World
Why are we testing puberty blockers on children again?
Puberty blockers are powerful drugs with unproven benefits and significant risks. Those were not my words, they came from a…
Philip Pullman is right: Oxford is a ‘frustrating and irritating’ place
The vast acclaim that Sir Philip Pullman’s latest novel, The Rose Field, has received has cemented his status as one…
A lethal standoff is playing out deep beneath Gaza
In 1929, René Magritte painted a picture that has since become iconic in both art and philosophy. The Treachery of…
Should this academic have been banned from campus for using the ‘n-word’?
Is it ever acceptable to say the ‘n-word’? As you will have immediately inferred by that sentence, it’s rare to…
The global cottage industry gaming America’s culture wars
It is the 9/11 of the blue ticks, the Hindenburg of the grifters, the dotcom bubble of the slop-peddlers. The…
Sunday shows round-up: Mel Stride says ‘mistakes will have been made’ during Covid
Heidi Alexander: ‘Tackling child poverty is in the DNA of the Labour Party’ The expectation is that Chancellor Rachel Reeves’…
Isis is stirring once more
Indications that the Islamic State (Isis) has begun to employ artificial intelligence in its efforts to recruit new fighters should…
France’s integration nightmare
France has spent decades telling itself the same comforting story: that the children and grandchildren of Muslim immigrants would become…
Red tape has broken Britain
The overwhelming smell of weed wafting down the street; heaps of decomposing litter floating in local canals and rivers; the…
Why Venezuela matters to Iran
The aircraft carrier Gerald R. Ford and three warships have been sent to the Caribbean, where they are joining a…
Who is looking out for Britain’s salmon and frogs?
Whatever happened to British ecology? I was thinking that when I read two reports in the Times this week, both pretty depressing.…
We must cut Send to help our kids
It is ‘insane’, Reform’s Doge chief Richard Tice said this week, that children are wearing ear-defenders in classrooms, supposedly as…
The CPS is desperate for a backdoor blasphemy law
I had hoped I would never have to write about Hamit Coskun again. After the Quran-burner won his appeal in October, it…
Will Mahmood’s asylum reforms force Ireland’s hand?
Labour’s plans to overhaul Britain’s overstretched asylum system have forced the Irish government to do the same. As the Northern…
The Covid Inquiry has ducked the most important questions
The biggest lesson to come out of the first report of the official Covid Inquiry is what a mistake it…
Was Nathan Gill recruited by the Kremlin?
Was 52-year old Anglesey man Nathan Gill, a member of the European parliament, taking money from the Kremlin, or just from…
‘Monster parents’ are terrorising Japan
If you want to make a Japanese high school teacher break out in a cold sweat and suffer heart palpitations,…
We should admire Shabana Mahmood’s political conversion
It’s difficult to recall any minister in recent years, let alone a Home Secretary, who has been lauded with such…
It’s miserable being an Epstein
It was shortly after my fifteenth birthday that I discovered the music of The Beatles. A school friend and I…
There’s no writer quite like Mariusz Szczygiel
I’ve been a fan of Mariusz Szczygiel, the Polish author, investigative journalist and TV presenter, since reading his book Gottland:…
Zelensky risks coup or civil war
Kyiv When is the price of peace ever fair? War does not determine who is right, only who is left,…
Make education classical again
The National Curriculum Review, published earlier this month, was a rare opportunity to ask some fundamental questions about the purpose…
Reform’s Russia problem
Nigel Farage has had better afternoons. Nathan Gill, the former leader of Reform UK in Wales, has just been sentenced…
Volodymyr Zelensky is facing the ultimate test
Standing outside his presidential office in Kyiv tonight, on the same spot as on the second day of Ukraine’s full-scale…
Second MP quits Your Party
Another one bites the dust. Iqbal Mohamed has become the second Independent MP to quit the left-wing Your Party amid…
