As I expected, the honorable member from National Review did very well. An Oxford reader writes of Jonah's speech:
Very amusing: a joke every line, house often in stitches. Hammered home the line that to regret America is to regret Britain, and that is a shameful, ludicrous act of self-loathing. Quite stirring. Excellent cracks about the Communist guy (who failed to turn up): "Was Dr. Doom not available? Did you not approach the most penetrating pundits in the Klingon galaxy?" etc. It fell to Matt Frei (of the BBC) to bark "Nein Danke!" at the proposition bench, when one clambered to make a 'point of information', to prolonged laughter.
Proposition was, shall we say, sinister - particularly UK Islamic Party guy, who talked darkly about "Corporations and control of money by small, dangerous groups", but stopped short of mentionining the Jews by name. One or two Muslims in the audience applauded them at points, but few else. Oddly they were combined with a Canadian feminist (producing, as the first proposition speaker put it, "the first ever Canadian-Islamist alliance against a Neoconservative-Matt Frei alliance"). Nearly everyone poured out the Noes door (save Matt Frei, interestingly, who nipped out for a loo break through the Ayes).
All in all it was a pretty good Union night, though the Islamists became quickly tedious, depriving it of those moments when the place zips with the tension and excitement of real and dramatised intellectual swordplay.
Now back to revising for finals.