OUR most-read blogs of last week all, in their different ways, reflected the dismay and apprehension that political uncertainty and the apparent collapse of any unifying moral or behavioural codes has left many of us feeling. Most read was Laura Perrins’s Shameless and vindictive – the Left’s attempt to silence Phillips, written in the aftermath of the appalling massacre in the Christchurch mosque. Many on the Left, she observed, could barely wait even a few hours ‘before scoring political points and in particular accusing well-known conservative commentators [including Melanie Phillips] of essentially having a hand in the attack’. There was no other word to describe their behaviour than ‘disgusting’.
Next, Laura focused our attention on the reasons for Mrs May’s failed leadership. The Art of War lists five virtues of a commander. Theresa May, she showed, has displayed none of them.
Andrew Cadman’s post, Hold hard, ERG, for all our sakes, argued for at least some politicians to retain their integrity, so that ‘individuals would remain inside the system whom the people still trusted and looked up to, and who had the experience to steer politics to a safe harbour from very dangerous waters’.
The fourth most-read post was Kathy Gyngell’s excoriation of the ‘turncoat’ Daily Mail which she nominated for TCW’s Brexit Wall of Shame, both for betraying the values of its conservative readers and indefensibly maligning the MPs who still stood for them.
Fifth on our most-read list was Michael St George’s forensic analysis of recent parliamentary votes, The Cradle of Anti-Democracy, which made it quite clear ‘that there is in reality no Leave option which can command a majority in a House of Commons determined not to allow one’. This brought him to the conclusion, shared by many, that Parliament is not just a shamocracy but now purposefully anti-democratic.
