BELFAST'S NEW TROUBLES, IMPORTED …

Northern Ireland, that small but densely packed laboratory of grievance, has spent the better part of three decades in the 1970s and beyond, testing the proposition that men with strong tribal loyalties and ready access to explosives might, under the right conditions, learn to live together. The Troubles, as they were euphemistically called—rather as one might describe a mild case of food poisoning that lasts twenty-five years—left thousands dead, entire districts scarred, and a peace process that required the sort of patient diplomacy usually reserved for a farmer trying to evict New Age Travellers off his land with nothing more than a shepherd's crook and wishful thinking. 

And yet, here we are in 2026, on Kinnaird Avenue in north Belfast, where a man was set upon with a knife in what onlookers described, with the sort of understatement the Irish have perfected, as an attempt to saw off his head. Bystanders intervened; one suspect was arrested; the victim was hospitalised with serious injuries. The cordons went up, the cameras clicked, and the usual rituals of official concern were observed. All very familiar. Only this time, the accents and the grievances were not the old, comforting, almost folkloric ones of Protestant and Catholic, Unionist and Republican. Something newer had been imported, and with it, a different flavour of barbarism. 

One pictures the scene with a certain dry inevitability. The police tape fluttering like bunting at a particularly grim fête. The forensic officers in their white suits, picking over the debris of yet another evening that failed to live up to multicultural expectations. The post that drew attention to this unhappy affair put the matter with commendable bluntness: after decades spent coaxing a fragile peace from the wreckage of the Troubles, why import an 'alien culture' into Belfast? It is the sort of question one is not supposed to ask in polite society, lest one be accused of noticing things. Governments, after all, have their reasons. They speak in the lofty language of enrichment, diversity, and the demographic refreshment that ageing European populations apparently require. What they mean, of course, is that someone must do the jobs that natives find tedious, pay the taxes that sustain generous welfare states, and—crucially—vote in ways that keep the current managerial class in office. The cultural consequences are treated as minor footnotes, to be managed by community liaison officers and stern editorials in the Guardian.

Northern Ireland, however, has form when it comes to footnotes that explode. For all the ink spilled on the sectarian divide, the province developed, over time, a certain grim expertise in managing its own divisions. The paramilitaries knew one another; the security forces knew the paramilitaries; everyone knew the rules of the game, however bloody. There was, beneath the horror, a perverse sort of local knowledge. The new arrivals arrive with no such shared history. They bring their own codes, their own conceptions of honour, their own enthusiastic interpretations of ancient texts that recommend vigorous use of the blade against the unbeliever. The result is not dialogue. It is not fusion cuisine and street festivals. It is a man on the pavement in north Belfast having his head worked on with a knife. 

Here the satirist’s temptation is almost irresistible. One imagines the policy meetings in some brightly lit Whitehall office, where earnest young graduates with first-class degrees in PPE and second-class degrees in reality sat around declaring that what post-Troubles Belfast really needed was a fresh injection of cultural vibrancy. Perhaps a few honour-based violence workshops. Maybe some workshops on female genital mutilation awareness, to balance the books. The Troubles, after all, were terribly white. How provincial. How lacking in global perspective. What better way to broaden horizons than to introduce practices honed in rather warmer climes, where the rule of law has a more flexible relationship with scripture?

And yet, for all the knowing smirks one might direct at such folly, there is a deeper irony at work—one that even the most jaded observer might find almost touching. For all that Northern Ireland endured in the 1970s, mass, unlimited third-world immigration may yet prove the issue that finally unites the Irish people ideologically, if not politically or geographically. Protestant and Catholic, north and south, Unionist and Nationalist: suddenly they find themselves staring at the same phenomenon. Not the old enemy across the border or across the street, but something imported from afar, alien in custom, expectation, and temperament. The very diversity that was meant to dilute old hatreds has, in a twist worthy of the blackest comedy, provided a new focus for a shared recognition: this is not working.

One can already hear the spluttering from the usual quarters. How dare you reduce complex migration patterns to crude generalisations? As if the spectacle of repeated attempts at impromptu surgery with a kitchen knife were merely a matter of statistical outliers. As if the reluctance of certain communities to integrate were a myth invented by tabloid editors rather than a daily observable fact on the streets of London, Malmö, Paris, and now, apparently, Belfast. The Irish, of all people, with their long memory of invasion, famine, and cultural erosion, might have been expected to spot the pattern. Instead, many embraced the rhetoric of open borders with the enthusiasm of converts to a new and fashionable faith—only to discover that the new faithful do not always return the compliment.

There is something almost poetic in this development, the grand narrative of European self-effacement reaching its absurd conclusion in a province that once specialised in absurd conclusions. The peace process, painstakingly assembled like a fragile piece of modernist sculpture, risks being knocked over not by the old tribal cudgels but by the newer, sharper implements of an imported intolerance. And the people who once divided themselves so meticulously over whether to salute the Queen or sing Amhrán na bhFiann may yet discover that, when it comes to basic questions of physical security and cultural continuity, they have more in common than the bureaucrats ever allowed.

Whether this unity will express itself in any coherent political form remains to be seen. Geography and history still weigh heavily; the border is still there, the old slogans still echo. But ideology is a subtler thing. It moves in the realm of recognition—what people know in their bones, even if they dare not say it aloud at dinner parties. In that realm, the knife on Kinnaird Avenue has spoken more eloquently than any diversity consultant ever could.

One can only hope the lesson is absorbed before more cordons go up and more victims go down. Because peace, once lost, is devilishly hard to regain. Ask anyone who lived through the 1970s. Or, better still, ask the man who very nearly lost his head trying to enjoy a quiet Monday evening in Belfast.

STARMER FALLS OFF HIS SILICON HORSE

In the great tradition of British political leadership, one occasionally encounters a figure so perfectly suited to the role of national disappointment that it seems almost cruel to mock him. Almost. Then one remembers that this particular specimen, Keir Starmer, has appointed himself the nation’s nanny-in-chief, determined to shield the youth of Britain from the terrible peril of TikTok while leaving them perfectly free to inherit his own masterclass in mediocrity. One pictures the man now: that permanently startled expression, like a provincial solicitor who has just discovered his filing cabinet has been infested with something progressive, peering out from behind the curtains of Downing Street as if the electorate might at any moment storm the gates demanding actual governance. Instead, they receive a social-media ban. How very Starmer. How very, pathetically, him.
Let us be clear from the outset. This is not the action of a serious statesman weighing evidence and public mood. This is the reflexive spasm of a weak-willed authoritarian who has spent his adult life confusing the removal of civil liberties with moral seriousness. Starmer, that hollow man with the face of a disappointed supply teacher and the political instincts of a weather vane in a hurricane, has reversed himself yet again. Two years ago he was dismissing the very idea of age-appropriate smartphone edicts. Now, with the polls sagging like his own jowls on a Monday morning, he is suddenly the valiant protector of the nation’s teenagers from the horrors of short-form video. One wonders what particular blend of focus-group despair and parental sob-story finally penetrated that thick skull of his. Probably the same blend that convinced him Brexit was both a good idea and a bad idea simultaneously, depending on which way the wind was blowing through Islington.
The timing, of course, is exquisite in its cynicism. Days before a by-election, with the vultures already circling his leadership, Sir Keir decides his legacy shall be the state telling parents they are too stupid to manage their own children’s screen time. This from a man whose own offspring, one gathers, navigated the digital world without apparent catastrophe. But then consistency was never Starmer’s strong suit. The fellow flip-flops with such elegant regularity that one half-expects him to announce a ban on political consistency itself, lest some dangerous principle take root in the Labour Party.
What a pathetic creature he is, when you look at him squarely. There he stands, the very picture of out-of-touch bewilderment: a knight of the realm who achieved his highest office by promising everything to everyone and then looking wounded when reality proved uncooperative. His idea of bold leadership is to ban the very platforms where the public mocks him most effectively. One can almost hear the internal monologue in that nasal, lawyerly whine: “The people are saying mean things about me on the internet. Quick, pass a law. Make it look caring. Something about the children. The children are always a winner.” Never mind that the evidence for such a sweeping prohibition is about as robust as Starmer’s spine. Correlation, hysteria, and a handful of tragic anecdotes dressed up as causation will do nicely when one’s primary concern is not truth but the desperate preservation of one’s own floundering authority.
Here is a man who rose to prominence by presenting himself as a decent, moderate sort—only to reveal, in office, the soul of a minor bureaucrat convinced that every social ill can be solved by tighter regulation and a sufficiently stern expression. Social media makes teenagers anxious? Ban it. Never mind the evidence that suggests the causal link is, at best, tenuous. Never mind that previous moral panics over everything from penny dreadfuls to video nasties eventually looked ridiculous. Never mind, above all, that British parents might just be capable of exercising judgment without the Prime Minister inserting his clammy handshake into their domestic arrangements.
No, Starmer knows better. Starmer, who looks as though he has never had an original or dangerous thought in his life, has decided the nation requires his personal intervention to prevent the young from encountering unapproved opinions, unflattering memes, or—God forbid—laughter at his expense. One imagines him in the small hours, pacing Number 10 in his sensible slippers, muttering about 'harmful content' while ignoring the rather larger harm inflicted on a nation's personal liberty by his own government’s incompetence. The economy stutters, the borders leak, the public services groan, and the Prime Minister’s big idea is to stop sixteen-year-olds from doom-scrolling. Magnificent. The ship is listing badly, the captain is rearranging the deckchairs on his phone, and the passengers are to be denied access to the shipping forecasts.
This is authoritarianism for the terminally timid. The sort of man who needs facial recognition technology and age-verification schemes to feel safe in his own skin. The sort of man who believes the state should play the role of disappointed parent to an entire generation because he himself lacks the courage to address genuine problems. Starmer does not lead; he manages decline with the anxious fastidiousness of a man who has never quite recovered from being mildly unpopular at school. His entire bearing screams “please don’t shout at me.” Unfortunately for him, the British public has rather a lot to shout about, and the louder they shout on X and elsewhere, the more frantically he reaches for the off-switch.
The unintended consequences, naturally, will be vast and hilarious. Teenagers, being teenagers, will circumvent the ban with the effortless ingenuity that Starmer himself so conspicuously lacks. The law will be mocked, evaded, and ultimately discredited—teaching the young an excellent lesson in the futility of official edicts, if nothing else. Meanwhile, the real issues—family breakdown, educational failure, a culture that has lost confidence in itself—will remain untouched by this pathetic gesture. But never mind all that. Sir Keir will have his legacy: the man who tried to save Britain’s youth from Instagram while presiding over their inheritance of a diminished nation.
One almost feels sorry for the fellow. Almost. Then one remembers the expression on his face whenever he is required to answer a difficult question—the slight pursing of the lips, the hunted look in the eyes, the air of a man who wishes the whole business of democracy could be conducted via pre-approved talking points and a reliable majority. This is not leadership. This is the last refuge of a political nonentity who has run out of ideas and is now reduced to banning other people’s ideas instead.
In the end, Keir Starmer’s social-media panic reveals him perfectly: a hollow, authoritarian lightweight, terrified of public opinion, contemptuous of parental autonomy, and utterly adrift in a country that increasingly sees him for what he is—a temporary embarrassment with delusions of moral grandeur. The teenagers will be fine. It is the adults who inflicted this man upon them who should be seeking therapy. Preferably offline.

THE RANTING BRUMMIE REVIEWS: "MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE" (2026)

One approaches a new Masters of the Universe film with the wary optimism of a man entering a revival meeting who has already been saved once, in 1987, and remembers the collection plate. Travis Knight’s version arrives clad in $170–200 million of shiny new armour, yet somehow contrives to look like the most expensively produced meme yet committed to celluloid.

The casting, one must concede, is mostly splendid. Nicholas Galitzine makes a perfectly serviceable Prince Adam/He-Man: broad of shoulder, square of jaw, and possessed of that slightly bewildered sincerity required when one is obliged to deliver the line “I have the power” without audible inverted commas. Jared Leto’s Skeletor is the sort of baroque, eye-rolling villainy that keeps supporting actors in caviar; one half-expects him to demand a close-up on his exposed cranium. Idris Elba brings gravitas to Man-At-Arms as if he had wandered in from a better film, while the supporting Heroic Warriors are competently represented by a roster of faces one is vaguely pleased to see again. In short, the players do what they can with the material, which is rather more than the material does with them.

Knight directs with a certain visual brio; the action sequences, particularly the set-pieces around Castle Grayskull and Snake Mountain, possess a chunky, Saturday-morning-cartoon grandeur that occasionally approaches the sublime. When He-Man swings that power sword, the screen knows it has been swung. And then there is the contribution of Brian May, who has lent his guitar to Daniel Pemberton’s score. One feels the spirit of Flash Gordon nodding approvingly from the asteroid belt. When those familiar riffs crash in over a climactic battle, one is briefly transported to a purer, more innocent age of heroic nonsense. For these mercies we should be grateful.

Yet the film’s virtues are repeatedly undone by its desperate need to be liked. The humour is pure Marvel house style: quippy, self-referential, and fatally convinced of its own adorableness. One half-expects Rocket Raccoon to wander through demanding a share of the royalties. The pacing lurches like a man trying to dance at two weddings simultaneously - one on Eternia, one in a focus-grouped boardroom. And the nostalgic tone is ladled on with the subtlety of Skeletor’s Havoc Staff. The nadir arrives when the film itself stages the dreaded “Hey, ey, yeah, what’s going on?” meme, complete with dancing supporting cast. At this point one realises the picture is not merely winking at the audience; it is doing that awful modern thing of elbowing them repeatedly in the ribs while shouting “Do you get it? Do you ?, Do you get it?”. 

Compare this, unfavourably if you will, to James Gunn’s Guardians of the Galaxy trilogy. Those pictures understood that the secret to making cosmic absurdity work is not to apologise for it but to commit. They balanced sarcasm with sincerity. Knight’s Masters cannot decide whether it wants to be a knowing pastiche or a sincere myth, and so ends up achieving neither. It is the cinematic equivalent of a man wearing a vintage He-Man T-shirt under an ironic Hawaiian shirt.

Even more damning is the comparison with the much-derided 1987 Cannon film. That picture was low-budget, cheesy, and corny, yes. But it had the courage of its own ridiculous convictions. It took itself relatively seriously, drew on the darker undertones of the original MOTU mini-comics, and memorably gave us Frank Langella’s towering, Shakespearean Skeletor - a performance of such lip-smacking grandeur that one almost believed the character might actually conquer the universe if only the special effects budget would allow. Langella understood that the only way to play a skull-faced tyrant is as if he were Richard III with better lighting. The new film’s Skeletor, for all Leto’s scenery-chewing, feels like a supporting act in his own origin story.

Then there is the inevitable messaging about toxic masculinity—a weary hangover from the 2023 Barbie film, as if every children’s property must now submit to the same corporate sensitivity seminar. He-Man, once the unapologetic beefcake saviour of Eternia, is now obliged to deliver lectures on emotional intelligence between sword fights. One almost longs for the days when the greatest ideological threat was simply having 'the power.'

In the end, this new Masters of the Universe is perfectly competent corporate entertainment: loud, colourful, intermittently thrilling, and hollow at the core. For He-Man and his friends to be taken seriously as a modern retro property, it must first take itself more seriously. Irony is easy. Earnestness, properly handled, is revolutionary. By the power of Grayskull, perhaps next time they will remember.