Politics

I must return, regrettably, to the subject of the Church of England. Readers with long memories may recall the year of our Lord 2024. In February of that year, the people who are meant to care for Canterbury Cathedral allowed a “silent disco” to take place over two nights in the place where St Thomas à Becket was martyred. Two thousand revelers turned up to take part in what became known as “a rave in the nave.” Naturally the Church of England authorities denied that this constituted any sort of defilement of one of England’s holiest places. Fast forward to September of that same year and it was Peterborough Cathedral’s turn. That was when it announced an Ibiza-themed nightclub evening with DJs spinning an “epic” set of “soul, funk and contemporary hits.

A year ago, on the afternoon of September 10, 2025, I was 20 feet away when my friend Charlie Kirk was murdered, shot dead for holding a public debate on whatever topics the students of Utah Valley University wanted to talk about. I spent the rest of the day in the waiting room of Timpanogos Hospital, first hoping for a miracle and then coming to grips with the miracle that did not come. I had little to do except reply to the dozens of messages pouring in, asking how I was holding up. Over and over, I shared how I honestly felt: I was heartbroken, but beyond that, I felt ill, sick to my stomach not just over the friend I had lost in the most horrible way imaginable, but over what it meant for the country Charlie loved so dearly. America's freedom of speech is nigh-absolute.

"People don’t need no jobs," said Mike Judge’s marvelous comic creation, President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Dew Herbert Camacho. "I’m gonna tell you what people need, people need money, lots and lots of money… we gonna print so much damn money, I’m gonna give every single American one million dollars. Ain’t gonna be no more one percenters. Everybody’s gonna be million percenters." President Donald Trump hasn’t yet gone full Camacho. But he’s getting there. Last night, at the glitzy Republican midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, he introduced the "Trump Dividend" – a $5,000 reward for every adult US citizen on the condition that his party keeps the House and Senate in November.

On my second day as Britain’s ambassador to Yemen, just after the so-called “Arab Spring” in January 2011, I visited one of the capital’s more important tribal sheikhs. This was not, by diplomatic standards, an entirely routine call. I had 23 armed bodyguards, an advance reconnaissance party, and a considerable convoy of vehicles for what was, in geographical terms, a fairly short journey through the capital, Sanaa. The precautions were justified. My predecessor but one had been attacked with an RPG by a young terrorist acting on behalf of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. Yemen has always been a country where hospitality and danger sit surprisingly comfortably alongside one another.

What happened in Portsmouth last night was extraordinary. Citizens waded into the bitter sea to try to prevent the arrival of foreign men who were all but ferried in by the authorities. Ordinary people stepped up as reluctant, unpaid border guards while actual border guards rolled out the red carpet for a hundred blokes from heaven knows where. Everyday Brits stood vigil over our shores while the state threw those shores open to all-comers. The last frontier of our kingdom’s hard-won sovereignty is a ragtag line of fuming Portsmouth locals How do we even define this? What do we call it? The media has reached for that small, familiar word “protest,” as if this were a mere outburst of public anger over government policy. It was so much more than that.