Things we are madly wrong about – my dispatch from the frontlines of modern madness
On several of the most important questions of our time, Britain has lost its grip on reality. We are wrong about power, wrong about morals and wrong about religion, and the confidence with which this country makes these errors is matched only by the paucity of the thinking behind them.
Welcome to this week’s dispatch from the frontlines of modern madness.
The fairy tale of the rules-based order
Donald Trump’s proposed purchase of Greenland, and the puffed-up outrage that followed, should finally have put to bed the idea that the ‘rules-based international order’ is anything other than a polite fiction.
After all, think about it for a moment and ask the most basic question: what ultimately enforces rules? Not goodwill, not international conferences and not hand-wringing op-eds. Power enforces rules. And power is unevenly distributed.
Who has it? Britain? Don’t be absurd — not for a very long time. Denmark, Germany, France, Italy? No. The United States has it. One of the primary reasons Europe has the borders it does, and enjoys the peace it has, is because the United States entered two world wars and helped us to win them — with power.
Britain once understood this. After the fall of France and before the United States entered the war, our brave island nation stood effectively alone against Hitler. We don’t seem capable of decisions like that anymore. Instead, we posture against the United States — our greatest ally — while selling the Chagos Islands, supinely tolerating mass immigration and waving through a Chinese mega-embassy in London.
Those offering woolly-headed, faux-moral outrage are cosplaying leadership. They are, quite literally, green about Greenland. I don’t see them standing against historic — and likely future — Chinese expansionism, nor saying anything of substance about Iran. Pretend moral panic is easier than geopolitical seriousness.
Trump understands something that European leaders do not: that Western hegemony only exists if it is reinforced. From Greenland to Venezuela, he is unapologetic about power. And uncomfortable as this may be for the majority of the Davos herd, that may well make the world safer for all of us.
People have grown soft-minded if they think this doesn’t all come down to power. It always does. The only real question is which side you are on.
The Panopticon as ‘ultimate vision’
In one of the most shocking the-quiet-bit-was-said-out-loud moments, the UK Home Secretary has said her ‘ultimate vision’ for criminal justice is the Panopticon using AI and surveillance technology.
For the uninitiated, the Panopticon was a prison design proposed by the philosopher Jeremy Bentham: a circular structure in which inmates could be observed at any moment from a central tower. The genius, and the horror, lay in internalised surveillance. You behave as if watched at all times.
Mahmoud’s comments are horrific. How can the Panopticon be your ‘ultimate vision’, unless you are Big Brother incarnate?
A government source apparently told the Telegraph that ‘this doesn’t mean watching people who are non-criminals – but she feels like, if you commit a crime, you sacrifice the right to the kind of liberty the rest of us enjoy.’
This assumes several things that experience tells us not to assume. That governments restrain themselves. That definitions of ‘criminal’ remain narrow, or ‘criminal’ even. That surveillance powers are never repurposed.
We are already one of the most surveilled countries in the world and what has this actually done for us? Rather than cure crime, it’s reinforced a depressing feeling of ‘the eyes of the state’ being ‘on you at all times’.
I will remain sceptical about the scope of these plans until the government shows the same zeal for stopping the mass illegal entry of millions — criminals by definition — as it does for watching the rest of us.
Boo, hiss, Jesus is back!
At the end of last year, the media worked itself into a mild panic over the ‘far-right resurgence’ of Christianity. The Church of England solemnly warned that ‘Christian nationalism’ is a corruption of faith. As I noted previously, these days the British media would slap Alfred the Great with a Christian Nationalist label.
It is, of course, far easier to criticise white people — particularly working-class ones — for being the wrong sort of Christians. It is harder to do so when race complicates the narrative, as protected characteristics have a hierarchy.
Black UK rapper DC3, real name Daniel Chenjerai, was interviewed by Geeta Guru-Murthy on BBC News and asked who his heroes were. ‘Santan Dave, Kendrick Lamar, most of all Jesus Christ,’ he replied.
Cue the now-famous sharp intake of breath.
She has denied she hissed, or even reacted in any way, insisting she was just breathing: ‘For the record, I was simply breathing in before moving to end the interview. To suggest anything else is just untrue.’ Listen for yourself. You’re not stupid, even though the BBC thinks you are.
The clip, titled ‘JESUS CHRIST ON BBC NEWS’ on Daniel’s X account, has amassed millions of views. He followed it with a diss track which is not only funny, but, in this middle-aged listener’s opinion, genuinely good.
Daniel is a breath of fresh air and the Christian resurgence is one of the most hopeful developments in Britain right now. He has won Best Newcomer at the Premier Gospel Awards 2025 and is nominated for Best Newcomer and Best Gospel Act at the MOBOs.
Whatever the commentariat thinks, something real is happening. Maybe it’s the Holy Spirit.
Assisted dying and the economics of compassion
Do you remember when we were told to save every life during the Covid-19 pandemic? Even as the elderly were funnelled from hospitals into care homes without tests or precautions, the young were admonished not to ‘kill granny’.
If the Assisted Dying Bill passes, dying early will never have been easier for granny and for all of us.
Lord Falconer, a Labour peer firmly behind the bill, has now said on more than one occasion that poverty is no reason not to end your life early. According to him, being poor and feeling like a burden is a valid reason to want to die if you are terminally ill. Only last week he acknowledged that ‘there’s only so much money to go around’.
This is where the conversation should become much wider — and much more honest.
Will assisted dying be cheaper than palliative care? Yes. Much cheaper.
According to the government’s own impact assessment, the prescription to end someone’s life costs £14.78. The saving from four months of healthcare ‘not used’ by those with a six-month diagnosis is £13,075. Beyond that there will be vast savings on social care and pensions.
Those who wish to end their lives will be given a ‘guide’ to help them navigate the process efficiently. Funnily enough, those who want palliative care don’t get guides. It’s almost like the cheapest route is being prioritised.
Amelia is the AI meme Boudica we didn’t know we needed
Sometimes the government gets things so wrong that it accidentally gets them right.
An educational project designed to raise awareness of online radicalisation invented a fictional persona called Amelia. From the outset it couldn’t have been more wrong, because Amelia was portrayed as a purple-haired, goth-style young woman. Anyone alive with eyes in the 2020s knows that young women with purple hair are more likely to vote Green, support open borders and be vegan to boot.
Far from serving as a cautionary tale (sorry, behavioural scientists!), Amelia has spawned AI memes and become a nationalist heroine. She is the AI Boudica we didn’t know we needed.
This is what is known in propaganda terms as a misfire.
Oops.
It's strange that a ruling Establishment (not just the Labour government, but the judiciary, lawyers, academia, media) that cares so much about the human rights of terrorists and rapists is so determined to treat innocent people as criminals. Perhaps, the only way to treat serious criminals as victims is to think of the victims of crime (the general public) as criminals.
I posted a variation on this elsewhere, but it is worth spreading, for context and for puncturing the hypocrisy.
The Louisiana purchase - that doubled the size of America - was effectively real estate, not a country. But there is precedent for buying a country, and with supreme irony it involves the same two countries as the Greenland impasse. And it involved 'rebadging' a lot more people than Greenland.
No one is mentioning that in 1917 America bought the Danish West Indies from Denmark, for $25m (about $630m in today's money.) The U.S. saw the Caribbean as their ‘backyard’ or outer protection cordon, so acquired the Danish West Indies and renamed them the U.S Virgin Islands.
It is fun/sport for people to blame Trump, and one can see why he would want Greenland. But that security trope has been going on for a very long time. It's not Trump's new idea. It has been in the U.S. governments' psyche for over a century, but only he has the balls to move on it.
Of course wanting something and demanding it, or taking it by force, are two completely different things. Morally wrong IMHO. I am just saying there is precedent for a purchase, and Denmark hasn't a leg to stand on, having sold a country before.
As an interesting aside: the Danes had been taking slaves to their plantations there for about 100 years before Britain began slaving; until then we would just buy slaves from them. And they persisted for fifteen years after Britain banned slavery. But no one to my knowledge is pursuing the Dutch for reparations.