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19 August 2024. An essay History has always been contested. The indubitable facts may provide firm common ground, but how to make sense of them, which ones to foreground and which to marginalize, how to distribute the weight of significance among them, and above all how to evaluate them morally will always be a matter…
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22 April 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Daily Sceptic. In her speech at the London conference of TheCityUK last Thursday, Kemi Badenoch denied that Britain’s economic prosperity is mainly attributable to colonial exploitation. She made this historical claim because of its present political significance. If post-colonial governments really believe in the narrative of simple victimhood at…
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17 April 2024. By Nigel Biggar for The Critic. There’s definitely no debate about whether she is transphobic or not…. She’s putting out so much hate”. So asserted Katie Neeves, biological male turned transgender female and founder of Cool to be Trans, on the BBC’s World at One last Tuesday, responding to a long string of…
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5 October 2023. By Nigel Biggar for The Spectator. Kemi Badenoch is right to say that Britain is not a racist country. The data simply does not support the claim that black and ethnic minority (BME) people in the UK are generally disadvantaged because of the racial prejudice of white Britons – that ‘systemic racism’…
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6 August 2023. By Nigel Biggar for The Telegraph. The Government’s combative response to the recent Coutts’ de-banking of Nigel Farage on “progressive” political grounds suggests that Rishi Sunak is committed to the war against wokery. And so he should be, for three good reasons…. The culture war is no ‘concoction’; it’s a real danger…
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By Nigel Biggar for Compact. 2 February 2023. It was the second week of December 2017, and my wife and I were at Heathrow airport, waiting to board a flight to Germany. Just before setting off for the departure gate, I couldn’t resist checking my email just one last time. My attention concentrated when I…
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The threat to academic freedom is no myth. Nigel Biggar makes this clear in his recent comment for The Telegraph (8 August 2020). Biggar’s “Political discrimination should be as unacceptable as racism at universities” highlights the problems at UK universities, where discrimination in political matters not only remains unfair but also disproportionately marginalises, and silences, conservative views. His…
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The creation of the non-partisan Free Speech Union, which was launched by Toby Young at the end of February, was inspired by the May 2019 McDonald Centre annual conference, ‘Academic Freedom under Threat: What’s to be Done?‘. Chairman of the FSU’s board of directors (here), Nigel Biggar, has argued in a recent Times article (24 February 2020) that the FSU is…
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In The Times 10 February 2020 Letter to the Editor, Nigel Biggar challenged his readers, and Education Secretary Sir Gavin Williamson, ‘to dispel the climate of self-censorship and inner exile’ and to champion moral and political viewpoint diversity in Universities. Editor of The Article Daniel Johnson offered a response to Biggar (read his ‘Universities need more intellectual and political diversity, as…
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Reflecting on a recent trip to Hong Kong, and the protests that spilled into its streets, Nigel Biggar raises questions about the limits of democratic elections to bring political well-being–‘votes,’ after all, ‘can’t be any wiser than the voters’. Yet rule of law and a free press are institutions thought essential for fostering political trust between…