The New Conservative

Stewart Slater

Mandelson, Starmer, Epstein and Prince Andrew as playing cards

Oh, Mandy 

I have a strange relationship with the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius. I am no longer a Stoic and whenever I pick it up, I get the impression that, were there to be some odd kink in the space-time continuum, and I met the Emperor, I would not have particularly liked him. There is a sort

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Meditation

The Illusion of Control

I meditated well this morning. I do sometimes. As I should. I’ve been practicing for nearly 14 years. You would have thought I had got my head round it by now. After all, it only took me 13 years to knock off school. But meditation, it turns out, is harder than readin’, ‘writin’ and ‘rithmetic.

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A weak Keir Starmer

Authority and Power 

What our cavemen ancestors thought of the animals among which they lived their lives, we cannot tell. Neither left us any written records to decipher. But since a sabre-tooth tiger could do as much damage to us as we could do to it, it is reasonable to assume that, to the humans of the day,

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Wes Streeting

Policemen and Peacocks

“Because, I’ll tell you what, if I’d been in that position, and I suspect many of your viewers have been in that position, that’s what any of us would have done.” The “I” in question was Wes Streeting, the Health Secretary, and the position was that of the Chief Constable of the West Midlands who

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Map

The Map and the Territory

Being born must be the most shocking thing that ever happens to you. All your experience up to that point is in a nice, temperature-controlled environment. It suddenly gets colder, possibly much colder. You are used to it being dark. It suddenly gets much brighter. The noises you have heard to date are those of

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AI bikini girl

Images And Self-Image

Last week, the Princess of Wales released the latest of her quarterly videos. Lots of slightly soft-focus visuals of HRH walking through the countryside like a House of Bruar model while a slow, serious, pause-filled voiceover gave us her thoughts about winter. Taken with her recent refusal to give details about her clothes, the videos

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Keir Starmer as Caligula

Hate And Fear 

You already know many of the Emperor Caligula’s greatest hits. There was making his horse Consul (he didn’t, but it was thought he might). There was the incest with his sisters (no real evidence for this and it was far from unknown in the ancient world – Cleopatra’s parents were almost certainly closely related, possibly

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