Features
Left in the lurch
Thanks to globalisation, ‘progressive’ politicians have nowhere to turn
What’s happened to my party?
Labour voters feel hope and despair; hope, because the Tories are doing no better than we, and despair, for that…
Marrying money
Marriage has emerged as a serious – and perhaps surprising – social divide
The ransom business
Islamic State commanders know exactly how to extract the greatest possible profit from their hostages. Some care about little else
Signs of contempt
Why do we ruin beautiful places to make them appeal to those who’ll never visit anyway?
Hug a hoodie?
The Ku Klux Klan is trying to rebrand
Kilkenny Notebook
‘What is a Minsky moment, anyway?’ asks Gerry Stembridge, an Irish satirist. ‘I’ve been reading about them in the papers…
Malta
Fate occasionally leads travellers to places they had never planned to visit. Into this category, for me, fell Malta. I…
No safe haven
Britain’s appalling record on refugees is a moral failure, and national disgrace
Let the right ones in
It is the easiest thing in the world to say who should come to Britain and why. But if there…
Republicans running amok
Taking control of both houses of Congress may hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton in 2016
What Merkel wants
The German Chancellor has a lot in common with David Cameron – which is why she can’t afford to help him very much
The Catholic civil war
Uncertainty over how much reform Pope Francis wants is splitting his church into factions
Ukip’s third man
Patrick O’Flynn praises ‘genius’ Nigel Farage, and puts Douglas Carswell in his place
All guns blazing
Once, both police and criminals in Britain routinely did without guns. How did that happen? And why did it change?
Old, vulnerable and hungry
The reality for elderly patients in NHS hospitals
The Alps
For a melancholy example of the power of celebrity, head to the Alps. Since Michael Schumacher’s accident last December in…
The cult of mindfulness
Separating meditation from faith might not be as harmless as it seems
The Seabirds
Out on the crumbling landscape’s farthest edge, Their winter journey starts, and while I know Some names, I can’t recall…
From Beirut to Brighton
The long shadow of the Islamic State means that many Christians are packing up and leaving Lebanon
The quiet revolutionary
Rand Paul combines a dull, reassuring manner with a Ukip-like insurgent appeal. It could take him to the presidency
Arguments with God
Former chief rabbi Jonathan Sacks on the return of religion to public life and the civil war that Islam needs
Mandatory fun
Forced, studenty wackiness has taken over our culture. It’s time to take a stand
The White Widow myth
Samantha Lewthwaite almost certainly isn’t as monstrous as the papers say. And she definitely isn’t as important
Gibraltar
The British overseas territory of Gibraltar, or, as some would have it, the wart on the bottom of the Iberian…
