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Roland Smith

@rolandmcs.bsky.social

24K followers 350 following 5.9K posts

Tracking the decay of the Right and patrolling the culture war's boundaries. Former Fellow of the Adam Smith Institute. Now centrist. Telegraph watcher. https://open.substack.com/pub/rolandmcs buymeacoffee.com/rolandsmith

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · Nov 10

Long thread on how Brexitism started and evolved over 75 years, drawing from Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon's 'Continental Drift'.

Global Britain, Free Trade, Cakeism, Federalism, anti-federalism, EEA, Winston Churchill, Empire, 52-48 referendums, Enoch Powell, 1975, Thatcher.... It's all here. /1

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 19h

I mean, it's actually quite a good speech. Just ignore the entire backdrop back in America.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 19h

Jared Kushner now saying how lucky we all are to have rules and morals and laws.

Yes, an American close to Trump said this.

Mmm, righto.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 19h

Lots of cheering in Tel Aviv at Trump's name. Chants of 'Thank you Trump'.

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Reposted by Roland Smith

Darren Guy @darrenguy.bsky.social · 19h

3 days old but popped up on my feed today

www.spectator.co.uk/article/its-...

Brexiters calling for uk steel industry to be killed off.

You just cannot make this up

Britain's steel industry must die

It already faced tariffs in the United States, and it has been struggling to cope with some of the highest industrial energy prices in the world. Now what remains of the British steel industry faces w...

www.spectator.co.uk

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 19h

Lots of jeering in Tel Aviv at Netanyahu's name.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 20h

There's a thought...

Bloomberg News @bloomberg.com · 20h

Margaret Thatcher led the way in turning Anglo-Saxon conservatism into a revolutionary political doctrine that may have destroyed conservativism itself (via Bloomberg Opinion)

Margaret Thatcher Is the Mother of Conservatism’s Crisis

Three of Margaret Thatcher’s dresses encased in glass boxes and a stall that invited attendees at last week’s Conservative Party Conference to “ask the Iron Lady” to opine on contemporary politics. A “Thatcher fest” in her hometown of Grantham that features the “smash hit” play Margaret Thatcher Queen of Soho. A grand dinner at London’s Guildhall hosted by, among others, Mark Thatcher and Joan Collins: “In a world craving true leadership, relive the legacy of the Iron Lady…” The British are trul

bloom.bg

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Reposted by Roland Smith

Peter Walker @peterwalker99.bsky.social · 21h

I realise I slightly go on about this, but I'm not sure enough attention is paid to the fact that a fair proportion of comment articles in the modern Daily Telegraph are utterly unmoored from any sense of even tenuous reality.

Daniel Hannan

Britain has given so much to civilisation. Now the barbarians are inside

The poisonous ideas of Vladimir Lenin have infected our progressive elite

Contemplate those elderly buffoons in blue berets who hand out EU flags at the Last Night of the Proms. Do you suppose they have any real interest in rejoining the EU? Do they strike you as having looked into the budgetary, migratory and commercial implications? Of course not. They just loathe the people they imagine having voted Leave.

Listen to Sir Lenny Henry, who thinks that, as well as handing over squillions to the West Indies and Africa, we should pay black people in this country. So much for the notion of equality before the law.

I could go on. The museums rushing to give away legally purchased collections to people who have never owned them, and who will very probably sell them on to private collectors. The diplomats longing to surrender British territories in defiance of the wishes of their peoples. The universities eviscerating the Western canon in the name of decolonising the curriculum.

“Colonialism-and-slavery” is proffered as a binomial phrase, like “law-and-order” or “gin-and-tonic”. Few kids in our schools are given the slightest notion that the first, at least in Africa, was driven by the desire to extirpate the second. Even fewer are taught that African kings fought to defend the institution.

The Benin Bronzes, which our cultural leaders are so keen to give away, were seized to defray the costs of an 1897 expedition against a state that buried slaves alive. The British Museum, which owns most of them, dares not mention it. Instead it says the carvings were acquired during the “expansion of colonial power”

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Comin' over 'ere, taking all our pension benefits...

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

I like the cut of your jib

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Noooooo.

bsky.app/profile/rola...

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Argh. [Runs screaming into the night]

bsky.app/profile/rola...

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · Feb 1

To clarify my point: SM *and* CU should not be pitched as an objective. It's dishonest. The objective here is Rejoin. Say so honestly.

The SM *and* CU scenario *can* have a walk-on part as a stepping stone to a baldly-stated goal of Rejoining, but that's all.

[It seems the Libdems are ignoring me]

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

So they are....

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Yes, and how many are: (a) in work; (b) working in, for example, nursing?

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Standard 'front page' fare for the Telegraph these days.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Can we widen this to 'if you permanently emigrate anywhere', perhaps including pensioners who get citizenship of Spain, Portugal, wherever?

A kind of 'one in/one out' policy.

Ros Taylor @rostaylor.bsky.social · 1d

I’m afraid that if you emigrate to Dubai for the tax breaks and 24-hour security, you really should give up your citizenship here for someone who wants it.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

The point is that they need to say, first and foremost, that their policy is to rejoin the EU. The SM+CU thing should be almost in the detail of how they propose to get there.

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Reposted by Roland Smith

Twlldun @twlldun.bsky.social · 1d

But of course he does

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Reposted by Roland Smith

Ros Taylor @rostaylor.bsky.social · 1d

I’m afraid that if you emigrate to Dubai for the tax breaks and 24-hour security, you really should give up your citizenship here for someone who wants it.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Which nation has SM+CU with the EU?

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Both things *can* be true. One declares one's full commitment to rejoin the EU in X years' time (say it loud, say it proud) *and* then says in order to get there we are taking the interim step of the SM and a CU.

What's wrong is trying to flannel people that "SM+CU" is a legitimate endpoint.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

LOL. Sort of.

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

The Right are doing this because they want you to believe there is a systemic problem with free speech in this country.

But there isn't.

bsky.app/profile/rola...

Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

There is no systemic free speech problem in Britain that needs fixing. There are some tricky fine lines between free speech and incitement – a balancing of rights – as has been the case for a *very* long time and was the case here. Nothing more.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

The Populist Right are desperate to signal that this one brave appeal judge is swimming against the tide of a system infected by 'Lefty Lawyers' – like the judge applied the law according to his own free speechy conscience.

He did no such thing.

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

The original conviction was never just about burning a Quran, which is not and has never been illegal in this country.

It was also about the associated shouting, swearing, time and place i.e. whether this constituted a public disorder.

open.substack.com/pub/rolandmc...

On Burning The Quran

Where is the line between freedom of expression, offence, and disorderly behaviour?

open.substack.com

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

In case you missed it:

Jenrick supported the appeal of an asylum seeker (to him: 'illegal migrant') who had run into trouble with a law first introduced by Thatcher, and was now drawing on the ECHR to overturn his conviction.

His free speech rights under the ECHR helped his appeal succeed.

#Irony

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Roland Smith @rolandmcs.bsky.social · 1d

Morning.

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