & Drink
•    Boisdale, Scotland, Restaurant

History and Serious Food

There's some corner of a Belgravia Street that is forever Scotland. Boisdale restaurant has deep roots in myth and history. In Gaelic mythology, Tir nan Og was a realm of Gods and heroes set in glorious landscape, out beyond the ultimate West. On South Uist, Loch Boisdale and its surrounding region, with hills looming out of the mist, is a real-life Tir nan Og. It is easy to imagine hairy, tweedy Gods, smoking their pipes in the heather, discussing the day's deer-stalking.