World
Why Russia couldn’t give up on empire
One hundred years ago this December, delegations from the core nations of the East Slavs, Russia, Ukraine, Belarus signed the…
Why Argentina is the team we love to hate
With the prospect of Messi closing out his glorious career with the ultimate prize it’s likely most neutral fans will…
What the revisionists get wrong about America’s nuclear bombings
The use of nuclear weapons at Hiroshima and Nagasaki is hardly a festive subject. But given that in recent conversations…
What will Putin do next?
If you were Putin, what would you do? Predicting your adversary’s future moves requires putting yourself in his shoes. As…
How Dickens invented Christmas
Time was, the Christmas shopping season used to last a week or two. Now it drags on for months. Never…
Why we should take the Twitter Files seriously
‘Shadowbanning’, ‘visibility filtering’, ‘de-amplification’ – the Twitter Files released since Elon Musk took over have given us a new and sinister language…
When it comes to migrants, Britain needs to be more French
Rishi Sunak’s fighting talk as he launched the latest Tory crackdown on illegal Channel migrants this week, with the dramatic words…
Why are political failures like David Cameron so richly rewarded?
The news – reported in the FT Weekend – that former Prime Minister David Cameron is to teach a three-week course…
Nothing will ever be good enough for Harry and Meghan
Imagine you’ve paid good money to see a French farce – and halfway through, it turns into a Greek tragedy.…
Elon Musk makes it up as he goes
Since Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, the script has been flipped. Pontificators at all points of the ideological spectrum are spinning…
Is Putin hiding away?
December is usually a busy month for Vladimir Putin, but not this year. In the run-up to Christmas, Russia’s president…
Could 30,000 Britons really die of flu this winter?
Could flu really kill 30,000 people in Britain this year as our immune systems, rendered naïve after two years of…
Rogues Heroes: What Prince Harry has in common with the SAS’s founder
I’ve enjoyed the recent BBC blockbuster Rogue Heroes, a drama that is mercifully free from the moralising that Auntie often…
Putin’s hawks are turning on each other
Feathers are flying and divisions are widening among Russia’s hawks as the degree to which the invasion of Ukraine was…
Why Don should make way for Ron
When I arrived in Washington, DC in 2006 to learn about US politics, someone told me that in America, there…
How did free speech become a right-wing value?
In early May, I explored the left’s reaction to billionaire Elon Musk potentially buying Twitter and his vow to make…
The EU is letting itself be blackmailed by Hungary
For Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, there is only one lesson to be learned from the compromise reached with the…
The Bank of England’s interest hike shows the worst is to come
After a faltering start in its programme of rate rises, the Bank of England is catching up. Today’s half-point rise…
Harry and Meghan’s Netflix show is worse than the Royals could ever imagine
At the end of the sixth episode of the interminable, grotesquely self-indulgent wallow in self-pity and score-settling that constitutes Netflix’s…
Could Britain pull out of Europe’s human rights treaty?
Just as Brexit began with a few harmless-looking chips at what looked like an impregnable concrete wall, something similar may…
Hooligans aren’t alone in exploiting Morocco’s World Cup run
‘Let’s all get behind Les Bleus for victory!’ tweeted Emmanuel Macron shortly before France and Morocco met last night in…
Latvia’s Russian media crackdown will delight Putin
When Russia was preparing to annex Crimea in the late winter of 2014, the newly-appointed head of the Russian agency…
Randi Weingarten isn’t going anywhere
It was eerily warm in New York the day before the midterm elections, and the president of the American Federation…
Anthony Fauci’s conveniently foggy memory
Dr. Anthony Fauci sat for a seven-hour deposition last week as part of a lawsuit brought by the attorneys general…
The Brittney Griner swap was nothing out of the ordinary
Viewed from a coldly logical perspective, releasing Viktor Bout for Brittney Griner is a highly lopsided trade in favor of…
