This weekend's best newspaper articles
A number of powerful newspaper articles this weekend.
Former MP Matthew Parris has been described as having "reached for the flamethrower" in a vituperative attack on the government in an article in the Times yesterday to which I will respond in a specific post next week.
A much more reasonable critique of those on left and right who claim to be defending British traditions but are actually undermining them comes from Nick Cohen, whose latest article in the Observer also suggests that some of the more hardline Brexit supporters are also preparing what amounts to a "stab in the back" myth.
I made a similar argument myself last September, here. We need to recognise that the process of untangling more than 40 years' membership of the EU was always going to be complicated, messy, and involve difficult compromises, that the PM has a responsibility to implement the majority decision from the referendum in a way which takes account of the legitimate concerns of the 48% as well as the 52%.
Both those who see any compromise with the EU as betrayal, and those who see any compromise with the majority of the electorate as betrayal - and there are too many hardliners on both sides who are arguing as if they see it that way - are making it harder to get a Brexit which works for as many people as possible.
Sarah Baxter argues in a Sunday Times article, Thatcher's not for spurning" that the refusal of many feminists to recognise the achievements of Margaret Thatcher is "not just wrong, it is self-defeating."
Also on the subject of feminism and in the Sunday Times but on a lighter note, there was an amusing article by Camilla Long which you can read here.
But the best piece of the weekend was by Stephen Pollard, who is editor of the Jewish Chronicle, in the Mail on Sunday, criticising the "snowflake" mentality of taking offence at the least opportunity.
He wrote that
"There is a far darker side to it than mere idiocy. If we close our minds to ideas that upset us, the long-term consequence is that our minds will atrophy. We will no longer be able to think for ourselves. We are seeing the stunting of debate, the closing of minds."
Quite.
Former MP Matthew Parris has been described as having "reached for the flamethrower" in a vituperative attack on the government in an article in the Times yesterday to which I will respond in a specific post next week.
A much more reasonable critique of those on left and right who claim to be defending British traditions but are actually undermining them comes from Nick Cohen, whose latest article in the Observer also suggests that some of the more hardline Brexit supporters are also preparing what amounts to a "stab in the back" myth.
I made a similar argument myself last September, here. We need to recognise that the process of untangling more than 40 years' membership of the EU was always going to be complicated, messy, and involve difficult compromises, that the PM has a responsibility to implement the majority decision from the referendum in a way which takes account of the legitimate concerns of the 48% as well as the 52%.
Both those who see any compromise with the EU as betrayal, and those who see any compromise with the majority of the electorate as betrayal - and there are too many hardliners on both sides who are arguing as if they see it that way - are making it harder to get a Brexit which works for as many people as possible.
Sarah Baxter argues in a Sunday Times article, Thatcher's not for spurning" that the refusal of many feminists to recognise the achievements of Margaret Thatcher is "not just wrong, it is self-defeating."
Also on the subject of feminism and in the Sunday Times but on a lighter note, there was an amusing article by Camilla Long which you can read here.
But the best piece of the weekend was by Stephen Pollard, who is editor of the Jewish Chronicle, in the Mail on Sunday, criticising the "snowflake" mentality of taking offence at the least opportunity.
He wrote that
"There is a far darker side to it than mere idiocy. If we close our minds to ideas that upset us, the long-term consequence is that our minds will atrophy. We will no longer be able to think for ourselves. We are seeing the stunting of debate, the closing of minds."
Quite.
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