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The other day the people of the small Oxfordshire village of Piddington voted to leave Great Britain. Of course, they have no intention of doing any such thing: this was an attempt to demonstrate locals’ anger at the proposal to house over a thousand illegal immigrants at a nearby disused military base.
But what if a few more towns and villages were to follow suit? After all it is difficult to see why decent people would want to be part of a debt-ridden, crime-ridden, economically-stagnant, fascist dystopia whose leaders would much rather the said decent people were dead. What if such a movement snowballed and ended up with swathes of the country voting for what might be called Brexit2? They might join forces. They might have a convention. Sonorous phrases like “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another…” might get an outing in England’s green and pleasant land. They might even make a stab at self-government.
Of course that would cut no ice with Britain’s rulers who believe in the divine right of the communist election-rigger. Any attempt by the secessionists to actually leave would be ruthlessly crushed. The only real question would be if the British (anti-British?) state would have the wherewithal to do it. If they did not, who knows? maybe we would all be applying for a passport to Piddington.
Why do the unions fund Labour? Because it works for them. The Employment Rights Act is very close to a straight transfer of TUC conference policy into the statute book, and nobody involved is embarrassed about it, nor should they be, since that is what affiliation has meant since 1900.
Sharon Graham has been admirably plain about this. Standing for the general secretaryship she told Keir Starmer there would be no more blank cheques. She has put Unite’s funding under review when Labour councils have crossed her. She treats the money as leverage because it is leverage, openly, on the record, in the Sunday papers. Then she stands up and objects to donations from men who want nothing.
Because that’s the difference, and it’s the bit her argument cannot survive. Harborne and Delo aren’t buying policy. There’s nothing to buy. We were low tax, pro-enterprise, anti-quango and hostile to the regulatory state before either of them wrote us a cheque, and we’d be all of those things tomorrow if both of them stopped. You cannot purchase a conviction from someone who already has one. All you can do is pay for the envelopes.
What they’re buying, as far as I can see, is a fair fight. The most conventional British appetite there is, the one that makes a crowd turn on a man who kicks somebody off the ball, and the one thing the modern establishment has decided it cannot afford to concede.
Nobody woke up. That’s the insult, and it isn’t aimed at two crypto billionaires who can look after themselves. It’s aimed at you, and it always was.
– Gawain Towler
97 of them were murdered by Muslim terrorists.
Here is a list of terrorist incidents in Great Britain this century, stating the ideology behind the attack, its date, the place it took place, the name usually given to the attack, and the number of victims killed.
Irish Republican – 09 September 2000 – MI6 HQ, London – MI6 rocket launcher attack – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 04 March 2001 – BBC TV Centre – BBC TV Centre car bomb – 0 killed.
Irish Republican – 03 August 2001 – Ealing – Ealing car bomb – 0 killed.
Islamist – 07 July 2005 – London Transport system – 7/7 bombings – 52 killed.
Islamist – 21 July 2005 – London – 7/7 copycat bombs – 0 killed.
Other – 18 January 2007 – Various – Start of Miles Cooper letter bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 30 June 2007 – Glasgow Airport – Glasgow airport attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 May 2010 – East Ham – Stabbing of Stephen Timms MP – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 29 April 2013 – Various – Start of Pavlo Lapshyn terrorism campaign – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2013 – Woolwich – Murder of Lee Rigby – 1 killed.
Irish Republican – 10 February 2014 – Various army recruitment offices – Start of New Irish Republican Army parcel bomb campaign – 0 killed.
Islamist – 18 February 2016 – Rochdale – Murder of Iman Jalal Uddin – 1 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 June 2016 – Birstall, West Yorkshire – Murder of Jo Cox MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 22 March 2017 – Westminster Bridge, London – 2017 Westminster attack & murder of PC Keith Palmer – 5 killed.
Islamist – 22 May 2017 – Manchester Arena – Manchester Arena bombing – 22 killed.
Islamist – 03 June 2017 – London Bridge – 2017 London Bridge attack and Borough Market stabbings – 8 killed.
Extreme Right – 19 June 2017 – Finsbury Park, London – Finsbury Park attack – 1 killed.
Islamist – 15 June 2017 – Parsons Green, London – Parsons Green tube bombing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 14 August 2018 – Palace of Westminster – 2018 Westminster car attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 16 March 2019 – Various – Vincent Fuller racist attacks – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 November 2019 – London Bridge – 2019 London Bridge stabbings – 2 killed.
Islamist – 09 January 2020 – Whitemoor Prison, Cambridgeshire – Whitemoor prison stabbings – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 February 2020 – Streatham, Lambeth, London – 2020 Streatham stabbing – 0 killed.
Islamist – 20 June 2020 – Forbury Gardens, Reading – 2020 Reading stabbings – 3 killed.
Islamist – 15 October 2021 – Liegh-on-Sea, Essex – Murder of David Amess MP – 1 killed.
Islamist – 14 November 2021 – Liverpool Women’s Hospital, Liverpool – Liverpool Women’s Hospital bombing – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 30 October 2022 – Dover – Dover firebomb attack – 0 killed.
Extreme Right – 02 April 2024 – Hindlip, Worcestershire – Attack on asylum seeker at Hindlip – 0 killed.
Islamist – 02 October 2025 – Heaton Park Synagogue, Manchester – Manchester Synagogue attack – 2 killed.
Islamist – 31 December 2018 – Victoria Station, Manchester – Manchester Victoria station attack – 0 killed.
Islamist – 29 April 2026 – Golders Green Synagogue, London – Golders Green Synagogue attack – 0 killed.
The list was compiled from these Wikipedia pages:
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2000s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2010s
List of terrorist incidents in Great Britain in the 2020s
I have excluded from the count the three young girls murdered in Southport by Axel Rudakubana because although he was charged under the Terrorism Act 2000 for possession of ricin and a military study of an Al-Qaeda training manual, I am not convinced his motive was political. I have also excluded the killing of Anne Widdecombe from the count because the suspect is awaiting trial and the presumption of innocence applies. If these two cases were included, the proportion of terrorist murders this century that were carried out by Muslims would be 97/104; 93% rather than 97%.
I do not blame innocent Muslims for the crimes of their co-religionists. I do not claim that all or most Muslims are terrorists. I honour those many Muslims who have fought against Islamic terrorism, at horrendous risk to themselves and their families. I do not deny that there are other sorts of terrorists out there, including those who seek to murder Muslims. But 97 out of 100 is a very high proportion.
Do we have any historical data on what happens when a German Chancellor abolishes the concept of free speech? I’m assuming it goes really well.
– Wings over Scotland
The recent news about a Ukrainian counteroffensive liberating several hundred square kilometres of territory around Lyman in eastern Ukraine has come as a pleasant surprise in the midst of the ongoing Russian missile barrages against Ukrainian cities, and the appalling spectacle of American negotiators discussing good memories with the Russian president in Moscow. The Ukrainian gains have been documented by a variety of sources, including drone videos, soldier accounts and media organisations that have held off reporting the operation. The Institute for the Study of War has stated in its latest update that “ISW’s mapping methodology is likely underestimating the extent of Ukrainian gains in the ongoing counterattacks in the Lyman direction.”
[…]
Thus, over the space of two months, Ukraine has executed two quiet yet successful counteroffensive operations in different parts of the country. Not only does this challenge the popular (and lazy) narrative of a stalemate along the frontline, but it also means that the Ukrainians have been investing in the hard intellectual work of finding new methods of conducting successful offensive action at the tactical and operational levels.
– Mick Ryan
Regarding the “appalling spectacle of American negotiators” remark… having businessmen do diplomacy is a bit like having a heart surgeon fix your roof. Even if he is a great surgeon, he is going to fuck up your roof.
Oddly enough, Labour governments understand incentives perfectly well when trying to make us stop smoking, or encouraging us to buy electric cars and install heat pumps. But suggest that incentives might also influence migration, however, and the concept suddenly becomes bafflingly controversial.
– Neil Davenport
Police professional standards departments, detecting the mood music, react accordingly. The Police Federation has pointed out how, from 2022-2025, 100 police officers and staff died of suicide — partly attributable to heavy-handed internal investigations. Then there’s the roll-call of officers thrown under the bus for political expediency — like Pc Lorne Castle, who had the temerity to call a knife-wielding male suspect “a bitch”, Sergeant Rhodri Davies, accused of using disproportionate force against a 6’7” prisoner in custody, or Pc Matthew Pike, charged with causing death by dangerous driving (it was the suspect he was chasing who was driving dangerously, as a jury later found).
Then, if criminal “remedies” fail, the Independent Office for Police Conduct gets a second bite of the cherry by pursuing officers for professional misconduct. Compare such cases with that of the former West Midlands Police chief, Craig Guildford — found to have not only constructed a bogus intelligence case against Israeli football fans, but misled Parliament too. Operational officers go under the prosecutorial bus. Senior cops have “teachable moments”, after which they quietly retire.
– Dominic Adler
“They can’t see why they are hated” wrote Seamus Milne two days after the 9/11 attacks.
Nearly two days after the horrific suicide attacks on civilian workers in New York and Washington, it has become painfully clear that most Americans simply don’t get it. From the president to passersby on the streets, the message seems to be the same: this is an inexplicable assault on freedom and democracy, which must be answered with overwhelming force – just as soon as someone can construct a credible account of who was actually responsible.
Shock, rage and grief there has been aplenty. But any glimmer of recognition of why people might have been driven to carry out such atrocities, sacrificing their own lives in the process – or why the United States is hated with such bitterness, not only in Arab and Muslim countries, but across the developing world – seems almost entirely absent. Perhaps it is too much to hope that, as rescue workers struggle to pull firefighters from the rubble, any but a small minority might make the connection between what has been visited upon them and what their government has visited upon large parts of the world.
But make that connection they must, if such tragedies are not to be repeated, potentially with even more devastating consequences. US political leaders are doing their people no favours by reinforcing popular ignorance with self-referential rhetoric. And the echoing chorus of Tony Blair, whose determination to bind Britain ever closer to US foreign policy ratchets up the threat to our own cities, will only fuel anti-western sentiment. So will calls for the defence of “civilisation”, with its overtones of Samuel Huntington’s poisonous theories of post-cold war confrontation between the west and Islam, heightening perceptions of racism and hypocrisy.
As Mahatma Gandhi famously remarked when asked his opinion of western civilisation, it would be a good idea. Since George Bush’s father inaugurated his new world order a decade ago, the US, supported by its British ally, bestrides the world like a colossus. Unconstrained by any superpower rival or system of global governance, the US giant has rewritten the global financial and trading system in its own interest; ripped up a string of treaties it finds inconvenient; sent troops to every corner of the globe; bombed Afghanistan, Sudan, Yugoslavia and Iraq without troubling the United Nations; maintained a string of murderous embargos against recalcitrant regimes; and recklessly thrown its weight behind Israel’s 34-year illegal military occupation of the West Bank and Gaza as the Palestinian intifada rages.
Gaza, eh? Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.
Seamus Milne continued as a Guardian columnist for another fifteen years until he left to become Executive Director of Strategy and Communications for the Labour Party under its then-leader Jeremy Corbyn. In all that time I never once saw him recommend that Palestinians, or Muslims more generally, or anyone other than Westerners should ask themselves why they are hated.
Covering your face is clearly an affront to trust, openness and civility. Progressives know this, of course – although they only say so when it suits them. And their double standards aren’t only on show when it comes to the burqa.
The recent anti-immigration protests in Dover and Portsmouth were condemned as ‘thuggish’ by Labour’s crime and policing minister, Sarah Jones, who admonished the protesters for being ‘dressed in all black and wearing face masks’. But when hundreds of Islamic sectarians – dressed in all black and wearing face masks – marched through Whitechapel in east London last year, there were no such complaints from the left. Nor has there been much criticism of the thousands of protesters who have covered their faces with keffiyehs while calling for the destruction of Israel on pro-Palestine marches over the past few years. It seems it’s only when white working-class men start masking up that we hear all the talk about law and order, and the importance of seeing each other’s faces.
– Hugo Timms
The HOMEFRONT Act is a GRANITE-style foreign censorship shield bill, the seventh such GRANITE-architecture bill or model policy to be advanced by American legislators in the last seven months, and the third such bill to be advanced in the last ten days. I anticipate there will be even more GRANITE-style bills, both state and federal, in the next several months.
– Preston Byrne
What we witnessed in Portsmouth was a public explosion of the deepest fissure in British society right now. On one side stands a state that has abdicated its prime responsibility, which is to defend Britain’s territory and Britain’s people from external forces. And on the other stand everyday citizens enraged by this managed suicide of British statehood, by the sacrifice of our sovereignty at the altar of a phoney globalist virtue that says borders are bigotry and migration is splendid.
A Home Office whistleblower has said what many of us have suspected for some time: that the vast majority of “asylum seeker” claims are false. In fact, he says, only around one per cent are genuine. For the state to keep foisting strong, fit, aggy men onto communities that don’t want them, while barking “They’re asylum seekers, you racists”, is wicked and preposterous. If the state wants to put a stop to the kind of vigilantism we saw in Portsmouth, then it just needs to do one simple thing: its job.
– Brendan O’Neill
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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