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Nick Cohen on how Zack Polanski has destroyed the old Green Party

There are not many left-wingers whose views I find interesting enough to quote. Nick Cohen is one of the exceptions. Here is an extract from his take on the comprehensive defeat of the Green party yesterday in Sir Keir Starmer's old seat, which not long ago Zack Polanski could reasonably have been expected to win. "Zack Polanski has destroyed the old Green Party Will the new version be darker? Labour has just comprehensively defeated the Greens in the Holborn and St Pancras by-election. The victory was a tribute to Andy Burnham and to the optimism he’s brought to the Labour Party, and to an excellent local candidate, who came to the UK as a refugee from Somalia, fought off the most disgusting racist abuse during the campaign, and is now a Member of Parliament. However, that’s not the whole story, as you probably already know. The election was also a catastrophic defeat for Zack Polanski, the leader of the Green Party, who you might have expected a few months ago to have taken ...
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Quote of the day 9th October 2026

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Voters back Kemi on Inheritance tax

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 YouGov finds strong support for Kemi Badenoch's proposals on Inheritance tax:
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Quote of the day 8th October 2026

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Midweek Music spot: Purcell's music for the funeral of Queen Mary

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Remembering the October 7th victims three years on

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Epic fail from Reform UK and Labour as they try to smear the Conservatives

For a good indication of how utterly desperate Richard "Pants on Fire" Tice and the liars of Reform UK are, check out the link in the Community Note note on the post linked to  HERE . He's not only a mendacious rascal, he doesn't even have the originality of mind to make up his own original smears. He's repeating a "Labour Press" smear which had already been debunked. 
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Quote of the day 7th October 2026

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JRM on his Tucker Carlson Interview

 "In most wars in history, you can make the case that it may or may not have been necessary. The Second World War is the absolutely classic case of good against evil." "Tucker Carlson, like many people who get on social media, find that to get clicks, they need to become more and more controversial, and they end up saying things that no sensible person could possibly believe." Rt Hon Jacob Rees-Mogg. I will confess to doing a complete fanboy on JRM this evening. Seeing him come up the stairs at the ICC in Birmingham, I went over, offered my hand, and said that I thought his demolition of Tucker Carlson had been brilliant. With his usual exquisite courtesy he shook the proffered hand and told me I was too kind.
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Quote of the day 6th October 2026

"I have children who are half black, half white. They’re mixed race. I don’t want to hear rhetoric that makes them feel that they’re not a part of this country.” (Rt Hon Kemi Badenoch , Conservative leader)
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Monday music spot: La Rejouissance from Handel's Music for the Royal Fireworks

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Quote of the day 5th October 2026

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Birds of a feather ...

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 As the Green party of England and Wales adopted today the highly problematic policy that "Zionism is racism" here is a handy reference guide to all the British political parties who have had that policy:
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Conference diary CPC26

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 I think the best way to begin this diary of the 2026 Conservative conference in Birmingham is with this YouTube clip of Kemi's opening speech.
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Quote of the day 4th October 2026

“I mean, you can't hate London and then hope to be the mayor of London.” James Cleverly (referring to the Reform UK candidate for that position, Laila Cunningham
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Sunday music spot: "Lord I trust thee" by G.F. Handel

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Saturday music spot: Handel's "Dixit Dominus" (Thus saith the Lord)

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Quote of the day 2nd October 2026

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This quote from another great Conservative woman seems particularly appropriate in a week when Reform UK have stepped up their highly personal and at times extremely dishonest attacks on the present Conservative leader, Kemi Badenoch. Maggie was right. These guys have no political arguments, and that's why they are making it personal.  
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The man who was vindicated many years after the event

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Thomas Cochrane was a British naval officer who had a brilliant career fighting the French during the Napoleonic wars, then became an admiral in the navies of various Latin American independence movements and had an equally successful record fighting for them. His exploits helped to inspire a number of great works of naval fiction, possibly including some of the events of C.S. Forester's "Hornblower" books and certainly some of the events in Patrick O'Brien's "Master and Commander" series.  As I write this post, a reproduction of Montagu Dawson's painting " The smoke of battle - the gallant Speedy " hangs on the wall of the room, depicting the capture in 1801 by HMS Speedy under Cochrane's command of the Spanish frigate El Gamo . The battle shown in the painting was an extraordinary victory by Lord Cochrane. The disparity between the two vessels was staggering: • HMS Speedy : A small 14-gun brig with a severely depleted crew of just 54...
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Quote of the day 1st October 2026

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"The last person to trust with power is someone who is dying to have it. The best person to wield power is someone who is reluctant to do so, but who will do it for a while as a civic duty. That is why term limits should make it impossible to have a whole career in politics." — Thomas Sowell
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Midweek music spot; "Let the bright seraphim" (Handel)

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Quote of the day 30th September 2026

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 "In short, honesty is more than a moral principle. It is also a major economic factor." — Thomas Sowell ( Basic Economics )
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Petition to Protect Pensions

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I have for years supported fair and realistic reform of the UK state pension triple lock to make it sustainable. I have consistently opposed scrapping it, which is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Andy Burnham wants to scrap the triple lock, replacing it with a system with no effective earnings link. Britain tried a system before with no earnings link. The results were disastrous. It meant that the state pension fell behind, contributing massively to pensioner poverty. If Burnham wins the next election and implements the plans he announced today, the same will happen again. The Conservatives are running a petition against Burnham's plans to scrap the triple lock. I had no hesitation in signing it and urge others to do the same. You can  sign the petition at: Sign the Petition - Protect Pensioners
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Comeback of the year

Comment on X about Andy Burnham's plans to scrap the Triple Lock in its' present form: "The WASPI women are going to be apoplectic when they hear about this in 20 years time." (Joseph Gellman) Joseph Gellman on X: "The WASPI women are going to be apoplectic when they hear about this in 20 years time" / X
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Why Andy Burnham's plan to axe the "Triple Lock" is wrong

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I have been arguing for five years that the state pension "triple lock" should be reformed to make it sustainable in the long term, but should not be abolished. Today at the Labour party conference Prime Minister Andy Burnham proved that he doesn't "get it" by proposing to scrap the Triple lock in 2030 and drop entirely the link to average annual earnings, effectively replacing the triple lock with a double lock tied to inflation or 2.5%, whichever is higher. THIS IS AN ENTIRELY WRONG SOLUTION TO A GENUINE PROBLEM. The triple lock was introduced by David Cameron in 2010 for the very good reason that without an earnings link the basic state pension had dropped badly behind living standards for the country as a whole, hitting particularly those pensioners who depend entirely on the state pension, who then as now included some of the most vulnerable people in the country . The original plan was to run the triple lock for a decade so those pensioners could catch up...
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Tuesday music spot Vivaldi's Violin Concerto in A Minor RV356

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I love many of Vivaldi's concertos both for violin and mandolin/guitar, but this one is probably my favourite. (Although it is close between this and the concerto for four violins which Bach adapted for harpsichords).
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Quote of the day 29th September

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Monday music spot: Vivaldi Violin Concerto in E Minor RV278

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Andrew Neil on the case against rejoining the EU.

Before putting in the link to Andrew Neil's article I'm going to write two paragraph which some people will find contradictory. In 2016 I voted Remain. All three of the reasons I voted Remain have been totally vindicated by events. And if I were somehow magically transported back to 2016 knowing everything I know today, I would absolutely still vote Remain. But we are not in 2016, we are in 2026. Trying to rejoin the EU how, if we were allowed in at all, would not restore us to the position we had in 2016 - in fact it would make some aspects of that damage worse. So if anyone asked me, as a 2016 Remain voter, if that means Britain should apply to rejoin the EU now, I would not just say "No," I would say, " Please for the love of God, absolutely not! " The decision to go into or out of a complex union like the EU - or for that matter, as the separatists in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland wish to do with the UK - is absolutely not like a general election...
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Quote of the day 28th September 2026

 Solzhenitsyn on the USSR/Russia: “We know that they are lying, they know that they are lying, they even know that we know they are lying, we also know that they know we know they are lying . . . [T]he lie has become not just moral category, but the pillar industry of this country.”
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