The war on smokers has gone too far
You’d think, wouldn’t you, that after winning a giant mandate from the electorate and having not yet done anything to…
In defence of Kirstie Allsopp
The jibe, commonly attributed to Napoleon, that England is a nation of shopkeepers, was at least a sort of compliment.…
Can W.H. Auden be called a war poet?
Though Auden maintained that the Great War had little effect on him, its catastrophe haunts his early poetry and shaped his anxiety about what it meant to be English
Can video games be funny?
Grade: B+ Games can be exciting, puzzling, scary, competitive and – occasionally – moving. Can they be funny? Not often.…
What we didn’t learn from the Manchester Airport police ‘attack’
There’s a famous 1986 TV advert for the Guardian (remember when newspapers had TV adverts?) which shows you footage of…
The CrowdStrike crash was an act of God
CrowdStrike. What a name. It sounds, doesn’t it, like exactly what it’s meant to prevent? And a cloudstrike, in the…
It wasn’t just Trump who dodged a bullet. It was all of us
Hard not to think that that’s the election in the bag for The Donald. Surviving an assassination attempt was always…
Let’s give Keir a chance
I don’t know about you, but I had an odd sort of election. The bits that I thought were going…
Keir Starmer channeled Obama in his first Downing Street speech
In his first speech from the Downing Street lectern, Sir Keir Starmer was setting out to reaffirm those qualities that…
Why is Putin really trying to interfere in the UK election?
Who says Britain is no longer a Great Power? To those of a declinist cast of mind, it must stand…
Michael Gove is right to compare the betting scandal to partygate
Poor old Rishi Sunak. You would have to have the proverbial heart of stone not to feel, at least, a…
The terrible consequences of the Hay Festival grandstanding
Just three weeks ago, I wrote about Hay Festival sacking their main sponsor Baillie Gifford after pressure from the campaign group…
Keir Starmer is treating the House of Lords with contempt
We have different approaches to tidying up, my wife and I. It bothers her very much that the house we…
The grandstanding against the Hay Festival is short-sighted
When the country’s largest literary festival parts ways with its main sponsor, it is not usually a cause for rejoicing among writers,…
Sunak’s speech was embarrassingly bad
Let’s be fair. It wasn’t Rishi Sunak’s fault it was raining. But it was, a bit, his fault that as…
In defence of Jonathan Yeo
If the basic job of a work of art is to be interesting, as I think it is, then Jonathan…
Gorgeous and deeply absorbing: Manor Lords reviewed
Grade: A ‘God games’, as they used to be called, have a storied history. SimCity, Civilisation and the excellently sadistic…
Farewell Nadhim Zahawi, you won’t be missed
Nadhim Zahawi’s latest resignation letter was one of the all-time classics of the genre: unctuous, preening and pretentious even by…
The Elphicke affair has made Starmer look incompetent and unprincipled
The defection of Natalie Elphicke to Labour was, no doubt about it, a political coup de theatre. What wasn’t immediately clear, but is becoming clearer now the curtain…
Suella Braverman has made herself look silly
Did Suella Braverman run her latest op-ed by No. 10 for approval? That was the question asked at the end of…
The parable of Blackpool’s potholes
I read the news today, oh boy. Four thousand holes in Blackpool, Lancashire. Well, in fact, not quite as many…
Tony Blair is a post-democratic product
Why was it that when I read a big interview with Tony Blair over the weekend – the ostensible premise…
Entirely pointless and extremely pleasant: House Flipper 2 reviewed
Grade: B+ Most video games challenge the player’s problem-solving skills, reaction time or hand-eye co-ordination. But a handful of them…
