Columns
Arthur Labinjo-Hughes’s death and the problem of evil
Since I first read about the torture and murder of six-year-old Arthur Labinjo-Hughes, I’ve had what feels like an A-level…
The Covid dissidents who’ve made my Christmas merrier
A few years back, a hackneyed journalistic come-hither led me to a sober reckoning: would I write about someone alive…
My meeting with the Durham University mob
My abiding memory of this fairly appalling year is of the face of the young student at Durham University who…
Does Kamala Harris deserve to be vice president?
Is it rude to refer to the Vice President of the USA as the world’s most famous diversity hire? Possibly.…
My plan for young people
I have been reading 39 Ways To Save The Planet by the BBC journalist Tom Heap, which includes such ingenious…
How to spin a storm
If, in the days after Storm Arwen, the north of England began to suspect that the south didn’t much care…
The Tories have no answer to the Channel crossings crisis
One of this government’s favourite tactics is to act as if the beginning of its time in office was the…
Life online is about to get even worse
No sooner had an inch or two of snow fallen on our upland areas last week than the climate-change Morlocks…
Anticolonialists have their myths too
Much is now being made of the evils of empire. As a child of empire I bridle. I acknowledge the…
Will we ever learn to ‘live with the virus’?
Comparing Saturday’s Downing Street press conference to Groundhog Day would insult one of my favourite films. The hilarious, multifarious strategies…
The Tories face their biggest problem yet
Up until a few days ago, ministers could see how the government might regain its footing in the polls after…
'The type of person who makes the world work': remembering Anthony Smith
I’m not sure how many readers know the name of Anthony Smith, who died on Sunday aged 83, but a…
Why the northeast could benefit from the ‘Waitrose Effect’
A Church of England primary school in Richmond, London, has junked Sir Winston Churchill and J.K. Rowling as names for…
Has Covid turned us into a nation of hermits?
If there’s one thing I misjudged completely, it’s how creepy and long-lasting the effects of lockdown on all of us…
The American identity crisis
There was no reason for the world ever to hear the name Kyle Rittenhouse. Except that in the summer of…
Why the next election will be harder for the Tories
Ever since Boris Johnson’s disastrous decision to try to stay the standards committee’s guilty verdict against Owen Paterson, things have…
The importance of stigma
Exciting news from Durham University, which is helping its students to become ‘sex workers’. This noble institution is offering two…
Why can’t we remember our first few years?
I begin this column on a train from Paris to London. Opposite me are a mother and baby. I don’t…
The sleaze row is a crisis made for Angela Rayner
Almost no MP has emerged with dignity from the sleaze debacle of the past three weeks. Boris Johnson’s botched attempt…
The absurd theatre of vaccine passports
When a column highlighting under-appreciated breaking news has had absolutely no impact on the course of events (per usual), the…
Can Boris weather this new storm?
The row over MPs’ outside interests has landed Boris Johnson in one of the most uncomfortable positions a prime minister…
The dangerous pleasure of hating men
I have Netflix, and in particular the series Maid, to thank for the startling discovery of how easy it is…
Kamala Harris and the problem with racist trees
I was intrigued to learn that Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the US, is worried about racist trees. I…
MPs aren’t the elite – faceless bureaucrats are
I see that the most boring conversation in the nation is back. The one even worse than people in the…
A re-gift to Donald Trump
For Democrats, like the ‘insurrection’ of January 6th, the Trump policy of separating illegal-immigrant parents from their children in 2018…