Why is ‘frilustsliv’ so good for us?

How can I incorporate “frilustsliv” into my life?

Mitchell Foyle-York-York is a freelance writer and works for the Roger Scruton Legacy Foundation.

In his first speech after defecting to become a Reform MP, given alongside Nigel Farage in a room jammed with bustling journalists, Robert Jenrick struck a consistent chord: vanity. Jenrick not only spoke of the need to “unite the right” but that he was the figure by which the right could be united.

His speech implied that a Tory Party without Jenrick lacked any serious right-of-centre coherence, and that his defection would be the final nail in the coffin for the Tories, paving the way for Reform to scoop up the right-of-centre vote. But don’t just take it from me. It was revealed in a leaked document that Jenrick’s own team had assured him that he would arrive on the Reform scene as “the new sheriff in town”. But has this proven to be the case? Is Jenrick really as influential and as popular as he likes to think?

There is still a long way to go until the next general election, but the (early) indicators are not good for Jenrick. In a YouGov poll, published the day after Jenrick’s defection was announced, it was recorded that Jenrick’s popularity rating sat at just 11 per cent, with 41 per cent of people polled saying they had an “unfavourable” view.

The same YouGov poll shows a somewhat similar trend among Tory and Reform voters (the people Jenrick was claiming to “unite”), with 39 per cent of Tory and 22 per cent of Reform voters having an “unfavourable” view of Jenrick. Furthermore, recent general election polling indicates either no gain or a small loss for Reform in national polls. As I have said, there is a long way to go, but all recent polling data suggests that Sherriff Jenrick is more Milky Bar Kid than John Wayne.

Jenrick’s opinion of himself and his political prospects may be a delusion, but delusions come from somewhere. How, even after losing the last Tory leadership election, has Jenrick been able to convince himself that he is one of the political heavyweights of our age? A clue lies in David Scullion’s review of Jenrick’s leadership campaign, published in The Critic in November 2024. In interviews with Jenrick’s own campaign team, Scullion reports that Jenrick’s spin-doctors had developed an “obsession with tweets… Everything had to go viral.” Herein lies the cause of Jenrick’s delusions: the internet.

If you were to look at Robert Jenrick’s X account, especially from the time of his leadership campaign, you might be forgiven for thinking that Jenrick was/is a very popular figure. After all, he gets plenty of ‘likes’ and ‘reposts’. The problem, however, is that the internet is not real life. Once you subtract bots and non-UK residents out of those social media engagements, what remains is barely enough engaged floating-voters to win you a seat on the local council, let alone a leadership contest!

The reality is that most people who engage feverishly with such online political content are usually ideologues with strange, niche, and sometimes even extreme, interests. They rarely reflect a significant chunk of the electorate, let alone the majority of it. Jenrick – as well as his team – appear to have been trapped inside an internet echo chamber… and it is clearly having some very damaging effects on his popularity and prospects.

Campaigners from PARC Against DARC are accusing the Ministry of Defence of a series of potential moves to split out planning elements required for the DARC radar proposal without including them in the main planning application. They say legal precedents show this practice may be unlawful.

A PARC Against DARC spokesperson said:

We haven’t come across a single person who doesn’t think the whole story behind the RDF aircraft tracker relocation proposal that’s just been tabled, the inexplicably high-security landing cable station, the unanimously unpopular £60m Newgale bypass road and required power cable upgrades for miles just stinks to high heaven.

After 37 Senedd and Westminster politicians have come out against DARC, a petition of 18,000 signatures and public demonstrations that have gone viral online, the MOD seems to be looking for any way it can to ‘salami slice’ the massively unpopular DARC plans and try to ram them through planning against the local community’s will. We think that this would be both unlawful and wrong.

Follow the DARC Money

The spokesperson continued:

DARC admits to funding the new RDF aircraft tracker in the application. The MOD’s environmental screening document states clearly that relocating the RDF has been part of DARC’s plans, and the only reason it gives as to why it was excluded from them was because DARC were assured that its relocation would be completed prior to DARC’s construction.

It even goes as far as clearly implying DARC is paying off who it needs to to expedite the relocation of the RDF, using distracting language to hide these realities behind the operational separation between the two projects.

It just leaves you with the question: why does it appear as if money has been changing hands in order for this aircraft tracker to be done and dusted at all costs before DARC is potentially started, if not for the reason that the application is blatantly linked to DARC, and yet unjustifiably is not being considered part and parcel of it?

We strongly question whether the MOD’s attempts to escape reality would stand up in court, and we are disgusted with PCC for issuing a screening opinion that throws the Pembrokeshire people it’s meant to stand up for completely under the bus.

The MOD’s screening request for the upgraded aircraft tracker includes no environmental assessment for radiofrequency radiation impacts to local people and livestock, which means it fails to consider the cumulative impact of what would be that plus DARC’s radiation.

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Considering we’ve found over 4,000 studies showing the type of radiation DARC would emit is linked with health impacts including cancer, and that the MOD has ignored nine whole freedom of information requests from us, the fact the MOD refuses to release a scrap of meaningful data on DARC’s huge potential radiation risks for our community leaves people here furious and disgusted.

All they can ever keep trotting out in response is the widely-criticised regulator ICNIRP and a tiny department of the WHO that’s completely riddled with telecoms and military lobbyists.

Suspicious ‘high-security’ undersea cable leads directly to DARC site

It gets even worse though, say campaigners:

There’s a strong public perception that the sea cable landing station they’re now building metres away from the gates of Cawdor Barracks, despite being said to be civilian, would actually be likely to supply DARC with data from overseas as well.

There’s an identical one proposed near Roch using the other one of the two new sea cables coming, but unlike that one, the Brawdy station features razor wire, security guards with on-site parking and CCTV cameras.

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The MOD won’t explain why it could possibly need any of this, but if you consider that Brawdy was involved in the SOSUS programme which literally covered up the fact that the British military was concealing that its sea cables were for civilian use when in fact they were tracking submarines, you can see why locals are sceptical.

If they’re right, none of this was ever going to be included in DARC’s potential upcoming planning application, making that application seem less consequential than it would really be.

Newgale bypass with DARC links

The Newgale bypass road has recently suffered another 18 month delay due to a public consultation response that almost unanimously rejected the entire proposal. According to PARC Against DARC, nearly everyone they’ve spoken to believes that the road:

had to have been connected to DARC, because it was so implausible that they could construct and operate such a large-scale military site using tiny backroads that would cause traffic bottlenecks from all sides. This was not factored into DARC’s scoping report either.

Silence surrounds DARC Pylons

Campaigners add that on top of that, documented talks between the MOD and PCNPA show that the MOD has so far failed to include in any publicised planning materials what could be extensive pylon-based or underground network power upgrades it admits could be required for DARC:

It just seems to us like the MOD is dripping with the kind of perceptions of corrupt practice in the local community that the DARC fiasco has become so well-known for in the St Davids peninsula.

The MOD, from the start and throughout, has proven itself to be a government ministry that seems to do nothing but railroad communities, flouting both strongly held public opinion and potentially the law to get what it wants.

DARC opposition set to be ‘hot topic’ at the ballot box

With the Senedd election just ten weeks away and with two of the main contenders in Plaid Cymru and the Wales Green Party both having come out very firmly against DARC as party policy, campaigners say:

Labour locally risks destroying its voter base even further if they fail to recognise the huge levels of local opposition to the proposals and change course.

They add:

The Labour governments on both sides of the border that are presiding over DARC have been an utter shambles, and FM Eluned Morgan and MP Henry Tufnell have been as silent as the grave on DARC since day one.

With a move to proportional representation, voting for 16-18s and an increase from 60 to 96 MSs in the upcoming Senedd elections, it’s looking ever more likely that Labour will be completely wiped out and a progressive ‘Anti-DARC’ government will form the next administration in Wales, so we believe Labour has everything to lose on this key election issue if they fail to about turn.

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Featured image (artist’s impression) via PARC Against DARC

Earlier this month, Manchester’s the Mill published a story highlighting racist comments from a Reform campaigner. The man in question was Adam Mitula, and the party has finally suspended him. The question is what took them so long?

Reform have finally suspended Matt Goodwin’s interim campaign mgr Adam Mitula following complaints about his online activity. The posts included the denial of Holocaust death tolls & antisemitic slurs like “I wouldn’t touch a Jewish woman”#politicslive#GortonandDentonByElection pic.twitter.com/2HjinzZwRS

— Mike H (@mikoh123) February 24, 2026

Revolting Reform

The Mill noted that Goodwin has actually surrounded himself with far-right activists. They argue that this is at odds with how Nigel Farage has historically operated:

Nigel Farage has always been at pains to distance his party from known far-right groups. He’s been publicly critical of Tommy Robinson on many occasions, and as UKIP leader he banned ex-British National Party members from running for his party.

Farage is pretty far to the right, obviously, but there’s always a further right. Most recently this manifested with the creation of Rupert Lowe’s Restore Party.

According to the Mill, Adam Mitula was the most problematic of Goodwin’s team:

Mitula’s output, posted on social media, includes his suggestion that “60-70%” of transgender people are paedophiles, the fact he would “never touch a Jewish woman”, and his use of the n-word. Meanwhile, discussing the number of people who died in the Holocaust in July 2024, he appears to try and play down the statistics, writing: “6 million polish [sic] people including some Jews. They always use Poles to make up the number. And on top of it they claim Poles were killing. Just sick.”

The Mill also highlighted the following tweet:

The Mill noted that Goodwin may not have been aware of the above. This was ten days ago, however, so Reform have certainly known about it since then. Despite this, it seems it took them until now to get rid of Mitula.

Here’s what the Mill said on 23 February:

And Reform’s former campaign manager in Tameside, Adam Mitula, is reclining on a poolside sun-lounger as we speak, perhaps enjoying a daiquiri, after the party quietly suspended him following our reporting on his history of anti-semitic and racist tweets, in a piece which used research by Hope Not Hate.

And here’s what BBC North West said today:

One of Reform UK’s campaign team in the Gorton and Denton by-election has been suspended after racist comments made on social media.

Adam Mitula, the party’s interim campaign manager, used an inappropriate word on X, and appeared to suggest the Jewish community had inflated the number of Jewish people killed in the Holocaust.

He says his comments have been taken out of context and he claims he was defending the Jewish community.

‘Defending’, he says.

Sure, pal.

Just like we’re defending you now when we say “get wrecked, bozo”.

At odds

As we reported yesterday, Farage seems to have abandoned Matt Goodwin following a series of scandals. And when we say ‘abandoned’, we’re saying that quite literally, because big Nige is literally on the other side of the world:

Chagos is a restricted UK territory. Access is tightly controlled through permits because of the strategic military base on Diego Garcia. This isn’t a tourist island it’s a high-security defence asset.

So did Farage request a permit ?

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Or is it another day another stunt https://t.co/ac0sWSJsGf

— Charlie (@CheckCharlieB) February 21, 2026

Farage is trying to create a Goldilocks political movement in which everyone is just racist enough. The problem is reactionary politics demands constant lurches to the right, and that’s going to make Reform impossible to hold together as a mainstream political project.

Featured image via The Mill

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Faux fur might not be the first thing that comes to mind when spring rolls around, yet here we are: winter’s nearly over, and I have suddenly started seeing these cuddly coats absolutely everywhere.

Pairing faux fur with denim and a baby tee is a classic combo for the coolest of girls. It says: “I’m not with the band, I’m in the band.”

Faux fur never really goes out of style, and with the UK’s classically unpredictable weather, you may well find you want a chic, warmer layer to rely on for longer than you think. Plus, opting for a shorter jacket instead of a longer coat helps make the garment a bit better suited to tricky transitional weather.

So, whether you want to channel your inner Carrie Bradshaw or you’re just looking for a fool-proof way to take your looks to the next level, here are some of the best buys on the high street right now.

Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff and Margot Robbie as Catherine Earnshaw | Image courtesy of: Warner Bros. Pictures

4 min read38 min

As a Yorkshire lass, Wuthering Heights holds a visceral place in my heart. I chose to view this new 2026 film adaptation not as the book I love, however, but as a standalone vision by director Emerald Fennell. Absolute purists will not enjoy this disconnected fantasy; it is certainly not Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. But if you suspend expectations, it is an indulgent treat.

From the opening frames – a medieval, Sweeney Todd-esque hanging scene – the viewer is plunged into a jarring crowd, introducing Cathy in this social context rather than on the isolated moors. This headlinegrabbing scene clearly tries to link sex with suffering in the viewer’s mind from the off.

There is a bizarre lack of actual nature. Compared to the raw realism of Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version, this feels like pure make-believe. The imagery is less Brontë and more Damien Hirst, presenting butchered pigs, fish in jelly and stuffed sheep that highlight the profound inauthenticity of the world on screen. Even the costumes reflect this; Cathy is cloaked in shiny, synthetic materials. Margot Robbie (Catherine Earnshaw) looks stunning throughout; she must have felt like a kid in a Gothic sweet shop.

I found the auditory experience equally jarring. The Yorkshire accents lacked grit, but an ‘A for effort’ for Jacob Elordi as Heathcliff. The soundtrack, featuring Charli XCX, brings a dark, industrial synth-pop energy – more shadowy city than Pennine storm – though it is effective in adding to the film’s overall feel.

The younger cast is a triumph. Young Cathy (Charlotte Mellington) is sweetly acidic, while a fearful young Heathcliff is movingly portrayed by Adolescence’s Emmy-winning child star Owen Cooper. Martin Clunes shines as Cathy’s father, Earnshaw – having seemingly absorbed the book’s character of his son Hindley into a singular, monstrous caricature. The absence of Hindley fundamentally shifts the context, making the relationships less layered.

Emerald Fennell’s ‘make believe’ lacks the scent of windswept heather but possesses its own strange, man-made shine

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Once the characters reach adulthood, the lead duo – Elordi and Robbie – possess a believable but shallow presence. This isn’t soul-shattering love; it is unquenchable lust. Their moments subvert the traditional male gaze but lack the heat expected from the hype – it’s certainly less shocking than Fennell’s 2023 film Saltburn. Cathy is the complete focus, unsympathetically presented even though her tragic end is foreshadowed by her crimson attire. Heathcliff appears almost an afterthought, merely a plaything for Cathy, leading me to conclude that Elordi is slightly wasted in this film, compared to his Oscar-nominated performance as Frankenstein’s monster in Guillermo del Toro’s 2025 film.

Down the hill at the Linton estate, the film shifts into an even more synthetic world, reminiscent of old Hollywood film sets. Alison Oliver’s Isabella Linton, whose creepy dolls house provides another dimension of sinister absurdity, is delightful. That Fennell’s Isabella later consents to Heathcliff’s cruelty (a drastic departure from the book) will possibly be the director’s most controversial interpretation.

The decor of Linton’s house is so over-the-top that Cathy does feel like a shrunken Alice here, as the the wild winds of the moors are swapped for a Grimms’ Fairy Tales aesthetic.

The strongest part of the film is undoubtedly the relationships of the women, with this dynamic replacing the generational trauma of the source material. From a rather more villainous Nelly (Hong Chau) to an obsessive Isabella, the tension between Cathy and these characters outweighs the drama with the men.

The verdict? Emerald Fennell’s ‘make believe’ lacks the scent of windswept heather but has its own strange, man-made shine. Shallow, yes; glossy, certainly. Is it worth a watch? Yes – as long as you don’t expect the earthy style, substance, or plot of the book.

3/5. (1/5 for the purists.)

Olivia Blake is Labour MP for Sheffield Hallam

“Wuthering Heights”

Directed by: Emerald Fennell

Venue: General cinema release

Over the course of their numerous collaborations, Rosamund told Radio 2 that she discovered the Oscar winner is both a “delight” and a fan of creating her own fun behind the scenes.

“The best actress I’ve ever worked with is Judi Dench, who’s such a mischief maker,” the Gone Girl star enthused. “She’s so delightful. She’s so, so good.”

Rosamund added: “She’s just amazing and yet, when you’re doing a play with her, she’s so funny, she’s so naughty. Off stage, she’s completely out of character, laughing, playing a practical joke, and then she walks on and it’s all there.”

Elsewhere in her Radio 2 interview, Rosamund claimed that her favourite male co-star was Christian Bale, even if his Method acting technique meant she didn’t really get to know him very well.

“He’s another level,” the Saltburn actor said. “I can’t say I know him really, but it was just a pretty amazing experience to be around him in a film called Hostiles.

“But I don’t think I met Christian, I think I only met the character. He’s quite method. He’s very method.”