October 2016

There is a certain irony about so called Liberal Catholics’ impatience with the liberal Pope Francis (Magazine 21 Oct). They complain that the Pope’s reform programme is “rapidly becoming overdue.” In the 19th century, John Henry Newman predicted that the emerging choice for Christians in Europe would be between “liberalism and its antidote Catholicism.”  He stressed repeatedly that liberalism is … [Read on]

Mrs May’s decision to allow the building of a third runway at Heathrow may prove fatal to her administration. Her government is weak by constantly attempting to be all things to all men, and this decision shows how much she in thrall to powerful business lobbies. We do not want, as Boris Johnson put it so aptly today, ‘London to be ‘a city of planes’ just as New York is a city of … [Read on]

It takes a certain gift to combine cliché with error, but Mrs May – to judge by her recent big speech to the Conservative Party Conference – appears to have it in full. In so far as the speech did not consist of the most hackneyed and empty phrases, it could have been delivered by any Labour leader before Mr … [Read on]

[pullquote]The relatively unknown investment fund where Theresa May’s husband Philip works as a senior executive is one of the world’s largest and most powerful financial institutions, controlling $1.4 trillion in assets.Its portfolio also includes $20 billion of shares in Amazon and Starbucks, both of which were cited by the Prime Minister-designate in her pledge to crack down on tax avoidance … [Read on]

On Sunday October 2nd, Hungarian voters were asked to decide in a national referendum whether or not Viktor Orban and his Fidesz-dominated government should refuse EU-mandated quotas of resettled Syrian strangers. Whether they are mostly refugees or mostly economic migrants is itself politically contested. Overwhelmingly, those who voted said no. However, in a confusing twist, too few Hungarians voted for … [Read on]