The Queen Is Dead: The passionate and powerful bestselling book by critically acclaimed journalist and author of Tears of Strangers and Talking to

by Stan Grant

Democracy is in retreat. It has lost its moral core. Democracy has been captured by big money and big power. It cannot speak to the voices that demand to be heard. Demagogues exploit anxiety and fear, fan racism and xenophobia to claim power.

Democracy is in retreat. It has lost its moral core. Democracy has been captured by big money and big power. It cannot speak to the voices that demand to be heard. Demagogues exploit anxiety and fear, fan racism and xenophobia to claim power.

A crazed White man with a gun has shot dead Black people in a supermarket. The reporter is trying to sound sympathetic but cannot escape her own racism. Racism she is not even conscious of. The Black people were murdered, she says, because of the colour of their skin. No, they weren’t. There is nothing in the colour of their skin that should mean they are gunned down in broad daylight. Their skin has nothing to do with it. They were killed because of what the crazed White man with a gun believed about Black skin.