CD Montgomery

4 weeks ago | thecritic.co.uk | CD Montgomery

This article is taken from the April 2025 issue of The Critic. To get the full magazine why not subscribe? Right now we’re offering five issues for just £10. A year ago I wrote here that what mattered for the Right was who got blamed for the pending Tory defeat. I admit that predicting this looming election loss was foresight on the level of people who are smug about having foretold that a party led by Nigel Farage would split if it had two or more members. But how has the narrative-framing gone?

1 month ago | thecritic.co.uk | CD Montgomery

His response to Ukraine suggests that Reform are growing more professional All foreign policy is domestic politics, obviously. Even here, even for us, even now, even over Ukraine. Starmer, politically, is having a good war. It’s good for him in that he’s getting the applause of the people he wants to hear it from.

2 months ago | thecritic.co.uk | CD Montgomery

Strike a pose, there’s nothing to it We don’t really own Chagos Arch, I said. We can’t even give it away, I claimed. Lawyers without clients are the worst fools imaginable, no one needed to be told. But here we are, and there Starmer, Hermer and Sands are, still at it, still seeking to pointlessly humiliate Britain for no discernible gain. They’re not even in it for the money. So what is the official opposition doing in return for their hourly rate? Nothing.

Dec 26, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | CD Montgomery

Diplomacy’s charm was the talking, not the fighting What do I honestly remember about Cambridge University’s DipSoc? Nothing, save for one fact which grabbed my mind then and has never released it since. There was a guy with a relatively distinctive surname (a military rank, for what little that mattered). This wasn’t what struck me as being endlessly fascinating at the time.

Dec 17, 2024 | thecritic.co.uk | CD Montgomery

Nothing quite says sovereignty like not even being able to surrender when and what you want. There was no case for the UK giving up Chagos Arch. The work Yuan Yi Zhu has done for us makes that abundantly clear. There was no pretend-legal case; there was no case in terms of alliance diplomacy; there wasn’t even a case in terms of squalid domestic Maldivian politics. In other words, it was just yet another Jonathan Powellesque balls-up.