The Week
Barometer
Breeding controversy A Downing Street aide, believed to have been recruited as a result of Dominic Cummings’s advert for ‘weirdos…
Performance artists
The PM was filmed introducing his new cabinet by getting them to answer in unison how many hospitals, how many…
Letters
No defence Sir: Jon Stone (Letters, 15 February) recalls the horrors and miseries of being subjected to bombing from the…
Borrowed time
The nature of the Johnson government is still not clear, but has become more so with the announcement this week…
Portrait of the Week
Home The Department of Health classified the novel coronavirus (named by the World Health Organization Covid-19) as a ‘serious and imminent…
Diary
Exactly 50 years ago I drove, for the first visit of many, across country to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, following the…
Barometer
Going viral A few of the businesses which chose ‘Corona’ as a brand name and now have a bit of…
Beyond impeachment
An impeachment trial is overseen by Congress and Senate, who both make the law and (in this case) sit in…
Letters
A green and poor land? Sir: Your editorial (8 February) is a timely warning about what the government’s headlong drive…
Costing the Earth
After being sacked as the chairman of the COP26, the UN climate conference which is to take place in Glasgow…
Portrait of the week
Home The United Kingdom quietly left the European Union at 11 p.m. GMT on 31 January. Boris Johnson, the Prime…
Diary
After I took the editor’s job at Today on Radio 4 nearly three years ago I had to answer to…
Barometer
Mumbo jumbo The Prime Minister called opposition to imports of US-produced food ‘mumbo jumbo’. The expression was introduced to the…
Living in hope
The gloom that envelopes the Labour party stands in strong contrast to the confidence and hope that the Prime Minister…
Objects of desire
‘Homosexuality without the cant’, by Simon Raven, 14 June 1968: ‘All virile societies,’ writes Mary McCarthy à propos the Florentines,…
Letters
The chance to fail Sir: Matt Ridley’s article ‘Risky business’ (1 February) offers a variety of reasons why innovation has been…
A new ally
The moment of Britain’s departure from the EU was always likely to be an anticlimax, both for those who expect…
Portrait of the Week
Home Using a Parker fountain pen (a brand now made in Nantes), Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister, signed the EU…
Diary
I still live in the same house, in London, in which I lived as a baby. I walk my five-year-old…
Barometer
In the beginning How did Britain mark its entry into the European Economic Community on 1 January 1973? There were no…
Hair we go
Lord Heseltine’s electrifying hair once whipped the party faithful into paroxysms of euphoria. But since today he sees his hopes…
Letters
Enemies on the left Sir: James Forsyth’s article ‘Labour must change to win’ (25 January) describes how little appetite the…
Stopping traffic
The news this week could easily have led with the deaths of 14 Afghan and Iraqi migrants in the English…
Portrait of the week
Home The Duke of Sussex left England to join his wife, Meghan, in Canada. This followed an agreement that stripped…
Diary
I start the week by going through my iPhone to delete the numbers of former friends. It sounds depressing, but…
