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It’s unlikely many of my readers are old enough to remember transactional analysis (TA), a method of psychoanalytical therapy from the 1960s and 1970s which involved role-playing mind games.
The Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne developed it in the 1950s. Ultimately, the goal was to produce in the patient the outlook of ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’.
In a comments section on one of the many blogs I read, someone linked to an article from 2016, ‘American Narratives: The Rescue Game’, which posits that today’s identity politics involve TA mind games. The topic discussed is racism in the United States, although, as the author John Michael Greer says, it can be done with any identity politics cause.
Excerpts follow, emphases mine.
Greer describes what is called the Rescue Game:
There’s a school of psychology called transactional analysis, which focuses on interactions between people rather than the vagaries of the individual psyche. Transactional analysis covers a lot of ground, but I want to focus on just one of its themes here: the theory of interpersonal games.
An interpersonal game, like most other games, has a set of rules and some kind of prizes for winners. In a healthy interpersonal game, the rules and the prizes are overt: that is, if you ask the players what they are, you can pretty much count on an honest answer. As this stops being true—as more of the rules and prizes become covert—the game becomes more and more dysfunctional. At the far end of the spectrum are those wholly dysfunctional games in which straight talk about the rules and payoffs is utterly taboo.
The accepted mainstream narrative about race in America today can best be described as one of those latter category of wholly dysfunctional games. Fortunately, it’s a game that was explored in quite a bit of detail by transactional analysts in the 1960s and 1970s, so it won’t be particularly difficult to break the taboo and speak about the unspeakable. Its name? The Rescue Game.
There are three roles in the Rescue Game — Victim, Persecutor and Rescuer:
The first two roles are allowed one move each: the Victim’s move is to suffer, and the Persecutor’s move is to make the Victim suffer. The Rescuer is allowed two moves: to sympathize with the Victim and to punish the Persecutor. No other moves are allowed, and no player is allowed to make a move that belongs to a different role.
That may seem unduly limited. It’s not, because when a group of people is assigned a role, all their actions are redefined as the move or moves allotted to that role. In the Rescue Game, in other words, whatever a Victim does must be interpreted as a cry of pain. Whatever a Persecutor does is treated as something that’s intended to cause pain to a Victim, and whatever a Rescuer does, by definition, either expresses sympathy for a Victim or inflicts well-deserved punishment on a Persecutor. This is true even when the actions performed by the three people in question happen to be identical. In a well-played Rescue Game, quite a bit of ingenuity can go into assigning every action its proper meaning as a move.
What’s more, the roles are collective, not individual. Each Victim is equal to every other Victim, and is expected to feel and resent all the suffering ever inflicted on every other Victim in the same game. Each Persecutor is equal to every other Persecutor, and so is personally to blame for every suffering inflicted by every other Persecutor in the same game. Each Rescuer, in turn, is equal to every other Rescuer, and so may take personal credit for the actions of every other Rescuer in the same game. This allows the range of potential moves to expand to infinity without ever leaving the narrow confines of the game.
Even worse:
There’s one other rule: the game must go on forever. The Victim must continue to suffer, the Persecutor must continue to persecute, and the Rescuer must continue to sympathize and punish. Anything that might end the game—for example, any actual change in the condition of the Victim, or any actual change in the behavior of the Persecutor—is therefore out of bounds. The Rescuer also functions as a referee, and so it’s primarily his or her job to see that nothing gets in the way of the continuation of the game, but all players are expected to help out if that should be necessary.
Sadly, politicians and social activists play this game with real issues and real people who are enduring real problems.
Greer describes how the game plays out, something we read about or see every day in the media:
Like most games, this one has an opening phase, a middle period of play, and an endgame, and the opening phase is called “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor.” In this initial phase, teams of Victims bid for the attention of Rescuers by displaying their suffering and denouncing their Persecutors, and the winners are those who attract enough Rescuers to make up a full team. In today’s America, this phase of the game is ongoing, and a great deal of rivalry tends to spring up between teams of Victims who compete for the attention of the same Rescuers. When that rivalry breaks out into open hostilities, as it often does, the result has been called the Oppression Olympics—the bare-knuckle, no-holds-barred struggle over which group of people gets to have its sufferings privileged over everyone else’s.
The middle phase:
is called “Show Trial.” This has two requirements, which are not always met. The first is an audience willing to applaud the Victims, shout catcalls at the Persecutors, and cheer for the Rescuers on cue. The second is a supply of Persecutors who can be convinced or coerced into showing up to play the game. A Rescue Game in which the Persecutors don’t show quickly enters the endgame, with disadvantages that will be described shortly, and so getting the Persecutors to appear is crucial …
However their presence is arranged, once the Persecutors arrive, the action of the game is stereotyped. The Victims accuse the Persecutors of maltreating them, the Persecutors try to defend themselves, and then the Victims and the Rescuers get to bully the Persecutors into silence, using whatever means are allowed by local law and custom.
At some point, either there are no more Persecutors or people get bored with the game and leave it. The game then enters a new, and final, phase:
At this point the action shifts to the endgame, which is called “Circular Firing Squad.” In this final phase of the game, the need for a steady supply of Persecutors is met by identifying individual Victims or Rescuers as covert Persecutors. Since players thus accused typically try to defend themselves against the accusation, the game can go on as before—the Victims bring their accusations, the newly identified Persecutors defend themselves, and then the Victims and Rescuers get to bully them into silence.
We recognise the pattern, which is a daily narrative for current affairs outlets, turning real issues that require real solutions — e.g. race — into some sort of gamesmanship.
Greer gives two more uses of the Rescue Game — in sexual identity and Marxist politics:
I first encountered the concept of the Rescue Game, in fact, by way of a pamphlet lent to my wife by her therapist sister-in-law, which used it as the basis for an edgy analysis of class conflicts within the lesbian community. From there to the literature on transactional analysis was a short step, and of course it didn’t hurt that I lived in Seattle in those years, where every conceivable form of the Rescue Game could be found in full swing. (The most lively games of “Circular Firing Squad” in town were in the Marxist splinter parties, which I followed via their monthly newspapers; the sheer wallowing in ideological minutiae that went into identifying this or that party member as a deviationist would have impressed the stuffing out of medieval scholastic theologians.)
Nationwide, the Rescue Game looks like this:
With impressive inevitability, in fact, every question concerning privilege in today’s America gets turned into a game of “Pin the Tail on the Persecutor,” in which one underprivileged group is blamed for the problems affecting another underprivileged group, and some group of affluent white people show up to claim the Rescuer’s role. That, in turn, leads to the third issue I want to consider here, which is the question of who benefits most from the habit of forcing all discussion of privilege in today’s America into the straitjacket of the Rescue Game.
Ultimately, there is only one winner in any form of these Rescue Games, and that is the Rescuer:
It’s only fair to note that each of the three roles gets certain benefits, though these are distributed in a very unequal fashion. The only thing the people who are assigned the role of Persecutor get out of it is plenty of negative attention. Sometimes that’s enough—it’s a curious fact that hating and being hated can function as an intoxicant for some people—but this is rarely enough of an incentive to keep those assigned the Persecutor’s role willing to play the game for long.
The benefits that go to people who are assigned the role of Victim are somewhat more substantial. Victims get to air their grievances in public, which is a rare event for the underprivileged, and they also get to engage in socially sanctioned bullying of people they don’t like, which is an equally rare treat. That’s all they get, though. In particular, despite reams of the usual rhetoric about redressing injustices and the like, the Victims are not supposed to do anything, or to expect the Rescuers to do anything, to change the conditions under which they live. The opportunities to air grievances and bully others are substitutes for substantive change, not—as they’re usually billed—steps toward substantive change.
The vast majority of the benefits of the game, rather, go to the Rescuers. They’re the ones who decide which team of Victims will get enough attention from Rescuers to be able to start a game. They’re the ones who enforce the rules, and thus see to it that Victims keep on being victimized and Persecutors keep on persecuting. Nor is it accidental that in every Rescue Game, the people who get the role of Rescuers are considerably higher on the ladder of social privilege than the people who get given the roles of Victims and Persecutors.
Greer ends his article with this:
Perhaps, dear reader, you find it hard to imagine why affluent white people would want to keep everyone else so busy fighting one another that they never notice who benefits most from that state of affairs. Perhaps it hasn’t occurred to you that giving the underprivileged the chance to air their grievances and engage in a little socially sanctioned bullying is a great deal less inconvenient for the affluent than actually taking action to improve the lives of the underprivileged would be. Such thoughts seemingly never enter the minds of most Americans; I’ll leave it to you to figure out why.
Speaking from personal experience, everyone I know who empathises with similar Rescue Games in the UK is in line for a whopping great pension, often from the public sector, and lives in a large house, often in a gated community.
It’s time we, the general public, ignored all of these media-fuelled narratives, which only serve the Rescuers’ purposes, and focus on creating a better world for our fellow citizes, in whatever small way we can.
It’s been quite apparent that the BBC were anxious to attack the Conservative government at every turn prior to May’s elections.
Other media outlets also promoted the same stories.
Some accounts were reported inaccurately. They weren’t exactly fake news, but either details were omitted or added, with any corrections placed on less visited web pages.
The Sir James Dyson story from the BBC is a case in point.
In early 2020, when coronavirus had every Western country in a tailspin, the Government were negotiating with British vacuum machine and hand dryer company owner/founder Sir James Dyson on the manufacture of ventilators. Dyson said that his company could develop the technology and do the job. Dyson is based in Singapore, so he wanted to make sure that, if his employees had to come to the UK, their wages would not incur tax in Britain.
By April 24, 2020, new ventilators were no longer needed. The Government no doubt thanked Dyson for his kind offer, and that was the end of the story.
However, the media resurrected the story one year later. This is how it was seen by a Twitter user in April 2021. Dyson is pictured with one of his amazing hand dryers, which really work:
On April 21, Guido Fawkes reported on the handling of the story and recalled that MPs — including Labour, especially Sir Keir Starmer — agreed that taxation of foreign companies’ employees who manufactured critical clinical equipment, such as ventilators, would be waived during the first few months of the pandemic:
Guido’s post says (emphases in the original):
This morning the BBC reveal texts between the PM and James Dyson, in which Boris promised to “fix” a tax issue to prevent Dyson’s employees having to pay extra if they came here to make Covid ventilators during what was a national emergency. The Treasury changed the rules to mean any days worked by foreign employees towards the national Covid effort wouldn’t be counted by HMRC between March and June 2020. Only an hysterical partisan would take issue with this, here’s Labour’s line this morning:
“These are jaw-dropping revelations. Boris Johnson is now front and centre of the biggest lobbying scandal in a generation, and Tory sleaze has reached the heart of Downing Street.”
A gigantic volte-face given Labour repeatedly praised the ventilator response – a response the tax changes aimed to bolster. The changes were openly put to parliament and applied to non-tax-resident doctors and engineers who would otherwise have had negative tax implications for helping in the fight against Covid. VAT and customs duties on vital medical equipment were also waived. In April 2020, Rachel Reeves said the government needed to “strain every sinew and utilise untapped resources in UK manufacturing, to deliver essential equipment to frontline workers”. A week later, Starmer praised everyone involved in the effort to get ventilators:
Even Tony Blair (Labour) thought that this year’s furore was a load of cobblers:
Last year, Dyson and Prime Minister Boris Johnson had exchanged text messages about the taxation issue. Boris defended the texts. On April 23, this was Guido’s Quote of the Day. Boris said:
If you think that there’s anything remotely dodgy, or rum, or weird, or sleazy about trying to secure more ventilators at a time of a national pandemic, and doing everything in your power to do that…then I think that you’re out of your mind.
On April 26, the BBC had to issue a retraction. They had added fake news to the story (emphases in purple mine):
Various outlets, Wednesday 21 April 2021
In our coverage of texts he had sent to the Prime Minister we referred in various outlets to Sir James Dyson as a prominent Conservative supporter or said he backed the Conservatives.
Sir James says this is factually incorrect.
We are happy to set the record straight.
26/04/2021
However, for some, the story did not end there. It is unclear whether the BBC reported the next item or where it originated. On Tuesday, May 4, two days before the UK’s local and regional elections, some Scots were angry to find out that Boris’s brother is a company director for Dyson Technical Training Limited. Perhaps it was a coincidence, perhaps not. In any event, plenty of people on the Left have their high-status connections, too.
Jo Johnson was appointed to that post on February 18, 2020:
But I digress.
Returning to the BBC, on Wednesday, May 12, the broadcaster was forced to make a further retraction of its Dyson coverage:
Guido has the full story.
The BBC stated (emphases mine):
We accept that Sir James Dyson is not a prominent Conservative supporter as was stated in some of our coverage of his text messages with the Prime Minister. The James Dyson Foundation made a charitable gift to support the Wiltshire Engineering Festival for school children. We accept that this does not signal affiliation to any political party and we would like to put the record straight. Sir James also raised concerns about the accuracy of other aspects of our reporting. We wish to make clear that Sir James contacted Number 10 in response to the Prime Minister’s direct request to him for assistance in relation to the urgent need for ventilators and incurred costs of £20 million which his company voluntarily absorbed in trying to assist in the national emergency. His text messages to the Prime Minister were also later sent to officials. We are sorry that these facts were not always reflected in our coverage, and we apologise for not doing so.
Dyson responded:
The BBC now acknowledges that it was wrong and has issued an apology – which I accept. To justify its claim that I am a “prominent Conservative supporter” the BBC shamefully twisted our charitable gift to school children to suit their political narrative. The Prime Minister asked Dyson to help at a time of crisis, in the national interest, and we did just that. We dropped everything and focused on the national effort. Far from any gain, the project cost us £20 million – a sum we voluntarily bore. I am proud of the efforts of every Dyson person who contributed and we would do precisely the same again. It was deeply disappointing, for me and for the hundreds of Dyson people who gave it their all, to have our efforts developing an emergency ventilator mischaracterised and used for political mudslinging.
To think that everyone in Britain with a television set is forced to pay annually for the BBC’s fake news or be fined — perhaps even sentenced to jail, as has happened in the past — is shameful.
I have several more examples of the Beeb’s ‘stories’ to explore in future posts.
The UK’s local elections will take place on Thursday, May 6, 2021.
Labour have been casting shade on Prime Minister Boris Johnson during the past few weeks over his handling of the coronavirus crisis and the refurbishment of the Downing Street flat. As one would expect, the left-leaning media are having a field day.
On Wednesday, April 28, after Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer verbally attacked Boris at the despatch box during PMQs (Prime Minister’s Questions), Boris let rip by listing all the Conservative government’s achievements on Brexit and coronavirus over the past 16 months. The fact that he could rattle everything off in just under two minutes is impressive. Even better, it looks as if our pre-COVID Boris is back. The Conservative MP for West Bromwich East in the West Midlands tweeted:
Here are two more Conservative achievements:
The media are dead wrong when they say that ‘Boris is on the ropes’:
Here is a more recent poll, taken earlier this week:
Last weekend, the papers were full of stories about what Boris allegedly said before reluctantly announcing a third lockdown around Christmas. He denies having spoken these words, and Labour made a big deal about this earlier this week in Parliament. The public, however, view it in a more nuanced way:
Then we come to the refurbishment of the flat in Downing Street. It is alleged that Boris received funds from a Conservative Party donor to top up the statutory £30k maximum from the taxpayer. The public aren’t that interested:
I’ve seen photographs of one of the redecorated rooms. It looks very Turkish, including the pictures. Although some might find a deep red patterned wallpaper with matching sofa agreeable, it’s not the sort of room most people could stay in for long because it is too ‘busy’. There is no solid pastel shade anywhere. The next occupant will be busy redecorating it, at taxpayers’ expense, to look more neutral.
That has been the work of First Fiancée Carrie Symonds (the ‘y’ is a long ‘i’, as in ‘Simon’), who does not strike most of us as a true Conservative. If Conservatives have any complaint, it’s been that she seems to be running the Government via Boris.
Douglas Murray wrote a great article which appeared today in The Spectator: ‘Carrie Symonds and the First Girlfriend problem’.
Unlike the United States, European countries have a tradition whereby leaders’ spouses take a back seat where politics is concerned. They stay out of the limelight. This is probably the first time in living memory where a British partner of a Prime Minister has been involved in decision making.
Murray explains:
There is no getting around the fact that there is a problem with Carrie Symonds, which it is probably best to have out now.
In 2019 our Prime Minister came in with a significant and clear mandate. Covid has added significantly to his workload. But for many of us he seemed the perfect — even the only — man for the hour. Yet as that hour has gone on, problems of his own creation keep appearing. Too many of them originate from the sway — even terror — his younger companion seems to exert over him.
Carrie Symonds herself is a perfectly nice, intelligent person who successfully worked her way through Conservative campaign headquarters. But she is having too great an impact on the course of government. There are issues the Prime Minister avoids because she does not favour them. And there are others — principally green issues — which he appears to adopt to satisfy her. The feeling is growing that the First Girlfriend wants political power without the trouble of having to run for office, and to wield it without any resulting criticism. This is not a sustainable state of affairs …
It is not just policy she seeks to influence. The First Girlfriend seems to have a desire to be involved in all personnel issues. Her principal ambition seems to be for her friends to make up all the central control flanks around the Prime Minister. This was one of the main causes of Dominic Cummings’s exit from Downing Street last year …
It seems no Carrie-related issue is ever too minor to distract the PM. Last year she made him stop a Cobra meeting at the height of the Covid crisis. The urgent cause was her demand that the PM make an official complaint to the Times newspaper over a story claiming that Carrie’s affections for the couple’s Jack Russell, Dilyn, had cooled in the year since the couple adopted him …
… the trap laid by Carrie and her defenders is clear. Say that Carrie has gained political influence only because of who her boyfriend is, and you will be accused of being envious of powerful, successful women who have made it in their own right. ‘Carrie is an expert in politics,’ one well-briefed source recently told the media. And she may well be. But that is not why she is sleeping in No. 10.
In the UK anyone who wishes to have political power should run for elected office. The emergent Office of First Lady is clearly a source of tension in Downing Street, and is already responsible for an unprecedented number of interventions in policy areas that affect our country. We hear nothing from the Prime Minister on issues he was elected on, and far too much on ones that Carrie happens to favour. The Prime Minister may have need of a First Girlfriend, but the country does not.
A year ago, I was wondering why Boris’s priorities were changing. Was it because of coronavirus or Carrie?
Twelve months on, I have my answer.
As far as local elections go, however, the Carrie problem is unlikely to affect voters’ opinions. Those determined to vote Conservative will carry on regardless of Carrie.
As I wrote last week, the fawning media coverage of Prince Philip’s death, especially by the BBC, was appalling in its hypocrisy.
They were rarely nice and respectful to him during his long life. It was disgusting to see BBC reporters suddenly in black, notionally fighting back tears. For decades, they and other media outlets treated this man terribly, so much so that, for many years, I wondered why the Queen had married the Prince. No one I knew could explain why. Eventually, I had to do my own research to learn more about him.
Re media knavery, here’s a case in point. In 2019, the BBC’s veteran radio presenter and, more recently, host of Mastermind, John Humphreys told of his slanging match with Prince Philip in 1975 during a Royal visit to Mexico. There was a mix-up over what vehicle each was to have been travelling in. That’s what he remembered about Prince Philip.
Humphreys then proceeded to voice his regret about not having an exclusive interview with the Queen. The Sun (link above) reported (emphases mine):
John, who left Radio 4’s Today last month, was speaking to BBC colleague Justin Webb at an event organised by Intelligence Squared.
The retired newshound, famous for his tough grillings, also admitted he twice begged the Queen, 93, to do an interview — but said she replied: “Nope.”
She also told him that if she was ever to do such a chat, it would “certainly not be with you”.
John said: “I have wanted to sit there and say, ‘With me this morning is Her Majesty The Queen.’
“She has probably met more powerful people than anyone else. And there’s the gossip, you know what I mean?”
Good for the Queen for seeing through John Humphreys. Such an interview would have been all about him.
Last week, MPs and Peers in Westminster spent time remembering Prince Philip. So did representatives in the devolved assemblies in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
One young MLA from Northern Ireland said that she ‘never really appreciated’ Prince Philip until he died, at which point she discovered all sorts of interesting details about his life that she had never heard before.
Well, yes, the media hid all that from the British public.
The only time Prince Philip was in the news was when he made one of his famous ‘gaffes’ on a trip. News presenters would ask the royal reporters if said gaffes would cause a diplomatic incident or harm trade relations with the country in question.
The satirical magazine Private Eye referred to the Prince as Phil the Greek. One would expect that from a satirical magazine. However, the news media were no better.
Even on May 4, 2017, when the 95-year-old Prince announced he would be standing down from public life, coverage was lukewarm, including in The Telegraph.
These are the principal facts from the article, mixed in with the usual negatives:
The Duke of Edinburgh is Patron, President or a member of over 780 organisations, with which he will continue to be associated, although he will no longer play an active role by attending engagements …
The Duke of Edinburgh has spent 25 days so far this year carrying out public engagements – more than the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and the Queen.
Philip’s appearances out and about with the monarch in the public eye since the start of 2017 have ranged from feeding an elephant at ZSL Whipsnade Zoo to attending the unveiling of a national memorial on Horse Guards Parade.
Solo engagements by the 95-year-old also included opening the new Warner Stand at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London on Wednesday and meeting actor Tom Cruise at a Buckingham Palace dinner to mark the 75th anniversary of the Outward Bound Trust in March.
The article also had a section called ‘The Prince in numbers’:
Here are some facts about Prince Philip:
Total number of solo engagements – 22,191
Total number of solo overseas visits – 637 (Commonwealth countries – 229 visits to 67 countries / other countries 408 visits to 76 countries)
Total number of speeches given – 5,493
Total number of patronages – 785 organisations
Presentation of colours – 54
Number of service appointments – 32
Number of books authored – 14
Oddly, the best tribute that day came from Jeremy Corbyn MP, who led the Labour Party at that time. Corbyn is hardly known for his royalist sentiments, but he recognised the Prince’s service over so many decades:
I would like to pay tribute to Prince Philip following his decision to retire from public service.
He has dedicated his life to supporting the Queen and our country with a clear sense of public duty.
His Duke of Edinburgh’s Award scheme has inspired young people for more than 60 years in over 140 nations.
We thank Prince Philip for his service to the country and wish him all the best in his well-earned retirement.
On July 8, 2020, CheatSheet listed the Prince’s most famous ‘gaffes’ and pointed the finger at him for his globalist perspectives regarding overpopulation, complete with a video:
Back in 1988, the duke brought up overpopulation when speaking to the German news agency Deutsche Press Agentur about reincarnation.
“In the event that I am reincarnated, I would like to return as a deadly virus, to contribute something to solving overpopulation,” The Telegraph quoted Philip saying at the time.
A few different versions of the quote have circulated during the coronavirus outbreak. Another published version claims the queen’s husband said: “If I were reincarnated I would wish to be returned to earth as a killer virus to lower human population levels.”
Prince Philip has never shied away from his feelings about overpopulation. In 2008, he said he believed it was one of the biggest challenges in conservation before offering his thoughts on what should be done about it.
And prior to that, the Duke of Edinburgh told People Magazine: “Human population growth is probably the single most serious long-term threat to survival. We’re in for a major disaster if it isn’t curbed–not just for the natural world, but for the human world. The more people there are, the more resources they’ll consume, the more pollution they’ll create, the more fighting they’ll do…If it isn’t controlled voluntarily, it will be controlled involuntarily by an increase in disease, starvation, and war.”
It was left to ordinary people — not journalists — to tell the world about the Prince and his life. Did you know, for example, that Prince Philip held the Queen’s hand while she gave birth to Prince Edward in 1964? Very, very few fathers did that in the 1960s.
This is an excellent Twitter thread about his life on the occasion of his 99th birthday last June:
Last Monday, a number of MPs said that they had participated in the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme when they were young. A few of them said that the programme — comprised of arduous Bronze, Silver and Gold levels — gave them the confidence to run for public office. It also encouraged physical activity and spurred Lady (Tanni) Grey-Thomas to become an award-winning Paralympian — now a crossbench life peer in the House of Lords. She explains the programme in more detail in this short video:
The residents of the South Pacific island of Tanna must have been sad to know that the man whom they viewed as their messiah had departed this mortal coil. They believed that he would settle among them:
What we did not know was that Prince Philip, once he found out he was so revered, kept in touch with the islanders, sent them gifts and also met privately with a delegation of them at Windsor Castle.
On Sunday, April 18, The Telegraph reported on this unusual story, excerpted below:
In the Sixties, when Vanuatu was an Anglo-French colony known as the New Hebrides, it is believed that tribesmen would have set eyes on a portrait of Prince Philip alongside the Queen (whom he had married in 1947) hanging in various official buildings – and decided that this handsome young man in the Naval uniform was the very same ancestor of their god.
This belief that the Duke was a prodigal son of the island was reinforced when coincidentally he and the Queen made an official visit to the New Hebrides in 1974. A warrior named Chief Jack Naiva, who died in 2009, was one of the paddlers of a war canoe that greeted the Royal Yacht Britannia.
“I saw him standing on the deck in his white uniform,” Chief Jack is on record as saying. “I knew then that he was the true messiah.”
Ever since, villagers have prayed to the British monarch daily. They ask for his blessing on the banana and yam crops they grow in the fertile volcanic soil and have held on to the fervent belief that one day he will return to the island and unite the nations of England and Tanna …
Largely cut off from the world with limited electronic communications, the islanders were only made aware of the Duke of Edinburgh’s death last Friday when a worker from a nearby spa resort made a journey on Saturday afternoon to break the news to them. It was reported that one tribeswoman immediately burst into tears, while the men fell silent as they tried to comfort their children.
When the Duke retired from public duties in May 2017, villagers only found out several days later after a visit by a Reuters journalist. The village chief Jack Malia said then that the islanders were still holding on to the hope that the Duke would visit.
“If he comes one day, the people will not be poor, there will be no sickness, no debt and the garden will be growing very well,” he said through an interpreter at the local Nakamal – a traditional meeting place where the tribesman gather at night to swap stories and drink highly intoxicating kava.
The same drink was cracked open to celebrate the 89th birthday of the Duke of Edinburgh on June 10, 2010 – the date he was initially prophesied to return to the island and live alongside villagers in a straw hut, hunting the wild pigs that are abundant on the island and adopting the local traditional dress which, for males, is nothing but a large grass sheath …
Discovered in 1774 by Captain James Cook, in 1906 the islands became the New Hebrides, jointly administered by Britain and France until independence in 1980. Even after his visit in 1974, the Prince was not aware of the legend surrounding him until John Champion, the British Resident Commissioner in the New Hebrides, told him a few years later.
Ever since, he has always taken the esteem with which he is held by the people of Tanna extremely seriously. Over the years he has exchanged various gifts with the islanders. Tanna elders once sent Prince Philip a “nal nal” wooden hunting club. He in turn sent them back a photograph of himself holding the club – which has become a cherished religious icon on the island alongside other photographs of the Duke.
In 2007, a delegation of five islanders visited Britain in the hope of an audience with Prince Philip as part of a Channel 4 documentary called Meet the Natives. The filmmakers took the men to stay with Prince Philip’s friend Sir Humphrey Wakefield at Chillingham castle in Northumberland. Sir Humphrey, whose daughter Mary Wakefield is married to Boris Johnson’s former chief advisor Dominic Cummings, took the Tanna tribesmen on a hunting trip and invited them to various black tie dinners.
At one of the dinners where another friend of the Duke, Lord Haddington, was in attendance, he assured the visitors: “If he had a moment, he would love to meet you, I’m sure.”
The Duke was good to his word and eventually hosted the men for a private reception at Windsor Castle, which the film crew was not invited to attend. Once they had returned to Tanna, the delegation relayed the somewhat cryptic message they said they had been given by the Duke of Edinburgh to their chief – “When it is warm, I will send a message. At the moment, it is cold in England.”
… In 2018, the Prince of Wales followed in his father’s footsteps and visited Vanuatu where he was made an honorary high chief. During the ceremony, he was presented with local gifts and garlands of flowers and took a sip of specially brewed Royal Kava, which had last been consumed when Prince Philip visited in 1974.
In the tradition of the Malvatumauri Council of Chiefs, the heir to the throne took part in a series of rituals before being given the high chief name of Mal Menaringmanu.
In closing, on April 18, the leader of Sinn Féin apologised for the IRA’s assassination of Prince Philip’s uncle, Lord Mountbatten, in 1979. He is shown on the left in this photo, standing next to his nephew:
The Independent reported that party leader Mary Lou McDonald told Times Radio:
My job, and I think that Prince Charles and others would absolutely appreciate this, my job is to lead from the front, now, in these times.
I believe it is all our jobs to ensure that no other child, no other family, no matter who they are, suffers the same trauma and heartbreak that was all too common on all sides of this island and beyond.
I have an absolute responsibility to make sure that no family faces that again and I am happy to reiterate that on the weekend that your Queen buried her beloved husband.
Better late than never, but not surprising in timing.
One does wonder if this apology — take it for what it is — would have been made sooner had media coverage of the Prince been more positive while he was alive.
Nonetheless, even left-leaning nationalists in the Stormont assembly in Northern Ireland praised the Queen and Prince Philip for their visits and for helping to reconcile both sides of the political aisle to bring peace to what is still a troubled nation.
Tomorrow’s post, all being well, will cover the highlights of the Prince’s funeral.
Sadly, Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh, died on Friday, April 9, 2021, exactly two months short of his 100th birthday:
The Queen has lost her best friend. My deepest sympathies to her for the unimaginable loss of her long-time husband and daily confidant. My condolences also go to the Royal Family in their grief.
Young love
The couple first met in 1934, and began corresponding when the Prince was 18 and a cadet in the Royal Navy. Princess Elizabeth was 13 at the time.
She was smitten with him from the start.
Prince Philip served with distinction during the Second World War in the Mediterranean and Pacific fleets.
After the war ended, he could have had a stellar career in the Royal Navy. His superiors praised his clear leadership skills.
However, love intervened and the rest was history.
Born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark, he renounced his foreign titles and took British citizenship before he and Princess Elizabeth were engaged. He took the surname of his maternal grandparents: Mountbatten.
He and Princess Elizabeth were engaged in July 1947. They married on November 20 that year. Shortly before the wedding, George VI gave him the titles of Duke of Edinburgh (created for him), Earl of Merioneth and Baron Greenwich.
Prince Philip remained in the Royal Navy until July 1951. He retired with the rank of Commander.
Royal succession — and surname
In January 1952, he and the Queen began a tour of the Commonwealth countries. They were in Kenya when news reached them that the Queen’s father, George VI, died on February 6 that year.
Although she became Queen immediately upon her father’s death, her coronation took place in 1953, as it had to be planned meticulously.
On Coronation Day, he knelt before her, clasped her hands and swore an oath of allegiance to her:
He also had to touch her crown and kiss her on the cheek.
He never had a constitutional role, nor was he ever formally given the title of Royal Consort. The courtiers did not like him, nor did they trust him. They believed his personality to be brash and unbecoming of the Royal household. They shut him out of as much decision making as possible.
When Elizabeth became Queen, the question about her family name arose. Prince Philip suggested that the Royal Family be known as the House of Edinburgh. Upon discovering that suggestion, Queen Mary, Elizabeth’s grandmother, wrote to Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who advised the young monarch to issue a royal proclamation saying that the Royal Family would continue to be known as the House of Windsor.
In his inimitable style, Prince Philip complained privately:
I am nothing but a bloody amoeba. I am the only man in the country not allowed to give his name to his own children. [57]
The Queen did nothing until eight years later, in 1960, 11 days before she gave birth to Prince Andrew. She issued an Order in Council declaring that the surname of her and her husband’s male-line descendants who are not styled as Royal Highness or titled as prince or princess would be Mountbatten-Windsor.
Pater familias
Prince Philip had to carve a role out for himself. He became the pater familias and, through the years, his role expanded to cover not only his four children but his grandchildren. He listened to their concerns, shared their joys and gave them advice. He knew everything that went on in their lives.
Although the public knew him for speaking as he saw — rather bluntly, on occasion — behind closed doors Prince Philip was known to be a warm, loving man.
He also favoured a more transparent Royal Family. According to the BBC, it was he who encouraged the Queen to make a multi-episode documentary on their daily lives, including those of their four children. It was broadcast in the late 1960s. I remember seeing it in the United States.
When Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997, Prince Philip was the one who kept an eye on the public mood that fateful week. He, the Queen and Princes William and Harry were at Balmoral in Scotland for their summer holiday. When the young princes wanted to attend church, their grandparents took them to the Sunday service on the day of their mother’s death. Later in the week, it was Prince Philip who encouraged the boys to walk behind the funeral procession the following Saturday. He said:
If you don’t walk, I think you’ll regret it later. If I walk, will you walk with me? [93]
One cannot imagine what he thought of Prince Harry’s departure for the United States to live a life separate from his closely knit family. I did read that the Royal Family shielded information about the Oprah interview from him.
John F Kennedy’s funeral
Prince Philip was in Washington for John F Kennedy’s funeral in 1963.
He had a friendly encounter with John Jr, who was still a toddler and known as John-John at the time. The child wondered where his father was, as he had no one with whom to play. The Prince stepped in to fill that gap. In 1965, the British government gave an acre of land at Runnymede to the United States for use as a memorial to JFK:
Funeral arrangements
Prince Philip was self-effacing and did not like a fuss to be made over him.
Therefore, the funeral arrangements will respect his wishes, which is rather convenient, as coronavirus restrictions are still in place. Up to 30 people will be allowed at his funeral, in line with legislation across the nation:
The funeral is scheduled to take place on Saturday, April 17:
It is interesting that Prince Harry will be able to attend when we have a 10-day quarantine in place for arrivals into the UK under coronavirus regulations.
The Sunday Mirror reported on Prince Harry’s return to the UK:
He could also be released from quarantine if he gets a negative private test on day five, under the Test to Release scheme.
Given his status as a member of the Royal Family travelling to support the Queen, Harry might be considered exempt from travel restrictions.
Wow. It’s nice to know we have a two-tiered quarantine system in place /sarc.
A championship boxer remembers the Prince
Former WBC Heavyweight Champion Frank Bruno MBE posted his memories of meeting Prince Philip. He is at the top left in the following photo:
An Anglican priest remembers the Prince
The Revd Peter Mullen, an Anglican priest, recalled his encounters with Prince Philip for Conservative Woman on April 10 in ‘A personal recollection’.
He first met the Prince during his schooldays:
The first time I met the Prince was in connection with his Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme which gave a leg up to youngsters from what would now be called the less privileged parts of the country. He paid a visit to the Leeds branch of the Church Lads’ Brigade of which, aged fourteen, I was a member. We were in the church hall making things. My task was to make a table lamp. I was hopeless at it.
The Duke got hold of my half-finished creation, held it up to one eye and said, ‘I suppose this hole is where the flex goes?’
‘I think so, Sir.’
‘You think so? I was never any good at this sort of thing either!’
And he was off . . .
As an adult, Mullen met him on more than one occasion thanks to the Honourable Company of Air Pilots. The Prince was its Grand Master. Mullen served as chaplain.
He recalls:
The Company gave a lunch for him to mark his 80th birthday and I recall how jovial he was, making light of his years: ‘I believe I have lasted so long because you people are always toasting my good health, but I don’t want to live to be a hundred. Things are dropping off already!’
At another luncheon one of our Liverymen who had his own port wine business presented the prince with Bottle Number One, the first fruits, so to speak. As he left, the duke handed the bottle to me: ‘You have this, Peter. Our house floats on the bloody stuff.’
‘Well, Sir, now I don’t know whether to drink it or frame it.’
‘Gerrit down ya neck!’
Prince Philip on MPs
Guido Fawkes came up with a good quote from one of the Prince’s trips to Ghana. It concerns MPs. His Ghanaian hosts told him the country had 200 MPs. Prince Philip replied:
That’s about the right number. We have 650 and most of them are a complete bloody waste of time.
Incidentally, Parliament will be recalled one day early from Easter recess. On Monday, April 12, MPs and Lords paid tribute to the Prince in their respective Houses:
That afternoon, the House of Commons reconvened to pay their tribute — from 2:30 p.m. until 10 p.m. (good grief).
Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle spoke first:
Prime Minister Boris Johnson had this to say:
Boris Johnson, who was invited to the funeral but declined so that another member of the Royal Family can attend, said that he would forego a pint when pub gardens reopen on April 12, out of respect for the Prince. Guido Fawkes, however, thinks that the Duke of Edinburgh would have wanted us to toast his memory, especially at a pub that bears his title in Brixton, south London:
Guido had a second tweet on the subject with another quote from the Prince:
Agreed.
Prince Philip on Australia
This is too funny. For those who are unaware, Australia was established as a place where Britain could send convicts. That was a long time ago, but the nation’s original purpose was to serve as a prison:
Prince Philip on civil liberties
On a serious note, the 12-minute interview below from 1984 is well worth watching, especially in the coronavirus era.
Prince Philip firmly supported the rights of the individual and believed that the state should serve the individual, not, as in our times, the other way around.
This is from a Thames Television programme originally broadcast on ITV:
I have posted the video below in case the tweets are deleted:
The Prince also said that certain subjects are out of bounds, such as the media and the NHS.
He said that the media are incapable of taking a joke about themselves and, as for the NHS, well, one cannot say anything against it. He didn’t necessarily dislike the NHS but thought it was held in too high a regard. Nothing is perfect in this world.
We have been travelling a long road towards the point where we are at present: ruled by the media (they clamoured for coronavirus restrictions) and worship of the NHS. This is how Health Secretary Matt Hancock, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and SAGE have been able to rule our lives. It’s been at least 40 years in the making.
BBC coverage on Friday
I was watching BBC Parliament early Friday afternoon, around 1:15, when the programme was interrupted by a broadcast from the BBC News Channel.
I checked the schedule an hour later, which said that the programme would last until 4 p.m. It was still going when I was preparing dinner at 5 p.m.
The final of MasterChef was to have been broadcast that night on BBC1. This was a clip from Thursday’s programme:
Pictured are the hosts and judges, chef/restaurateur John Torode on the left and former greengrocer, now television presenter, Gregg Wallace on the right:
BUT:
The BBC News channel was simulcast all afternoon and all night long, not only on BBC Parliament but also on BBC1, to the dismay of MasterChef fans (myself included), and BBC2. BBC4 was suspended for the evening.
I read on social media that the BBC also broadcast continuous coverage of Prince Philip on their radio stations, including Radio 2, knocking out Steve Wright’s drive-time show on Friday afternoon.
A friend of mine said that most of the BBC’s employees were probably rubbing their hands with glee because it meant an early weekend for them. It’s a cynical perspective that could well turn out to be true. We’ll find out when someone writes his or her memoirs.
Everyone with a television set receives the BBC News channel. It comes into our homes at no extra charge. There was no need for the BBC to take over every channel for hours on end. By the way, if one had watched two hours of the Prince Philip coverage, as I did, one would have seen and heard everything in its entirety.
The BBC braced themselves for a plethora of complaints; they took the relevant page down on Sunday. Good. I am sure Prince Philip would have objected, too.
As much as I love the Queen, I hope they do not try this when her day comes. God willing, may it be long into the future.
Record-beating prince
Prince Philip established two records as consort to the Queen. He was the longest-serving royal consort in British history. He was also the longest-lived male member of the British royal family.
May he rest in eternal peace with his Maker.
May our gracious Lord grant the Queen, Defender of the Faith, His infinite peace and comfort in the months ahead. May He also bless the Royal Family during this difficult time.
President Trump has given three interviews in mid-March. More on those below.
Americans clearly miss him and his clear-cut, sensible policies. Joe Biden’s administration is reversing many of them. Remember the manufacturing plants that were going to stay in the United States? Ford has now reneged and is going back to its original plan of moving one of its plants from Ohio to Mexico:
In other news, it took more than two months for the media, led by the original source, the Washington Post, to retract the story about Trump’s phone conversation with Georgia’s secretary of state about the election. WaPo finally retracted their false quotes attributed to the former president on Tuesday, March 16:
RedState has an excellent article about this further example of fake news (emphases mine below):
The alleged contents of this conversation had been part of the national conversation ever since January 9 when Washington Post reporter Amy Gardner published a story claiming, based on a single anonymous source, that President Trump had attempted to pressure Ms. Watson into creating evidence of fraud where all right-thinking people know that all voting in Georgia, especially in Fulton County, was totally on the up-and-up. The story blew up. It slid neatly into the Pantheon of Evil Acts By Trump worshiped by the left, the media, and NeverTrump. Through the miracle of journalisming, something we lay folks can’t be expected to understand, the anonymously sourced story was quickly and independently confirmed by NBC, ABC, USA Today, PBS, and CNN.
When President Trump was impeached after leaving office for giving a speech on the National Mall on January 6, this unsourced, though now multiply “corroborated,” allegation found its way into the “impeachment brief” submitted by the House “impeachment managers,” see page 10 if you care to wade through this dross. And, they, relying upon that integrity and sense of fair play for which progressives are famous, even used it in their impeachment arguments …
One final note. If the Daily Caller or Free Beacon or even the Washington Examiner had pulled a bullsh** stunt like this, they would be out of business (read The Washington Post Doesn’t Deserve to Exist After Making up Trump Quotes to Own the Orange Man). Facebook and Twitter would have de-platformed them by now (read Based on Brian Stelter’s Own Arguments, CNN and Washington Post Should Be Deplatformed). They would be ritually sacrificing staffers to try to keep advertisers from fleeing, and they would still fail. The Washington Post and Amy Gardner will simply move ahead. They will continue to sling wild conspiracy theories based on uncorroborated single sources, and they will continue to be treated as though they are serious newsgathering organizations.
Trump quickly compiled quotes from all the journalists condemning WaPo — including one from Glenn Greenwald, not a fan of his by any stretch of the imagination. When clicking that Telegram link, click on ‘Context’ to view in its entirety. It is easier just to visit his website’s announcement with all the quotes.
On Saturday, March 20, at Mar-a-Lago, he made reference to Joe Biden’s tripping on the airplane stairs and quickly added that he himself won the election by more than 75 million votes:
That Trump won is very likely to be true. On March 19, Howie Carr interviewed Jonathan Allen, one of the authors of Lucky: How Joe Biden Barely Won The Presidency. At the 8 minute point of the interview, Allen tells Carr that Trump lost within 43,000+ votes in three states. Peter Navarro, who wrote three reports for Trump on the 2020 election results, maintained that only six counties needed recounts, yet the swampy advisers around Trump said not to pursue the matter. After all, they have careers to preserve.
Former Democrat — now proud Republican — Georgia state congressman Vernon Jones was a guest of President Trump’s at Mar-a-Lago twice in one week:
On Monday, March 22, Harris Faulkner of Fox News interviewed Trump. They discussed the border situation and Biden’s reversal of his policies:
Trump is clearly concerned about the Second Amendment (guns), packing the Supreme Court and the weakness of Mitch McConnell, now the Senate Minority Leader.
There was also this:
On Tuesday, March 23, Trump gave an interview to Greg Kelly of Newsmax, wherein he discussed the ‘gross incompetence’ of the border situation, Operation WarpSpeed and more:
Biden’s fall also came up for discussion. Trump said he had ‘expected it’:
James O’Keefe of Project Veritas was Trump’s guest at Mar-a-Lago on March 23:
Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-North Carolina), elected in 2020, was Trump’s guest the following day:
And, finally, on Thursday, March 25, Laura Ingraham of Fox News interviewed him. This interview, which is 26 minutes long, is excellent. It covers the recent policy changes that have happened since Biden took office, including his first press conference that day, and ends with a discussion about Trump’s social media plans. Trump seems less sure about a new social media platform, saying that it would be rather complicated and that he enjoys his current communication streams on his website and Telegram.
The former president says he has been relaxing, yet keeping busy. It certainly looks like it.
Those of us who read about former President Trump’s impeachment trial hope that his lawyer Michael van der Veen is having better days.
I’ll recap later in this post.
He did a great job for his client and had a gimlet eye on the facts.
He had to correct Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) for misquoting Trump:
His closing argument was excellent.
In one of these clips, he says that House impeachment managers sent him evidence on the first day of the trial, rather than before. Proceedings had already started by the time they sent van der Veen the email with the evidence.
Trump’s accusers did not make reference to any laws or the US Constitution:
Van der Veen spoke about the six months of civil unrest that preceded what took place at the Capitol on Wednesday, January 6. Last year’s unrest was actually encouraged by a number of Democrats:
He rightly condemned all the unrest, from last year to January 6, but asked how the United States could find itself in such a position:
He concluded that President Trump said nothing that could have incited a riot on January 6:
In fact, the mêlée had already started before Trump encouraged his rally goers to walk to the Capitol. With so many people in the nation’s capital that day, it would have taken about a half hour to walk to the Capitol building from the Ellipse, where Trump was speaking.
In any event, Trump was acquitted.
That was partly because someone on the impeachment managers’ team doctored the evidence. Two pieces of tampering that emerged in the news were 1) a tweet which was doctored so that 2020 read 2021 and 2) a blue tick mark added to a Twitter user’s account.
Van der Veen said there was more falsified evidence.
A CBS News interviewer, Lana Zak, was mystified that van der Veen would find falsified Twitter evidence egregious and unethical.
He was clearly displeased with her reaction and told her so (start at 2 minutes in):
Howie Carr made some excellent observations about this on Monday, February 15 (emphases mine):
What set van der Veen off was when this anchor cupcake by the name of Lana Zak (never heard of her before, how about you?) tried to pooh-pooh the falsification of evidence by the so-called House managers.
In case you missed it, and you probably did, they put blue check marks on Twitter accounts that didn’t have them (to somehow add credibility to meaningless, stupid comments). They also changed the dates on various postings, and they doctored video.
In other words, the Democrats falsified evidence, just as the FBI did on Carter Page in the application for search warrants in the secret FISA court.
And the Democrats (including of course See BS News) act like it’s no big deal, to try to frame somebody. I get it, it wasn’t a criminal trial so technically you don’t have to worry about niceties like due process, hearsay, Sixth Amendment rights to confront accusers etc. But still, is it proper to falsify evidence, and then, when you get busted red-handed, shrug it off because you were only doing it to a Republican?
Whatever happened to the American Civil Liberties Union?
Unfortunately, things were hotting up at the van der Veen residence that same day.
How horrible:
Fox News asked the lawyer about it during a post-acquittal interview that Saturday. He said that he didn’t want to talk about it. His office was also ‘under siege’, as he put it. The Gateway Pundit has more on the story, along with the video from Fox News.
I hope things have calmed down for him and his family.
What an appalling state of affairs.
The Left, including the media, should be ashamed of themselves. ‘Shame’, however, is a word and a concept unknown to them.
In case you’ve missed the earlier posts in this series, here they are: parts 1, 2, 3 and 4.
The best known of the minority MPs from David Cameron’s premiership — 2010 to 2016 — is Rishi Sunak, who is Chancellor of the Exchequer.
He represents the Richmond constituency in Yorkshire.
Early years
Rishi Sunak’s grandparents moved from the Punjab province of India to East Africa. Rishi’s mother Usha was born in Tanzania. His father Yashvir was born in Kenya. Both are Hindus.
Both sets of grandparents migrated to the UK in the 1960s.
After marriage, Usha and Yashvir settled in Southampton, on the southern coast of England. Usha worked locally as a pharmacist. Yashvir was a general practitioner.
The couple have three children: Rishi, another son Sanjay, who is a psychologist, and a daughter Raakhi, who works on COVID-19 strategy for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.
Rishi Sunak went to the renowned public (private) school Winchester College, founded in 1382, where he was head boy and editor of the student newspaper.
He then went to Lincoln College, Oxford, where he graduated with a First in 2001 in PPE, which is nothing to do with hospital gowns, rather Philosophy, Politics and Economics. Whilst at Oxford, he did a brief stint at Conservative Campaign Headquarters.
During summer holidays he worked at a curry house in Southampton.
Sunak began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he worked as an analyst from 2001 to 2004.
He then decided to study for an MBA at Stanford University in California, where he met his wife, Akshata Murthy, the daughter of the Indian billionaire N. R. Narayana Murthy, the man behind Infosys. The couple married in 2005. Sunak, a Fulbright Scholar, completed his MBA in 2006.
Sunak and his wife settled in England and have two young daughters.
Prior to entering politics, Sunak worked for two hedge funds and was also the director of one of his father-in-law’s companies, Catamaran Ventures.
Political career
Former Conservative Party leader William Hague represented Richmond, which has been a safe seat for the party for over a century.
Rishi Sunak was elected comfortably to his first term with a majority of 19,550 (36.2%). Once in Parliament, he was appointed to the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Select Committee.
Sunak was also committed to Brexit and was an early advocate of free ports, having written a report on the concept in 2016, the year of the referendum.
In 2017, with Theresa May as Prime Minister, Sunak won re-election with an even greater majority of 23,108 (40.5%). In Parliament, he continued to support Brexit, voting for Theresa May’s deal and against a referendum on a final withdrawal agreement in 2019.
That year, Theresa May stood down as PM. Sunak supported Boris Johnson in the ensuing leadership contest.
That autumn, during the general election campaign, he appeared on a television debate, representing the Conservatives:
I am sure Sunak did better than Iain Dale gave him credit for:
He also participated in a seven-way debate on ITV.
On December 12, Sunak further increased his margin of victory at the polls to 27,210 (47.2%).
The coronavirus Chancellor — and some inside scoops
Then, in February 2020, Prime Minister Boris Johnson replaced Sajid Javid with Rishi Sunak as Chancellor:
He gave his first budget less than a month later, on Wednesday, March 11, which I wrote about at the time.
The following Monday, March 16, Boris announced social distancing rules and the closure of pubs, restaurants and events venues. Rishi spoke at one of Boris’s televised coronavirus briefings with news of a generous financial package:
Guido Fawkes posted the full video and remarked (emphasis in the original):
You wouldn’t guess he’s only been in the job for five weeks…
Full details are here. Sunak also issued a Twitter thread with a summary:
Then lockdown came a week later on Monday, March 23.
A few days later, Boris was struggling with his bout of coronavirus, as was Health Secretary Matt Hancock:
The Conservatives soared to record approval ratings in the polls:
Early in April, Boris was quietly rushed to St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Rishi did another coronavirus briefing to reassure an anxious nation:
The well-spoken, gentle Sunak appealed greatly to the folks at home. The Independent did not like that one bit.
Society magazine Tatler began running articles on Sunak in March. They could see he would quickly become a cult personality.
On March 18, the magazine posted an article by Annabel Sampson, ‘Everything you need to know about Britain’s new Chancellor, Rishi Sunak’.
It begins with this (emphases mine):
The virtues of 39-year-old Rishi Sunak have been extolled many times over; for his charming demeanour, his razor sharp brain and his acute financial sense. Now the man who has come to be recognised as the ‘Maharaja of the Dales’, thanks to his Indian ancestry and Yorkshire home, has been appointed to the highest office in the country, to Boris Johnson’s Cabinet in the role of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second biggest government job; and the second youngest person ever to take the position.
The appointment follows the ‘Cabinet Reshuffle’ that occurred in February when Savid Javid, the former Chancellor, resigned when he was asked to get rid – reportedly a request linked to Dominic Cummings – of his closest aides. Rishi Sunak’s star has been rising for some time now, so his appointment to the position will have baffled few.
The article has several photos, including one of Sunak in the Yorkshire countryside and one with his dog, which resembles Boris Johnson’s Welsh rescue pup, Dilyn.
Sunak and his wife had a traditional Indian wedding:
Rishi and Akshata were married in her hometown of Bangalore, in a two-day ceremony attended by 1,000 guests.
Akshata is a working mother:
Akshata runs her own fashion label Akshata Designs and is also a director of a venture capital firm founded by her father in 2010. Her designs are wonderful; she’s been profiled by Vogue India and been credited for creating clothes that are ‘vehicles to discovering Indian culture’ – comprised of chic silhouettes with bold, Indian design.
Did we know that the Sunaks throw great parties? We do now:
With their combined wealth, they understandably have a generously sized home in Northallerton, North Yorkshire (in Sunak’s constituency). The Daily Mail reports that their annual summer garden party is a county highlight; where uniformed staff loft around serving ice cold champagne and canapés (no doubt prepared by the prestigious Yorkshire Party Company).
Sunak is a natural at politics:
According to the Daily Mail, ‘While many MPs stutter and trundle their way through their maiden speech in the Commons, Mr Sunak’s at-ease manner provided a glimmer of what was to come’. One ally in parliament told the Telegraph: ‘He’s ferociously intelligent and thoroughly decent at the same time’ …
He was one of the few Conservatives who were let loose on the air waves (14 times in total) and allowed to make public appearances during the election campaign last year. He has even been dubbed the ‘Prime Minister-in-waiting’, we’ll see. His first big challenge was the March budget; and now he is juggling the unprecedented complexity of the impact of the coronavirus on the economy. The UK are in safe hands.
The article also has a photo of him supporting Yorkshire County Cricket at Edgbaston.
Early in July, Tatler‘s Ben Judah travelled to Sunak’s home town of Southampton and reported his findings in ‘Inside the world of Rishi Sunak’.
Naturally, Judah went to the curry house where Sunak worked during his summer holidays:
The kitchen at Kuti’s Brasserie, not far from Southampton docks, was not the sort of place, in August 1998, you would have gone looking for a future hedge funder, son-in-law of a billionaire and Conservative chancellor.
That summer – the summer of the France 98 World Cup and the Omagh bombing – Kuti Miah, the eponymous restaurateur behind the curry house, went to have a word with one of his waiters. ‘You’re going to be someone, Rishi,’ he said. The future UK chancellor flashed his famous smile. He was, adds Miah, ‘a brilliant talker’. Rishi Sunak, then 18, was about to go to Oxford, but that holiday he waited tables for Miah, a close family friend, to earn some pocket money. ‘I saw him grow up,’ says Miah. ‘His father used to bring him in his carry cot.’
Miah was fast friends with Yashvir and Usha Sunak, both Hindu Punjabis born in colonial Kenya and Tanzania respectively, whose parents had migrated from India. After India’s independence, both families left East Africa for Southampton in the mid-to-late 1960s. Yashvir and Usha met in Britain and married. He became a local GP and she ran a pharmacy. They were ‘brilliant conversationalists’ and ‘very strong believers’ who ‘worked very, very hard’, according to Miah, who also recalls that they were ‘passionately British’.
Rishi, the eldest of their three children, was cut from the same patriotic cloth. Not only did the young Sunak fall in love with the game of cricket, he fervently supported England over India at any opportunity. His career, too, has followed one of the most traditional and storied of England’s paths to power. Like five chancellors of the exchequer before him, Sunak was schooled at the ancient and distinguished Winchester College; and like three of those same Wykehamist chancellors, he went on, as was expected, to study at Oxford.
The article includes a photo of Sunak with his wife and in-laws.
Ben Judah had met Rishi Sunak before, in 2015, just before the general election that year. They met up in Northallerton, North Yorkshire:
We were a long way from London – from where Sunak had been ‘parachuted in’ for the seat. During the interview, I had a distinct sense of being the only person in the cafe who knew that this slight man in a Barbour jacket was running for parliament. ‘I tell this story when I’m out and about,’ he said, coffee in hand, ‘that you can come to this country with very little… My grandparents came with very little from a village in northern India, and two generations on, their grandson has this enormous privilege of running as a candidate for parliament. For my family, the route was education.’
Well said.
Sunak’s candidacy in 2015 raised some eyebrows:
He was vying for a seat once presided over by Tory grandees William Hague and Leon Brittan. But I had spent days in Richmond and the surrounding area, reporting on the resentment his sudden arrival had stirred up among certain local Tory notables, who felt the seat in the Dales was rightfully theirs. ‘There was a very acrimonious constituency battle,’ claimed one source, with a lot of hostility to an outsider coming in.
Sunak’s wife had also met with some resistance on the campaign trail, says Judah.
However, Sunak’s father-in-law enthusiastically flew to England where he helped to campaign:
Sunak’s billionaire father-in-law, NR Narayana Murthy, however, has been so enthusiastic about Sunak’s parliamentary career that he’d flown in, and had even been leafleting on his behalf, wearing a Rishi sweatshirt. ‘To be honest,’ said Sunak in Costa Coffee that day, ‘I think it’s patronising to assume minorities should only run in minority seats.’
The article discusses Sunak’s property profile:
On 7 May 2015, Sunak won, with more than 50 per cent of the vote (a Ukip vote of 15 per cent had appeared from nowhere). He put down roots in his new constituency of Richmond, North Yorkshire, augmenting a £10 million property portfolio (metropolitan digs in London – a Kensington mews house, a flat on Old Brompton Road – and a place in California) with a £1.5 million Georgian manor in Yorkshire set across 12 acres, including an ornamental lake. Here, he now entertains the constituency membership with lavish summer parties at which uniformed staff serve champagne and canapés. He has been repeatedly dubbed by newspapers the ‘Maharajah of the Yorkshire Dales’.
The general public know less about those details. Nonetheless, Rishi Sunak has become a household name:
In a swift few years, Sunak has become known as many things: Dishy Rishi to the tabloids; one of the richest MPs in Westminster; the second-youngest-ever chancellor of the exchequer, presiding over a £350 billion package to boost the economy (the largest ever recorded in peacetime); and a former hedge funder whose profile has risen faster than stocks in a vaccine manufacturer.
However dazzling all of this is now, things were very different when Sunak entered Winchester College as an adolescent:
… Winchester would come at a price for the Sunaks. No sooner was he accepted than Rishi’s good fortune immediately foundered: he missed out on the expected scholarship. Desperate not to let the opportunity go to waste, his parents decided to take on the high fees themselves, picking up extra work and making what the chancellor has called considerable ‘sacrifices’. His brother would later follow.
One of his classmates discussed Sunak and described Winchester in the mid- to late 1990s:
Tim Johnson, now a lawyer, was in the boarding house next door. ‘Rishi was a good chap, in boarding-school idiom,’ he recalled. Sunak, he said, was a ‘reasonable cricketer’, who stood out in friendliness; and he was a solid, but never number one, student. ‘Rishi was always expected to do something,’ Johnson remembered. But exactly what, beyond Winchester, was vague. ‘He was always expected to be head boy as he was clever enough, reasonable enough and well behaved enough.’ This became Sunak’s thing – hard work and attainment, becoming the first Winchester head of school from an Indian background.
Sunak was different to other sixth formers in Winchester: a lifelong nondrinker, he wasn’t distracted by the allure of the pub. But there was something else that marked him out from the herd. He was a conservative in every sense: not only in his outlook and demeanour but in his religious attitudes, too – a practising Hindu who avoided beef. At school, where few boys were political, Sunak was clearly ‘associated with the Tories’, said Johnson. It was 1997, The Chemical Brothers were topping the charts and the mood was rebellious. Counterculture, New Labour and ripped jeans were in; the Conservatives were out. ‘That wasn’t his intellectual jam. Rishi didn’t play that game,’ Johnson explained.
‘Everyone was chipper about it when Blair won,’ Johnson said. But not Rishi. His family’s story was closer to Margaret Thatcher’s than that of his bourgeois Labourite classmates. Watching the early results of the landslide on election night 1997, Sunak sat down to write a gloomy article for the school magazine, The Wykehamist, lamenting the news. His main complaint: Europe. ‘He revels in the label of a patriot,’ he complained of Tony Blair, ‘but has plans for the possible break-up of the United Kingdom and membership of an eventual European Superstate.’ The seeds of Brexit were already in his mind.
‘Already,’ fretted Sunak, ‘the New Labour rhetoric sounds worryingly pro-European and avid pro-Europeans are being sent to Brussels’ …
Later, at Oxford, Sunak had a low profile, unlike his predecessor as MP, William Hague:
He was nothing like the young William Hague, who arrived at Oxford fêted and almost a Tory celebrity, or the young Boris Johnson, the blond beast who tore apart the Oxford Union. At Oxford, Sunak was a nobody, much like Tony Blair.
He continued to eschew strong drink:
Oxford acquaintances remember him as a nerdy teetotaller who was ‘just very clearly going into business’. He would ‘make this big thing’ out of drinking Coke in the pub. ‘Rishi was unknown to the student politicians, that gossipy overlapping world, who all knew each other,’ said Marcus Walker, then-president of the Oxford University Conservative Association, now a clergyman. Sunak was never a member.
It is hard to remember how irrelevant and demoralised Tory circles felt after 1997, but some do recall Sunak as a ‘Thatcherite’ and ‘Eurosceptic’. ‘That was absolutely par for the course,’ said Walker. ‘If you were still a Tory after 1997, you were a Eurosceptic. That was all you had left.’
Nevertheless, Sunak did develop a network from his Winchester College and Oxford days. Graduates from Winchester are called Old Wykehamists:
These days, socially, Sunak has been placed by some in Westminster’s Spectator set. He was best man to his lifelong friend and fellow Old Wykehamist James Forsyth, political editor of The Spectator, at Forsyth’s politician-studded wedding in 2011, to Allegra Stratton, the national editor at ITV News – and gave what one guest recalled was ‘one of the most touching best man’s speeches I’ve ever heard’. (In fact, Stratton has recently announced she’s leaving ITV News for a job with Sunak at the Treasury. Some have seen this as very Cameron-esque in its ‘chumocracy’.)
Allegra Stratton, also a good friend of ITV’s Robert Peston, now works for Boris Johnson as his notional press secretary, although she has not yet begun to give press briefings, probably because of coronavirus.
Imagine the son of immigrants having ties to Britain’s two oldest — ancient — magazines: The Spectator and Tatler. Wow.
Tatler‘s Ben Judah also spoke with people who had worked with Sunak during his hedge fund days. They painted a similar character portrait of the Chancellor:
After two years in California completing a CV-topping MBA, he returned to London and Mayfair in 2006, where a new type of boutique finance was booming: hedge funds. He was hired by Sir Chris Hohn at The Children’s Investment Fund (TCI). It was a dream job: a big role at an activist firm off Berkeley Square at the peak of their fame. ‘He appears to have been trusted,’ said a source. Indeed, Sunak was made a partner two years later. Contemporaries remember him ever-ready to meet and greet; a mixture of a junior, deputy and a bag carrier; the perfect foil to Hohn’s bolshy swagger. ‘Ridiculously nice.’ ‘Affable.’ ‘Approachable.’ ‘Charming.’ These are the words that come up again and again among Mayfair types who knew Sunak. The charm was of a particular kind: ‘There are two kinds of people at hedge funds,’ said one source. ‘Handsome and thin smooth-talkers who are always on the phone or going out to lunch with clients, getting them to part with their money. And then quants in the back room with their shirts buttoned up badly.’
Sunak was one of the smooth-talkers, his charm honed on calls to investors, getting them on board with whatever drastic moves the fund wanted to make. The kind of charm that prizes clarity and persuades people to part with their money. It worked: but hedge-fund charm is designed to hide as much as it reveals. The atmosphere at TCI was buccaneering and bold; it both led and profited from a controversial banking raid that eventually meant a £45.5 billion public bailout of the Royal Bank of Scotland. (The Treasury and TCI say Sunak was not involved in the deal.) He left when TCI split in 2009, and joined the breakaway hedge fund Theleme Partners. His new firm’s reputation took a knock when its founder was revealed to have used a notorious tax avoidance scheme. The Labour Party researched Sunak’s past during the 2019 election. ‘But he was too little known for us to use it,’ said one source …
His reasons for entering Parliament are equally obscure. Those who know him have different opinions as to why. One thing that everyone agrees on is his penchant for order:
Many in Westminster see his motivation as status. ‘He’s not an ideologue,’ said one Tory source. ‘He wanted to enter politics in that old-fashioned way, because it was seen as the good thing to do.’ Good, as in socially ambitious. Whether that’s true is another matter, because first came a stint at Policy Exchange, leading a unit researching black and minority ethnic attitudes. The scruffy but influential Conservative think tank world is seen as a de facto holding pen for future special advisers, but it was nonetheless an unexpectedly technical way into Westminster for someone with means.
Sunak quickly made an impression. ‘He’s got that Blair-like ability to hold your eye,’ says Nick Faith, who worked with him there. Sunak cut a snappy figure amid slovenly suits. ‘He’s into his clothing.’ His is not the fusty establishment Rees-Mogg or Nicholas Soames style, but more the wiry Emmanuel Macron look. Everything Sunak wears, many remarked, is immaculate, even at the end of a Treasury work day, and fits perfectly. Faith says that ‘everything, from how Rishi dresses to how he structures his life, is very well organised’. Sunak’s elegant house in London, with a touch of Indian decor, reflects that. ‘Nothing is out of place. For someone with two small kids, that’s quite an achievement.’
Having learned from his background in finance, Sunak also knows how and when to place his bets:
‘His mind works in Excel,’ said one City contemporary. But like all hedge funders, it also works in bets: and the two biggest bets that Sunak has made in his career have paid off spectacularly – Brexit and Boris. David Cameron knew the gravity of his predicament when Sunak came out for Leave. ‘If we’ve lost Rishi, we’ve lost the future of the party,’ he reportedly said. The same thing played out in reverse in June 2019 when Sunak came out for Boris in The Times with two other MPs during the party leadership elections. This was widely seen in Westminster as a decisive turning point: the one where Johnson won over ‘the sensibles’ and pivoted the backbenchers. The PM seems to agree: all three have been handsomely rewarded.
In Parliament, he keeps a low profile but, to those who know him, is loyal:
‘He’s unknown in parliament,’ said one MP. ‘He doesn’t play the parliamentary game at all.’ Tory Remainers are sceptical of him. ‘It’s Star Wars,’ said one MP, referring to the chancellor’s strange and classically ‘geek-chic’ hobby for minutely detailed models of spaceships and video games. ‘Most of his political philosophy comes out of the Star Wars trade wars that are about the independence of various kingdoms from the Empire. He’s not someone intellectual.’ Loyalty has been his strongest suit. Sunak is a No 10 man. ‘He’s a grown-up,’ said one MP. ‘The only grown-up in Downing Street, despite him being 20 years younger than them.’
… At the height of tensions over Brexit last year, he was cheerfully going around Westminster saying he would back ‘no deal’ if push came to shove. He struck the right note, in the right place, at the right time. Tensions between Boris Johnson and Sajid Javid’s teams exploded in February, when the then-chancellor resigned after refusing to fire his own special advisers and submit to an unprecedented joint team with Downing Street, effectively under the stewardship of Dominic Cummings. It was Sunak, with high skills and no clear agenda or faction behind him in parliament, whom Downing Street turned to. He quickly agreed to the joint team, once again becoming the perfect foil for an outsized boss.
Even now, it’s still too early to say whether Rishi Sunak will become a future leader of the Conservative Party and, as such, a possible prime minister. A week is a long time in politics.
When Boris’s erstwhile special adviser Dominic Cummings broke coronavirus rules in travelling from London to Durham and back during Boris’s time in hospital, Sunak tried to calm the ever-turbulent waters surrounding Cummings, who was never popular with the Remainer media. He tweeted this after Cummings’s lengthy press conference in May:
In June, Sunak was tactful about the reopening of shops and businesses in Britain after the first coronavirus lockdown:
He also warned that his generous financial package could not go on indefinitely:
A few weeks later, in early July, pubs were allowed to reopen:
The Government launched the Enjoy Summer Safely campaign. Pictured below is Piccadilly Circus:
On July 8, he issued a Summer Economic Update, with financial help continuing (more here):
This included the launch of his Eat Out To Help Out plan, which lasted to the end of August:
A lot of Labour MPs didn’t like the plan. I don’t know why. Leftists own restaurants, too.
He cut VAT for the hospitality industry, too.
He also issued a detailed jobs plan, including an apprentice scheme:
Some men in the media were taking a shine to Dishy Rishi, including the leftist Owen Jones of The Guardian and Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine:
At that time, the attention being given to Sunak and Boris Johnson got the better of Conservative MP Caroline Dineage, a Culture minister, who was questioned on masks, which were strongly suggested (mandatory only on public transport) but still optional in what now look like heady days. This was from a BBC interview:
… asked why the Prime Minister and Chancellor Rishi Sunak had not worn one in public, she snapped: “You’d have to ask the Prime Minister and the Chancellor that, with respect.
“But it is something that is advised and we keep it under review.”
At the end of September 2020, the coronavirus crisis dragged on. Talk intensified about a winter lockdown.
On September 24, Sunak issued a Winter Economy Plan, about which I wrote at the time. When he presented it in the House of Commons, he advised all MPs to live ‘without fear’.
By October 6, Sunak was being blamed for an uptick in coronavirus ‘cases’ (positive test results, not necessarily hospital admissions) for the Eat Out to Help Out scheme:
A US study, which did not cover Britain, showed that hospitality venues were shown to be responsible. However, the study did not cover workplaces or hospitals. Nonetheless, it is still a contentious point even to this day.
The Sun‘s Harry Cole rightly, in my opinion, defended the Chancellor’s restaurant promotion.
Then talk of hospitality curfews emerged. Fellow Conservative MP Matt Vickers defended the Chancellor’s Eat Out to Help Out programme, which had come to an end five weeks earlier.
The calls for a winter lockdown grew. The Chancellor rightly opposed them:
By then, more areas of England had moved into tiers, indicating more coronavirus cases. Sunak increased financial support to those cities and counties. He also offered more help to businesses, including the self-employed.
By November, some thought a storm was truly brewing between Boris and Rishi. Despite all the talk from the Government about people being able to meet loved ones at Christmas — for the first time in months, for many — a pessimistic undercurrent, which turned out to be accurate, seemed to be part of every news cycle.
Rumours circulated that Sunak was ready to resign. However, on November 1, the Daily Mail reported:
A source said there was a ‘collective decision’ to back a second lockdown, and that Mr Sunak ‘accepted it’ – and he did not threaten to resign, as some whispers around Westminster were suggesting yesterday.
The November lockdown was supposed to prevent a Christmas lockdown, but that was not to be. There was a brief re-opening before Christmas, and on December 19, the hammer fell once more.
Interestingly, the minority MPs in Cabinet shared Sunak’s concerns.
By the middle of December, Sunak was clearly worried about how long the borrowing could go on. On Saturday, December 19, the day when Boris announced Christmas was cancelled, The Spectator reported what the Chancellor said about borrowing and quantitative easing (QE):
‘Are you or anyone else going to guarantee me that, for the duration of this parliament, rates might not go back to 1 per cent?’ he asks, pointing out that this almost happened in March, before the Bank of England started printing money to bring rates back down. ‘There is this very large QE thing that’s going on. No one has done that before. There are plenty of smart investors who are also thinking about the risks of inflation over the next 12 months. Because we are now so levered, small changes have huge cash implications. If I have to come up with £10-£20 billion a year in a few years’ time because things have changed — well, that’s a lot of money.’
To Sunak, it’s not just an economic problem but a political one. ‘If we [Tories] think borrowing is the answer to everything, that debt rising is fine, then there’s not much difference between us and the Labour party,’ he says.
The media criticised him for going to his constituency of Richmond for Christmas. To be fair, he did work while he was there, visiting a local hospital and a vaccine centre. He did not rush back to London.
On February 3, 2021, Sunak rightly accused scientists advising the Government of shifting the goalposts regarding lockdown:
This might be causing a rift in Boris’s Cabinet:
On a brighter note, Time magazine has included Rishi Sunak on its list of 100 ’emerging leaders’. On February 17, the Daily Mail reported:
Under the ‘leaders’ category, Chancellor Rishi Sunak landed a spot on the list, being described as the ‘benevolent face of the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic’ by Times reporter Billy Perrigo.
The Chancellor’s profile piece discussed the furlough scheme, describing how he approved ‘large handouts’ for people whose jobs had been affected by coronavirus.
The piece also paid respect to Sunak’s Eat Out to Help Out scheme, which the magazine described as an attempt to ‘revive the economy’ by subsidizing dining out at restaurants.
Although his profile acknowledges that Sunak bears more responsibility than most for his calls to ease lockdown restrictions, Time’s profile for the Chancellor admits he has earned himself a ‘legion of fans’.
Sunak’s accompanying profile points to a YouGov poll showing him to be the nation’s most popular politician and even tips him to be the bookmakers’ favourite as the next Prime Minister.
Again, a week is a long time in politics. We shall see about the future as and when it happens.
For now, Sunak is focussing on the budget, to be delivered on March 3. He is asking industry leaders for their thoughts.
Michelin-starred chef Gordon Ramsay was one of those leaders:
If Rishi Sunak ever tires of being an MP or Chancellor, a job in media awaits.
He is an excellent interviewer and researched Gordon Ramsay well. The 15-minute video is worth watching.
The list of minority Conservative MPs continues. All being well, more tomorrow.
Shortly after Joe Biden’s inauguration, Fox News posted two interesting videos.
The first was one I never thought I would see. In fact, I hadn’t even imagined it.
Laura Ingraham managed to get an interview with Glenn Greenwald, formerly of The Intercept, which he co-founded. Not so long ago, the publication told him to take a hike. They did not like that he opposed ‘their’ editorial line. Greenwald, although hardly a conservative, questioned current leftist narratives.
Glenn Greenwald is not a fan of Donald Trump, but even he can see that Big Media have clearly overstepped their bounds.
Laura Ingraham begins the segment with three minutes of Inauguration Day coverage contrasting 2021’s with 2017’s. Even Greenwald says he could barely stomach it:
He said that the media react in three ways: a) basic whining, b) complaining that the public can see through media lies and c) downright censorship.
Greenwald said that the public’s
lack of trust will continue to worsen, undoubtedly.
Ingraham asked about the militarisation of Washington, DC. Greenwald posited that the media had to create a story that invoked fear — domestic terrorism — because talking about Joe Biden would have been too dull.
Ultimately, he said that the media want the people to be subservient to the elites and that is why they are
spinning these stories.
He also said that the Democrats want to bring in a
new War on Terror bill.
It would deal with what is perceived to be domestic terrorism:
all designed to entrench powers in their hands that we would otherwise agree they should never have.
Too true.
Tucker Carlson also discussed this on his show around the same time:
Glenn Greenwald said that Adam Schiff (D-California) has been trying to bring in a domestic terrorist threat bill since 2019.
Tucker Carlson introduced another Democrat legislator with the same intent in mind. His name is Rep. Brad Schneider (D-Illinois). No one outside of his constituency or state has ever heard of Brad Schneider. Tucker wonders who put Brad Schneider in charge of the First Amendment.
Tucker’s video goes on with video clips of two other legislators who want to restrict the right to free speech and freedom of assembly, because Americans doing so — Americans with conservative values — are ‘harming’ other Americans.
Unbelievable.
Both videos are worth your time: 13 minutes in total.
Please watch and circulate.
Dems and their water carriers in the media do not have the Constitution in mind with these proposed laws.
Tucker, in particular, makes a valid and impassioned defence of the First Amendment. He read history at university, so he’s not a ‘media studies’ kind of journalist.
America has always been the freest country in the world.
May the Great Republic always be so. May these censors and charlatans cease and desist from removing fundamental American rights from the people.
