Occidental Partridge

It's Valentine's Day evening and I have a blind date. I'm sitting in the lobby of a well-known London campus waiting to meet a first-year student who has just finished his day's lectures. OK, it's not really a date in that both parties expect the affair to be entirely platonic, and it's not really blind as we have met once before. But it's only when he spots and waves at me, and I take a second or so to register, that it strikes me I haven't seen his face before. For when we met, on a January demonstration opposite the Chinese Embassy on Portland Place, he was wearing a face mask. Having attended a number of pro-Hong Kong marches last year, the sight of masked East Asians had become very much a norm to me. So what compelled me to talk to this young man in particular? Namely, the fact he was also wearing the Chinese Olympic tracksuit, and holding a homemade banner saying "Love China. Love Democracy." My story-senses were tingling: a mainlander

Against the advice of some of my better read friends, I will still from time to time reach for that  Evening Standard on the bus or London Underground. It exposes me to stories I would never usually click on when they drift through my social media feeds, to the juicy politically-charged gossip of the 'The Londoner' pages and, above all, can be a nice free ride with original high-quality thinkers who I'd usually have to pay for in The Economist or Standpoint (yes I mean Anne McElvoy). This week though it was Matthew D'Ancona whose Comment piece piqued my interest. This is unusual because D'Ancona, being among those Remainers with whom I parted company after the referendum, could for the last year at least be found using his Lebedev inches to preach Remoaner miserabilism with a consistency comparable to certain Anglican vicars I could name.  But it is time for us all to move on and in any case the subject matter was intriguing enough to draw me in: a eulogy-cum

We're all fairly comfortable with the knowledge that our actions have consequences. But how often do we apply the same to our words? Certainly in our interpersonal relationships - whether romantic, familial, professional etc. - we are generally sure to mind our manners; anything less risks the fragile social harmony of an open-plan office space, or a tipsy Boxing Day.  But what about in the political sphere, and the impact our voiced and written thoughts may have on people we may never meet? Especially when those words aren't meant to bully or cause harm, but are simply the expression of sincere moral conscience? Actually it's something the UK plc office has been dealing with rather a lot lately: perhaps it's not the most sensitive example, but it's usually forgotten that a  now notorious comparison of niqab-wearers to letterboxes  was part of a defence of the very right to wear such things, and thus doubly belonging to a very British liberal tradition of stick

So, we're out. How was your first week?  I voted (reluctantly) to Remain, but I told myself the day of the referendum that whatever the result, I would remain proud of this country. The fact that we were holding such a referendum - uniquely so far - was in itself something to take pride in. I'm happy to say that that pride has held out. It took some blows; for instance, in the immediate aftermath of the referendum when a minority of bigots felt emboldened to enact their savage prejudices toward immigrants; when Theresa May's government (to my shock and dismay) failed to immediately guarantee the continued rights of residence of 3.2m EU residents of the UK; and when Mrs May's government thought so little of this country that they were willing to sign her into a state of vassalage, in which we would take EU law but have no say in its making. But all societies have their share of racism, and the UK, it must be said, has a notably meagre one, at least as suggested by