Matthew d'Ancona

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King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, attend a ceremony at Buckingham Palace in London on Thursday. (Reuters)

If the past decade has an overarching lesson, it is that, in politics, culture and society, emotion is often more powerful than reason. The coronation on May 6 of King Charles III and Camilla, Queen Consort, will not resolve the daunting array of problems facing the citizens of the United Kingdom. But — if only for a weekend — it will make a great many of them feel much better.

The ceremony in Westminster Abbey — the site of royal coronations since the 11th century — will be a ritual that, for a modern Group of Seven democracy, is almost unbelievably antiquated and full of flummery.…  Seguir leyendo »

Prime Minister Theresa May in London on Friday.

Like a stumbling figure from “The Walking Dead,” Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, has yet to realize that she is a political zombie. For all her poise as she spoke on Downing Street on Friday, the day after Britain’s general election, when she declared her intention to continue in office, she is roaming the land of the undead. Sooner or later, reality is going to bite — hard.

Once again, almost all the pundits, pollsters and political betting wonks got it wrong. Less than a year after Brexit stunned this country, and seven months after Donald Trump won in the United States, a political outcome that seemed certain and preordained was upset by people actually going to vote.…  Seguir leyendo »

The Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament reopened Thursday, after the attack on Wednesday. Credit Niklas Halle'n/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

“The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts,” George Eliot wrote in “Middlemarch.” On Thursday, in a statement to the House of Commons about the attack that had occurred right outside Parliament the day before, Prime Minister Theresa May echoed that sentiment, paying tribute to the “millions of acts of normality” that are the most powerful weapons against extremist violence. This was London’s counterattack: to show that it takes more than a murderous rampage through Westminster to shut down this mighty city.

Somber but undaunted, members of Parliament of all parties expressed their admiration for the courage of the police, doctors and nurses who had responded with such speed and vigor, rushing to help those who had been mowed down by car on Westminster Bridge.…  Seguir leyendo »

Nigel Farage, center, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, at Trump Tower in New York on Nov. 12. Yana Paskova/Getty Images

When the British voted to leave the European Union on June 23, I assumed that the meaning and ramifications of this historic decision would be a topic unchallenged in the chatterings of the Westminster village for months, probably years. I was wrong.

Since the early hours of Nov. 9, the political class in this country has been mesmerized by Donald J. Trump’s election, and what it signifies. Brexit remains the inescapable backdrop, an often dreary legal and administrative process that is now the subject of a rancorous court case. But the main event is elsewhere: In the corridors of Westminster, the president-elect’s victory and his plans are virtually all that ministers and members of Parliament want to talk about.…  Seguir leyendo »

‘On Remembrance Sunday, Jeremy Corbyn has already been compelled to promise his nervous parliamentary party that he will not be sporting a white poppy.’ Photograph: Dominic Lipinski/PA

When I read yesterday that Jeremy Corbyn could not see “what there is to commemorate about the first world war”, I thought at once of my great-uncle Jack Arnot. A mining engineer who joined up early in the conflict and was a sergeant in the Northumberland Fusiliers, he was shot at the Somme in 1916, and died after 30 days struggling for life. That seems worth commemorating to me, if not to the Labour leader.

I am sure that Corbyn’s allies will point out that his remarks were made in April 2013, more than two years before he succeeded Ed Miliband, and that they were inspired precisely by a sense of outrage at the “mass slaughter of millions of young men on the western front and all the other places” and that the true target of his invective was the Cameron regime.…  Seguir leyendo »

After Britain was reportedly dismissed as a “small island” by a Russian official last week, David Cameron took the steering wheel and sped off to compose his response. For security reasons, prime ministers are not normally supposed to drive. But at the G20 summit in St Petersburg, there were electric cars to ferry the participants from one location to another. Cameron decided to commandeer one such buggy, and give his officials, Craig Oliver, Liz Sugg and Helen Bower, a lift to the press conference.

Occasionally hair-raising as Cameron-Cabs turned out to be, the team was calm enough to help the driver draw up his inventory of British accomplishments, which the PM duly rattled off to the media when they arrived – ending, correctly, with a quip: “If I start talking about this 'blessed plot, this sceptred isle, this England’, I might have to put it to music, so I think I’ll leave it there.”…  Seguir leyendo »

To be on the road with a new prime minister on his first big international adventure is to observe him before the habits and resentments set in. Things are always more interesting when they are still a little provisional, rough-edged and buzzing with new enthusiasm. This week we saw Gordon Brown feeling his way into the job, taking his band across the Atlantic to try and break America.It suits him. I think he is beginning to clock how much more appealing he is as a new boy than a know-all. One of the lessons he says he has learned in the past few weeks is that things happen, events come and go, you have to keep your focus on the fundamentals.…  Seguir leyendo »