UK

How Social Justice Killed Anti-Racism
One of the early signs of trouble for the British anti-racism movement was a tweet sent by Lee Jasper in April 2013, in which he declared that black people are incapable of being racist, and offered to publicly debate anybody who disagreed. I offered to debate him, as did a

Vaccines and the Coronavirus Crank Crisis
When I last wrote about the rise of the coronavirus cranks for Quillette on January 16th, there were 37,000 people in British hospitals with COVID-19, and 1,411 COVID-related deaths on that day alone. The story that self-described sceptics had been telling themselves since the summer was a smoking

Standing Up to the Gender Ideologues: a Quillette Editorial
On June 23rd, Britain’s Royal Academy of Arts put out a carefully worded five-paragraph media statement regarding German-born textile artist Jess de Wahls. “We have apologised to Jess de Wahls for the way we have treated her and do so again publicly now,” read the RA communiqué. “We had

Breaking the Union
The purpose of the Scottish National Party, like that of other separatist political groups, is to break the nation state of which it is presently a part. The Catalan nationalists wish to subtract Catalonia from Spain; the Parti Québécois wish to cut Quebec out of Canada; the Vlaams Blok wish

Lesbians Aren’t Attracted to a Female ‘Gender Identity.’ We’re Attracted to Women
There is commonly held to be a difference between a sexual preference and a sexual orientation. Sexual preferences include preferences for blondes over brunettes, or macho men over pretty boys. At the more exotic end, they can include predilections for cars, chandeliers, and dalliances with farm animals. None of these

Debate and Disinformation: The Ugly Quarrel Over the UK Government’s Race Report
Howard Beckett is the deputy leader of the largest trade union in the UK, a frontrunner in the race to be its new leader, and the elected representative of the country’s unions on the executive of the UK Labour Party. On Friday, May 14th, the party suspended Beckett, and

Between Hartlepool and Hampstead—Paul Embery on the British Labour Party and the Working Class
In December of 2020, Paul Embery published his first book, Despised: Why the Modern Left Loathes the Working Class, in which he argues that the working class no longer has a voice in British politics. Embery is a firefighter, trade union activist, and UnHerd columnist, and he believes that the

Lockdown Scepticism Was Never a ‘Fringe’ Viewpoint
Whether or not lockdowns are justifiable on public-health grounds, they certainly represent the greatest infringement on civil liberties in modern history. In the UK, lockdowns have contributed to the largest economic contraction in more than 300 years, as well as countless bankruptcies, and a dramatic rise in public borrowing. This
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