Columnists
Secrets for sale
Like all hacks, I sometimes wonder whether I should just screw my self-esteem, do a Jonathan Freedland and start writing…
Mexico’s progressive hell
Every morning I check to see if Rodrigo Iván Cortés has published the ‘apology’ that the court in Mexico has…
A New Labour restoration
To understand the political journey of Sir Keir Starmer, look to Liz Kendall. This week the Blairite and one-time leadership…
Right-on Kew
We must all hurry down to the Temperate House at Kew Gardens next month to enjoy Queer Nature After Hours,…
Silicon Valley stuck in the mud
If any readers are having those September, back-to-work blues perhaps I might offer them a sure-fire palliative? Just go online…
Children need protection from adult madness
The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable…
Britain has an entitlement problem
An Institute for Fiscal Studies paper, published at the end of last month, makes grim reading. Through the prism of…
It shouldn’t be a crime to sniff a goshawk
I notice that the naturalist Chris Packham has been reported to the police for the ‘crime’ of sniffing a goshawk.…
Risk management
When prime ministers sense the end is near, they tend to follow a similar pattern. They change senior civil servants…
George Osborne’s midlife crisis
There should be a term in anthropology for what happens to a certain type of Tory male in middle age.…
Why are the British so anti-doctor?
Having lived in the United Kingdom for almost my whole adult life, I like to think I’m well assimilated. I…
Should all western businesses follow Heineken out of Russia?
The news that Heineken, the Dutch brewer, has sold its business in Russia to a local buyer for a token…
The joke’s on us
The award for the funniest joke at this year’s Edinburgh Fringe was won by Lorna Rose Treen, with this: ‘I…
Charge of the right brigade
You know the Conservative party is in trouble when it does not dare use its name on leaflets. Instead, it…
The hope of the no-hopers
Who is Perry Johnson? It is a question not many American voters can answer. He has a grand total of…
Then they came for therapy
Were I to overcome a lifelong scepticism about the healing powers of talk therapy, I imagine languishing on a psychiatrist’s…
Here come the Greens
So far, Keir Starmer has been unmoved by complaints from left-wingers that his policies differ little from those of Boris…
The great sociology con
My default mood at the moment is bleak despair, although it can sometimes be triggered into nihilistic loathing, which I…
