Columns
The root of the problem
I was intrigued to learn that Kamala Harris, the Vice President of the US, is worried about racist trees. I…
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…
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…
The Tories’ health battle
Boris Johnson knows the value of three-word slogans. ‘Take back control’ and ‘get Brexit done’ helped propel him to his…
Does the doctor really need to see you now?
Only later, perhaps even a decade later, as the pandemic of 2020-22 shrinks in our rear-view mirror, may we be…
My conflicted loyalty to Newcastle United
The second thing I learned about football, after moving to London, is that you can never, ever switch your allegiance.…
What this Budget tells us
The Budget and the spending review gave the clearest indication yet of what the post-Covid government might look like. During…
Who owns the language?
The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, is giving local residents £25,000 grants to enable them to change the names of…
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…
The dangers of being trans-gressive
I’m accustomed to a sense of urgency in relation to Netflix offerings because the streaming service often buys short-term rights…
An idea whose time has come – at last
Thornton Wilder remarked that there are individuals who fall in love with an idea long before its appointed rendezvous with…
The problem with ‘David’s law’
Two members of parliament have been killed in the past five and a half years. This, one long-serving MP laments,…
The ideology of madness
On the wooden jetty from which the ferry used to depart for the little island of Utoya, there stood for…
The dangers of a Covid state of mind
Covid transformed the role of the state. During the pandemic, the government did things it would never normally even contemplate.…
The sultans of sulk
Many negative qualities are ascribed to politicians — name-calling, absenteeism, drunkenness — but you rarely hear of my favourite political…
The pandemic has made cynics of us all
A report by MPs into the spread of the coronavirus has concluded that the government’s approach constituted one of this…
Israel has been spared Sally Rooney
I have not watched the BBC’s new period drama Ridley Road because I knew it would be impossible for the…
Blame it all on the middle-class drug users
We can suffer a lethal pandemic with lockdowns, petrol shortages and supermarket shelves almost entirely denuded of sausages. But when…
E-everything is heading your way
Trends in New York City tend to foretell trends in London, whose fashions in turn set the pace for smaller…
Boris offers a hostage to fortune
Most prime ministers would be worried about supply chain shortages. But as became increasingly clear at the Tory party conference…
We should never have been in Afghanistan
Two important studies have been published this autumn on the apparent failure of our almost 20-year war in Afghanistan. In…
Labour has gone back to 1983
One day quite soon someone at a petrol pump is going to get a tyre iron wrapped around their head.…
The tactics of victimhood
Late last week the Labour deputy leader was the subject of a glowing profile in the Times. The piece described…
Don’t mix up murder and hate crime
I’m not sure very many of our politicians, the London Mayor or even the Met can really be said to…
Starmer’s last shot
Next week, when Keir Starmer appears on stage at Labour conference in Brighton, it will be the first time he…
