The Hitch

An online publication with articles and essays on subjects from current affairs to pop culture, politics to music

30/06/2023

Now that Boris Johnson has been expelled from Parliament, what is his legacy?

An Oxford student is caught copying a translation of a Greek text straight from someone else’s book, instead of doing his own. His tutor’s reaction is predictable: considerable annoyance. &nb…

08/06/2023

What Martin Amis, a great novelist who died last month, meant to me 👇

For me, the road to Martin Amis led through Christopher Hitchens. The two were devoted friends for most of their lives, both caustic and witty essayists, and both proudly opinionated on every matte…

13/03/2023

Matt Hancock's leaked WhatsApp messages matter now, but what will future historians make of them? 👇

Matt Hancock (pictured), in his finest impression of Homer Simpson, decided to give his secret, safe WhatsApp messages straight to the leakiest journalist in Britain and total opponent of everythin…

15/12/2022

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/12/15/changing-my-mind/

I wrote on this blog only 18 months ago or so that the universal standard to judge whether something is right or wrong and by how much, is whether it increases or decreases suffering and by how muc…

12/11/2022

Every victory sows the seeds of its own defeat, and liberalism is no exception 👇

Every victory sows the seeds of its own defeat. Having crushed the Prussians in 1806, Napoleon faced them on the field again seven years later and remarked, ‘These animals have learnt something.’ T…

22/10/2022

Here's a confession: I'm a conservative, but not a Conservative. Let me explain 👇

Forgive me, father, for I have sinned: I am a conservative. I confess it. As much as I carry my Labour Party membership card and shall vote for Keir Starmer’s lot come the next election, I finally …

30/09/2022

Truss is proving a disaster - but what about the powers behind her throne? 👇

Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that ‘Every institution is the lengthened shadow of a single man’. In this case, a single woman. Emulating Margaret Thatcher is almost a matter of faith for today’s Tories…

14/09/2022

https://wp.me/pcs12w-1gK

We may demand that God save the King but only we can. King Charles III surely knows that calls for Britain to become a republic will grow louder and more common now that his mother is gone. Should …

10/08/2022

A dose of optimism for my generation 👇

https://wp.me/pcs12w-1gB

It’s not looking good. The Bank of England is predicting 13.3% inflation at its peak, 15 months of recession and stagnation for another year after that, and the largest decline of household incomes…

27/06/2022

'My body, my choice' is right, but it doesn't even begin to persuade most opponents of abortion for one big reason 👇

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/06/27/they-really-do-think-its-murder/

America is riven by many questions but the one on most lips today is whether abortion should be legal. The US Supreme Court ruled in the 1973 case Roe v. Wade that the Constitution made it legal, a…

24/06/2022

Life's unfair, cruel, turbulent, uncomfortable, and generally damn hard. But would we truly want it not to be? 👇

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/06/24/a-god-in-ruins/

Christ is come again! He has appeared in Seville, Spain, in the sixteenth century. He is preaching, performing miracles, and being acclaimed by the congregants in Seville Cathedral as the Son of Go…

22/06/2022

Why the Tories' nastiness is one of their biggest advantages 👇

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/06/22/the-nasty-party/

‘You know what some people call us? The Nasty Party.’ Theresa May gained some notice when she levelled that blunt warning at the Conservative Party conference in 2002. She was urging her fellow Tor…

16/06/2022

Labour cannot and should not claim to be the 'party of the working class' any longer 👇

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/06/16/labours-renaissance-labours-loves-lost/

This is the fifth in a series called ‘Labour’s Renaissance’ on the transformation of the philosophy, principles, and policies of the Labour Party to suit the 21st century. On the Sunday morning aft…

13/06/2022

You can't change the world, but you can change your small bit of it 👇

https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/06/13/cultivating-your-own-garden/

Candide, Pangloss, and Martin have travelled the world, and suffered enormously. They have seen persecutions, shipwrecks, earthquakes, famines, rapes, cannibalism, syphilis, smallpox, wars, and tor…

27/05/2022

Why do cities around the world feel more and more the same?

Why do so many cafés have exposed pipes and lightbulbs on the ceiling and unvarnished wooden tables below?

What's going on with our art and architecture? 👇
https://scottbartram.wordpress.com/2022/05/27/yawning-at-velazquez/

Unmoved and slightly bored by the National Gallery’s exhibition of paintings about sin by many old masters in July 2020, I recall shuffling round in the predictable queue of people desperately tryi…

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