The sugared-almond theory of economic consequence
Let me ease you gently into a big and boring-sounding word for a small dishonesty that today corrupts the language…
Will AI make bricklayers better-paid than barristers?
Old tortoise that I am, my head usually yanks back into my shell when people start talking about artificial intelligence.…
Why people would hate a property tax
My friend Tim Leunig is a cerebral thinker of the best kind. Though not party-political, he has worked for Tory…
Afrikaners have been endlessly maligned
This I began writing two weeks ago as an overnight guest in a cosy cabin on a farm beside an…
Could Ukrainians ever trust a Putin peace deal?
Last week at the Buxton International Festival I joined a big audience for an onstage interview with Anna Reid. She’s…
History will judge Rishi Sunak kindly
Memorably sweeping statements tripping easily from the tongue have a habit of worming their way into assumptions we make and…
Would you want Nigel Farage to marry your daughter?
The opposite of attraction is repulsion. Political commentary gives too little attention to a party’s (or leader’s) capacity to repel.…
The moment Starmer lost control of the Labour left
‘Tony Blair walks on water.’ Decades ago this statement led a Times photographer and me to the front door of…
Are ultra-processed foods really so bad?
Last week saw a flurry of media reports, of whose headlines one of the worst preceded one of the best…
Save us from the plague of plastic tree protectors
Can nothing protect us from a plague of plastic tree protectors? They’ve descended on us like locusts, covering our hills,…
Donating to charity is too easy
It’s been a torrid few weeks for anyone who knows anyone who was running in the London Marathon. In have…
What is there left to say about the Tories?
Spare a thought for us political commentators. We stare into the void between now and a (presumed) decisive Labour victory…
Euthanasia is coming – like it or not
Throughout the short life of the Assisted Dying Bill which failed in the Commons, the ‘faith community’ (a quaint term…
When righteous anger goes wrong
From abroad I’ve returned to a country where, in language to which the word ‘shrill’ hardly does justice, fellow British…
The four big questions our politicians need to answer
Anyone would think (anyone, that is, who has followed our three main annual party conferences this autumn) that Britain’s principal…
Folk wisdom gets so much wrong
I was only a boy when I first began protesting against the idiocy of so much of the folk wisdom…
