Very best of luck to Standpoint—the new monthly magazine edited by Daniel Johnson that aims to “defend and celebrate western civilisation”—the first issue of which is published today. A couple of my colleagues attended the opening party at the Wallace collection last night, and this morning have been lauding the quality and the quantity of the champagne on offer.
But it looks like Standpoint’s online editors may have been similarly enchanted by the bubbly. The magazine’s homepage, which features its slogan “The magazine that makes you… think again” not once, not twice but three times, also contains a box headed “Latest Blog Entries,” which promises such delights as “A new Blog peice,” “My another blog” and “My Blog entry.” Click through to read the Blog peices and you are presented with two posts that take their responsibilities to defend western civilisation so seriously that they are entirely in Latin. My favourite, however, is right at the top. I hope you’ll indulge me if I quote in full:
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Western civilisation is in safe hands.
Was there too and met many interesting people. Gove was excellent and there is an impressive list of figures marshalled to the cause, from Nick Cohen to V S Naipaul.
But I think the magazine is heading in the wrong direction by identifying itself as the centre-right alternative to Prospect and trying to hitch a ride on the Cameron express. Nothing against Cameron, but as far as I’m concerned, the rise of New Labour was as irrelevant to the success of Prospect as the rise of Cameron will be to Standpoint’s future. Prospect’s virtue is precisely that it is not ideological. Its readership may be more so, but Goodhart, former arts editor Linklater and many contributors are very far removed from the politically correct ideal cherished in most left wing circles in academe and the media. For good measure, try squeezing Prospect regular Michael Lind into an ideological box.
I just can’t see the kowtowing to multicultural orthodoxy, nor the adherence to a New Labour political project within the magazine’s pages. Maybe Standpoint can make a go of it as an explicitly ideological intellectual magazine. I wish it the best and think it will do the world of ideas a service. But I can’t see it attaining the same penetration within the pool of intellectual consumers as Prospect.