Last year, the American author Christopher Caldwell wrote an essay for the Claremont Review of Books in which he gave an overview of the state of Britain.

He described a country that had been transformed under the feet of its inhabitants into something unrecognisable – as if much of the furniture in our home had remained intact, but the ownership had been transferred, leaving us with little say over renovations or who may come or go.

Of the political repercussions of this transformation, he said:

“The baby boom leaders who presided over an uncompensated dismantling of English customs now struggle to find euphemisms for what they’ve done.”

What exactly have they done? And how can it be described without resorting to euphemism?

They have created a country where the following scenario, with superficial variations, is an inevitable and routine occurrence.

On 16 August last year, a young girl was gazing at the stars in Barking park, while her date serenaded her with his guitar. Two Afghan asylum seekers approached the couple, and held a knife to the man’s throat, while each took a turn raping the woman. One of these illegal migrants, Noorullah Ahmdzai, later falsely claimed in court that he paid the girl £20 for sex and that it was consensual. The other, 19-year-old Khan Agah, claimed he was 16 to get a more lenient sentence. Both men arrived here on small boats. Their first act on British soil was to break the law. Their second was to be housed at taxpayer expense.

Stories like this are made more horrific by the fact that they occur on a near weekly basis. For decades, our media has preferred to ignore or downplay them, and we have been encouraged to shrug them off as an inevitability, like the weather. More men like this are almost certainly arriving as we speak. They might be greeted with literature from the Home Office informing them that in Britain, it is wrong to rape, and that raping could even affect their asylum claim. That seems to be the extent of the government’s concern.

It is also an admission they know exactly what they’re doing, and who they’re admitting into the country. Another clue is that the Foreign Office advises against travelling to Afghanistan, while the Home Office tells us: here are your new neighbours. The same week an Eritrean man raped a male pensioner outside a church, the Prime Minister announced he intends to send asylum seekers to middle-class areas as a “point of principle.” That might qualify as a threatening communication to everyone with a Waitrose clubcard.

Our porous borders are only one tile in a larger mosaic of entropy and dysfunction. The British state’s greatest sin, though, has been presiding over the mass rape of English girls over many decades, while attempting, until as recently as last year, to divert attention away from the most monstrous crime committed on British soil in a millennium.

The Romans believed their Republic had been founded in response to popular outrage over the rape and subsequent suicide of the noblewoman Lucretia. The British people, however, do not have a Lucretia. There is not one household name among the thousands of English girls who were raped and abused by predominantly Pakistani rape gangs. This crime is almost too vast and painful to put into words, inspiring the sort of dumb silence only a war memorial obelisk can hope to express.

As I wrote last year, if you want to understand the value of a belief, consider what people are willing to sacrifice for it. We, in Britain, were willing to throw the most vulnerable in our society onto the pyre of a multicultural ideal – an ideal that proved to be a mirage. Onto this pyre we also threw equality before the law, after the Macpherson report found – on grounds more spurious than those of the Salem witch trials – British police to be “institutionally racist.” On Macpherson’s recommendation, this diagnosis was later extended, as a baseline assumption, to every institution. Thus fed, the flames became greedier, and the pyre continued to grow. It can now be said of the land that birthed Milton’s Areopagitica that we arrest 12,000 people a year for social media posts, largely related to so-called hate crimes.

The administrative order that has perpetuated these horrors was incubated by the very liberal-democratic norms it has since diminished. Which raises the question: is it possible for anti-establishment parties to dismantle that order while upholding those same norms? In other words, can democracy save democracy?

To answer that, we must first clarify what we mean by the administrative order. Broadly, it is the apparatus through which the preferences and prejudices of our governing elite – the Lanyard Class – are given institutional force. People, often with plum state pensions, who hold correct and fashionable opinions. Have I got News For You at prayer.

The state they’ve constructed, since the Brown-Blair revolution, overturned half a millennium of English constitutional history – in which Parliament, as the voice, however imperfect, of the people, was sovereign and more or less unassailable. If Parliament wanted to abolish the BBC, the monarchy, even cyclists in Zone 1, it could do so with the stroke of a pen. However, the Blairite changes to the constitution diminished that sovereignty, with the establishment of laws, courts, quangos, and devolved administrations that can subvert or override the programme of an elected government.

Yet attempts to remedy this democratic deficit are routinely described as illiberal or anti-democratic. But is the charge legitimate, or simply the blob protecting itself?

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This what independent journalist Charlotte Gill has devoted her work to look at. She joins Tom and The Critic editor Graham Stewart, looking at the highlights from this month’s edition, and in particular, Charlotte’s cover piece.

Charlotte examines how public money is distributed across the charity sector, questioning whether some taxpayer-funded organisations are working in opposition to the government’s stated aims on immigration and asylum.

The discussion also explores the growing emphasis on diversity, equity and inclusion in funding decisions, and whether these priorities are being placed ahead of merit and measurable outcomes. Charlotte reveals the scale of public funding involved, which organisations receive it and the causes being supported by taxpayers’ money.

Graham also talks us through some other highlights in this month’s issue, which is out now and available for consumption!

The first time I visited, Paris was not itself.

I visited for the Olympics, and no city hosting the Olympics can allow visitors and sight of its real nature. The streets must be sanitised, both literally and figuratively. I’d been told that Paris was a dirty city, but the streets were remarkably clean: the gravel paths around Les Invalides were almost snow-white, and crunched so crisply underfoot it was almost as if the street cleaners had dipped, scrubbed and reinserted the audio.

This cleanup was essential for the hordes of tourist that accompany every Olympics: a curious mix of IOC invitees moving effortlessly between the Koolhaasian junkspaces of the VIP sections and the backseats of Mercedes, niche sport superfans and the invariably obese who, judging by the age of their t-shirts and proliferation of pins, visit every Olympics.

Paris’s streets had also been cleaned of human debris. Weeks before the Opening Ceremony residents had started to leave, effectively turfed out of their own homes on early holiday by security measures and restrictions on public transport. Some were literally turfed out of the city; buses were laid on for the homeless, many of them migrants, to take them on a one-way journey to cities hundreds of miles away like Besançon, Bordeaux or Marseille.

But one thing could not be sanitised. Five years before Notre Dame had burned, and it had not been repaired in time. Standing at the steps, there was a sense of something far more palpable, more pervasive, more powerful than mere decline. It came to me clearly, unmistakably, like a bell ringing in an empty sky.

Seeing the scenes across France, I was reminded of that feeling.

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This week on Outpost, Tom Tugendhat and James Glancy look at three conflicts that are increasingly connected.

Iran. Reports suggest the US and Israel are preparing a new round of strikes after the midterms. With oil and diesel prices already climbing and interceptor stocks running low, what would another campaign achieve, and is there a strategy behind it?

Ukraine. As Washington talks directly to Moscow and a Trump–Xi–Putin meeting is floated, Ukraine risks being sidelined. On the ground, the drone-dominated front has stalled Russia’s advance, and Moscow appears to be returning to an old playbook: targeting civilians to break morale through winter.

Britain’s undersea cables. Russian fishing vessels have spent hundreds of hours over the cables that carry Britain’s data and power. How serious is the threat, why is “monitoring” not enough, and could an unconventional response be the answer?

Together, the three stories show how far grey-zone pressure now reaches into everyday life, from fuel prices to the internet, and why Britain needs to rethink how it defends itself.

Follow Tom’s Substack, Dispatches, and subscribe to Outpost on YouTube and Substack.

The apocalyptic scenes in France at the weekend will surprise no one who has read Douglas Murray’s 2017 book The Strange Death of Europe. In his all-too-prophetic bestseller, Murray writes that Europe is ‘committing suicide’ by opening the door to uncontrolled mass migration from the Middle East, North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa. These new arrivals seek to impose their own customs, traditions, politics and religion on a continent in the grip of a crisis of confidence, faith and identity.

The Left’s reaction to Murray’s book was entirely predictable. Personal highlights include Murtaza Hussain (I had to look him up) of The Intercept (I had to look that up, too) describing his prognosis as ‘relentlessly paranoid’, and The Guardian’s equally glowing review, which ran under the headline: ‘Gentrified xenophobia’.

I suppose they would view the torching of an imposing 19th-century town hall in Limoges at the weekend as yet more evidence of relentless paranoia cooked up by conservative commentators. The desperate woman pleading with balaclava-clad rioters not to loot a supermarket was practically dripping with gentrified xenophobia.

The mainstream media would certainly have us believe that the protests were overwhelmingly peaceful. Students, trade unionists and gilets jaunes (yellow vests) mobilised to vent their legitimate frustrations over the rising cost of living. Opportunistic looters, encouraged by rabble-rousing hard-left politicians, then hijacked the protests, and anarchy ensued.

I can accept that hundreds of thousands of protesters marched peacefully on Saturday – taking to the streets is a feature, not a bug, of the Fifth Republic, after all. But that doesn’t explain what happened. To believe it does is a dangerous delusion.

I can sense the hackles rising among progressives who may have unwittingly stumbled upon my article. Blaming hard-left agitators for the riots is one thing, but attributing them directly to uncontrolled mass immigration is quite another.

But neither cramped classrooms nor the cost-of-living crisis gets to the heart of why masked men waved Palestinian flags as historic buildings went up in flames. What does a war in the Middle East have to do with the very real social and economic pressures bearing down on the French population? Even if I were willing to accept the Left’s animus towards Israel and its response to October 7, which I’m not, it still wouldn’t answer my question.

The picture starts to look clearer when we consider what the Palestinian flag has come to represent: nihilistic hatred towards the West and a jihadist assault on both Judeo-Christian values and the Enlightenment ideals sown on European soil. It is a symbol of the civilisational struggle between open and closed societies.

I’ll grant that not everyone who waves a Palestinian flag in the West is a jihadist sympathiser. But its appearance against a backdrop of anarchy raises profoundly uncomfortable questions about ideological motivations.

It makes perfect sense for young men steeped in Islamist ideology who feel no real ancestral connection to France to fly such a flag – and to do so with pride. These ‘split loyalties’, as my colleague Colin Brazier recently put it in his monologue, can manifest themselves in pernicious ways.

He notes how Frenchmen of North African origin seemed more upset, and more prone to rioting, when the countries their grandparents came from failed to win the World Cup. This example sounds trivial, but it isn’t. Tribal loyalties are often revealed in the beautiful game, in the ecstasy of victory and the violence of defeat.

Extrapolating from this example to Saturday’s riots will be a bridge too far for many on the Left and mild-mannered conservatives still clinging to the centre ground. It will strike them as conspiratorial: a convenient scapegoat with which to advance my supposed ‘far-right’ bigotry.

It doesn’t help that determining the precise demographic composition of the rioters is virtually impossible due to France’s colour-blind principle.

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On this week’s episode of The Critics Show, Chris Bayliss is joined by Harry Wilkinson, Head of Policy at the Global Warming Policy Foundation, to examine growing public scepticism towards net zero a…

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But the crisis, Colin argues, runs much deeper than a shortage of prison cells. Tracing the shift from the ‘prison works’ consensus of the 1990s to today’s emphasis on rehabilitation and shorter sentences, he examines the widening gulf between public opinion and the political establishment. Have we lost sight of the fundamental purpose of punishment? And, as criminals walk free after serving a fraction of their sentences, whose side is the law really on?

Drawing on their experiences in Ukraine, they assess the situation on the front line, the wider fallout from America’s war with Iran and the growing strain on Western military resources. Faced with an increasingly unreliable ally and a predatory power on their doorstep, can Britain and Europe step into the breach?

There are many qualities about the Left that I find undesirable, but the one that really sticks in my craw is this tendency to treat voters as though they have no agency, moral or otherwise - as though they are mere vassals, incapable of thinking or acting independently, and therefore must be managed.

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With Marine Le Pen potentially on course for the French presidency, Colin warns that the violence on France’s streets may be a dress rehearsal for a much bigger political confrontation. Could Britain face similar upheaval if Nigel Farage comes to power? And what can the French experience teach us about the challenges that may lie ahead?

Michael, whose documentary The Guardians of Israel captured a society on a war footing a year after the attacks, and Adam, who wrote about visiting the Nova memorial museum, discuss the unanswered questions over how the attacks were allowed to happen, how October 7 reshaped the Middle East, and the attendant rise in antisemitism at home and abroad. They also weigh Israel’s response in Gaza and compare the attacks to 9/11.

Listeners are walked through a preview of a profile of Roger Hallam which features in the print issue, as well as discussing the cover piece which talks about the figure behind Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion.

Fred then explains asylum reform, tracing the system from the 1951 Refugee Convention’s postwar European focus through its 1967 expansion into a global framework. He reflects on decolonisation, international law, and refugee movements of the 1980s and 1990s.

All that and much more, make sure to subscribe below, and share if you enjoyed this episode.

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This week, America’s military posture in Europe is also in question, with the pressure on Zelensky to curb attacks on Russian refineries, the wider impact of the conflict with Iran and disruption in the Strait of Hormuz, and the mood among US Republicans towards Britain, including emerging tensions over the Falkland Islands and the transatlantic alliance.