World

Morgan McSweeney’s resignation won’t save Starmer 

9 February 2026 2:32 am

Morgan McSweeney has resigned, which felt inevitable but is still a shock to the government and to SW1 in general.…

The lanyard class is not ready for Reform in Scotland

9 February 2026 1:27 am

The most reliable sign that Reform is doing well in Scotland is the refusal of the lanyard class to engage…

Sunday shows round-up: Pat McFadden defends Keir Starmer

9 February 2026 12:06 am

Pat McFadden: ‘I don’t think it’s good for the country to change prime minister every 18 months’ Keir Starmer’s government…

How the Washington Post became a liability for Bezos

8 February 2026 11:28 pm

What does Jeff Bezos’s gutting of the Washington Post say about America’s sense of itself and of its place in…

Takeout with Woody, Soon-Yi and Epstein

8 February 2026 9:29 pm

The more salacious aspects of the Epstein files are well known – but what of the banal side of being…

Mandelson got five-figure sacking payoff

8 February 2026 5:35 pm

It’s a tough time for the nation’s finances – but don’t worry, one man is doing ok. Lord Mandelson received…

Why Gen Z is troubled by Jesus

8 February 2026 5:30 pm

Many teenagers today find Christianity off-putting because Jesus seems too fond of ‘mansplaining’. He appears to have a ‘God complex’,…

The UK is punishing dual-nationals like me

8 February 2026 5:00 pm

Clearing customs at Heathrow is about to get a lot more demanding for people like me. Hundreds of thousands of…

There’s untapped gold in Northern Ireland

8 February 2026 5:00 pm

As anyone familiar with Irish folklore knows, it’s a fool’s errand to look for Leprechaun gold at the end of…

The Mandelson scandal is far grubbier than the Profumo affair

8 February 2026 4:30 pm

The pundits are convinced that Peter Mandelson’s friendship with paedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein is the ‘biggest British political scandal since…

The miracle of India’s railways

8 February 2026 4:00 pm

‘Because it is the Indian Railways that makes India.’ When I have a loquacious personnel officer declare this in my…

There will be few politicians like Jeane Freeman again

8 February 2026 3:30 am

There is no shortage of noise in contemporary politics, nor of people keen to confuse it with authority. Jeane Freeman,…

Crockett

Inside Texas’s messy Senate primaries

8 February 2026 12:33 am

There used to be a political designation in the South of “Yellow Dog Democrats,” meaning voters who’d vote for a yellow dog if…

Why centrists have an anger problem

7 February 2026 11:49 pm

There is an argument that the (further) disgrace of Peter Mandelson has been magnified out of all proportion. Mandelson was fired from…

Pakistan’s terror problem is of its own making

7 February 2026 8:41 pm

At least 31 were killed and over 170 wounded in a suicide bombing targeting a Shia mosque in Islamabad on…

Palestine Action and the limits of jury justice

7 February 2026 6:04 pm

Five out of six Palestine Action protesters on trial in relation to a break-in at the Elbit Systems factory in…

venezuela

Was the raid on Venezuela real?

7 February 2026 5:00 pm

From the very start, there was something weird about Operation Absolute Resolve. The official story went something like this: after…

The hard work of elephant conservation is paying off

7 February 2026 4:30 pm

The death of Craig the elephant, one of Africa’s last great ‘super tuskers’, at the beginning of the year was…

The words that could – and should – doom Starmer

7 February 2026 4:30 pm

The current Labour government, those ‘adults…back in the room,’ are now the UK’s unofficial Party of Sleaze. In the wake…

A day with Bristol’s van dwellers

7 February 2026 4:30 pm

Four weeks since a caravan was torched on Goodneston Road in north-east Bristol, and still no one has bothered to…

Why so many autistic children no longer go to school

7 February 2026 4:25 pm

Louis, 9, rocks back and forth. He can draw the solar system and place every planet on it, but he…

Can Nigel Farage save the great British pub?

7 February 2026 4:20 pm

Good morning from behind the bar, where the beer is still pouring – just. So far this year I have…

Mamdani

Who’s the victim in Zohran Mamdani’s New York?

7 February 2026 5:48 am

Mayor Zohran Mamdani made a hospital visit to comfort the victim of a knife attack on a police officer, who…

The growing conservatism of the Democrats

7 February 2026 5:05 am

Kamala Harris is destined to be the Democratic nominee in 2028 because the American left is now conservative. Democratic politics…

Labour has bottled it – what happens next?

7 February 2026 4:45 am

Where are we then, after the most consequential week in British politics since the last one? Keir Starmer no longer…