This month, The Critic is fifty issues old. Later this year, we’ll celebrate our fifth birthday. This magazine owes an obvious debt to Daniel Johnson’s Standpoint, and, to whatever degree we succeed, continues in a tradition behind Encounter, Leo Maxse’s National Review and the perhaps surprisingly small handful of other titles to have occupied this niche.

It would be foolish not to note that those publications were habitually also the fruits of much generosity. Thus, Alan Bekhor’s Standpoint, Lady Milner’s National Review, or, indeed, the CIA’s Encounter. From the moment we launched, we have enjoyed similar proprietorial benevolence from Jeremy Hosking. What we have done with that, has been on us. But without it, we could have done nothing.

The Critic under Labour hopes to go on being just as cheerful as we were under the Tories, but more so

Our 2019 launch party happened in the ballroom of a London club on the evening Boris Johnson got the 2017-elected House of Commons to vote to dissolve itself. Which is a sentence that sums up much of the present situation. 

Glib, expedient, constitutional vandalism (Cameron and Osborne’s coalition-era Fixed Term Parliaments Act requiring a Commons vote to obtain dissolution  was behind so much of the chaos of doing Brexit) was followed by constitutional indifference by the victorious Tories. Not one lesson was learnt, as will soon enough be seen when, unlike the unlamented Tory government, Labour use their majority to do things good and bad.

Our parliamentary sketchwriter, Robert Hutton, has dutifully noted how ruling seemed from the vantage point of Tory pets. Dilyn and Nova the dogs saw dysfunctional courts fail to do anything other than play games. From this issue on, he hacks into the emails of Sue Gray, civil service éminence grise.

The fusion of progressive front-of-house politics with a progressive administrative state will be a thing to  behold. Forgive us for anticipating nothing good of it. But, if nothing else does, this will bring the country to a reckoning with where we are. Everything is going to be tested to destruction now.

The Critic under Labour hopes to go on being just as cheerful as we were under the Tories, but more so.  We’ll change, discreetly, in ways we hope you won’t notice. And start doing more things in ways we hope you will. 

Ideally you won’t get tired of words like “membership”, “exclusive reader events” and “quality ‘Make Criticism Great Again’ caps uniquely for you!” As the Sue Grays of this world know, words really aren’t enough.

Our launch leader said that the point of this magazine was honest criticism, all the better to approach the truth we know exists. A luta continua! But thank you once again to everyone who makes that possible, now and in the future.