Andrew Stuttaford
A
ndrew was born in England far, far too many years ago, but his day job (working in the international financial markets) took him across the Atlantic in 1991 and he has been resident in New York City ever since. Andrew writes frequently for a number of publications about a wide range of cultural and political issues. He is a contributing editor of both National Review and National Review Online and can often be found on the Corner, particularly at the weekend. He tweets as @astuttaford and a sporadically updated archive of his work can be found at andrewstuttaford.com. Andrew can be contacted at [email protected].
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John McDonnell, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s principal lieutenant and — Jezza is not the brightest red in the asylum — much of his brainpower too, isn’t that enthused by this democracy thing. McDonnell, who is also Labour’s “shadow” chancellor ... -
Cultural Appreciation Update
Yahoo News: Indigenous advocates from around the world are calling on a UN committee to ban the appropriation of Indigenous cultures — and to do it quickly. Delegates from 189 countries, including Canada, are in Geneva this week as part of a ... -
May, Fly
Charlie makes a strong (and, to me, persuasive) case for British Prime Minister Theresa May to stand down—and sooner rather than later. He also asks “what…is the case for her staying on”. Good question. The problem for the ... -
Britain’s Election: Long Night Ahead, Long Knives Ahead
So, it’s now being said—and not just by bitter-enders–that the exit polling may understate the Conservatives’ support. The very first results from the Northeast suggest that a significant slice of ‘old Labour’ UKIP may be going to ... -
Britain’s Election: May to Make It?
Both anecdotal accounts (neatly backed up by a friend—and generally objective analyst—who has been canvassing for the Conservatives in the British Midlands) and the polls suggest that the Corbyn tide may be receding. May could be looking at ... -
No Enemies to the Left, Few Enemies in the Gutter: The Company Corbyn Keeps
With the polls continuing, it seems, to grind away at the Tory lead (Ipsos MORI has it down to five percentage points) in the British general election (voting will be on Thursday), many thanks to the reader who alerted me ... -
Theresa May (Not Win)
I don’t agree with The Spectator’s take on the ‘dementia tax’ (which is/was bad politics and bad policy), but much of its new editorial on the failings of British Prime Minister Theresa May’s election campaign hits ... -
Dismay
It may well be that the current concern over the Labour Party’s surge in the opinion polls will be remembered as one of those panics (“wobbly Thursday” from 1987 comes to mind) that occur from time to time in many ... -
Corbyn Draws Closer
First Brexit, then Trump, then…. Corbyn? The latest opinion polls from Britain make unnerving reading. The Independent: Labour has slashed the Conservatives’ lead in the polls to just five points, the latest YouGov/Times results show. The party has made ... -
Against Free Speech: Merkel, May (and Macron)
Theresa May and Angela Merkel have quite a bit in common. For example, both are suspicious—more than suspicious—of the free market and both are daughters of clergymen (speculation, of course, but those two facts might not be entirely ... -
Theresa May’s Dementia Tax (2)
Some early reactions to Theresa May’s dementia tax proposal: From the (Tory) Bow Group: “These proposals will mean that the majority of property owning citizens could be transferring the bulk of their assets to the government upon death for ... -
Macron the 'Post-Partisan' and other Stories
France’s new president, Emmanuel Macron, has been putting together his government, drawing on figures from the right, left and center as well as a handful who have never been actively involved in politics before. That’s led at least ... -
‘The Finnish Jihadi/Islamist Scene’
From something I posted on the Corner in 2013: Bored, bored on a recent flight to Finland I turned to the Finnair magazine in the desperate hope of something. What I found was a piece (“Invest in Finland!”), by the country’... -
A Vote For 'Europe'?
Macron’s impressive win (now looking like 65.8/34.2) in the French presidential election was, I suspect, more than anything else a vote against Le Pen. Predictably enough, however, the usual suspects are claiming that it was a vote for ’Europe’ (by ... -
Macron it is
As expected, Emmanuel Macron, the establishment candidate (however much this might be denied), has managed a comfortable 63-37 (or more – the numbers are not final) win over Marine Le Pen in the French presidential elections. Turnout looks to have been ... -
Making a Meal of Brexit
Judging by the leaks coming out in Germany (for a good discussion of their implications go to the EU Referendum blog here), last week’s dinner between British prime minister Theresa May and Jean-Claude Juncker, the EU’s top bureaucrat, ... -
"Culturally Loaded"
From the New York Times’ Public Editor (my emphasis added): One reader wrote in this week to ask why The Times, in a story on a Michigan doctor who is accused of performing female genital mutilation on two 7-year-old girls ... -
Fillon Endorses Macron for the French Presidency
Fillon, the defeated candidate of the center-right, has now endorsed Macron, saying that Le Pen would lead France to ruin. When Fillon won the Republican nomination—and before scandal intervened—he seemed well-positioned to take the presidency too. He is ... -
Ça ira (or not)
With France going to the polls in the first round of its presidential elections on Sunday, this long, reflective piece by Chris Caldwell in City Journal is well worth your time. Indeed it would be worth your time even if ... -
Games for May (in June)
The Guardian: Theresa May has said she wants to hold a snap general election on 8 June, despite repeatedly claiming that she was against the idea of an early vote. In a surprise statement outside Downing Street on Tuesday morning, the ... -
France 2017
Theodore Dalrymple, writing in City Journal: As every married person knows, silences can be pregnant with meaning, even if the meaning is not immediately clear. The silence in the French press about a recent startling event in Paris is surely ... -
United: Even First Class is no Haven
The Los Angeles Times reports (my emphasis added): Fearns needed to return early so he paid about $1,000 for a full-fare, first-class ticket to Los Angeles. He boarded the aircraft at Lihue Airport on the island of Kauai, took his seat ... -
Robbie the Robber: Automation and Pay
If automation has played its part in rising structural employment and, for that matter, rising underemployment too (it may be a subjective test, but it says something that, according to a 2016 PayScale survey nearly a half of American workers consider ... -
Automation: Another Day Another Report
The latest report on the disruption that the automation wave may bring in its wake makes for no more cheery reading than its predecessors. It probably doesn’t help that it’s produced by the International Bar Association. Lawyers are ... -
Automation: The Beat Goes On
The New York Times: Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they’ve declared a different winner: the robots. The ... -
Middlebury and The Heretic
Looked at one way, the attempt to silence Charles Murray and the violence that followed it was nothing more than another chapter in a long power struggle, but there was something else about it, something more disturbing still. Writing in ... -
Germany's Military: Looking a Little, Well, Obsolete
In a post the other day I mentioned how German foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel (a Social Democrat from the left-hand side of Angela Merkel’s governing coalition) seemed to hint at foot-dragging over his country’s commitment to boost its ... -
History: "Said To" Have Happened
I haven’t seen Bitter Harvest, the new film made about the Holodomor, the man-made famine that transformed Ukraine from bread basket to mass grave, so I have absolutely no view on its artistic merit. It may be terrible (the ... -
The President and Russia
President-elect Steinmeier that is: Did you think I meant someone else? Just under a week ago, Germany’s parliamentary assembly elected Frank-Walter Steinmeier as the country’s new president. Steinmeier is a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the ... -
Pope Francis and Venezuela: Throwing Another Tyranny a Lifeline
Critics of Pope Francis who describe him as a ‘socialist’ are fairly wide off the mark. Perhaps that was inevitable: Describing the ideology of a pope in conventionally political terms is, by definition, going to be a struggle. That said, ... -
Greece, Sliding
Here we go again. The Wall Street Journal: The International Monetary Fund warned on Tuesday that Greece once again risks a eurozone exit amid stalled bailout talks, sending the clearest signal yet the emergency lender isn’t likely to soon ... -
Belarus: When Despots Fall Out
For years Belarus, a former Soviet republic that saw its attempt at democracy snuffed out by Alexander Lukashenka, the thug who has run the place since the 1990s, has been seen as little more than an annex of Russia, but ... -
Trump, ‘Classic Dictator Moves,’ and the NEA
Marlow Stern, writing in The Daily Beast: [R]eports [have] surfaced that Trump, a Philistine whose favorite film is forty-five assorted minutes of Bloodsport, was planning to cut the National Endowment of the Arts. It’s a classic dictator move, ... -
Brexit’s Day in Court
The first stage of leaving the EU is to file a notice to quit under Article 50 of the EU Treaty. This triggers a two-year period in which the terms of the divorce must be worked out, an ambitious enough goal ... -
From Versailles to Davos
Versailles PBS: The Petit Hameau (The Little Hamlet), or “Le Hameau de la Reine,” was situated in the English-style gardens of the Petit Trianon. Created in 1783, the Petit Hameau was a mock farm area, complete with farmhouse, dairy, and poultry ... -
EU, Robot
Asimov’s three laws are not, apparently, enough. The Guardian: The European parliament has urged the drafting of a set of regulations to govern the use and creation of robots and artificial intelligence, including a form of “electronic personhood” to ... -
“Legal, Tax, Institutional Changes”
Ken Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard (and previously an economist at the IMF and at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System) is annoyed by those primitives who object to the abomination that is a negative interest ... -
Brexit With Blinders: Theresa May’s Cunning Plan
British Prime Minister Theresa May’s prolonged silence over the type of Brexit she favored was, I have hoped, both a matter of clever tactics (it wouldn’t make sense to reveal too much ahead of what will be very ... -
The War Against Vaping: National Park Service Proposes New Puritan Exhibit (Itself)
Turn wearily to that old Mencken quote yet again: Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. Virtue signaling (via Wikipedia): The term was first used in signalling theory, to describe any behavior that could be used to ... -
Japan's 'Perverse' Immigration Policy
Writing in the Financial Times, John Plender wonders why Japan, seemingly stuck in the economic doldrums for two decades, has not seen a populist upsurge comparable with those seen in the US and parts of the EU: The starting point ... -
Wilders Verdict: Free Speech is Not A Dutch value
Geert Wilders, the leader of Holland’s Party for Freedom (PVV), has been found guilty of, to quote a CNN report “of inciting discrimination and “insulting a group” after a trial over statements he made about Moroccans.” CNN: Wilders, the ... -
Fillon, France and Putin
When it comes to political predictions, I’m not exactly on a roll at the moment. Nevertheless, after last weekend’s primary of the right, I’ll risk another. The next French president will be François Fillon of the ... -
Cuba Before Castro
There was, to be sure, a great deal that was wrong—badly wrong—with Cuba before Castro’s revolution, but it’s worth noting this extract from a useful PBS summary of the position the island before Fidel brought disaster: ... -
Mass Murderer Dies, Mourned by Many
A tyrant has died in Havana to the regret, it seems, of quite a few. Pope Francis: “Sad news” Jeremy Corbyn, leader of Britain’s Labour Party: “He will be remembered both as an internationalist and a champion of social ... -
Leonard Cohen (1934-2016)
Just under four years ago, I was lucky enough to hear Leonard Cohen at Madison Square Garden nearly four decades after I first stumbled across his early recordings. Yesterday this grand old man died, not long after releasing a fine ... -
Germany: "Everything about this mosque made me feel uneasy"
One obvious concern about Angela Merkel’s decision last year to, so to speak, throw open the doors to Germany was the obvious risk that potential jihadists were among those that she was welcoming into the country. That concern hasn’... -
A Gargoyle over the Lower East Side
The New York Times: The copper statue of Vladimir Lenin stood above the Lower East Side cityscape for more than 20 years, facing southwest with one arm perpetually raised as if in mid-oration. Visible from neighboring buildings and the sidewalk below, ... -
Looting The Dead: Clinton's Proposed Death Tax Increase
We can, I think, be confident that tonight’s debate will not revolve around the death tax, but Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a massive hike in the slice that this morbid levy takes from the (very) richest corpses (with ... -
Climate Change: Sarkozy Goes There
Count me skeptical about former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, but I had to warm, so to speak, to this comment (via Politico): Sarkozy, who hopes to secure the center-right Les Républicains party’s presidential nomination, told business leaders earlier ... -
If You Like Your $10 Bill You Can Keep Your $10 Bill
The war on cash grinds on. Writing in NRODT in April I noted: Government gathers power sometimes in great swoops, sometimes by stealth, and sometimes in slow, sly increments, foreshadowed by position papers, op-eds, and regulatory tweaks designed to address ...
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Progressivism, The Right Side of History and All That
Some wise words from Ed West at The Spectator, writing from a British perspective, but with some applicability over here (my emphasis added): [I]t’s an illustration of how progressivism has become internalised that even generation rent can’t ... -
Corbyn or ‘Soft Brexit’: Choose One
Theresa May has just three key matters to attend to in what ought to be the death throes of her shattered premiership. The first is to cut a deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party good enough to give ... -
Britain’s Election: 1974 Redux?
The BBC has just updated its exit poll in a way that suggests the Tories might scrape very close to a majority. The pound remains very weak. There is, of course, chatter about the possibility of Corbyn as prime minister, ... -
The Ides of May?
BBC Exit poll: The survey taken at polling stations across the UK suggests the Tories could get 314 MPs when all the results have been counted in Thursday’s election. Labour would get 266, the Lib Dems 14, UKIP none and the SNP 34, ... -
After London
Almost immediately after the terrorist attack in London, Donald Trump took to Twitter, and (as so often) none too wisely. One of his tweets read: “At least 7 dead and 48 wounded in terror attack and Mayor of London says there is ‘... -
CNN — Taking the Spice out of Pepper
If we needed yet another reminder of just how joyless and just how pious our establishment media has become, this CNN article suggesting who would be on a reworked Sgt. Pepper cover today is not a bad place to start. ... -
Meet Mr. Corbyn
Two years ago, in a vivid reminder of why Mensheviks have a way of losing out, Jeremy Corbyn was handed the chance to run for the leadership of Britain’s Labour party by some soft-headed members of the soft Left. ... -
Trump in Europe, Festivus in May
Airing of Grievances Feats of Strength -
After Manchester
Writing in Spiked, Alaa al-Ameri, a British-Libyan economist and writer: Britain has a long history of (relatively gradual) immigration and, most importantly, assimilation that has been, as much as anything, the result of acceptance by host communities – mostly at the ... -
Theresa May – Champion of the Predatory State
As Britain’s election campaign trundles on, Theresa May’s planned ‘dementia tax’, an attack on savers, aspiration, fairness and some her party’s key constituencies, may not (surprise!) be playing too well on the doorstep. Here’s what the (... -
Theresa May’s Dementia Tax
Theresa May has more than a touch of Teflon about her (her record as Home Secretary—interior minister—was notable mostly for broken promises on immigration and displays of petty and not so petty authoritarianism). Even more than that that ... -
May not Maggie - The Tories' (Further) Left Turn
Britain’s Conservative Party has now unveiled its election manifesto. The Daily Telegraph: Theresa May has sought to distance the Tories from Margaret Thatcher and said her government will not “drift to the right”. There is clearly no danger of ... -
Sessions: Digging a Deeper Hole
NBC: Attorney General Jeff Sessions ordered federal prosecutors this week to seek the maximum punishment for drug offenses, in one of the clearest breaks yet from the policies of the Justice Department under the Obama administration. A break from the ... -
The Outsider?
There’s been a lot of talk about how France’s President-Elect Emmanuel Macron is an outsider. And in one sense, it is quite obviously true. He left the Socialists and formed his own En Marche! party (complete with Jeb! ... -
Brexit: WTO, No
Theresa May’s Tories reported an impressive series of wins in British local elections on Thursday, helped both by voters’ distaste for the Labour party’s hard left leadership and the collapse of the UKIP vote. Much of the explanation ... -
Keep (Some of) the Deductions
An iron rule of politics is never to legislate in a way that implies that your side will always be in power. As Veronique points out, there’s plenty to praise in President Trump’s tax package, but there are, ... -
Macron’s Moment
The news that Emmanuel Macron, the nice centrist candidate, was going to win the first round of France’s presidential election was greeted with undisguised delight by the European Union’s ruling elite. Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European ... -
It's Macron (It Seems)
The first numbers are out, and they appear to show that the run-off in France’s presidential elections will be between Emmanuel Macron, the Blairite (for want of a better shorthand) on 23.7 percent and Marine Le Pen (21.7 percent), who needs ... -
Other People's Money
A Labour win in the upcoming British general election (or even a strong showing by the inaccurately named Liberal Democrats, something that I would not rule out) would be terrible news for the UK, but Theresa May’s Tories seem ... -
“Creative Destruction at its Best”
The beat goes on… The New York Times (my emphasis added): Between 2010 and 2014, e-commerce grew by an average of $30 billion annually. Over the past three years, average annual growth has increased to $40 billion. “That is the tipping point, right there,” ... -
Brexit – The Return of the Norway Option?
As British Prime Minister Theresa May’s preparations—to give that ill-thought collection of platitudes and impossibilities too kind a noun—for ‘hard Brexit’, a dog’s Brexit if ever I saw one, pave the way towards who knows what, ... -
United 3411
You’ve probably all seen the appalling images of that poor man—a doctor, apparently, who didn’t want to miss seeing his patients the next day— being dragged off that flight at O’Hare. With the caveat that we ... -
And Now Stockholm
Another week, another atrocity, this time in Stockholm. Douglas Murray, writing for The Spectator: I am tempted simply to write ‘copy’, ‘paste’ and ‘repeat’ with links to my recent piece on the Westminster attack. Which in turn referenced my piece ... -
After Middlebury: Campus as “Holy Space”
This weekend’s Wall Street Journal includes an excellent interview with Jonathan Haidt, an academic fighting the good fight against the lack of ‘viewpoint diversity’ in American universities, an absence with devastating consequences for free speech and, for that matter, ... -
Brexit: It Begins...
So, the clock is about to start ticking. BBC: Prime Minister Theresa May is to officially notify the European Union next Wednesday that the UK is leaving. Downing Street said she would write a letter to the European Council, adding ... -
Middlebury: Thoughtcrime and Punishment
Paul Crookston has already discussed yesterday’s attack on free speech at Middlebury College, but it’s worth adding how it concluded. After Charles Murray had been forced to abandon his speech, he was escorted to a separate room where ... -
Enlightenment Fail : A Dane is Charged with Blasphemy
The New York Times (my emphasis added): A 42-year-old man who burned a Quran and posted a video of it on Facebook has been charged with blasphemy in Denmark, a striking decision by prosecutors in a country that is largely ... -
Italy: Drowning not Wading
In a post the other day, I mentioned how Greece was (yet again) sliding towards another crisis in its relationship with its creditors. This was despite the euro zone crisis being, you know, over. I concluded that post in this ... -
Iran: Sweden’s ‘Feminist’ Government Submits
From the Swedish government’s website: Sweden has the first feminist government in the world. This means that gender equality is central to the Government’s priorities — in decision-making and resource allocation. A feminist government ensures that a gender equality ... -
Böhmermann, Erdogan and Merkel's Illiberal Democracy
BBC (my emphasis added): The Hamburg court said that it stands by its order, issued last May, which prohibited republication of parts of a poem by German comic Jan Boehmermann. The satirist, who is barred for repeating the majority of ... -
Bungling Brexit
There have been few more consistent Brexiteers than Christopher Booker. The Great Deception, the book he co-wrote with EU Referendum’s Richard North, first published in 2005 and later updated (you can download it here) was a relatively rare British attempt ... -
Germany, the Euro and Currency 'Manipulation'
When it comes to recent comments on Germany from Peter Navarro, Donald Trump’s top trade adviser, (which are now causing some outrage across the Atlantic) there’s quite a bit to unpack, but when it comes to the advantage ... -
May’s (Unnecessarily?) Hard Road to Brexit
We shall never know whether Theresa May could have managed to secure the Norway option (membership of the EEA- the European Economic Area) for a post-Brexit UK, but for whatever reason (both neglected homework and political cowardice have, sadly, their ... -
Brexit: An Oblivious Uncoupling
British Prime Minister Theresa May yesterday announced that she was going for a hard (or hardish) Brexit. What she wants, she said, is “a bold and ambitious Free Trade Agreement with the European Union. This agreement should allow for the ... -
Davos and ‘Responsible’ Leadership
It’s time once again for that annual orgy of self-congratulation and de haut en bas preaching better known as the Davos ‘World Economic Forum’. Donald Trump will not be sending any official representatives (as symbolic gestures go, not the ... -
Angela Merkel: Leading “Europe’s fight for liberal values” (and, maybe, censorship).
Financial Times, January 2, 2017: With Donald Trump moving into the White House, Ms Merkel has faced calls to assume the mantle of leader of the western liberal world from Barack Obama. She dismisses the demands as “grotesque and absurd,” but she ... -
Vaccines: Nut on the Case?
CBS: President-elect Donald Trump met with Robert Kennedy Jr., a prominent vaccine skeptic, on Tuesday. According to incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer, the two discussed “the issues pertaining to vaccines and immunizations.” After the meeting concluded, Kennedy told ... -
Cameron's Downing Street and the War Against Cash
It would be nice to think that a British government of, supposedly, the free market ‘center right’ would want to have nothing to do with initiatives that increase the power of the state, reduce the privacy of the individual and ... -
An Election in Macedonia
The Macedonia expert around here is Jay Nordlinger (take a look at his ‘Homage to Macedonia’ in a May 2015 NRODT issue). To read that piece is, among other topics, to read of a prolonged contest between the VMRO-DPMNE (abbreviated to “... -
More Equal Than Others
Reuters (December 2010) (emphasis added) Euro zone policymakers deliberately chose to “violate” the bloc’s rules in rescuing Greece and Ireland, closing ranks to protect the single currency area’s future, French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde was quoted as saying. The ... -
Italy’s Vote
Sunday’s decisive rejection by Italy’s voters of the constitutional reforms proposed by the country’s center-left prime minister, Mario Renzi, was expected (thus the muted reaction in the markets), but it has revived fears/hopes that Italy might ... -
European Values: Juncker on Castro
In the course of a post yesterday on the, well, interesting reaction of certain political figures to Castro’s death, I included these words by Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the EU Commission (its top bureaucrat): A hero [for] many ... -
Castro: A Letter from Khrushchev
Like many millenarians, Castro welcomed the thought of the purifying fire to come. Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, decades into a career in which had waded through blood, remained convinced that communism still offered the promise of a radiant future to ... -
‘Fake News’, ‘Post-Truth’ and All the Rest
Spiked’s Brendan O’Neill wades into the controversy over ‘fake news’, a controversy that, tellingly, does not revolve around the likes of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart, but rather involves claims that made-up news on social media may have ... -
Brexit and the Judges
Over on the home page, Tom Rogan attacks yesterday’s ruling by the High Court in London that the British government must secure parliamentary approval before pressing the button (notification under Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty) that begins the formal ... -
Brexit's Hard Pounding
The slump in the pound has—how can I put it—attracted some attention in recent days, and has put a spring in the step of those who want to talk Brexit down. The Financial Times, long something of a ... -
The Gripes of Roth
In the immediate aftermath of Britain’s Brexit vote Martin Roth, the (German) director of London’s Victoria & Albert museum announced that he was stepping down. The Guardian reported: The Guardian understands that Roth had always intended to stand down ... -
Pope Francis: the Man with the Answers
AP: Pope Francis has encouraged Europeans to welcome refugees, calling authentic hospitality “our greatest security against hateful acts of terrorism.” Francis Saturday spoke to alumni of Jesuit schools in Europe who were in Rome for a conference on refugees. There’... -
Negative on Negative Interest Rates
Catching up on a back issue (from late August) of The Spectator, I noticed this from Liam Halligan: The European Central Bank went first in 2014, followed by Denmark, Sweden, Switzerland and, earlier this year, Japan. Private-sector banks in these countries ... -
Basket Case
NBC: Hillary Clinton urged supporters late Friday not to be complacent about Donald Trump’s chances of winning the election, saying half of his backers were “desperate for change” but the other half belonged in a “basket of deplorables.” Appearing ...