What gets lost amid silly scandals
I wonder if we will ever be able to resist fixing the suffix ‘gate’ to the end of any not-yet-sufficiently-salacious…
Abortion is still one of the great moral issues
There are two things non-Americans can almost never understand about America and should probably never speak about. The first is…
West is best
So why be ashamed of ourselves?
Being reasonable isn’t easy
Some years ago there was a study at Harvard that tried to find out what people did when they held…
Why Rishi shouldn’t quit
Perhaps I should stress from the get-go that I do not know Rishi Sunak. So far as I know, we’ve…
How to lose elections
I have remarked here before about our era’s tendency to accept election results if your side wins but to reject…
Sorry is the hardest word
It is uncanny how swiftly British culture imitates the worst of American culture. Take Whoopi Goldberg, who distinguished herself again…
The day I nearly brought RT down
It is interesting to watch Ofcom finally remove the broadcasting licence from the Russian propaganda channel Russia Today (RT). I…
Will the West’s unity against Russia last?
Over recent days I have been reflecting on War and Peace. Or Special Operation and Peace as it must now…
Life must go on
Well, at least Covid is over. No sooner had Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled into Ukraine than the UK’s Covid advisory…
What the right gets wrong about Putin
A fracture on the international right may seem small fry given everything that is going on right now. But it…
Trudeau’s tyranny
Early in the corona era the historian David Starkey gave some thoughts on Covid. ‘We’ve got a Chinese virus,’ he…
Work is no place for your ‘whole self’
One of the few things I have learned in this life is that Dante Alighieri was wrong. In the Inferno…
In defence of bad jokes
I was once at a terrific Shabbat dinner where late in the evening one of the other guests suddenly said:…
Oh ambassador, you’re spoiling us
I know the following sentence is going to get me into trouble. Still, there are times when you wonder whether…
The blame games are about to begin
‘The main job of a government is to ensure that the economics don’t go wrong.’ So argued an economist friend…
Meat of the matter
Are you ready for ‘Operation Red Meat’? If not, then you should brace yourself. For it looks set to be…
Why I don’t walk under ladders
Well, I did warn you. As I typed my column last week on the imminent end of Covid I said…
I’m calling it – Covid is over
If anyone had any doubts about the wisdom of tempting fate then they probably haven’t considered the case of Betty…
History is less clear as you are living through it
I was recently reading the works of the 17th-century antiquary John Aubrey, who at one point mentions a ghost craze…
America’s vice
Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly.…
The type of person who makes the world work
I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a…
America’s identity crisis
There was no reason for the world ever to hear the name Kyle Rittenhouse. Except that in the summer of…
Why parliament is in such bad order
I see that the most boring conversation in the nation is back. The one even worse than people in the…
Could a truthful Clinton have saved the US?
What if Bill Clinton had told the truth? Would America’s sexual and political history be different? The thought occurs because…
