Category: Politics

Breaking the Silence on Brexit

Sir Keir Starmer’s signal that the government will step up its criticism of Brexit feels like the beginning of a gentle but necessary reckoning; a moment when the country is finally invited to name the truth that’s been sitting heavily on us for years. So many promises were made in 2016, and so many of them were built on sand: claims about billions for the NHS, effortless trade deals, frictionless borders, and a world queueing up to prioritise Britain. Those lies shaped expectations, stirred emotions, and pushed people towards a path that hasn’t delivered the renewal or control they were told to expect. Now, with a quieter honesty, the government seems ready to acknowledge that Brexit hasn’t offered the stability or prosperity once promised.

By placing renewed emphasis on repairing relations with Brussels, Labour isn’t trying to reopen old divisions; it’s acting out of pragmatic realism. Closer cooperation with our nearest neighbours offers smoother trade, stronger supply chains, and a steadier economic climate. It also draws a clear contrast with Reform UK’s politics of resentment and retreat.

Hopefully, Labour can offer something steadier: the belief that partnership, shared standards, and respectful dialogue are acts of responsibility, not surrender. Many people who voted Leave weren’t gullible or unthinking; they were hopeful. They wanted a fairer deal, more security, and a sense that life might open up rather than narrow down. When those hopes haven’t been met, people are willing to listen again, as long as they’re met with honesty.

There’s something restorative in this shift, because it gently invites us to stop pretending. We can admit that we’re tired, that isolation hasn’t served us well, and that healing begins with truth. If the government speaks plainly, avoids the lure of easy slogans, and offers a hopeful, cooperative path forward, it may help the country breathe again.

Lifting the two-child benefit cap

Lifting the two-child benefit cap is often painted as indulgent and unfair, yet it carries clear social and economic advantages that ripple far beyond individual families. It recognises that children aren’t responsible for the circumstances they’re born into, and that society’s strength is measured by how we treat its most vulnerable.

Removing the cap helps prevent families from slipping into deep poverty; it gives parents room to breathe, make wiser choices, and build a more stable home. When families aren’t constantly fighting scarcity, children thrive: better nutrition, better school attendance, and a calmer emotional climate. Those outcomes echo into adulthood, breaking patterns of hardship rather than entrenching them.

Economically, it’s a long-term investment. Child poverty costs the UK billions every year in lost potential, higher health needs, and greater strain on public services. Supporting families early reduces those pressures. And it restores a principle that many feel had been eroded: benefits should meet actual need, not punish family size.

The Danger of Lazy Thinking

Trust in politicians may be at an all-time low; yet there’s a quieter, and in many ways deeper, threat to democracy in the way feelings and opinions are so often allowed to overshadow facts and expert insight. When that happens, public conversation becomes blurred, as if clarity itself has slipped out of reach. Confident claims start to carry the same weight as careful evidence, and the people who shout the loudest begin to drown out those who’ve spent years studying the issues that shape our common life.

It’s easy to see why this happens. Facts can feel slow, demanding, or inconvenient, while opinions offer something quicker and simpler, a shortcut that seems to spare us the effort of wrestling with complexity. Yet democracy rests on the willingness of ordinary people to stop, listen, and think with generosity and humility. Experts aren’t flawless, but their work – tested, challenged, and refined – gives us the best chance of understanding the world as it really is, rather than as we wish it to be.

If we want a healthier public square, we need to nurture a spirit of curiosity. That means reading beyond the surface, noticing where information comes from, and speaking with people who see things differently without slipping into suspicion or scorn. It asks us to value substance over spectacle, patience over instant certainty, and truth over the comfort of hearing only what we want to hear. Democracy grows stronger when we choose that slower, braver path: the one that leads us back to honesty, compassion, and shared responsibility.

Why is Socialism feared?

The negative portrayal of socialism has deep roots, and it isn’t really about the ideas themselves so much as the stories that have been told about them.

For more than a century, powerful interests have framed socialism as something to be feared, often because it challenges the concentration of wealth and asks hard questions about fairness, community, and economic justice. During the Cold War those fears hardened; western governments, media, and cultural institutions painted anything associated with collective provision as a slippery slope towards authoritarianism. That legacy still lingers, long after the geopolitical context has changed.

There’s also a tendency in public debate to flatten socialism into its worst historical examples. Instead of seeing it as a broad tradition with democratic, ethical, and community-centred strands, people often hear the word and think immediately of failed states or heavy-handed regimes. It’s easier to caricature than to explore nuance, and outrage always travels further than careful explanation.

At the same time modern politics rewards simple binaries. Calls for stronger public services, fair wages, or shared responsibility get bundled together as “socialism”, then dismissed as unrealistic or dangerous, even though many of these ideas already sit quietly at the heart of everyday life: the NHS, public libraries, state education, and the principle that no one should be left behind.

In truth socialism is portrayed pejoratively because it threatens comfortable assumptions. It asks us to look again at how we live together, who benefits, and who’s forgotten, inviting a conversation about compassion, community, and the common good.

Don’t Share Rage Bait!

Rage bait has become one of the defining features of our online lives; it slips into news feeds, social networks, and comment threads with a quiet ease, stirring us before we’ve even realised what’s happening. It’s crafted to provoke a sharp emotional reaction, often anger or disgust, because those feelings are powerful drivers of clicks and shares.

The content doesn’t need to be accurate, fair, or thoughtful; it only needs to be provocative enough to pull us in. Once we’re hooked, the algorithms reward the engagement, and the cycle repeats: outrage breeds interaction, interaction amplifies visibility, visibility shapes perception.

It’s tempting to think we’re immune, yet rage bait works precisely because it appeals to our sense of justice, our frustrations with the world, and our desire to defend what matters. It can leave us feeling riled and drained, as though we’ve spent energy on something hollow. Over time, it dulls our compassion, erodes trust, and narrows our ability to listen. It also strips away nuance, replacing it with a simplified ‘us versus them’ worldview that doesn’t honour the messy, complicated truth of real human experience.

Choosing not to take the bait is an act of quiet resistance. It asks us to pause, breathe, and treat our attention as something precious. It invites us to look for stories that build rather than break, and conversations that nourish rather than consume. In that pause, there’s space for curiosity, gentleness, and the recognition that most people are far more than the headlines designed to make us hate them.

Roman Welfare Benefits

It’s easy to imagine the ancient world as hard, unforgiving, and uninterested in the wellbeing of ordinary people, yet the Romans quietly remind us that societies have always wrestled with how to care for those who’re vulnerable. They didn’t have anything like a modern welfare state, but they did understand that a city, and an empire, couldn’t hold together unless people had enough to live on. That sense of shared responsibility feels surprisingly familiar.

In Rome, the annona – the state grain supply – became a lifeline. Huge quantities of grain were shipped in from across the empire and distributed free or at subsidised prices to the city’s poorer citizens. Taxes, rents, and provincial revenues made it possible. It wasn’t simply largesse; it was a recognition that a hungry population breeds unrest, while a fed population can breathe, hope, and build.

Later, under Trajan, the alimenta scheme offered support for orphaned and poor children in Italy. Money from taxes and state-managed loans funded regular payments to help them grow, learn, and thrive. It wasn’t universal, and it certainly wasn’t perfect, but there was a quiet moral thread running through it: children matter, and society can’t flourish if they’re left behind.

Even the emperors’ occasional cash gifts, debt relief, or employment through public works carried the same message. However self-interested those acts were, they revealed an understanding that prosperity isn’t just an individual pursuit; it’s something held in common, something tended and shared.

When you look at it this way, the Romans weren’t just building roads and aqueducts. They were experimenting with the idea that a community should look after its people – an idea that still shapes the choices we make today.

Broken Brexit Britain

Brexit hasn’t just nudged the UK off course, it’s pulled us steadily into a poorer, smaller, and more divided version of ourselves. The promises that once shimmered with confidence have evaporated, leaving us with slower growth, weaker trade, and a constant sense that the country is working harder for less. Businesses have been saddled with paperwork that no one asked for, investment has drifted to Europe, and young people have lost freedoms that older generations took for granted. Prices are higher, opportunities are thinner, and the dream of a nimble, global Britain has shrunk into something far more fragile.

Politically, we were told we’d take back control, yet control is exactly what we’ve lost: influence in Europe, trust in government, and even harmony within our own Union. Scotland feels further away than ever, Northern Ireland remains caught in a web of compromises, and the country as a whole seems stuck in a permanent argument about who we are and where we’re going.

Brexit has left a mark on our national spirit too. It sharpened old divides and opened wounds that still haven’t healed. Most people now see leaving the EU as a mistake, and that quiet shift in mood says everything. This isn’t the confident leap into the world we were promised; it’s a slow unravelling, a sense of potential slipping through our fingers. Britain deserved better than this, and deep down, we know it.

Free Speech Under Threat

It’s hard to ignore the chill that runs through moments like this. A respected historian, Rutger Bregman, delivered a thoughtful lecture for BBC Radio 4, only to discover that a key line had been removed from the broadcast. The line wasn’t inflammatory, nor was it reckless; it was simply his assessment that Donald Trump was “the most openly corrupt president in American history.” When he learnt it had vanished, he said the decision came “from the highest levels within the BBC” and that he was “genuinely dismayed” by the quiet edit.

And honestly, it’s difficult not to share his dismay. Free speech isn’t just threatened by governments or dramatic acts of censorship; sometimes it’s chipped away by small, silent decisions that trim the edges of honest conversation. Public broadcasters should be places where we can hear carefully argued perspectives, especially when they touch on uncomfortable truths. If historians can’t speak plainly about the subjects they study, even when those subjects are controversial, then our collective understanding grows narrower, not richer.

There’s something troubling about the BBC shielding listeners from a historically grounded criticism simply because it mentions a polarising figure. It risks creating a culture in which anything remotely sensitive gets softened, diluted, or cut altogether. And once that happens, we lose more than a sentence about Trump; we lose confidence that open debate is still welcome.

Moments like this remind us how precious free speech is, and how easily it can be lost.

Whose Flag Is It?

The Raise the Colours campaign in the UK (Summer 2025) was presented as a simple celebration of English identity, yet the evidence surrounding its organisation, its supporters, and the reactions of affected communities pointed to something more troubling.

Far-right groups, including Britain First, donated flags and promoted the movement, creating an atmosphere in which a patriotic gesture was easily co-opted into a display of dominance. Councils and community groups warned that the campaign risked intimidating already marginalised communities, especially where its supporters had been linked to anti-migrant activism and street intimidation.

Reports from Birmingham and other towns described residents feeling unsettled as groups of men arrived to plant flags, sometimes accompanied by harassment or racist language. Anti-racist organisations called the movement a coordinated attempt to unsettle asylum seekers, migrants, and Muslims, noting that it often appeared alongside anti-migrant protests. This sense of threat wasn’t imagined: attacks on mosques involved English and British flags, folded into a wider narrative of Christian-nationalist hostility rather than civic pride.

Surveys showed the depth of mistrust. Around half of ethnic minority adults in the UK said the St George’s flag had become a racist symbol, with even higher numbers among British Muslims. When a symbol was experienced this way by the very people it claimed to represent, its widespread and unsolicited display felt less like celebration, and more like a warning.

Taken together, these reports, perceptions, and patterns made it clear that Raise the Colours wasn’t simply about patriotism; for many, it carried the weight of exclusion, pressure, and fear.

A Truly British Achievement

The early Covid-19 vaccination roll-out was a great UK achievement, not a Brexit one. This is something to celebrate amongst all the failures and mistakes. If we believe the lies (mainly by disgraced former Prime Minister Boris Johnson) we diminish a truly great British achievement.

Brexit didn’t meaningfully enable the UK to roll out Covid-19 vaccines earlier. The UK was still in the post-Brexit transition period in late 2020, which meant it remained under EU rules. Crucially, EU law allowed any member state or transitioning state to issue its own emergency authorisation for medicines. The UK used that existing mechanism through the MHRA. It didn’t need to leave the EU to do so, and countries inside the EU could’ve done the same if they’d chosen to.

Where the UK did move faster was in planning, procurement, and regulatory readiness. The MHRA worked at extraordinary speed, the NHS had a well-organised distribution plan, and the government pre-ordered large quantities of vaccine early. Those advantages came from national decisions and infrastructure, not from Brexit itself.