The Social World

Tag: UK

  • Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Will the Andrew formerly known as prince appear before Congress?

    Amidst all the ceremony and gravity of Britain’s Remembrance Day service on Sunday, one salient fact could not be ignored. The King has long talked of his desire for a “stripped-down monarchy,” and now he has his wish. The only male figures from the Firm who were out on show alongside him were the Prince of Wales and Prince Edward, who together had the effect of making the royals look a rather paltry selection compared to the grander gatherings of the past.

    We all know about Harry, but although some would like to see him, too, stripped of his royal title, Montecito’s second most famous resident continues to be able to refer to himself as a prince. This is not a luxury that his disgraced uncle enjoys any longer, as he adjusts to life not as Prince Andrew, Duke of York, but plain old Andrew Mountbatten Windsor. As he prepares to leave Royal Lodge for a more modest existence in a grace and favor home tucked in some obscure corner of the Sandringham Estate, he may look around and wonder if his disgrace is yet over. Well, judged by recent events, the bad news for him just keeps on coming.

    During his “heyday,” Andrew liked to present himself as a swashbuckling, entrepreneurial figure, thanks to his Pitch@Palace initiative, which invited would-be moneymakers to come to Buckingham Palace and get their businesses off the ground. Unsurprisingly, given his shame, this is no longer a going concern. Documents seen by the Guardian show that the last remaining part of the business, Pitch@Palace Global, has been wound up after its UK side foundered in 2021.

    Admittedly, after Andrew’s disastrous 2019 Newsnight interview, it is doubtful that even the most desperate would-be businessman would have seen the soon-to-be banned old Duke of York as the answer to their prayers, but the knowledge that this beleaguered endeavor is no more shows how total, and terminal, his disgrace is. (Lest we forget, it was from the Chinese arm of Pitch@Palace that the alleged Chinese spy Yang Tengbo emerged, suggesting that Andrew’s judgment when it comes to those he kept company with has always been terrible.)

    And what of middle England? Well, Andrew has a few supporters who argue doughtily for the presumption of innocence before guilt is proved. Yet the overwhelming majority of the country consider that enough wrongdoing has now been established to regard the former prince as unspeakable, and they are not afraid to make their feelings felt. Residents of Prince Andrew Road and Prince Andrew Close in Maidenhead are hoping that the names of their streets will be changed, to avoid the taint of association. One long-sufferer local, Kelly Pevy, told the Daily Telegraph that: “If you’re giving someone the address, it’s the first thing [they’re] going to say. When I speak to energy companies and they ask for the address, they make a little joke. It’s mentioned more and more, and so then you start thinking about it more.”

    It remains to be seen whether the dwellers of Maidenhead succeed in their petition to the local MP to end this little joke, but if Andrew takes a moment out from a head-down routine of self-pity and video games, he may by now be seeing the enormity of the disgrace he faces. The Democrats on the House Oversight Committee have asked that he be summoned to the United States and Congress to answer questions about the precise nature of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Although they have no legal power to compel him to attend, Andrew knows that to do so would be potentially hazardous. Not only could he be prosecuted for perjury if any part of his testimony is false, but his presence in America would open him up to investigation, even arrest, for his alleged activities with the then-17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.

    Andrew Mountbatten Windsor – there is currently some debate as to whether his last name will be hyphenated or not – is as maligned as anyone in public life today. Yet if he had stopped playing Call of Duty on Sunday and watched his elder brother and nephew remember the fallen, he would have been aware of what real courage and real sacrifice look like. Andrew, by contrast, is an insignificant figure, too sinister and grim to be pathetic and too boring to be laughable. His downfall, in all its embarrassing little details, reflects the man perfectly.

  • Britain’s reverse imperialism

    Britain’s reverse imperialism

    Britain’s post colonial reckoning can be summed up in a single sentence delivered last June at the Glastonbury music festival when rapper duo Bob Vylan shouted “You want your country back? You’re not getting it back!” to an overwhelmingly white, middle-class audience roaring its approval. The message was unmistakable: Britain has been colonized – and its dominant culture not only accepts, but celebrates, it.

    Britain’s transformation has been driven not by invasion, but by invitation. The country’s population, political culture and national cohesion has been radically reshaped by immigration – one wave in the 1950s, driven by post-World War Two labor shortages, and another following Brexit. They brought an estimated 10-15 million immigrants, primarily from Africa and South Asia.

    And the more recent surge of what the British euphemistically call “irregular migration,” that is in fact illegal immigration, has only deepened the challenges.

    But the immigration debate is no longer simply about “uncontrolled” migration. The deeper threat lies in what legal immigration from certain regions has produced: reverse imperialism.

    After World War Two, Western colonial empires were dismantled, and their histories of economic exploitation, cultural dominance and political control were broadly condemned. It was hoped that the post-colonial world would look very different. But history is ironic. The racial superiority of the British raj has been replaced by the moral and religious supremacism of its Muslim population.

    The flow of migrants today, particularly from former colonies to their former colonizers, has initiated not a new chapter in diversity, but a quiet conquest by demographic, cultural and political means while Britain’s elites, paralyzed by guilt and progressive dogma, have permitted the erosion of core values in the name of multiculturalism.

    Legal immigration during both postwar periods has significantly increased the UK’s Muslim population – from negligible levels in 1950 to almost seven percent of the population today. But numbers alone don’t tell the whole story. In urban centers like Bradford and Tower Hamlets, their numbers are concentrated, climbing to over 35-40 percent in some neighborhoods.

    These are not merely demographic shifts but cultural. Increased levels of welfare dependency and low levels of female workforce participation in these enclaves – often influenced by cultural and religious values – have raised concerns about an extraction of state resources without corresponding integration. To some critics, this dynamic resembles a kind of “reverse imperialism.”

    Muslim concentration in cities also translates into political power – from “sharia councils” as well as power reshaping local elections, influencing national policy and asserting itself most clearly within the Labour party.

    Let us clarify: Not all Muslims are Islamists. But those who are do not merely reject integration; they actively seek the transformation of their host society. Dawah (religious outreach) funded by zakat (charity), as well as political organizations are used to embed Islamist ideals within public institutions – from schools to local governments and even Parliament itself. This is reverse imperialism – not by armies, but by slow, deliberate cultural and institutional conquest.

    Britain’s robust protections for freedom of speech and religion have been turned into shields for anti-assimilationist movements. Public displays of Islamic religiosity – mass prayers staged in Whitehall and along Tower Bridge, for instance – are not mere cultural expressions. They are demonstrations of societal power.

    Similarly, protests purportedly against the war in Gaza increasingly reveal themselves as anti-Israel, even anti-Semitic. The normalized antisemitism in parts of the Islamic world has quietly embedded itself in Britain’s urban centers and beyond. Consider the British-Palestinian NHS doctor in bucolic Gloucestershire, genuinely stunned to be arrested in October 2025 for hate speech and pro-Hamas posts – as if her deeply held belief in Islamist moral superiority should have granted her immunity. Its presence is most visible in double standards: pro-Palestinian marches in London receive full police protection, while pro-Israel rallies often proceed with minimal security – or none at all.

    And while violence is the most visible symptom, the intellectual and political conquest is quieter but no less potent. Even the once-iconic Oxford Union has become a stage for extremist voices. Far from challenging Islamist ideology, elite British institutions are increasingly complicit in legitimizing it.

    Underlying this societal vulnerability are two postwar developments that have hollowed out British resilience.

    First, Britain has become a post-Christian society. In 1950, 85 percent identified as Christian. In 2025, that number has collapsed to 46 percent. Second, pacifism has replaced patriotism. British youth, increasingly disconnected from national history or pride, express little willingness to defend their country. An Ipsos poll in April 2025 reported that 48 percent said they would not fight for Britain “under any circumstance.” A society that no longer believes in itself is easy to replace.

    Britain’s leaders have offered not resistance, but accommodation – and in doing so, they’ve allowed the institutions of state and society to be gradually reshaped in the image of their most assertive minority factions. These factors are not, as yet, visible in America.

    Many Americans assume that Britain’s postcolonial dilemmas don’t apply here. After all, the US never had colonies in the same sense. Our national reckoning has focused on slavery and civil rights – not empire. But this is a dangerous misconception.

    The United States has long defined itself not by “blood”, but by allegiance to a common set of civic values. But Arthur Schlesinger’s The Disuniting of America, emphasized that unity depended on assimilation – on the willingness to become Americans.

    Today, that process is under threat. Consider Dearborn, Michigan, where the Muslim mayor unapologetically declared a Christian pastor “unwelcome” after he objected to renaming a road after a known Hamas supporter. This is not an isolated event but reflects a broader trend: the emergence of parallel societies with different values and civic loyalties.

    America’s constitutional protections – especially of religion and speech – may ironically be accelerating this process. Foreign flags now fly at US protests. Demonstrators chant for causes antithetical to the American creed. These aren’t just calls for global solidarity – they signal a growing rejection of national unity itself.

    Britain is a cautionary tale, not just about immigration policy, but about “cultural surrender.” The postcolonial legacy has produced fragmentation, the rise of groups with a supremacist agenda resisting integration and a populist backlash. But even populism may come too late if a nation’s sense of self has already withered.

    Trump understands this. His administration’s efforts to redefine immigration, restore assimilation and reassert national identity mark a sharp contrast with Britain’s passivity.

    But a course correction requires more than political leadership. It requires that Americans confront what the British have already endured: that legal immigration absent assimilation can be a mechanism not of enrichment but of replacement, even subjugation.

    Britain’s reversal of empire and identity is well underway. It’s time we learned from those who failed to prevent it.

  • Enoch Powell understated Britain’s problems

    Enoch Powell understated Britain’s problems

    The great John O’Sullivan has a story about Enoch Powell which he keeps promising to put into print. Since he still hasn’t done so, I will risk repeating it here. It occurred during a conversation some years after the Rivers of Blood speech. A group of conservatives were talking, and Powell was among them. At some point one of those present referred to the 1968 speech and asked Powell: “Why did you do it?”

    Powell’s reply started something like this: “When the lark sings in the morning they do not say – ‘Oh lark why dost thou sing?’ When the nightingale gives forth her song…” and so on. After Powell had gone through an array of the bird kingdom metaphors, he came to his clincher: “And so it was with me that day in Birmingham.”

    I was thinking about Birmingham, Britain’s second-biggest city, and Powell this week for a number of reasons. Firstly, because he was the MP for nearby Wolverhampton; secondly, because it is where he gave his famous speech; and finally because it is where the latest outbreak of sectarian politicking in England has occurred.

    The bad news on immigration and integration in this country floods in so fast these days that it is hard to keep up with. But even in the mêlée that is modern Britain, the news that Israeli football fans have been told not to go to Birmingham because they will not be safe there is striking.

    Nowadays the area has local politicians of a lesser intellectual caliber than Powell. Ayoub Khan was last year elected as the MP for Birmingham Perry Barr. Khan is one of a number of MPs voted in at the last election solely because of their appeal to the sectarian Muslim vote and specifically its obsession with Israel and Gaza. So of course Khan applauded the idea of Israeli football fans being kept out of the city he represents. Indeed he issued a statement “welcoming” the news and thanking the police for listening to “our community’s concerns”. And what “community” might that be?

    Elsewhere, there has been some outrage at the ban on Maccabi Tel Aviv fans turning up in Birmingham. Even Prime Minister Keir Starmer has expressed concern at the idea that a British city should be deemed literally unsafe for visible Jews to be in. But I can’t see why he or any other MP should be surprised. Birmingham is one of those places where “multiculturalism’ is approaching its natural endpoint.

    Conservative MP Robert Jenrick was recently raked over the media coals for comments he made about the lack of white faces in Birmingham. As has been the British way for almost 60 years now, opportunistic MPs and others rallied around, to attack not the vast demographic change that has got us here but the person who committed the crime of noticing. Because the only thing anyone is meant to say when going to a city like Birmingham today is how wonderfully diverse it is.

    Yet many of us do not think this is a blessing, and cannot help noticing that parts of the city are not diverse at all. They are simply ethnically homogenous in a different way – in the same manner as it would be if a city the size of Birmingham had moved to Mirpur in the past few decades, rather than the other way around.

    Today, Birmingham is one of a number of British cities in which people who identify on the census as “white British” are in a minority. To which we are again meant to say only “Hooray – our country was built on diversity.” That is the sort of mantra still spilling out of the empty heads of people like the leader of the Green party, Zack Polanski. This week Polanski spewed this far-past-its-sell-by-date cliché in a debate with the admirable Conservative MP Katie Lam. A visibly disdainful Robert Peston joined Polanski in pouring scorn on Lam’s point that our country wasn’t actually built on diversity. Of course it is, was Polanski and Peston’s message, and surely only a racist, backwards Powellite would dare to claim otherwise.

    This, for the time being, remains where the debate is. Which is roughly where it was in 1968: don’t say what you see with your eyes or we will tell you that your eyes are racist and lying.

    The problem is that this argument is even harder to defend in 2025 than in any previous year, as the results of legal and illegal migration are felt across the country. In the past I have summarized the “diversity is our greatest strength” argument as going something like this: the immigration isn’t happening; it is happening but it is good for you; it may not be good for you but you deserve it; it’s happened and there’s nothing you can do about it.

    If you want to find one of the principal causes of the enervation of British society, it can be found there. And yet what people would put up with a process like this forever? And what are we going to do about it?

    To understand just how bad things are, it is worth going back to 1968. Pretend that Powell used his speech not to say what he said, but to say what is now true. Pretend for a moment that he had used his speech to say that within the lifespan of many of his constituents, white British people would be a minority in the whole of Birmingham. Pretend he had predicted that by the 2020s, significant numbers of Birmingham voters would vote in a Pakistani-born Muslim on specifically sectarian, racial, religious lines. And pretend he had predicted that as a result of this change, visibly Jewish people would be barred from attending a soccer match because the local Muslim community would not tolerate it. If Powell had said even a portion of this, he would have been derided even more than he was. In fact he would most likely have been deemed certifiable.

    The question today is not why the lark sang, nor why his song was ignored. The question is why the facts now prove that he understated our current problems so much.

  • Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Does Prince William need to ‘change’ the British monarchy?

    Of all the people who might be expected to get revelatory public comments out of the Prince of Wales, the beetle-browed actor Eugene Levy would not be high on the list. Yet during the Schitt’s Creek and American Pie thespian’s new show, The Reluctant Traveler, Levy ticks off a series of “bucket list” experiences – one of which was getting close to the royal family. While it would, presumably, have been fairly easy to get an audience with Prince Harry, Levy’s intentions instead lay with Britain’s actual royal family, and so the encounter took place between him and Prince William.

    The most striking remarks that the heir to the throne made to Levy were that he clearly regards his father’s reign as an interregnum between two rather more significant periods on the throne: his grandmother’s, and his own. Not, of course, that he was so tactless or brazen to make such a comment, but Levy managed to elicit some unusually candid remarks from William, who was filmed drinking a pint of cider with him in Windsor’s best pub, the Two Brewers.

    “I like a little bit of change,” said William. “I want to question things more. I think it’s very important that tradition stays. And tradition has a huge part in all of this. But there are also points where you look at tradition and go, ‘Is that still fit for purpose today?’ So I like to question things.”

    Levy, scenting something of a scoop, pressed him by saying “it sounds like the monarchy will be shifting in a slightly different direction”, to which the Prince of Wales expressed agreement.

    It was notable that, while William talked fondly about his grandmother at several points during the interview, his father King Charles was barely mentioned, save for the rather blasé observation that: “My father needs a bit of protection but he’s old enough to do that himself as well.” In other words, recent gossip that the relationship between king and heir has been strained of late will only be fanned by this, rather than dispelled.

    There were, of course, fond comments about his family. Unsurprisingly, William described 2024 as “the hardest year I’ve ever had”, remarking that “it’s important my family feel protected and have the space to process a lot of the stuff that’s gone on [in the] last year.”

    Sounding more like his estranged brother than usual, he went on to sigh: “I enjoy my job but sometimes there are aspects of it, such as the media, the speculation, the scrutiny…” And, he might have added, participating in such pieces of entertainment as The Reluctant Traveler.

    Yet whether it worked or not as television, it was a fascinating insight into a very private man’s psyche. It is widely expected that William will be a transformative monarch in a way that his father has not been. His comments that he will not be looking to the past were more telling than might have been intended. William said that: “I think if you’re not careful history can be a real weight and an anchor around you. And you can feel suffocated by it and restricted… It’s important to live for the here and now. But also I think if you’re too intrinsically attached to history, you can’t possibly have any flexibility because you worry that the chess pieces move too much and therefore no change will happen.”

    This may be true. However, one hopes that if William has a trusted courtier or two at his side, that they might be able to convince him that change – presumably on the significant scale that he is intending – is not always a good or even necessary thing. In any case, a reign that many have pre-emptively dismissed as dull might yet surprise the world, although whether for good or ill remains to be seen.

  • Do Jews have a future in Britain? 

    Do Jews have a future in Britain? 

    I was on my way to synagogue yesterday when I got news that was surprising and unsurprising at the same time. That there had been an attack at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur was a shock, but only the location and the timing. The fact that terror had struck our community felt like the confirmation of our worst fears – and something that was grimly predictable. 

    For as long as I can remember, Jewish life in the UK has been closely guarded and protected. My childhood synagogue in the leafy London suburb of Surbiton was behind locked gates with security guards posted outside when anyone was in the building. My Jewish newspaper office today has similar protections and an address we’re told must never be made public. Every kosher shop in North London has a permanent security presence, twice or three times that of a supermarket in a dodgy area. 

    British Jews are always watching over their shoulders, silently clocking the escape routes out of synagogues and constantly feeling like a target when we congregate. We are a group that, by virtue of existing, is targeted. Jewish schoolchildren are told to change their uniforms when going home on public transport, observant Jewish men hide their kippahs with baseball caps when on the tube, everyone does the little things they can to try and feel safe. 

    All of this of course, was true before October 7 and it will be true for a long time after this war ends. But there has been a remarkable uptick in the last two years. The right-thinking consensus that anti-Semitism was bad is crumbling before our eyes, as the horseshoe theory that sees us hit from the far-left and the far-right becomes stronger every day.

    The Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization that collects data on anti-Semitism in Britain has recorded an unprecedented rise in all manner of attacks on British Jews, from casual anti-Semitic remarks to violent assaults on visibly Jewish people, buildings and communities. Just last month, a man was arrested in North London for a spate of attacks where he smeared his own excrement on synagogues. 

    The reaction to what’s happening in the Middle East is coming home to affect British Jews, making us feel like outsiders in a country that we’ve lived in and loved for centuries. I see it all the time in my own life and work. The social media channels of the Jewish Chronicle are inundated with hateful, anti-Semitic comments every day that have nothing to do with Israel. I’ve seen anti-Semitic graffiti appear all over my neighborhood in south London and I’ve been accused of “killing kids” at a friend’s birthday party by someone I had just met. 

    The nature of anti-Semitism means that it is ever-present, always under the surface. And it has been allowed to fester. Partially by a government that through its own poor politicking is pandering to extremists in its own party, but also by a media so desperate to raise the temperature of debate in Britain, that it forgets that Jewish people’s safety is at stake. Anti-Semites across the UK and in public life have been allowed to grow in confidence, to march on the streets of London, a city that Jews have thrived in, with placards of blood-drenched swastikas and depictions of Jewish leaders with horns. 

    Britain has always been seen as different to the rest of Europe when it comes to Jewish life. For years, our community has looked at violence in places like France, where Islamist terror attacks against Jews are a regular fixture and thought, “That wouldn’t happen here”. 

    But now it has. The events of yesterday will be a scar on Britain’s Jews, in the same way that the Tree of Life shooting, and the HyperCache attack, and the Boulder firebombing forever changed those communities. The Jews of Manchester and those across the UK will remember Heaton Park for years to come. There will also be soul-searching. Does this mean we should all go to Israel, to live among a different type of Islamist threat? What can we do to prevent this happening ever again? 

    There’s a certain feeling among British Jews that in any country other than Israel we are not in control of our own destiny, that our safety in the UK or in any other country is dependent on the government of the day listening to our pleas and taking our security seriously. To the credit of the police, they acted quickly to protect the Jews of Heaton Park. But many Jews today will be feeling that the attack was grimly predictable, and wondering why the government or the police allowed this country to become a place where Islamists’ toxic ideas and hatred of Israel are allowed to take the lives of British Jews. 

    Killing Jews in Manchester or London or Paris or Washington DC will not bring this war to an end. Not a single Palestinian life is saved by the taking of one from a synagogue worshipper. Yesterday’s attack feels like a turning point. If British Jews can be killed simply for being Jewish, then do the rest of us have a future here?

  • Has Trump changed Britain’s stance on Palestinian statehood?

    Has Trump changed Britain’s stance on Palestinian statehood?

    As Donald Trump visited the United Kingdom this week, the press seized the opportunity to confront both him and Prime Minister Keir Starmer about the issue of Hamas and Britain’s posture towards Palestinian statehood. In a rare moment of lucidity, and perhaps influenced by the firm presence of the President, Starmer appeared, briefly, to align his moral compass. Faced with questions over why his government was proceeding with the recognition of a Palestinian state in the wake of the October 7th atrocities, Starmer delivered what may be his most unequivocal statement to date:

    “Let me be really clear about Hamas: They’re a terrorist organization who can have no part in any future governance in Palestine. What happened on October 7th was the worst attack since the Holocaust. We have extended family in Israel. I understand first-hand the psychological impact that that had across Israel. So I know exactly where I stand in relation to Hamas. Hamas of course don’t want a two-state solution. They don’t want peace. They don’t want a ceasefire. I’m very clear where I stand on Hamas.”

    It was also strikingly convenient that, at this critical juncture, Starmer suddenly remembered his extended family in Israel. One wonders how reassured they feel about his use of them in such a moment – deployed as a sort of bauble to decorate a policy that is not only contradictory but potentially dangerous. If they are to serve as moral ballast for his position, they deserve more than to be name-dropped in the midst of strategic incoherence.

    Had Starmer stopped there, one might have mistaken him for a leader with conviction. But in the next breath, he returned to form, assuring the press that his decision to recognize a Palestinian state had been set out in July and had “nothing to do with this state visit.” He insisted that the matter had been discussed with president Trump “as you would expect among two leaders who respect each other and like each other and want to bring about a better solution in the best way we can.”

    The irony, of course, is that just as Starmer found the fortitude to call Hamas what it is, the group was issuing yet another declaration of grotesque barbarism. In a statement released by its al-Qassam Brigades, Hamas promised to turn Gaza into a “graveyard” for Israeli soldiers, to use hostages as human shields, and to ensure that not a single captive would be recovered alive. They referenced Ron Arad, the long-lost Israeli airman abducted by Iran-backed terrorists in Lebanon, as a model for how future hostages would disappear without trace.

    “We have prepared for you an army of martyrs,” they declared. “Your prisoners are scattered throughout Gaza City’s neighborhoods, and we will not spare their lives… you will not recover a single prisoner, neither dead nor alive, and their fate will be the same as that of Ron Arad.”

    So when Starmer finally managed to utter the truth about Hamas, it was as though he had been coaxed into it by the magnetic clarity of the man standing beside him. Trump, sensing the moment, actually grinned with approval and gave him a pat on the back – like a dog that had finally learned to sit when commanded. It is said the two spent around thirty minutes alone before the press conference, with no aides present. One can only imagine what was said, but it would not be a stretch to presume that Trump reminded him of the basics: do not reward genocidal jihadists with the trappings of statehood.

    Yet, despite the bluster, Starmer still intends to confer symbolic recognition upon a Palestinian entity that does not exist in any coherent, lawful or democratic form. He has mouthed the words of moral clarity, but he cannot follow them through with coherent policy. This is the essence of his weakness: he learns to say the lines but not to dance the dance. For all the talk of opposing Hamas, his government is giving succor to its cause by validating the fantasy of a state that Hamas itself openly defines through martyrdom, bloodshed, and the annihilation of Jews.

    Starmer’s rhetoric on Hamas is thus at odds with every other aspect of his posture. He decries their atrocities, then gestures toward recognition of a statehood project that would reward them. He acknowledges they do not want peace, then backs a policy that empowers them. He understands their strategy of hostage warfare, then gestures towards concessions that would only embolden it. And he said nothing of the failures of literally all other mainstream Palestinian leaders and political movements to act with decency, respect for humanity or international law, or indeed any ambition of peaceful coexistence with the Jewish state. If not Hamas, Sir Keir, then who? It is not biased or racist to state these facts, however distressing and undesirable: it is merely looking a hard truth in the eye. Without that, how else can the situation be improved?

    Starmer’s position makes Britain appear rudderless. If the leader of His Majesty’s Government cannot translate his apparent convictions into action, if he cannot resist the theater of international appeasement even in the face of Islamist terror, then he diminishes not only himself but the standing of the nation he represents. One hopes that Trump, in those thirty private minutes, managed to plant a seed of realism. But there is, as yet, no sign that it has taken root.