Tanya Gold

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Liz Truss Is Finished

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For 40 days, Prime Minister Liz Truss of Britain has ridden a roller coaster of ridicule.

Her “mini budget”, on which she hung her free-market credentials, was a disaster: Bond yields rocketed, the pound tanked, and the markets, far from gratified, were distinctly upset. To mitigate the damage, she reversed a tax cut for high earners — and was rewarded with more mockery. At the Conservative Party conference, protesters played loud clown music, and the police refused to intervene, as sure a sign of a failing administration in Britain as the storming of the Winter Palace in Russia.

Embattled, Ms. Truss raged against the “anti-growth” coalition, opponents of her supposed revitalization of the British economy through tax cuts.…  Seguir leyendo »

Voters Have Finally Punished Boris Johnson

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Lots of people predicted that Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s administration would be a bin fire, but I don’t think anyone expected it to be quite so surreal.

The voters, at least, have noticed, and they have punished him. In Thursday’s local elections Mr. Johnson and his Conservative Party lost more than 400 seats and control of a number of councils, including at least two flagship councils in London. The party expected this and leaked ahead of the election that it would lose an absurd 800 seats. It hoped to make those results look like victory, with the dishonesty we have come to expect.…  Seguir leyendo »

Boris Johnson Is in Trouble

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During the Covid pandemic, we Britons have developed a tabloid obsession with “saving Christmas,” as if it were a beloved pet in danger of being run over.

Yet our Christmas is indeed in peril. The Omicron coronavirus variant, which Prime Minister Boris Johnson said could lead to a “tidal wave” of cases, threatens to upend people’s best-laid festive plans. After last year, when the government imposed restrictions on household mixing on the cusp of Christmas, the possibility of yet another fractured Yuletide is close to retraumatizing the nation.

Ominously, the Christmas tree the Norwegians give us every year to stand in Trafalgar Square, in thanks for Britain’s help during World War II, is notably spindly and bare this winter.…  Seguir leyendo »

Demonstrators scuffled with the police during an anti-lockdown demonstration in London’s Parliament Square on Monday. Credit Facundo Arrizabalaga/EPA, via Shutterstock

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England, we are told, is free. On Monday the government lifted the country’s remaining Covid restrictions — on social distancing, on face masks, on numbers for gatherings, the lot — effectively leaving protection from the coronavirus to vaccinations and, er, the goddess of chance. (Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, the devolved nations, have sensibly chosen to retain some restrictions.)

The timing was immaculate: Over the previous week, 332,170 people tested positive for the coronavirus — the most since January — as the Delta variant courses around the country. New Covid-19 cases are expected to rise, perhaps reaching the dizzying figure of 100,000 a day later in the summer.…  Seguir leyendo »

Prince Harry and Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, at Westminster Abbey in London in March. Credit Tolga Akmen/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

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What is required of the British monarchy?

The answer is obvious, though it is both painful and embarrassing to admit: It is a willingness to be consumed. Sometimes, as when I watched the 12-year-old Prince Harry walk behind the coffin of his mother, Princess Diana, I think monarchy is less a national enchantment, or hoax, than a national sickness. I have done a jigsaw puzzle of the queen’s face. I bought it at the gift shop at Sandringham, the queen’s country home. What is that but an act of control by the subject of the object?

It is hard for outsiders to know what British people want from the royal family.…  Seguir leyendo »

English and Belgian fans on Wednesday in Gdansk, Poland. From there many planned to take buses to Kaliningrad, Russia, where their teams were to play each other Thursday. Credit Kacper Pempel/Reuters

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England plays Belgium in the World Cup on Thursday while Prime Minister Theresa May is in Brussels, for Brexit negotiations. I know which I’ll be watching: football, because nationalism is more fun with balls.

Football is simple and beautiful. Governance is neither. But I should be wary of loving, and certainly of trusting, football, even if I have already devised a sophisticated fantasy in which England wins the World Cup. (It is based on the 1987 victory of a spirited youthful team in the Oxford-Cambridge boat race, and the aggressive tailoring of Gareth Southgate, the England team manager.)

I know that nationalism can begin with sports — I watch children in their white England football shirts adorned with the three lions, those symbols of English kings, awaken to it — but it does not end there.…  Seguir leyendo »

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Who wants Brexit? Not David Cameron, the British prime minister, for he opposes it. Not the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn, whose Euroskepticism is subsumed by fear of Little Englander nationalism. And not even Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and unofficial leader of the campaign to leave the European Union, who has spent much of his career arguing that Britain would be better off in a reformed union.

But Mr. Johnson wants to be prime minister, and many of the Conservative Party members who will select their next leader are euroskeptic. And so last month Mr. Johnson came to Manchester to campaign for Brexit in a disused television studio that was ugly, cold and half-filled with an audience that was largely white and middle age.…  Seguir leyendo »